Davidji's Comeback Story Pt.1

00:00:09 Speaker 1: What's up everybody, We are back with another episode of Comeback Stories. So today's guest has taught millions of people around the world to heal their hearts, plant powerful intentions, and manifests the life of their dreams. He's a globally recognized mind body health and wellness expert, mindful performance trainer, meditation teacher, and author. He is by far the most prolific creator of guided meditations in the world. His more than one thousand guided meditations are available on Inside Timer, Daily Home, Apple Music, Amazon, Hey How, Spotify, Title and more. So. His life today is all about serving, meditating, and teaching people to connect to the innermost aspect of themselves. David G. Welcome to the podcast, my brother. Hey, Hi, it's great to have you. It's so great to see you guys. First of all, happy belated birthday Darren M. And congrats on five years of sobriety. Thank you, Um. Look with these five years has given you, um and Donnie my brother, So you are such a shining light. I am so grateful to have you as a friend and you're you're transforming the world. So thank you so much. Big shout out to to to Buddy and Cody Frenchiez. Thank you, man Um. Yeah, I really appreciate you. I think it's this is one of the interviews I've been looking forward to the most, um, your words of wisdom, the way that you speak, your storytelling, and most importantly for me, I think, like most of us, when we start meditation a meditation practice, most of us struggle. We just don't dive in and like figure it out and think we're master meditators right away. And you know, I really credit you to giving me making meditation accessible to me with your words and just the way that you can kind of storytell and just make it accessible to anybody's, like someone like me that was really struggling with it. So thank you. I'm profoundly grateful for your words of wisdom and how you guide and lead. Thank you, Thank you so much. All Right, we're diving in, so we want to know what was growing up for you? Like, first I just want to announce I am wearing a little silver and black here. Let's get it heavy Meta. You're listening. His shirt says heavy Meta and Metta, I'm sorry, what was what was growing up? Yeah? What was growing up for you? Like I'm from Queens Queens, New York. As you come out of the womb, the doctor whispers into your ear, right, here's out works effort and focus, not working, more effort, still not working, more focused. And it was pretty wild time. Um, a lot of a lot of yelling in my household. Whoever yelled the loudest actually was heard. Um. I was not the best yeller, so often not heard. And you know, pretty much growing up was this experiment where you know, my mom was like cookie and an artist, and my father was a disciplinarian, um, great athlete, shortstop. And that was pretty much my life, growing up in a red brick apartment and building and you know, just just trying to get along. I left there after a while began my my journey out. I've had a bunch of different journeys, but grown up, my mom pretty much always told me to just keep when you fall down and just get back up, don't worry about it, dot yourself off, get back up. You're on a journey. It's not the destination, it's the journey. Embrace it and lead with your heart. And so she died when I was relatively young, but I carry that inside me right now to this day. And my dad, who I was estranged from for quite a while. He and I are best friends now and I talked to him every day. So it's funny how things go when you think, oh, no, that's it. It's going to be forever relationships. If we want them to, we can lean harder into them and make them unfold well like we'd like them too. When you look back into your younger years, can you think of like an early memory of pain that really sticks with you or stuck with you? Um? Yeah, I had a you know, I had a grandfather who liked to h to beat me when for whatever reason, um, you know, taking off his belt and beating me, and so um, you know, I don't know that that stuck with me, the sting of that for just random beatings. But I definitely really embraced at a certain point in my life that I will I will not be defined by other people whatever they do to me. And so that just gave me just a little bit of I don't know, just a little bit of strength to like, no matter what happens. And then when my mother died, I was like, what possibly could happen? That's this bad? And that has been you know, a continuous role for me to allow me to like, whatever's going on, I've been there, you know, so, um, those are those are probably too fairly inspiring intimate aspects of my life. I feel like you are one of the master teachers out there. But who was one of your first real teachers growing up? You know, probably very very early, um, in my in my awareness, there was a friend of mine whose who whose parents were killed in a in a car crash, and you know we just like came from home from school one day and that was that. And so you know, he was like so inspired you know how he handled that and and what he did with his life going forward. He's a pretty successful guy, um right now. M. But he he was very very vulnerable, and at an early age he really shared with me like it's okay, it's okay to be to be vulnerable. You know, you can that can happen, and it doesn't make you weaker in your vulnerability, rest your strength. So that was pretty early on. That was like in my you know, early teens. But I've had a lot of you know, you know probably you know, Jimi Hendrix was just like you know on my wall that inspired me to start playing guitar. And a certain you know, a certain period. I was like, you know, I'm never going to even approximate that, so let me stop. But I was always inspired um um by musical stars sly in the Family Stone, um Isley, Brothers, Hendricks. Those are like my foundational musical and whenever I would play that music, it would just transport me to other other realms, like embodying the vibrations. David G. You were de man first and foremost. Thank you for being here. Um. I want to ask you. You said a lot about having numerous journeys along the way. I like to know what and where in those journeys would you perceive to be your lowest point or your rock bottom and tell us what that was like. I've definitely had, you know. I think we all have defining moments in our life, and you know, whatever we do in that moment becomes the fabric of our life. There was a bunch of years where I was working on the eighty second floor in Tower two of the World Trade Center, and during that period of time, I really wasn't lacking what I was doing. I really wasn't I wasn't doing what my heart wanted me to do. I had stopped meditating. I'd started meditating in college, you know, started doing it was an experimental Asian studies course, and I was in that class. There were twelve of us. We sat in a circle, and we were instructed that when you had a thought come into our head, we were supposed to raise our hands in the corner. Our zen master stood in his hands. He carried an eighteen inch bamboo stick known as a kazaku, and when we raised our hands, he would come over and thwack us on the back. So I only lasted in that school of meditation a few weeks, and I got on and off meditation over the years. But sometimes for years I was meditating every single day. But as I got more deeply involved in the corporate world, that stuff slipped away. And at a certain point I had traded in my morning meditation routine routine for an early morning train ride to the World Trade Center, and I had traded in my evening meditation routine for a glass of scotch. And like that, meditation was gone for my life. But also what was gone was balanced. And you know, then nine to eleven unfolded, and just a few months before then, I left the World Trade center. So here I am combination survivor's guilt and lots of important work to be done. But it was really in the in the I was feeling so so empty. After nine eleven people I knew had been killed, The world as I knew it was stood on its head. You know, that's really what trauma is. It's when your entire worldview is turned upside down and just things just don't make sense. And so in the wake of nine to eleven, I was walking pastor row of cardboard boxes in southern Manhattan that people were living in, and I walked past this particular box and this guy grabs my pant like pulls me into his box. Who are like inches away from each other. I'm gazing into his like crystalline blue eyes, and he says, what's going to be on your tombstone? And it was like one I call these butterfly moments where suddenly everything stops. The traffic stop, the people stopped, every single aspect of the world shut down. It was just me and him and perhaps I don't know, is this God speaking through this person or this person speaking to me? And then we stayed in this this gaze lock for what seemed like hours. It was probably just a minute or toe. And then he started, actually, you know, asking me. You know, I reached into my pocket to give him a few bucks. I figured, this is what this is about. And he put his hand and pinned my hand in my pocket and said, it's not about them up, It's not about the money. You have sacred powers. And I was like, what WHOA? And you know, the money dropped to the floor. I staggered away, tears streaming down my face. I was hyperventilating, my heart was pounding, my knees were weak. I staggered over just like twenty feet to this apartment building and sat on its steps, and like this whole thing was like everything in my life. It'd suddenly come to that second. And you know, I'm asking myself, like what it is going to be on my tombstone? Why am I here? What have I been brought here to do? And what are these sacred powers resting inside of me? And again not that I have some like divine powers, I believe we all have these. I wrote a book called Sacred Powers, you know, based on that there are these magnificent superpowers that are resting inside of us, perhaps dormant that we can awaken through various practices and paying attention and things along those lines. But that was like the jumping off point. I quit my job, I threw everything in. I went on my own little eat pray love journey without the without the eating and the love, just a lot of prayer. Headed off the India, of course, you know, in search of the Guru, in search of answers, in search of meaning, went to the northern India darms Alot to visit his holiness, the dale Lama. He wasn't there that day, you know, traveled away to the south. I was bathing in the Ganges and practicing yoga and meditating and going to the temples and praying and trying to find like the depth of answers. And then like one day I was it was about six months. I had like a six month visa, and it was like five months and twenty eight days. And I'm laying in a in a hammock in a cashew forest and Kerala, southern India, and these parrots are squawking, and I'm reading the Baga bad Guida, this ancient ancient book when you're the original conversations with God type of thing, and suddenly I read this this one line and it like blew in my mind. Um, and it's uh, it's chapter two, verse forty eight. Yoga Sta Kuru KARMANI, how you know, the great warrior Origin is talking to God and he's like, how am I supposed to live my life? How am I supposed to walk through the world? And God replies, Yoga Sta Kuru KARMANI, establish yourself in the present moment, moment and then perform action, so like get still and then be brilliant. And that was like it was like my my my biggest aha moment. And you know, following you know, extreme extreme pain that was perculating inside of me, what was the what was the process like with getting more comfortable and welcoming the stillness? Because I'm sure that somebody that's riding a train to work and you know, trying to transition into finding answers, somebody like me that's fresh out of rehab or you know, it's tough for us to develop that desire to be still because the world is teaching us to go, go, go, to achieve, to obtain, Like, what is what was your journey like from there from here in that line to developing stillness as being one of the most sacred spaces in your life. Yeah, well you're so right down because you know, I'm from New York. We're high achievers, we're control freaks. Um, you know, we're elbowing people out of the way to get to wherever we're whatever we're trying to accomplish in that moment, And so we are not taught that who we really are is stillness and silence. But that's who we really are. We are the space between we are the space between our breaths. We're the space between our heartbeats. You know, we're the space between our words with the space between our actions. And so you know, even even watching football, you know when you're on the line waiting for the snap, you know there's like that moment of just stillness and then all the action takes off. And given if we're not in the NFL, we're all practicing that on a daily basis where we can be We're always better coming from stillness as opposed to knee jerk. So I believe that since that's who we are, the space between cultivating that through meditation, through being in nature, through being joyful, through forgiveness, through in deep introspection, we can actually connect to that space and recognize that's who we truly are. And then we have a choice. Would I like to cultivate that? Would I like to expand that in my life? And you know, not everyone chooses that. Most people roll their eyes and say, oh, that's that's woo woo gibberish, not really adding value. But we know that that's sort of like the key. It's that millisecond right before the action. And you know, I think that if we're willing to give ourselves just a shot, you know, to do that, you know, the the that same line that that says, you know, establish yourself in the present moment, you know, right before that it says we've total control over our own actions and no control over the fruit of those actions. And we spend so much time in the fruit. You know, they're like what happens after, you know, if I do my thing? And so so often we're like living for the fruit and we're not being fully present. And I think when we suddenly experience just a flicker of it here and they're like, oh, I got still, and then I listened a little more and I actually heard something I usually would have cut that person off and said what I needed to say, or I was just a little more receptive to this idea that I otherwise wouldn't agree with. And so you know, the teaching is, you know, if we can perform our work, our duty, and I believe Donnie and Darren and everyone listening, you know, we're here for a particular action. We're we're here to do something. We're not randomly here. We are here for a purpose. You want to call it a divine purpose or a noble purpose, but we're here to deliver the goods right now, to make something matter right now. We transform the world by transforming ourselves. So this all stems from inside. This is like get established within yourself, you know, and go and go inside. And the only path to our trauma and releasing it, the only path to our addictions and transcending them, the only path to all of this. You know, the wound is the way. And so we've got to go into this place and allow. And that place is the stillness and silence that rests within. That is truly who we are. A lot of people would debate that, but I believe, you know, we can cultivate it and so easily, you know, just by taking a breath, just by giving ourselves permission to take a breath, by practicing, there's a whole bunch of techniques. I Now it doesn't make for great podcast or great radio, but let's just do this right now. Think about something that's been bothering you or disturbing you just over the past couple of days. Don't go too deep. This isn't therapy, but just you know, someone said they were going to do something. They didn't. Something was supposed to happen in a certain way. It didn't. And get clear on that. And now close your eyes and through your nose, take a long, slow, deep breath in and watch that breath as it goes down deep into your belly. And when it gets there, just hold it. Just watch it and hold it. Just witness it and hold it, and now release it. Observe it as it moves up your chest, through your throw out, through your nose or mouth. Keep exhaling, keep witnessing, keep watching, keep observing it. Just allow that breath to dissipate into the ether. And now open your eyes and breathe normally. And that was about sixteen seconds. And in those sixteen seconds, if you're playing along. I don't know if you were playing along, but if you were playing along, you weren't thinking about that thing that I just asked you to think about. And so imagine, in just sixteen seconds, we can adjust the direction of where our attention is. And we can probably do it even less. But we all you know, that's what we We've proven the three things. One, we can direct our attention anyway. We don't have to be stuck in our pain, we don't have to be stuck in our sadness. Everybody needs to visit the land of hurts and wounds, but nobody needs to live there. I say, rent don't buy, and interest rates are too high anyway. So that's one thing. The second thing is we just introduced a power and interrupt, you know, a time in a break in the action from what was happening to our next thought. And the third thing is it's one of the secrets of meditation. We just cultivated an object of attention. For those sixteen seconds, the object of our attention was just watching our breath. And so just in that simple action, it brings all of our hormones and chemicals that are balancing into play, and it sort of like settles down, adrenaline, correzol, glucagon, all that other stuff that fires us up. So just with something as simple as as sixteen seconds, so you do it four times it's a minute, to twenty times it's five minutes, you can have like an entire present moment practice just built on something as simple as that. There's a lot there going back to the we are the space between. I can't help but think about the most important thing we'll ever know is like how we feel about ourselves when we're by ourselves. And when you say that that's kind of the space in between, or if I think about the pandemic and that space, to me, that felt like one long ass meditation where all the doing stopped and a lot of people struggled during those times. But you're saying that's that's who we are, the space in between its and it's why probably people struggle to meditate or they resist it, because when the doing stops, are they comfortable in their own skin? Do they do they like the person they are beyond the labels and the roles and oftentimes hiding in work or hiding in their relationships. So it's really powerful. I've heard you say that before. But it just landed so different for me this time, and it's given me a better understanding of why many people struggle in the non doing or in the pause. But there's power in the pause, for sure. Yeah. And you know our devices don't help. You know, if there's like four seconds that we could sneak away from ourselves, you know, suddenly something ends, whatever it is, and we've got like four seconds or ten seconds, we're like, let me let me check social media, you know, let me see if anyone texted me. Let me let me check a you know, a voicemail or an email, or how many likes I got or like any of that stuff. And you know, it's it's harder, you know, it's become harder and harder to spend time with yourself, even if you want to spend time with yourself. But if you know that that's the path to liberation, to emotional freedom, how do you not go there? How do you not you know, if you know that that's the path to the better expression of yourself. Not that you're not great when you're in in action, but if you can get still before the action, you know, it's like pull them back the bow. You know, if you just pull it back a little bit, or you don't pull it back a little than the air just falls down. If you really pull back that bow, then it launches. And I think that's, you know, the perfect metaphor for like everything that we're doing in our life. You know, get still first and then be brilliant, take a breath and then speak, you know, take a breath and listen and allow someone else's words to land. But you're right, Donnie, you know, if we don't want to be with ourselves, you know, for a loan for ten minutes, who else wants to be with us? It's a great point. Even that pause, My new practice has been when I hit a yellow or red light to not grab the phone in that space in between where I think for so long, even me, as a quote teacher of these practices, still struggles with that. So my new practice the last couple of months has been that pause when I'm driving, to not grab my phone when the light's read, which still tempting doing okay so far, though, we need to keep you in cars more. David, you what was the shift from acquiring this knowledge, acquiring wisdom and then wanting to teach and share um? Well, that's really funny because you know, I'm from I'm from Quentin's, I'm from New York, so we don't care about anyone else's meditation. UM people were like, dude, you have all this wisdom, now share it. And I'm like, oh god, really, I have to think about someone else's meditation. So that was not my intention. I did not get on the on the path to UM to go deeper into this so I could share it with others. Friends of mine after I came back from India, they were like, dude, all you do is sit around and meditate. And I was like, yeah, I know, isn't that amazing And they're like, nah, you need to, like you need to share it with other people. And I was like, hmm, that's not really my thing. And they said, well, if you really want to learn something, learn it from the inside out. Become a teacher, you know. And I was like, okay, I'll try that, and so I went on this teacher's path. I actually went to a workshop. At the time, Deepak Choper had a had a center in UM Southern California in Carl's Bad, San Diego, and so I went to this workshop. And I had been in business for many many years before that, and I go to this workshop. I figured there's going to be like a thousand people there and there's thirty of us and us what's going on here? Um? And that's the work that I was in. I was just you know, merges and acquisitions, turning around companies and so, you know, we all got to introduce ourselves at this workshop on the first day. And while I was meditating, I think like on the third day, UM Deepak approached me and said, you know, we got you know, our CFO is here. Would you would you consider working for us? And I was like, well, yeah, sure, I'm not I'm not really doing anything else else. I would love to. And I said, but you know, I came here to get certified to be a meditation teacher, So if you could just like step back from the business for a minute and just allow me to become that. And so I started off being the COO and then became the lead educator because once I got certified, I was teaching every single day, and then ultimately became the dean of Choper Center University and like, so for like a decade, all I did was study and teach every single day. Traveling the world, you know, teaching you know, a lot of this timeless wisdom. And the hilarity was after I've been doing that for like a month, I was like, oh my god, this is so cool. How do I not share this with others? So I went from like totally the most selfish, you know, possible person in the world to this stuff is bursting inside of me. I'm so passionate about. Like you know, when you see like a really great movie or you read really great book or you know, so it's like, oh, oh, oh, check this out. And so that's that's what happened with me. Um. I was finding such my life was just accelerating and shifting, and um, as I got deeper and deeper into nothingness, it's pretty it's pretty intense, and like I wanted to share that with other people. I wanted to share the fact that I'm making better decisions because of my meditation, of the world is coming at me in slower motion because of my meditation. It's like all these benefits that I would never have anticipated. You know, I'm you know, I'm I'm I'm so restored. When I wake up in the morning, I have such energy, you know, it's like all these we know, the physiological benefits of meditation, they are you know, they're carved in stone, they're real. And there's a whole bunch of emotional benefits as well, um, such as forgiving other people, or not holding grudges, or or or being grateful in life, or about just you know, um, choosing a peaceful moment over being right. You know, at at your funeral, no one's gonna say, oh, and he was right so often, you know, like that that's been so overrated and so connecting to stillness and silence really allows you to suddenly realize, oh, there's something deeper here that I wasn't taught in school. No coach or a trainer or a teacher ever actually taught me about you know, the space between, or about the stillness and silence that rests within, or about who I truly was at my core. And I believe that's really what spirituality is. Spirituality is, it's not religion. Spirituality is you know, your understanding that there's something so much bigger than you in some way, and it's your journey to that on a daily basis. Maybe it's your best version, maybe it's Jesus, Maybe it's God, maybe you know, pick pick your deity, or maybe it's just you at your best expression. And that's what spirituality is. It's a journey that we take to our highest expression on a daily basis. And it's not a one way trip. When we touch that magnificence, who're like, oh, I'm freaking awesome. But we can take a you know, a tweezer full of that or a thimbleful of that back into our lives. And that's really heaven on earth. You know, it's taking the best of us and bringing it back into this moment and then living that and then again moving towards the best expression of us. Spending time in stillness and silence really allows you to be a little more reflective and a little less reflexive, you know, being a little more thoughtful, a little more mindful, a little less mind less. As you mentioned how to be a great teacher, you need to be able to listen. But how do you correlate the two and how has meditation made you a better listener? Well, I've heard you guys on one of your podcasts talking about that prayer is talking to God and meditation is listening, and so you know, we're we're a society, we're a culture where we're hoping, we're praying, we're wishing. You know, there's a lot of stuff going out there, like let me not get COVID, let me again, let me, let me, let me get this thing done right, let me you know, please, you know, heal that person or you know, change things. You know, we're negotiating. We're in ling constant negotiations with the divine. And you know, I think that nobody spends enough time listening to anything. I mean, think about it, think about I don't know, I don't know what you know when you get in your car, Donnie, but you know, most people it's just a couple of seconds till they get in the car and then turn on serious or turn on you know, the radio, or or pop some music on. There's like sacred space in our cars. There's sacred space in the subways if you can just like pop your pop your air pods and then just like meditate. We're not really we are internally capable of it, but it's not really reinforced in our society. And so if we have to be the ones who do that, we have to be the ones who say, well, I'm in activity twenty four hours a day. Maybe I could take five minutes and just breathe in let and breathe out go and do that for five minutes a day. Since I'm ingesting all this energy and taking stuff personally and getting riled up and getting righteous and getting pissed off and getting frustrated, and like, maybe I can have like a five minute let go meditation. So something as intentional as that can be transformational. No one's doing that, you know, well, meditators are doing that, but not people who don't meditate. So you can heal your heart as you also you clear your mind as you also gain just a little bit more like crystallized thought. Why wouldn't we do that? If there was a pill, we would all be taking the pill and so okay, so it takes a little more effort than the pill. You know, if there was a pill that would like guarantee you great sleep, make you a little more patient, Enhance your relationshiots, enance your relationship with yourself at end, your higher power and anyone that you happen to be living with. Increase your performance no matter what you're doing in life. Make you a little more humble and courageous, like who wouldn't be taking that pill? We'd all be taking that. So I think we have an opportunity to really take our lives to the next level just by dipping our toe in, just dipping our toe into the space between the stillness and silence that rests within. And I think if you can just do it, I don't think anyone felt worth doing our sixteen seconds together. And so if you can just do that realistically with I don't know every single day everyone's got sixteen seconds. Everyone actually has probably twenty minutes, you know, his holiness the Dalai Lama says, if you don't think you have twenty minutes a day to be in meditation, you need to meditate for forty minutes. So we have opportunities throughout the course of the day instead of just picking up the device, just like I'll pick it up in a minute. It's okay, the world won't end if I just close my eyes, take a few deep breaths, and then come back. And you know, science says that we're not really great after forty five minutes. Everybody needs a reboot, a mental clarity reboot. At the forty five minute mark, and most of us aren't doing that. We're just like staring at the zoom or staring at our computers or staring at our devices for like ten hours and then we pass out. But you know, the reality is that it's not so hard for us, and so many meditations, guided meditations are on our devices, so all you need to do is like okay, you know, and go to like insight time or go to you know. There's so many unplugged meditations, so many apps, meditation apps, and you can still be connected to your device, but instead you're listening to someone guide you into stillness and silence. How do you resist that? Why would you resist that? Well, it's like very common response for me is when people are resisting meditation is that they don't have time. But meditation actually gives you more time back because you're not then wasting time on things you can't control. So if you're meditating, you're cultivating more awareness and you start to start to become more aware of the things you can control, and you can let go of the things you can and ultimately it gives you more time, energy, and space. So it's like the story of our mind. Saying I don't have time is the exact reason why we need to make time to do it. But it's a hook. It's tricky. Yeah, it's tricky. You have to commit to it and you have to ritualize it. You know, both of you guys, you know athletes, you know the ritual, you know the drill. You know, you can show up and you do these things and you get stronger and you get better and you hone your craft. And I think you know that's part of the deal also when it comes to meditation. You know, our ability to hone our craft, and that's like, you know, let's hone our ability to connect to the stillness and silence that rests within. How about if we like did that, what would that you know, what would that feel like if we just connected to a little bit of stillness, Because that's the secret. If I could start my day every single day with a little bit of stillness and silence as you guys do, and then everything we encounter throughout the course of the day becomes infused with a little bit of stillness and silence. Someone's going to push your button, Someone's gonna you know, at some point, you're gonna take something personally. At some point you're gonna have a regret or a grievance. We'll imagine if you have just a little bit of stillness inside of you to sort of like act as like a buffer to that and so that it wouldn't be you know, this type of it wouldn't weigh on you. It would actually be more of a you know, a liberation. And like I said, it's true, if you meditate, the world comes at you in slower motion. Who doesn't want that? It's in superpower? How do we how do we not embrace that one um? You know, if we could, you know, we can't necessarily hear what other people are thinking, but we can definitely move through the world at the same pace we want. But everything's coming on it is just a little bit more slowly, and you know, there's a lot of stuff going on. And I've said, when the when the pandemics first hit us in like March of twenty twenty, and suddenly we entered a period of low tide. You know, high tide is when you're bopping along and you're floating along and you can't even see, you know, below the surface. But low tide, suddenly the tide comes down all the sharp aspects of life are revealed, all those really really scary and sharp edges are revealed. And you know, in relationships and health, and society and culture and in you know, our racial challenges, like all that stuff, we're still there. We're still at low tide. So this requires people who are willing to step up. This requires people who are willing to like not just yell at each other, but perhaps transform themselves a little bit. And then that's how the world outside of us gets shifted. And so I believe we have a responsibility to be our best expression, certainly during low tide. And oh, by the way, I don't see it ending, you know, like in a week or so. We're probably in the decade of low tide right now. And so how about figure out what are these nourishing things that we can do to ourselves to prevent burnout, to prevent us being a holes, to allow us to be our best expression, and to sort of like step beyond whatever vision we thought we might have had of who we are really into this more magnificent expression. Yeah. I like what you said about that had the vision of who we are because a lot of what we're taught and kind of hardwared into our brains as human beings is like we're taught to seek comfort, We're taught to seek pleasure, and the easiest route possible, the path with the least amount of resistance. And you know, I feel like the theme of this conversation here today is it just requires you to get a little bit uncomfortable to take a step towards that fear or that insecurity, because on the other side of it is something that you can't even comprehend. Right now, that's the case for me, I know that's the case for Donnie. No less the case for you. But as human beings, it's like we're so we're so taught to it's sold to us on TV, on ads, on social media like comfort, pleasure. We find our space and we want to just stick to it and not really try anything else. But if we just had a little bit of a willingness to step into something that's uncomfortable, most human beings don't understand how much of an investment that is to continue to choose discomfort on a day to day basis. What would you say to somebody that is having a hard time like putting into their mind and just really just taking that action. It's brilliant down. You know, there's a there's a Joseph Campbell line. You know, the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek, you know. And so we're like, I don't know, I don't want to go in there, but that's where the that's where, that's where the richness of life is resting, you know, on the other side of your comfort zone. Um. You know, we have the opportunity. Both of you guys have sort of life had like new beginnings, rebirths, you know, of your life. You're you're like these powerful archetypes of you know, yeah, let me let me see if I can shed what doesn't serve me and let me step into the unknown. But that's where the richness is. Let me step out of the stale. There's no richness there. It's like same old, same old. Um. So, if you want to experience a beauty of life that you never even envisioned could exist, you got to take that step, and you could take small steps. It's okay, baby steps. You don't have to like start with a thirty minute meditation practice. You don't have to suddenly like burst into the room that you've been afraid to enter. And like I'm here, you know, maybe make an appointment, or you know, maybe dip your toe in. But I believe that if we don't dip our toe and we can't know is the water cold or not, if we don't put ourselves out there and risk and trust it's all about risking and trusting, then how could we ever find out? Now? I know that there's magnificence that's greater than this moment for me and for you, and you guys have demonstrated it. You're you're there, You're the real world, visible example of people reinventing themselves, rebranding themselves, you know, stepping beyond whatever could seem comfortable. But you know, we all want to hold onto that familiar suck. It's like it's so familiar. I know it sucks, but it's so familiar, it's so comfortable. We're afraid to step into the unfamiliar, the unknown. But it doesn't suck. It's beyond suck. It transcends suck. So I know that's probably not a very articulate, compelling argument for people to step in. But you know, if you don't like the way your life is going right now, guess what you get to make a more conscious choice, and maybe there's stuff in your past you know that you did that was just like, no, you don't understand you know, my life. You know, it's just so horrible, the things I've done. It's like, you know, you get to step forward, and you get to give yourself permission to step into the now. And if we can live in the past as victims, so we can step into the now and really set this new trajectory, this new platform for a whole new, magnificent world. You think you'll never love again. Guess what. The love you'll find on the other side of this is so much, far beyond what you ever thought you could have or were deserving of. You don't think you can succeed again because you failed and fallen down fifty times. What do they say, like Thomas Edison fourteen thousand attempts at the ucandescent light bulb, you know, when they say about you know, Michael Jordan, you know only you know missed like seventy percent of his shots. You know, loser, you know, so suddenly we start to look at you know, if you can just get back up wherever you are. You know, Wayne Dyer has this line, even if you're lying in the gutter, you could still see the stars. You know, if you can just get back up, right, that's what perseverance, you know, that's that's that's that's what resilience is. It's not being bulletproof, it's getting back up. It's getting back up and being able to say, you know what, thanks for that horrible experience. I learned a lot from it. I learned and maybe twelfth time as a charm, but I learned that I can step into my power and will it be scary? Yes, um, but you know I think it was? Was it? Walt Whitman said, like the person who's brave is the same exact person as you. They're just brave for five seconds longer. So you don't have to suddenly like just be out there. Um, just trust, just trust that whatever has gotten you to this moment will get you to the next moment. But you have to be willing to take the step. You know, this is great. You know, Bruce Lee has has said so many things about water. There's so many like Bruce, Bruce Lee, water means out there. But like there's like, you know, there's a great one that they'll start with something like be like water. Be like water making its way through the cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around it or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid outward, things will disclose themselves. And that's all about getting still in silent and then letting the universe unfold to you. And they're like, oh, here's how it is, now let me take that step. I feel like we'd be doing our listeners a disservice if we didn't go round two on this. Would you be willing We've never really done this and come back and done back to back episodes, but there's so much more that we didn't get to. Questions I wouldn't I want to ask, and you have so much more depth. Would you be down to maybe jump back on with us next week and go round two because there's there's so much here and yeah, yes, yeah, I love hanging out with you, guys. We love hanging out with you. We'll tell you what you're gonna have to come back next week and get round two of David G's wisdom because it's it's profound all right for me, guys. Yeah, we're gonna leave it right there. Man, Look for David g next week. Also, yes, sir, we're out. What's up? Comeback stories, family, It's Donnie dropping in here. So did you know that Darren and I's relationships started by me being his personal development, mindfulness and mindset coach. I want to let you know about both my one on one coaching program, The Shift, and my group Mastermind Elevate your Purpose. These coaching programs are specifically designed for people who are ready to take the next step in their purpose and level up their career, the personal finances, and have more connected, deep and meaningful relationships. My gift and part of my purpose is to help others take that next step in leveling up their lives so that they can have a greater impact on the lives of others, create success that sustainable yet evolves and grows, and help build a legacy that will outlive your life. If this is calling you, just go to Donnie Starkins dot com and apply for either one of my programs.