Deep Dive with Dr D
Discussions on life and living with Dr D. A man who has risen from the lowest depths of life to the amazing life he has now.
Deep Dive with Dr D
What If Adversity Is Building You, Not Breaking You
The glossy highlight reel hides a harder truth: most of us are fighting battles no one can see. This solo deep dive gets honest about adversity—what it feels like to lose your footing, how shame isolates, and why the way back is built from small, stubborn choices. I share the moments that reshaped my life, from a failing sub shop and a beloved dog’s diagnosis to standing in the same courtroom years later as my felonies were vacated. The thread tying it all together is simple and repeatable: start where your feet are, separate who you are from what you’ve done, and let consistency outrun confidence.
We dig into practical tools you can use today. A one‑minute grounding routine to steady your mind. A language shift that turns “I’m a failure” into “I’m learning from failure.” The power of showing up when it’s awkward and letting community carry you when your own belief wobbles. I walk through the pink cloud of early wins and the harder, second‑year work of building a life that lasts—paying off debts, making amends, returning to school at 41, and learning to trust daily wins more than fireworks.
Three truths become the backbone of this conversation: shame isolates while connection heals, grit is built in the small choices no one sees, and hope is contagious. When you rise, others rise with you. If your flame feels dim, borrow light from your people until yours returns. End each day naming one thing that went right. Turn pain into purpose by sharing your story, because someone out there needs your map. Ready to trade shame for momentum and take one honest step forward? Press play, subscribe for more weekly deep dives, and leave a review to tell us the next right action you’re taking today.
Good morning, friends, and welcome to Deep Dive with Dr. D. Uh, I took a couple weeks off, and you know, I'm I try to be pretty transparent. I didn't have guests, I actually had one, and then that guest canceled, and then I took last week off. I've got some other guests in the pipeline. Uh I'm gonna have uh Brandy, who is the executive director of Pears Rising. She's on later this month. I have a young lady, uh Nessie, that I want to have on. I want to get perspectives from a wide variety of people on my show on life and living. So uh, oh, my um my father figure friend in Ellensburg, my Ellensburg dad Ken. I broached the topic with him. He's thinking about it. Um, so uh yeah, and uh I want to say this out loud. I like recording these in my office in Ellensburg, and I've had some friends, and I'm not closing my door today, we're keeping it super chill. So here's Johnny. Here, here we go.
SPEAKER_00:Come here.
SPEAKER_01:Come on, come, come on.
SPEAKER_00:There, you're such a good boy.
SPEAKER_01:There's Johnny boy. Yeah, you had a good morning, he got to run. Okay. So uh I've had some friends who don't live in the area go, Well, do you want to record it, you know, through Zoom and do that? And I'm like, I've been resistant to that, but maybe I need to be open to that because I I've done I've done Zoom interviews, and for a podcast, you're not gonna know any different. You just hear the voice, and on YouTube it looks kind of cool. So maybe I need to be more open to having guests remotely, is what I'm saying out loud. So if you're just joining, uh this one's gonna be kind of relaxed. It's just me today. And uh if you haven't gotten your copy yet, my book Grit Over Shame is out. I released it earlier this year, and uh it's available wherever you buy books. If you live in Ellensburg, you can get it at Gerald's or Pearl Street Books, and then if you don't, that's okay. You can come to Ellensburg and get it. You don't have to. You can get it online at Amazon.com. We all know that place, or Gerald's if you want to shop local and get it sent to you. Gerals.com, J-E-R-R-O-L-S.com. And uh oh, as an ebook, it's available through Kindle, and then I narrated it, and it's so it's also available on Audible. And uh this is season three of Deep Dive with Dr. D. The last several sessions I've had guests on. I've had some great interviews, so go back and check those out. Uh, people's perspective on recovery, on life, on relationships, on parenting. A lot of great information is out there. So if you're just jumping on, if you're on the Facebook Live or the uh TikTok live, I'm also open to questions. If you have a question about the podcast, about my book, about me, about a guest, and I can answer it. Today's a great day for that. You can put that question in the chat. I've got a little script I'm gonna go into here shortly, and it's on a talk I gave yesterday at an event here in Ellensburg, and it's how to throw thrive, excuse me, in the face of adversity. That's what we're gonna talk about today. So there we go. I see some friends on TikTok and some friends on Facebook, so I'm gonna jump into this. And again, I'm I'm taking this talk from a talk I gave just yesterday, and that whole talk will be uploaded here shortly to my YouTube channel. And I was asked to, as an author, to give a talk kind of based on my book and my life on a topic of my choosing for an event on healing, and there were uh tarot card readers, there were energy healers, there was massage yoga. It's a cool weekend event in Ellensburg. And so, my talk, I decided, you know, let's talk about how to thrive when we're going through adversity. So that's what I'm gonna talk about today. So let's let's let's start basically with what I gave them. My name is Dr. David A. Douglas, and I'm the author of Grit Over Shame. Now, I need to be honest, and and I'm really being honest when I say this here. I'm reading from my script, but the word doctor still sounds strange when people say it to me. Like I teach on a college campus and the kids call me Dr. D. Why? Well, because there's a long stretch of my life when Doctor wasn't even on the same planet of where I was heading. Like I was needing to see doctors, but I wasn't. Um, so I want everyone to understand that gets to know me or watches me, um, that truly I'm grateful to be here. And and I mean that. Like, just sitting here when I say that, knowing that I have all I have in my life, I have a roof over my head, I have heat that's been flowing in the house this morning. I have an amazing wife who loves me no matter what. Right now, my dog Johnny is laying next to me in my home office, chewing on a toy, and just living his best life. I get to live an amazing life today. In fact, later this morning, we're going to celebrate grandson Anthony's 15th birthday. He turns 15 tomorrow. That's just wow, time flies. And so I get to go celebrate him. And then I'm taking my wife to a play. Like, I live a fortunate life in so many ways. Now, it's a good reminder, and especially if you're watching this, if once it's uploaded on YouTube or you're listening to this live on social media, that we live in a world that really celebrates appearance, right? Filters, highlight reels, perfect smiles, right? All of AI now is really ramping these kind of things up. But underneath, isn't it also true that many people are fighting quiet battles that nobody can see? Isn't that the truth? I think it is. I think we we all struggle. We all have stuff going on, but that's not what we see on people's Instagram feeds or their Facebook feeds or Snapchat or TikTok. We we see all this, oh, everything's great. But that's not the reality. And that's what I'm here to talk about today. How to thrive in the face of adversity, but not not just how to survive it, because I've done that along the way, right? Just how to survive going through things, but how to build a life worth waking up for. If you've ever been knocked down flat and wondered how to get back up, I want you to think about this for a second. I want you to burn this into your brain. This is what I say when I'm teaching these certain things, these concepts. You're not broken and you're not alone. You are my kind of people. Like I'm always rooting for the underdog. I'm always rooting for the throwaways, the misfits. The people who are in the trenches, those are my people, right? So I'm rooting for you. In each section of this talk, I'm going to give you a specific skill that you incorp you can incorporate into your life on a daily basis and for sure when you're going through things. So here's the first one. Ground yourself before the storm. Take 60 seconds. It's and it says each morning, but you can do this at any point in your day. Yeah, call it a one-minute meditation. Take 60 seconds each morning to breathe. Open your space and remind yourself I'm still here. I'm still standing. The next section. The fall. Losing it all. There was a time in my life, there's been a few times in my life, two momentous times where I rebooted my life. 29, it was a complete hard reset. Like had to rebuild everything. And then at 40, I had to do another hard reset, but not quite as hard as 29. And then there's been others along the way where everything felt, it felt like I remember before I returned to use in 2006, my mental health was a mess, and I felt like my life was ending. It wasn't, but that's how it felt. And so if you can think about times in your life, there was a time in my life when everything collapsed. Addiction had taken over, my relationships disintegrated, my confidence. I had none, it had evaporated. I did not believe in the David A. Douglas that I believe in today, not even close. I had lost jobs, friends, trust, freedom. I remember in the mid in the mid-90s, freedom was taken from me because of my behavior. And maybe the hardest thing in all of these reboots along the way, especially at 29 and even at 40, I remember right here in Ellensburg when I rebooted at 40. I had lost myself. That was the hard thing. I remember when I had a little sub shop, the Hungry Hippo subshop in Ellensburg. And this was this was in the summer of 2006. And to paint this picture, it was the summer of 06. My marriage was failing. It was crumbling to the end. My dog Cody that I had, he was a uh, I called him the gentle giant. He was a Rottweiler Malamute, beautiful dog, and just a good boy. Johnny, in some ways, reminds me of Cody. But Cody at a young age developed a nerve tumor, a cancerous nerve tumor that was inoperable. And I'll never forget I had set up a booth at the fair, our local fair, selling food. And I'll never forget the veterinarian I had at the time, a kind human, he's still a friend to this day. He made a point to come to the fairgrounds because he wanted me to tell me in person. I'm going to get emotional. He wanted to tell me in person he didn't believe it should be a phone call, that he had gotten the results, and that there was nothing more we could do for Cody. I remember that was the point at which I just felt like my life was ending. The marriage was ending, the business I had was failing, financial struggle. Again, this was pre-return to use, friends. I know a lot of people think this period of my life that my life crashed and burned because I returned to use. No, this that's not the reality. Now, certainly returning to use not long after this certainly helped propel this. But this was where I was at. And this, I remember this point feeling like my life was ending. And if you've had points in your life, maybe you're going through a struggle right now. You can relate to this. So here's a little passage. I remember one night sitting outside the sub shop that I used to own. I could see the lights on inside, people were working, laughing, being normal, right? Life was happening for people outside of what was going on in David Douglas's brain. But I realized at that moment that I used to belong there. But I couldn't really walk through those doors in that way anymore. Not because anyone said I couldn't, but because I couldn't face the man I had become. At this time in my life, my self-esteem was below the bottom. My anxiety was just constant. The financial pressure of that business that I had, that I was just like on a shoestring budget when I bought it, and it was like that from day one until the day I sold it. My relationship with my son was a real struggle at this time. My relationship with his mom was a real struggle at this time. My marriage was failing. I felt like my world was ending. I was no longer the person I was just a year prior. I was full of shame. And here's what shame does it isolates you, it convinces you that your story's over. I used to think I was a bad person trying to get good, but what I really was, I was a hurt person trying to heal. And that small shift in truth, and this wasn't an aha moment that really came to me myself. I remember my counselor Ronnie Hart would send this message to me. And at some point along the way I heard it. And she's retired now, and I get to interact with her through social media. We actually met in downtown this summer, and I gave her a copy of my book. She was instrumental in walking me through this really tough period in my life where I was full of shame, and she kept sending me that message. And I had other people saying that same thing that you're not a bad person, you're a hurt person that needs to heal. Because listen, here's the reality, friends. If in your mind you think you're bad, we hide, we stay isolated. But if you're hurt, you can heal. You can move forward. Everyone that's listening to this, I think you can relate to know what it likes, what it feels like to fall short. Maybe your story isn't addiction, maybe it isn't mental health, maybe it's something else, maybe it's loss or burnout or fear. But adversity has a way of finding every one of us. And here's your skill as I go into the next section. This is important, friends. Separate who you are from what you've done. Again, separate who you are as a human from what you've done. Change your self-talk from self-talk is so critically important. I went to a program in the mid-90s that really shifted my self-talk that I use these skills to this day. And it was by a motivational speaker named Bob Moad. We used to watch on VCR, my friends, VCR tapes every morning in this program I was in, and he talked about self-esteem. It's so important. And your self-talk is critically important. So think about this. Change your self-talk from I'm a failure to I'm a person learning from failure. See, that language shapes recovery. That keeps us out of that isolation, that keeps us out of judgment of ourselves as a human. The turning point, the quiet decision. Now, my turning points along the way haven't really been dramatic. Like I talk about, you know, rebooting my life at 29, remembering being in that jail cell and going, you know, my life, my gigs up, I'm going to prison, and my sister bailing me out. That that would seem like, and yeah, that was kind of a dramatic turning point in some ways, but I look at my reboot when I was 40, and I look at different reboots along the way. They're not always dramatic. There's no spotlight, no music swelling in the background. Really, a lot of turning points are quiet. Right? Most turning points are. And I can really relate to what I'm going to talk about here with my reboot in 06-07. One morning I woke up empty. Hear me when I say this. Not physically tired, soul tired. Tired of hurting people I cared about, tired of running from myself, tired of pretending change wasn't possible. And I would add, believing that change wasn't possible, believing that myself as a human, I wouldn't be able to turn it around. And in that exhaustion, I whispered a simple decision. I'm done just surviving. That was really it. No fireworks, no big aha moment, no instant transformation, because transformations don't happen instantly. They take time and effort. Just one honest choice, and then another one after that, and another one after that, and another one after that. At the time I didn't really know what thriving looked like. I only knew what dying looked like. And I was finished with that. Recovery starts small in a lot of cases, right? A simple, real, authentic conversation with a friend or family member. A commitment to do better. A meeting. A counseling session. One day at a time taking small efforts to start turning it around. And maybe if you're listening to this, that might be where you're at right now. You don't need a massive plan, friends. And you just need a starting point. You just need to say in this moment, I'm done being physically tired. I'm soul tired. And I want to turn this around. Here's your grit skill as we go into the next section. Start where your feet are. Start where you are right now. When life feels overwhelming, when we put into our brain all that we may have to do to make big change, that can be really overwhelming. I say bring it, bring it front and center. Stop. Don't think about all you need to do in the days or weeks or months ahead to change whatever you want to change in your life. Stay in the now. When life feels overwhelming, narrow your focus to the next right action. Big change, friends, always starts small. I say this to my students who are in at the university on their journey to earning a degree. You know how we get to that graduation stage, four years to get a bachelor's degree? We get to it one class at a time, one module at a time, one assignment at a time. One of the beautiful skills that I've learned from the recovery community is living in each day, living 24 hours at a time. All we have, friends, if this can help you, is right now. Listen, I can't do anything, certainly can't do anything about anything that happened a month ago, a year from now, five years ago, ten years. I can't do anything about that. I can learn from it. I can learn from the mistakes of my past. I don't give you permission to just say, oh, well, you know, I screwed it up. I'm just going to keep moving forward. Learn from your mistakes. That's important, but then leave it there. And here's what we can't do. We can't predict with any certainty. Now I'm going to talk about this in a different way, but you can't try to foresee what's going to happen a week from now, a month from now, a year from now. But you know what you do have a lot of control over? Right now. Today. This moment in time. That's where you want to start taking steps toward that behavior change, toward that changing your life from negative to positive, is taking action in each of your days that you're given. The next section, the climb, learning to live again. Now, let me tell you something about the climb back up. It's not pretty. Right? We see this with uh people who find a life in recovery from substance use disorders. It's called the pink cloud, that initial phase of recovery. And I remember it well in the mid-90s. It didn't happen so much in 06, but in a in little ways. But let me talk about early recovery. When someone has never enjoyed a life without drugs and alcohol, right? And they experienced that the first three months, six months is like, oh my gosh, this is amazing, right? You're not going to jail. You get your license back. Your family wants you back in their life. You're able to get a job, right? Like getting my driver's license back was huge. Like, wow, right? You physically feel better. But guess what happens? There's a little reality check, about you know, six months, a year in for sure. They say the first year is great, but then the second year, that's when you really got to start doing the work on really adapting your life to the new life you're living now and making change and peeking into your past and making amends and doing all these things. Anything you want that is amazing and good, it's going to take work. Because life keeps happening, right? I've been through more in my life in recovery, like stuff, than I did in my life in addiction. And I've walked through it with skills, with the ability to know that I don't need to use drugs and alcohol. I can go through the death of my mother. I can walk through hospice care. I did that. But see, this is the thing is climbing out, up and out, it's not going to be this glorious linear path. It's not going to be pretty. It's not the part you post on social media, right? Certainly we hear these celebrations and they're please celebrate your life. Like, yes, I graduated, or yes, I got my license back. Oh, I got a place to live, right? But that's not what we hear about. It's the early mornings, it's the awkward restarts, it's the putting yourself in uncomfortable new situations to learn new things. The voice that keeps whispering, imposter syndrome, who do you think you are? To be smart, capable, powerful. That voice in you that wants to what? Keep you back. That voice that says, nah, you're not worth this. When I went back to school, right, this was here in Ellensburg in 2009. I was 41 years old. I walked into the classroom surrounded by students half my age. I remember this one class in particular that literally I was sitting in the middle, and I'm surrounded by students half my age. Oh boy. They were talking about residence halls and they were talking about this was really old school, social media wasn't as big of a thing, but they were talking about things that 20-year-olds talk about that I couldn't really relate to. I was talking about lower back pain and having to raise my son, right? But you know what? I kept showing up. I kept stepping into those uncomfortable, scary places, right? To class, to recovery, to life. I'll never forget the day that I was in Pierce County the courthouse in the same courtroom, the same courtroom in 2010. I went back to the same courtroom, and the judge listened to my letter and signed the documentations that vacated the felonies that I had received in that same courtroom 15 years prior. I'll never forget that feeling, right? I sat there and I wept. See, not everything was suddenly perfect, but man, because that piece of paper said I had been working toward all along, you are not your past. I'm gonna say it again. You are not your past. Eventually I go on, what? To do the things you guys see me do in my life today. I'm a college professor, I've been a counselor, I'm a father to my son today, I'm a grandfather to my grandsons, I'm a husband to my wife. And now, crazy as this sounds, I'm Dr. D and I'm an author. How does that happen? It happens over time, it happens over consistent effort, it happens over not quitting permanently. You're never too late, friends, to live your own life. Thriving isn't a destination, it's a direction. It's not about where you end up, it's about who you become along the way. And here's your grit skill as we go into the next section. This is good. Show up even when it's awkward. There's a saying, um, fake it till you make it. And I don't think it's just used in the recovery community, but I think that's where I use it. But like, you gotta if you wanna go, if you wanna get in the game, go to where the game's being played. And it doesn't mean you have to know how to play the game. If you hang out, you'll learn, right? Consistency beats confidence. You don't have to believe you belong, yet you keep showing up until your actions prove it. Building grit and hope. I love this one. Hope isn't an emotion, it's a practice. You have to change your mental tapes, you have to take action towards hopeful things. You build it in small, ordinary decisions. And grit, what is grit? Grit is what keeps you moving when hope feels far away. Like I'm gonna tell you, friends, way back when in the mid-90s, I had a lot of financial wreckage. In fact, one area, my license had been suspended for years by this point, and I owed thousands of dollars. Right? This was long before there were there were laws passed that had an effect for people in this area at the time. I had to pay all that shit back, and it was in collections, and oh my gosh, it was a heavy, heavy weight that I carried all the time. But you know what? I started chipping away at it. I listened to others teach me about financial management, about running from a budget, about making phone calls, about making small incremental payments. Guess what? I paid it all off every dime. I owed thousands of dollars to my son's mother for back child support. That was a heavy weight. I kept chipping away, I kept paying at it, and I'll never forget getting the letter from the Office of Support Enforcement saying, paid in full, I fulfilled my responsibility to my son. Right? That took time and it took effort. There were plenty of days, and I still have days to this day, my friends, but they were weightier in previous years where I didn't believe in myself. And here's here's what I would encourage you to do. I borrowed belief from other people. I looked at a guy uh out ahead doing the things that I aspired to do, and I borrowed that from him in those times. Think about the four or five people. This is your psych 401 class for the day right now in this two-minute talk I'm gonna give here. Think about the four or five people you spend the most time with. I want you to think about it. Close your eyes, think about who do I hang out with. I think about mine, my son, my wife, Ken. Uh, who else do I talk to? I talk to Calvin. I talk to Corey. There's five people, right? Think about that for yourself. The four or five people you communicate with on a regular basis, they are influencing you. You are influencing them. You're borrowing something from them, and you're they're borrowing things from you along the way. You ready for this? Here's here it is. You are the sum of the four or five people you spend the most time with. And they are either helping you get toward a life you want to live or a way. The power of connection is insurmountable. It's powerful when you have strong connection with people in your world. Sometimes you need someone else to hold the flashlight until you remember how to carry it yourself. Lean on your people to help you build the hope and the belief in yourself that I know you have in you. You have it within you to do amazing things. You can't tell me you don't. I've seen it in myself and so many other people who have gone through so many things that I believe in you. I don't even know you. If you're watching this, I don't even know you, and I believe in you, I know that you have it within you to do amazing things. Whatever that looks like for you. As I close this section, if you're in a season where your flame feels dim, don't isolate. Reach out. And it reminds me of my period of real darkness and depression in 2006. It was literally right here in Ellensburg, it's like three or four blocks. I had a little duplex. And it can be a really, really difficult thing. And I'll tell you, my reaching out was friends would come over and bang on my door and on my windows, and I would I had law enforcement. Ray Sadeno, he's still an officer in Ellensburg. He knelt he came over and and came in my home and knelt in front of me and gave me hope and helped me to get out of that isolation. And it's happened in so many ways like that, around that, from people who said, David, I believe in you. So as best you can, don't isolate. Find people who remind you who you are when you forget. Remembering that isolation kills momentum. Community restores it. Here's your grit skill as I go into the next section. Borrow light until yours returns. When hope runs low, lean on people who see you and know you, who see your strength, who see your potential. Recovery and growth are team sports. I I say this as many times as I can. The life that I have today, all of it, it's not just been David A. Douglas doing it. Yes, I've done a lot of good work. Yes, I've I've I've tapped into resources, but without those resources, I would be nothing. Without people, community, I would not have the life I have today. The message. What thriving really means. You don't have to have my story to need a comeback. Adversity wears a thousand faces. Adversity can come through grief, it can come through illness, financial struggle, burnout, heartbreak. There's no one face that adversity wears. But I believe the pathway through it is universal. And so here are three truths that I learned. We're getting close to the end. Shame isolates. Connection heals. Healing begins when we get honest. Healing begins when we start peeling that onion and we allow others in to help us heal, to help us learn, to help us grow. Number two, grit is built in small choices. It's not the big wins. Certainly, those are great. Those markers in time, those achievements that we go, yeah, I did that. Celebrate those, those are important. But that's never that's not where grit lies. It's in the small choices, it's the daily courage no one sees. I call it the quiet work that you do on a daily basis that not everyone sees. Number three, oh man. Friends, hope is contagious. When you rise, others rise with you. Think about it. I believe this in my core. I was in a treatment center in Sumner, Washington. It was a next level after inpatient, where it was still inpatient, but you can go out and you can work. It's actually the form of a treatment center I want to open myself. But you could go and work and all of this. And my counselor, Melissa Laws, I remember I was sitting in her office and I was struggling with self-esteem and with, oh, can I do that? And she shared with me, I encourage you to look this up. It's a passage by Marianne Williamson that talks about this. Each one of us were created, were born with massive potential, with massive gifts. And it's our jobs to really tap into those and put those out to the world. And when you do that, when you let your own light shine, this is from that passage, when you let your own light shine, you unconsciously give others permission to do the same. Hope is contagious. It's powerfully contagious. So three truths. Shame isolates, connection heals, grit is built in those small choices, and hope is contagious. And maybe that's the real purpose of adversity. Not to break us down, but to break us open. And maybe, maybe that's where some of you are right now, if you're listening to this. You don't need a massive plan. Remember that. You don't have to have it all figured out. I went to the Piers Rising Gala last night. Right. And I remember the day that Ken Fyle, who he went with me last night, he's like my Ellensburg dad. I remember the day, the summer of 2021, when he handed me the keys. We were in the building, the original KCRCO building downtown. He handed me the keys and he and he said, Hey, here you go, figure it out. Holy crap. Now I had a vision, I had a plan, I had kind of a template, but I wasn't sure how it all was going to look. But I was willing to do the work. You don't need a massive plan. You just need to have a willingness to step into uncomfortable things, to try new things, to ask for help. So remembering about those three truths that I talked about, that what we learn in the fire becomes the light that you will carry for someone else. Now here's your grit skill as we go into the closing. Find one thing each day to rise for. End your day, naming one thing that went right. It trains your mind. You can retrain your brain to see possibility again. Last week, all of my quotes were on being grateful. And that's one of the other skills from the recovery community that I use in my life on a consistent basis is like right now, I have a roof over my head. I hear and feel the heat flowing in the home. My belly is full because I was able to go into the kitchen and I have food that is plentiful. I am grateful I have a lot. Start your day like that. If you wake up and you have a roof over your head, you have clothes to put on your back, you have a vehicle to get you from point A to point B, you have a lot. And end your each of your days with a quick assessment. Like I'll do a post on social media and I'll ask people what was your win for the day? Have that grateful mindset. And here's the closing to talk about the rise. So if you've been listening to this and you're in a hard season, you're in a tough point in life, a season that might feel impossible, I want you to hear me clearly. And I said this earlier. You are not broken, you are not bad. You are being built. You don't need a perfect plan, friends. You just need the courage to take one honest step forward and then take another, and then take another. Thriving, this is important. Thriving doesn't mean you're never gonna trip and fall again. But here's the thing: it means you stop believing that the fall has the final word. I say fail forward. Trust me, I've made mistakes in my life in recovery, in the amazing life I have. I'll continue to make mistakes, but here's the key. I don't see those mistakes as the complete failure of my life now, as David being bad. I can learn, I can adjust, I can adapt. When I go to my grandson's birthday party today, I see proof that second chances don't just change lives, they change generations. My son and I are breaking generational cycles of addiction. It's a beautiful thing. My son's uh my grandson's mothers breaking generational cycles of addiction. It's a beautiful thing. Neither of my grandsons have had to see any of their family mothers and grandfathers in an active addiction. And and listen, I'm not here because I got it all right. I haven't. I'm here because I refuse to stay down. And that's that's a skill that I see a lot with people who have been through a lot in life and have gotten up and you keep going. You can't keep me down. I'll keep trying, I'll keep finding a way. And sometimes it might mean that maybe this way isn't gonna be the exact way. Maybe it's gonna be this way, and that's okay, right? Because grit beats shame any day of the week, and hope can rise from anywhere. I'm almost done. So whatever mountain you're facing, whatever mountain you're facing, please keep climbing. Even if you have to crawl, keep climbing, take baby steps. Because the view from the other side isn't about what you see, it's about who you've become getting there. My name is David A. Douglas, and I'm living proof that no matter how far you've fallen, it's never too late to rise. And here's your last grit skill, and I'm gonna close this up. Turn your pain into purpose. Whatever nearly destroyed you can become what helps someone else survive. Share your story. Someone needs to hear it. That's all I have for you today. Thank you for joining me. If you didn't watch the whole thing, it will be uploaded soon wherever you listen to podcasts or on my YouTube channel.