September 5, 2024 • 52 mins
Doug Bopst is a personal trainer and author who transformed his life after facing challenges as a former felon and drug addict. Doug shared his inspiring journey of overcoming adversity, starting from his childhood experiences of divorce, bullying, and addiction. He highlighted the importance of social connection, resilience, and post-traumatic wisdom in healing and growth. Doug emphasized the significance of small wins, commitment over interest, and playing hurt in life to achieve personal transformation. His story is a powerful reminder that taking accountability, pushing through discomfort, and staying committed to one's goals can lead to profound changes and success. Through his own experiences, Doug exemplifies the power of resilience, self-discipline, and self-belief in overcoming obstacles and achieving personal growth.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I'm Makini Smith. After going through a divorce, my sister passing
away, experiencing narcissistic abuse and some
significant health scares, I realized through sharing my
story that I wasn't alone in my suffering. Suffering, subjective
distress generated by the experience of being out of
balance. In a deep dive to holistically heal mind,
(00:21):
body, and soul is where I discovered peace, clarity,
and connection. It is impossible to be truly wise
without some real-life hardship, and we cannot develop
post-traumatic wisdom without making it through, and most
importantly, through it together. Social
connection builds resilience, and resilience helps create
(00:44):
post-traumatic wisdom, and that wisdom leads to hope. hope
for you and others witnessing and participating in
your healing, and hope for your community. A
healthy community is a healing community, and a healing community is
full of hope because it has seen its own people weather,
survive, and thrive. Doug
(01:23):
Bopes is an award-winning personal trainer, three-time author, speaker,
and podcast host who transformed his life after
facing challenges as a former felon and drug addict. He
focuses on health and wellness and hosts the
Adversity Advantage podcast. Doug has been
featured in national media and recognized for his
(01:43):
work. He shares inspiring stories of overcoming and
has spoken on various events and platforms, and has worked
with organizations like McCormick and the Clemson
football team. He's been featured on the Today Show,
Men's Health, the Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
podcast, Forbes, Gold Coast, and
(02:11):
Thank you so much for agreeing to come on and share your story with
us. I'm someone who is genuinely interested
in people's backstories, how they've overcome adversity. And
I think there's so much that we can learn from each other.
So I'm always grateful when someone is open
and willing to come on and be transparent and share their
(02:37):
So I want to jump, I guess, right in. And
I typically like to start with where things began
before we get to where you are presently, because I feel like our childhood
or childhood wounds, our upbringing, our environment, all those
things have a huge impact on who we are today.
So as an icebreaker question, I would love to ask,
(02:59):
you know, who or what did you want to be as a
Icebreaker question. It's a good one. I think as a child, I mean, there
was a there was a variety of things I wanted to be. I would say the thing that most
stuck out to me is I wanted to be involved in
sports somehow. And that evolved as
I got older. Like when I was a little kid, I wanted to be a professional athlete,
(03:21):
I think, just like many young boys. Right. And then once
I realized that my athletic ability didn't
match up to my aspirations, I
wanted to be some type of sports broadcaster. I
mean, I was obsessed with sports growing up. I was the guy that would
convince my parents to stay up late so I could watch SportsCenter. I was always getting
(03:42):
up early so I could watch the morning edition of SportsCenter. I collected baseball
cards, football cards, basketball cards. I played all the video games growing
up. I just had this immense passion for
Mm hmm. I love it. I love it. So I okay. So
what is your earliest childhood memory that defines
(04:05):
I mean, I guess the earliest memory
I have, which is also probably I mean,
it was a defining moment indirectly was I
remember my dad walking out of my mom when I was like roughly five years old.
And then my parents got divorced from there, and it was a
pretty contentious divorce, pretty rough divorce. And
(04:28):
that really impacted my childhood and
my brother's childhood as well, my brother's childhoods as well.
And I think that began to develop
this what's wrong with me mentality when I was a kid. And
why is this happening to me? And why am I different? where
(04:48):
I grew up and maybe just the circles I ran in, it wasn't
common for parents to be split up. I think divorce, I don't know
what the rates were back then, but I guess from an objective or
my perspective, it was much less than it is now. And
so I would see my friends whose parents were together and I'm like, why are
their parents together and mine aren't? Why am I being shuffled around from house to house? Why
(05:09):
am I having to stay with my grandparents after school? Why aren't my parents here? And
so I began to raise all these questions in my mind of,
like, is there something wrong with me? There's something different. And then
the way they handled the divorce also shaped how
I viewed relationships and even carried on into
my adult relationships, which is what I, which is, which I had to actually work
(05:31):
on a lot. But then outside of that, other things compounded
from there, whether it was just the getting used to growing up in a stressful environment,
whether it was just having a nontraditional family
dynamic. And then I mentioned my passion and love for sports. And
I was always like one of the last kids picked. I never made the special teams
(05:53):
like the travel teams or the club teams or whatever. I was
always kind of made fun of for my athletic ability, even though like I had this deep rooted
desire and passion for sports. Like if passion equals success,
like I would have been one of the most successful athletes as a
kid. And so that began to reinforce this
what's wrong with me mentality because I was like, huh? like,
(06:16):
all these kids around me, we're all the same, right? We
all are trying to do the same thing. We're all spending the same amount of
time practicing, etc. Like, why are they
being picked for the teams? And I'm not like, why,
even though I'm doing everything I can to work hard, like, why isn't that
equaling success? So that started to kind of
(06:37):
compound, I thought that I was broken. And that everything
that I was going to do from there on out, from there on out, I was going to fail.
And on top of that, in school, I was bullied a lot. I was picked on
as a kid for a couple reasons. One,
I started to develop some body fat when I was young. I think
I was like 10, 11, 12 years old, I started to get some
belly fat, and I started to have to wear like husky clothes. And
(07:00):
again, it was like, what's wrong with me? Like, why am I eating the same foods as
other kids? Why am I living the same kind of lifestyle as my friends? And
I'm the one who's gaining some body fat. And
I was told that I was like, I had down syndrome as a kid, like
people would call me like some horrific names. And it
(07:21):
developed this, again, this identity of What's
wrong with me? Why am I so different? What
did I do wrong? What did I do to deserve this? Because it's like
as a kid, you're just trying to get by. You're just trying to be liked by the
kids in school. You're trying to get attention, you know, from
I was trying to get attention from girls, which I think was obviously a very normal thing when
(07:42):
you're in school and you're in middle and high school. You're
trying to be good at something so you
can get admiration from your parents and get admiration from the people around you.
And I wasn't really getting that. in the ways that I wanted and
the ways that I desired. And I would come home at times from school, and I would just cry in
my room, because I just was so
upset with myself and my life. And I was afraid at times to go to
(08:05):
school the next day, because I was like, Well, what's tomorrow going to bring? If today was this bad, what's
it going to look like then? And then that really
set the tone for how a majority of the rest of
my teenage years would play out. As
I got involved with with drugs and selling drugs
and running around with the wrong crowd and getting myself in a lot of legal trouble, which
(08:26):
I'm sure we'll get into. But I mean, yeah, that earliest
childhood moment, as a matter of fact, I think it's the it's the only moment
I remember my parents together is that day is my dad, like walking out
of my mom, walking out of my mom moving out. And
then like shortly after that, we're in two separate townhomes. And
that's it's sad, right, that that's like the only memory I have. Mm
(08:48):
hmm. But from what I understand, it's pretty common that when something traumatic like
that happens, that's kind of the only thing we focus on.
Absolutely. Absolutely. You
know, I reference this book often, but I feel like I
do it because it it helped shift some things in my mind. But
It's called, uh, what happened to you? Um, so it was written by, um, it
(09:11):
was co-written by Oprah and Dr. Bruce Perry. And so
when you were talking about, you know, what, what happened to
you or what's wrong with you, it's like society has
a tendency to automatically say when they see someone acting
or behaving or getting certain results, what is wrong with you instead
of asking what happened to you and, I
(09:33):
can relate to, you know, your childhood where it's like,
I was probably about one when my parents split, when my dad
left to start his new family. And it's
interesting how we have these vivid memories of our
childhood and how they affect us as we,
you know, we become adults, how we view life, how we view relationships.
(09:56):
And you mentioned you as a teenager, so I
would love to know what you were like as a teenager. Um,
because I know, especially for the people who are listening, sometimes they feel like where
they are, um, their situation or
their scenario is, is it, they don't realize that
you can evolve from that or that you can attain
(10:18):
higher things than that. So seeing where you are now, I
I mean, I was very unconfident, had a lot of anxiety. I
was depressed. I was stressed all the time. Um, I
was, I was afraid of my own shadow, a lot of fear, walked very
hunched over, not good posture. Like I said, very unathletic,
(10:40):
even though I love sports. Um, but I was always,
I was, I was like a nice kid. Like I was a kind kid. Like I didn't want
any trouble. I was trying to do whatever I could to fit in and trying to get
people to like me. And, um, you know, that resulted in.
Obviously developing a low level of self-worth because now,
you know, you're losing yourself in order to get the validation from other people. And
(11:02):
then you're getting attention from people just
for the sake of getting attention, even though those people may
not be in the best interest of you. And
so that's what I was like as a kid. I was a kid that was just completely scared, anxious,
not confident, not well-spoken. So people see me now,
(11:23):
and they see me in what I do today, and that I'm charismatic, that I'm outgoing, and
I'm confident. And all that, I was never like
that as a kid. I mean, all that really became, all
that came from me going through hard times
and a lot of adversity. That's what truly developed a
lot of these skills that I have now that people may
(11:44):
look at and say, oh, you must have always been this way. But people who knew me, people
who went to high school with me, they'll know I was not like this.
I was total opposite. Yeah,
I mean, I was just the guy, like I said, just completely mentally
burdened with negative emotions and negative
self-image and self-worth of myself that inevitably forced
(12:12):
So before we get to the addiction piece, I would love to
learn, like, what did you learn about emotions
Um, I mean, I think, Emotions
growing up, and I think as a guy especially, you,
you're told you can't cry, right? So I think that
(12:35):
has an impact on you when you're a kid, even though like, by myself, I
cried a lot. I think that when
you're scared of something, or when I was scared as
a kid, I would think of that as a bad thing, even though that was probably a
sign for me to change paths or change directions. Same
with anxiety, depression, I saw it as all these negative emotions.
(12:59):
We're now, I mean, can those emotions and
states of mind be negative? I mean, of course, I
view them now as just signals and being
like, okay, like if you're scared, What do you like?
Something's off something. Something is telling you something your
body is trying to tell you something your body could be trying to tell you. Oh,
(13:19):
like this is new for you. Maybe you need to step into this because
you will become stronger, wiser, you'll develop into a
better person after doing this. Your body may be telling you
don't do this because it's going to mess your life up or you're
going to get into a bad relationship or you're going to set yourself back
wherever whatever the example is. And you can say the same thing with. when
(13:41):
you're feeling depressed or depressed or anxious. Like I
know at times in my life when I felt depressed. It
was always because something was off or something that happened in my life that
I didn't pay attention to. And the same thing with. Feeling I'm
feeling anxious like people will ask me like, well, what
is it like? Why do you get anxious? I'm like, well, I know that I tend to
(14:01):
like overthink things and worry about certain things, especially when I have a lot of my plate.
If I don't sleep well, my anxiety goes up. If I'm
doing things that are not in alignment. I mean, I'm not talking from
a legal perspective. I'm talking just from a, like a
soul perspective. I tend to get more anxious because I'm
just not as connected to myself. So I totally
(14:22):
view them differently. And I think it's because, you know, as a kid, like
most kids don't have self-awareness like that, right? They're not like, Oh, I'm feeling
this way because of that. Again, like I said earlier, kids are just trying
to get by, survive, have fun in school, you know,
get through it. go off to college if that's their goal, go off and play
sports if that's their goal, go off to a trade school, whatever their goal is. But
(14:43):
when you're an adult, it's your responsibility to
develop awareness around those emotions because a lot more
is at stake now. As a kid, you're under
the responsibility and care, if you're lucky, obviously, of your
parents. When you're an
adult, it's up to you. You're legally responsible
(15:05):
for all your actions, So if you're not, if you're not aware of
what you do when you get angry, like that's going to be a problem. If you're not
aware of how your anxiety impacts your day to day life, that's going to be a
problem. If you don't manage stress well as an adult, that's going
to be a problem. And, and so my ability,
I think, to develop not just the self-awareness around all
(15:25):
that, but the depth and
how deep these emotions go, I think has really
served me well, because I can pinpoint why I
feel these emotions and I can kind of trace it back to
like situations in my life that
maybe were primers for these emotions. I've also been
(15:45):
able to take that and kind of just store it in my back pocket
a bit and not letting that be the driver of
my day-to-day life. Because I think it's easy to get caught up in this cycle of
just going back into your past for everything. And I think it serves a purpose.
I also think it can be detrimental because now you're
not even being present. and you're not even aware of
(16:07):
what your actions are, you're not
even being aware of what your actions are actually doing to your life. And
so you're continuing to just blame your past circumstances for
the way you're behaving today. So that was a roundabout way of saying,
yeah, I think as a kid, I mean, I wasn't as
aware of my emotions, specifically how they impacted me. It
(16:28):
was more It
was more just a feeling in the moment. And I just recognized a lot of what I was going
through was bad. And now I'm coming out on the other side of it. I've
realized that I've realized
that there was purpose in those emotions and that there's just signals for bigger
(16:51):
Yes. I love how you explain your
emotions, how you process them and even the importance of
awareness. Um, you know, I'm an avid reader,
so I always reference books, but there's a book called permission to feel. And, um,
he's explaining that, you know, like you said, like our
feelings are not bad or good or negative
(17:12):
or positive. Our feelings are data. They're letting us know what
is going on. So it's important for us to have that awareness. And
I think, Sometimes ignorance will allow
people to look at someone else's emotions and disregard them
and not ask questions or not be aware. And it's very easy
for us to not be aware of our own emotions. So I love how you
(17:38):
Um, okay, so you mentioned, um, addiction and
things like that. So, um, you know, you're, you're known from,
for going from, from felon to fitness. So I
would love if you like, okay, so I understand how
people, when they have experienced trauma and adversity, we
look for things to numb, whether it be drugs, sex, like
(18:00):
whatever, we look for things to numb the pain that we're feeling and what
we're experiencing. So I can understand. how the
addiction came about based on what you've shared about your childhood. So
I won't really ask you how you got into the addiction piece. But
if you can share, like, how did fitness save
(18:22):
Well, fitness saved me because I got ended up getting I was incarcerated on
felony drug charges back in 2008. And during my
incarceration, my cellmate got me
into working out and to, I guess, paint
a better picture of who I was like when I was in jail because a lot
of things had happened since then. I mean, between the time I
(18:43):
was legally allowed to work, I forget when I was legally allowed to
work. It was sometime as a teenager. I forget. It was like 14, 15, 16. I
forget. But nonetheless, between that time and the time I went to jail, I had
21 jobs by the time I was 21 years old, 21. And
it wasn't because I just found something better. It was because I
was selling drugs. And I thought
(19:04):
that I felt that I could make way
more money selling drugs than I could making $6, $7, $8, $9, $10 an
hour, whatever it was I was making. So I would leave jobs because of that. I
would get fired because I wouldn't show up, because all I cared about was getting high
and selling drugs. Again, I would quit. If somebody pissed me off,
I would quit, because I knew I had this other job
(19:26):
that made me way more money. I mean, the fact of the matter is, after I
started selling drugs, after I graduated high school, like
selling a lot of drugs, I should say, Me having a
job was a front to either if
I needed to get an apartment or if my parents or
people in my family were wondering what I was doing to make money. I
wasn't like, oh yeah, I'm just selling drugs. Even though they knew it, but I couldn't openly
(19:49):
admit that to them with them being okay with it. 21 jobs, that's how I'm 21. Crippling,
I say, when I say crippling, I mean crippling anxiety, like to the point
where later on in my teenage years, I ended up
going to the emergency room twice because I thought I
was having a heart attack when really it was just, it was an intense panic attack, yeah. Crippling
(20:11):
anxiety, heavily addicted to Oxycontin, to drugs. I
was selling a bunch of drugs before I went to jail. Damaged
relationships, tons of legal trouble. As I just mentioned,
I was a convicted felon at the time as well. And just
in my mind, like a terrible human being. And so my
cellmate, who looked like a more jacked version of Brad Pitt
(20:33):
from the movie Fight Club, is how I like to describe him, just to paint a picture. He
was like, you're going to start working out with me when you get through your painkiller detox.
And I was just like, dude, there's no way. Like, have you seen me? I could have been a model for Pillsbury.
Like, I was so fat. Like, I mean, when I say, I mean, just fat, like my body
fat percentage, if I had to guess, was like 40% back then. And
I didn't weigh that much. I mean, I maybe weighed I don't know, like around
(20:55):
200 pounds, something like that. So it wasn't like
anything insane, you know, as far as my weight goes. And
not too long after that, after I pretty much completely declined his
offer, he's like asking
me some questions. He's like, you know, why did you go to jail? Like, what are
you doing here? Why'd you get addicted to drugs? Why'd you start selling drugs? Like
(21:17):
asking me all the questions. I started to blame everybody else
for my problems but myself. I started to blame the girls for not being interested
in me. I started blaming like the sports because
I wasn't good at sports. I started blaming my parents, started blaming my friends
and kids who bullied me. And he looked at me and the PG version
of it is he said, quit being a victim.
(21:39):
And I remember looking at him and I
like hated I hated what he had to say because I was looking for him to call me
and say it's okay dog the world's against you because I convinced myself in
my mind that that was true I had rationalized all
of my poor behavior. Based
on the fact that I did have some adversity growing up
(22:00):
and I was like, oh well because my parents got divorced I
can do this because I was bullied as
a kid I can do that because I'm being picked on
This justifies this and it all makes sense because in my mind
it did make sense, right? But my cellmate pointed out
very clearly He's like you're blaming everybody else
for your problems, but yourself and taking zero responsibility for this
(22:23):
and And he's like, there's plenty of people that
go through life with the same circumstances as
you that aren't in jail. Right, Doug? And I'm like, yep. He's like,
so you have two choices. Be a man and take
responsibility for yourself or go be a victim and cry in
the corner and say, woe is me and blame people
for your problems. He's like, most people will do that. And it was like
(22:46):
in that moment, I realized that the drugs had been out of my started to get out of my system for
a bit. You know, this guy had no real skin in the game as far
as my life. He wasn't a member of my family. He wasn't like a lawyer. He
was just like a guy I met in jail. So I was
like, oh, this guy must truly care about me like unconditionally. And
that inspired me to start working out. And when
(23:07):
I got down and do a push up, I couldn't do a push up. As a
matter of fact, I couldn't even do a push up from my knees. That's how weak I was. And
I remember looking at Eric, my cellmate, and I'm like, man, why can't
I do a push-up? And he looked at me. He was like, because you're
fat. And I hated that word, because I was called that a lot as
a kid. And I was like, well, what do you mean? He's like, Doug, I'm not going
(23:28):
to sugarcoat it. He's like, you have excess body fat. Your upper body
is weak. Your core is weak. You're out of shape. He's like, so you're collapsing. Every
time you try to go down to do a push-up, your body can't physically push
itself back up. And then I took a break, and I would walk
up and down the steps in the common area of the jail. And, and
I was out of breath, like going up and down, because I was also smoking cigarettes, too,
(23:51):
before I went to jail. And with his motivation and encouragement training
me in there every single day during my 90-day sentence, I was able
to do a set of 10 pushups and run a mile by
the time my jail sentence was over. And
the way that worked was, We started with being able
to hold my body weight up from my knees. Then once I was able to do that,
(24:11):
then it was like one push-up, then two push-ups from my knees, and then all the
way up until I was able to do a set of 10. Same thing happened for
my feet, holding my body weight up, one push-up, two push-ups.
At the beginning of jail, the thought of me being able
to do a set of 10 push-ups from my feet, was similar
to if you had said, Hey, Doug, like tomorrow, I want you to go climb Mount Everest, it'd
(24:33):
be the same. Very, like, there's no way it's gonna happen. It's physically
impossible. And and then the running was interesting, too.
Because there's no like, there's no track, there's no treadmills in
jail, at least the jail I was at. And so the
way to measure the distance and how far I was going, we used a
deck of cards. And there was a perimeter in the common area in
(24:56):
the jail where people would sit, they'd eat, they'd watch TV, they'd play games and
stuff, play board games. And so
I would walk around the perimeter, and every time I would take a lap, I
would take a card from my left hand and pass it to my right hand. And
then every time I would take another lap, do the same thing. And then that would, I would, I
would use that to track like how far I went. And then I would progress to
(25:16):
jogging, progress to running. And then, again,
sure enough, during my, at the end, I was able to, to
do the mile and then the 10 pushups. And
I always tell people, it's not, it's
not the direct impacts necessarily of fitness. that
can help you improve your mental health, recover from addiction, and have
(25:37):
it do the same things it did for me. It's more like the indirect. I was
able to finally get comfortable being uncomfortable. I was finally
able to develop some self-discipline, finally able to
prove to myself that I mattered enough to show up for myself every single day. And
even on the days where I didn't feel like it, most of the time in there, I didn't want to work out.
I hated it. It was so foreign to me to want
(26:00):
to exercise. Um, it also just developed this
immense amount of confidence, because I was able to prove to myself that
I could do certain things that I never thought I could do. And that's life changing. Like, I always tell
people, like, they're, they look at me where I'm at now,
or look at other people who have had, you know, success in their life. And
I always say, like, the biggest level of confidence comes from going like, from zero
(26:21):
to three, not from zero to 100. Like that, that time
in your life, where, and we've all, I think, been there in some
capacity, where you're in the thick of mud, the
mud, you can't really see anything. You're like, I'm scared. I
have no idea, like, what's gonna happen moving forward. But I
know I got to crawl right now and just move and keep going. And then once you get
out of that mud, and you're able to make some progress, the confidence you build from that
(26:44):
process is what really carries you for the
rest of your life, I believe. It's not the getting to the top. Like,
I think about what I'm most proud, people will ask me all the time, like,
What are you most proud of? And you know, I could say
it's the books, I could say it's different media stuff I've done, I could say it's the podcast, which
I mean, I think all those things have been amazing. But that jail experience,
(27:05):
by far still stands out to me is the most instrumental,
memorable experience of my life because of
what I just shared and where I was. And I think
if you can develop this whatever it takes mentality and learn to bet on yourself,
even when the odds are against you, I think you'll
win. I really do. And not necessarily in a financial way
(27:26):
or in a personal achievement way, but you'll just tell yourself that
you believe in yourself. So
yeah, I mean, after that, my cellmate gave
me a workout plan that I still have framed here, so I don't forget where I
came from. Lost a bunch of weight, and
then got to a place fitness-wise where I wanted to help other
people use fitness to transform their lives, became a personal trainer, built
(27:50):
a very successful career in the fitness space. And that inspired
me to do a lot of the other things I'm doing now, whether it's the podcast, writing, speaking,
like wow there's there's
so much that you said there that i wanted to um
(28:11):
highlight and make sure that the listeners um really
took note because one with the cellmate like
i strongly believe that every single connection that
we make every single person that we meet can either be a
blessing or a lesson. And you can know that
person for five minutes, five years, 50 years. There's something that
(28:33):
they can either teach you or bless you with. So it's,
it's beautiful that, you know, someone else may
have said, well, if you hadn't have gone to jail, would you
be where you are presently? Or if you hadn't met that cellmate, all
those things. So it's beautiful that, you know, it's
like, well, I strongly believe like, you
(28:54):
know, nothing happens by chance. So that connection,
that cellmate, all of that was meant to be in order to transform where
you are presently. Um, I also understand
like when it comes to habits, like naturally as
people we were we're
habitual like we you know we do things in habits and then when we have an
(29:16):
addictive personality it's just intense and whenever
we're trying to shift a habit or something if we don't replace it
with something then we'll automatically just pick up something
else or go back to that other thing So I think it's
great that you were able to swap the drugs for fitness,
the felony to fitness. And
(29:38):
also, you talked about with the fitness, like it's not just a physical
thing. And, you know, I'm a mindset coach, so
we talk about this all the time, especially people who are going to the gym or
trying to lose weight. Fitness is a mental game. You're
mentally pushing through all of these barriers. You're
mentally pushing through all of these things in order
(29:59):
to transform physically. It's about making the commitment to
yourself. It's about doing the uncomfortable. It's about pushing through
the terror barrier, all of those things. And
then you talked about your present confidence, which
I strongly believe that competence builds confidence. So
you talked about just going from 1 to 3 and not 1 to 10. I
(30:21):
think people often assume that, you
know, you got to do the big jump in order to get there, but it's
I know for myself and anyone else that I've spoken to that have done big things,
it's about the small things. And continuously doing the small things
helps to build that confidence that we have now. And
then I love how you talked about being able to now transform
(30:44):
and utilize what you've learned and what you've experienced to
do all of these trainings and do all these things because a
common theme that i have seen in doing i don't know i
think we've recorded probably 280 episodes or
something by now but wow in every single episode
the common is that our pain births
(31:04):
our purpose. So I love how you've been able to
transform all that you've experienced into helping
others, into, you know, you've transmuted that
pain into something greater, something bigger, something that
will leave a legacy, something that, you know, has a domino effect.
Like, you help one person, and you don't even know
(31:25):
how many people that can help. So you're now utilizing your
platform and your knowledge and your experience. to
Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I think
when you don't have the confidence, it's hard to create confidence because
you create cognitive dissonance where,
(31:46):
I mean, you can tell yourself all day that you're the greatest. You
can tell yourself all day that you're this and that, but
if your actions don't reflect that, I just
think your brain is going to somehow be convinced that
it's not true. It's like the fastest way to build trust with
yourself is to do the things that you say you're going to do. Because
(32:06):
if you tell yourself, I'm going to go to the gym tomorrow and
you don't do it, your brain's going to be like, well, you
told me you're going to do this and you did. And like, how am I supposed to believe you? And then that
carries on into other areas of
your life as well. And I think that that's just
something that we need to, that people, um,
(32:28):
that need, I think it's something that people need to grasp because there's
a lot of noise out there on social media and
it's easy to look at the highlight reels of other people and
say, I want to, you
know, accelerate my success to get to that place because
it looks like it looks cool on social media. It looks like my friend or
(32:49):
my family or whoever it is that they're paying attention to. And
it, I think, limits people's ability to take
action, because they're like, well, that's gonna take so long to get there. I have no
idea how to do it. I want the easy way. But they don't realize that
every person who's had success like that, or has accomplished something
meaningful, has, has really had
(33:10):
to start from ground zero. And I'll give you an example. Like, people
will look at me now, And they'll be like, Oh, it's
so awesome that you're on these big podcasts, or getting these big guests,
or whatever it is. But I'll look back, and I'll be like, I've been sharing my
story for like, over 10 years. Yeah, over a
decade. And it really just started to get picked up, I guess, by
(33:32):
bigger media, maybe over the last five, six years or so. Um,
And so people don't see like beneath the iceberg. They don't see
that it started with me just sharing my story with my clients and
started me sharing my story with like local newspapers and local
media and doing a lot of like stuff here in my
hometown. And then that gave that helped me put the reps in
(33:54):
and it helped me get practice and develop the confidence to
be able to share my story. And that led to a lot of the other things
that I'm doing now. But I just encourage people
to remember that you have to stack small wins, like
small wins lead to big goals. And the only way to get to
the place of that zero to 100, or to
(34:17):
the place where you think people are on social media, is by
starting where you're at. And so it's putting the
shoes on and going out for a walk. It's, you
know, making that first therapy appointment. It's raising
your hand and asking for help. It's, you know,
telling yourself you're not going to drink tomorrow. It's whatever, right? It's that
(34:39):
small step that you can build off of that. It's
that small step that you build off of that. And that all compounds. Like
for me, When I, the day I left jail, like there, I
wasn't like, Oh, I want to be a podcast host or I want to be a personal trainer. It
was about, it was literally about survival. Like I remember exactly how
I was feeling the day I left jail. I was freaking scared. I was
(35:00):
mortified. I was terrified because up until that point, I
had proven to myself that I was a failure based
on the way I lived my life. Like I told you my track record. And
so most of me doubted me. Most
of me knew that I was going to fail. But there was that small
part of me that, that There
(35:22):
was that small part of me that believed I wasn't, that I was going to succeed. And it was because of
the mindset that I had started to develop when I was in jail, where
I was like, all right, I've seen the things that I do
daily that make me a better person. I
know who I want to become. Like, I honestly, to be fully
transparent, like, I just wanted to be ripped so I could get attention from
girls when I was like, getting out of, like, that was like a main goal,
(35:45):
which I think vanity is, I mean, I think vanity sometimes
gets lost in the weeds with, with health, but I think I mean, that is,
in a way, like a lot of people's goals, especially early on
when they're trying to transform their health. I mean, it can't be the only thing. But I
knew that if I wanted to be somebody who was lean, jacked,
confident, thought highly of myself, that there were
(36:07):
certain things I needed to do on a daily basis in
order to get myself there. I knew I needed to work out, eat a certain way,
stay away from certain people, talk to myself in a certain way,
get good sleep, stay away from drugs, obviously, and
selling drugs and all those things. And I knew if I did that every
day, I had control over those things that it would give me
(36:29):
a chance to become that person I wanted to be. But
if I told myself, well, I'm never going to be that person because
of X, Y and Z circumstances or X, Y and Z excuses, I
would have automatically counted myself out of
that transformation just based on stuff in the past. And
so what ended up happening was, I would go like a
(36:52):
few days after jail without, well, I mean, staying on the path and
not doing the, and staying away from all those things that I mentioned and
doing the things I was supposed to do. I'm like, wow, I haven't used drugs for
three days outside of jail. This is amazing. Or I've
stayed on this fitness path for three days on my own without my cellmate. This
is amazing. And then that compounds more confidence. Then a week goes
(37:13):
by, and you're like, oh, it's been a week. Then like three weeks go by, and it's been three weeks, and
then a month. You're like, holy crap. I can run a
5k now, I can do 50 push ups, I can, I
haven't touched drugs in three months, I blah, blah, blah, right,
whatever it is. And it all came from like, just that, that simple
win of focusing on that one day.
(37:34):
And you just never know, you never know how much your life can change in
a matter of months or years, you just don't. But I think a lot of times people
They count themselves out because of what's happened in the past.
And trust me, I get it. Like, I understand how tough it can be to, like, carry
that weight with you. And then on the flip side of that, they
count themselves out because they're like, well, I'm never going to achieve this thing because
(37:57):
of how long it'll take, how old I am, my skill set
right now, my level of fitness, whatever it is. But I'm
not going to say if I can do it, you can do it because that's a tall,
that's a big thing to say. But I'll say if somebody like
myself can achieve some of the things that I
did coming from where I came from, there's a good shot
(38:19):
I think the victim mindset and feeling sorry for yourself, it
I know that sometimes, I know that a lot of times in life, people
have horrible circumstances. Like, I mean, some of the stories I've heard on
my show, or just talking to people that I know, I'm like, Wow, like,
(38:42):
man, I had it good compared to you, right? And
there's people that had a lot better than me, right? So But the
thing is, like, you can't change the past. You can only learn from it
and grow from it. And if the thing that you want, like a lot of times when people are feeling
sorry for themselves and they're trapped in the thick of the victim mindset, what
they really want is they want some sort of guarantee that everything's
(39:02):
going to be OK. They want some level of happiness and
satisfaction and fulfillment. They want meaning. They want purpose.
They want validation. And the only
way to get there is by changing your actions and moving forward.
You focusing on the past and blaming your parents, your
family, the people around you for everything that's happened
(39:24):
to you, it's going to guarantee that you don't get there. I
That accountability piece is big. I've
learned that it's hard for people to take accountability, especially
if it's something that can create shame or guilt
or any of those things. It's almost like they view it as death, like it's that
(39:48):
detrimental to them. So being
able to hold ourselves accountable, it's not easy, but completely necessary
in order to move forward and to be able to help other people
do the same. But I wanted to highlight
something you said about the small wins. Yeah.
I think that is an excellent, excellent point
(40:09):
to share, because like you said, people will look on social media and see
the accolades and the successes and your
highlight reel and feel like I can never attain that. They
look at where you are, but they don't look at the
story of how you actually got there. I
(40:29):
can relate where it's like, I grew up in government housing to a
single mom, had all of these things in my childhood, but
in certain rooms now, because I was mentored by
Bob Proctor, because I've had certain people on the podcast where
people had these assumptions about my life not
realizing, all the small wins that I've had to
(40:51):
celebrate in order to get to where I am presently. And
part of what I love about podcasting versus Instagram is
you get to dig deeper into that person's
story. You get to understand the mindset. You
get to understand the past traumas, the adversities they've
had to overcome, instead of just focusing on, you know, the
(41:12):
tangibles from their present success or all those things. I think it's important
for people to realize that it is attainable if you
are committed to that change for yourself. Oftentimes
people will say they want a certain change, but they're interested in
that change. And I feel like if you're just interested, you can still
make all the excuses under the sun in order not to do that thing.
(41:34):
But if you are committed to that change, you do whatever it takes
and you push yourself into those uncomfortable places and push
through those terror barriers in order to, I
guess, receive those rewards on the other side of what you want your life to
Yeah, there is a big difference, obviously, between being interested and committed. Right.
Because when you're interested, it's like you do it when
(41:56):
it's easy. When you're interested, you do it when it's convenient. When you're interested, like
you do it like on your terms. Right. But when you're committed, you're like
all in no matter what. And I think along
that that same that same along that
those same lines, I always tell people like in life, sometimes you got to play hurt. Like
you think about Like Michael Jordan Game 7 NBA
(42:19):
finals. He like twists his ankle up a little bit. There's
two minutes left. The game's tied. You think he's going out of the game like no way like
he's he's staying in the game for the final two minutes to
make sure he gets the ball and to see if he hits the game winning shot right? And. I
think it's the same thing in life like sure, there's going
to be times where I could. Michael Jordan tears his ACL like probably probably
(42:41):
not going to go back in, but I'm saying. most of the time, our
little pain that we're experiencing, our little hurts in life, are
things that we can still manage and walk through. Some of the emotional
pain, maybe you didn't sleep as well the night before, maybe you got more
stress, maybe you got into a fight with your boss. Like,
a lot of times what happens when those things occur is you're like,
(43:03):
Oh, my day is so bad. I'm just gonna sit this one out,
and then we'll do better tomorrow. And
I think what happens when you do that is you tell yourself that when life gets hard, it's OK
to just quit. It's OK to quit on your goals. It's OK to take the day off.
And it's not to say, again, that there's not going to be days where you're forced to
do that. But a majority of the time, I think
(43:25):
you got to be able to play hurt. You got to be able to say, OK, like, I'm only feeling like
70% today. I want to go into the gym. and
give it my 100% today, even though I'm only
feeling 70%, just because I want to stay committed to the things that
I told myself I would do. Or
you're feeling 60% or 70%, and you're in a
(43:46):
relationship, and you've got this weekly date night that's been
really important for your relationship. You
just go up. You just show up, and you give it your 100%. And you
can use that example with anything. And so when I tell people like
sometimes in life, you got to play hurt. I'm not talking about like you go and
scrape your knee and you got to go still run. It's
(44:07):
the emotional hurts. It's the mental hurts that I think sometimes people have
a hard time moving through. And if you convince yourself that
you have to wait until things are perfect to make a decision or you're only going to
do things when things go perfect, you'll never accomplish anything ever,
right? Because there is no perfection. in
life as it relates to transformation, as it
(44:29):
relates to life experience. I mean, sure, there's the perfect
sunset. I'm sure there's things like that. I'm talking about real
life. And you have
to be able to get comfortable knowing that that's just the
way that life is so that you can convince yourself,
OK, I'm not feeling good today. I'm feeling stressed. Again, signal, like
(44:51):
I talked about earlier. But it doesn't mean that I'm
going to just kind of sit this one out because I look at my
own story, especially the first few years. I mean, there was times I
felt like crap. I mean, I wasn't talking to my mom hardly. I
mean, I was damaged relationships with family. I owe my brothers a lot of
money. Again, like I was on probation for
five years, like a lot of stuff that was stressing me out. Couldn't
(45:14):
get a job for a period of time because of my record. But if
I just said, told myself, like, I'm not feeling good. I'm
just going to wait until things get better. I might not be where
I am today. I might be in a grave. I might be in jail
again. I might be whatever. I don't know, because
that's where my life was going before I went to jail. And
(45:35):
so I guess to close the loop on that, I think you have
to be really prepared in life to
face adversity and to ask yourself, when adversity comes,
am I going to be the person that's like lukewarm with
my goals and just saying that I'm only interested when things are good? Or
am I going to prove to myself that no matter what, I'm going to bet on myself
(45:58):
and I'm going to overcome the impossible and not give up on myself. It's
like one of the greatest gifts I think I got from jail. I don't
know if who said this. I don't know if it was David Goggins. Somebody said something where they
were like, essentially, it's like it's easy to meditate and work out and
do all the things when life is good. It's easy because you really, I
mean, it's not really There's no real reason
(46:19):
that would limit you from doing those things, right? But
when life gets tough, that's when you're tested. And
I had the gift of developing a lot of these tools
when I was in the depths of, I mean, hell in
my life, in the depths of despair, where I was in
the middle of the fire. And I had to figure out how to
(46:40):
stop getting burned. And it was by working
out the way I talk to myself, practicing
the pause, understanding that things will get better if I
put in the work, leaning in on mentors, trusting
myself, holding myself accountable, like all the things that we've kind of talked about. I
happened to learn when I was going through one of the toughest moments
(47:03):
of my life, and probably the toughest moment of my life. And
so yeah, I mean, it's a long way of saying, like, you got to be committed.
You got to play hurt. And you got to show up for yourself, even
Love it. Love it. So, OK, what is your present?
Why? Because I know you spoke earlier about, you know,
(47:25):
when you were younger, your why was to impress the girls or
I mean, I want to change the way that people view adversity and
mental health and how they deal with it. Like, I think a
lot of times, like the the idea
of the show, the adversity advantage wasn't necessarily like, OK, you got
(47:45):
to go like do something crazy challenging to
make your life better. It was more like a reflection of
my story, where I saw how
much adversity I had as a kid. And because I did things like
acted out, abused drugs, sold drugs,
was just careless in the way I lived my life, my life got a lot worse. And
(48:08):
I was able to rationalize it because of what I went through.
And really, my life got worse because of how I behaved afterwards, not
necessarily because of the divorce and the bullying and stuff. And
then the ironic thing was during a
time of massive adversity, my life really transformed. So
I want to provide tools through the content
(48:32):
I share and the people that I interview for people to navigate
different themes of adversity in their life, whether it's mental health, whether it's
relationships, whether it's fitness, wellness, addiction,
you name it. Because it's not the
divorce that destroys your life. It's
typically what happens is, and again,
(48:56):
just talking generally, I'm not talking about like abusive relationships or, you
know, narcissistic or toxic relationships. I'm talking generally speaking, what
happens is people go and they'll drink like two bottles of wine every
day for like, two months, three months, four months, and
all of a sudden, that compounds. And now you're, it's impacting your work, it's
impacting your relationship with your kids, it's impacting your health, it's impacting the
way you talk to yourself. And then that becomes a pattern of
(49:19):
behaviors that end up lasting for a
long time if you're not careful. And then you look back, And you're like,
How'd this happen? And most people who are unaware are like, Oh,
it's because of the divorce. Divorce really rocked me. And it's like, No, what rocked
you was you drinking 2 bottles of wine every single day for the next
5 years of your life. That's what rocked you. So
(49:40):
I want to help people create I
want to help people reduce the amount of pain and suffering they
have to go through when they're experiencing adversity based on some of the
stuff that we we talked about on the show and, you know, sharing stories and
Wow. Wow. Thank you so much, Doug,
(50:03):
for. your transparency for your
gems for. I mean, not everyone who's experienced
adversity and hardship in life openly
shares the lessons that they've learned and are
as transparent. about the things that they've been through. So
I deeply, deeply appreciate, um, you sharing that with the listeners and
(50:26):
the world and using that to make the impact that you are presently making. I
would love if you could tell the listeners where they could stay connected with you
Yeah, for sure. Thank you again for having me on. I love the conversation. I love getting deep
on stuff like this. Best place to find me is I'm at
Doug Bopes on all the social platforms. Dougbopes.com is my
website. If you want to listen to the pod, it's the
(50:50):
Adversity Advantage podcast, wherever you get your podcasts, Apple, Spotify,
YouTube, wherever. And again, appreciate you having me on. I really enjoyed
Thank you. I will definitely have all the links to connect with you in
the detailed section of the episode so they don't have to search too far. And
I just want to thank Koldi Sharma for connecting us,
Robin Sharma's son, for connecting us. I'm always grateful when,
(51:11):
you know, past guests highlight other amazing humans.
So I want to thank him. And I want to thank you once again.
I appreciate you and your time. And if there's anything that
I could do to be of value to your community, I'd be more
And to all you healers out there until next time, subscribe on
(51:32):
all platforms. Don't forget to rate the show and leave us a review on
Apple podcast. I just want to thank each and every
one of you that continues to listen each week to help the
show globally rank in the top one point five percent of
most popular podcast. That's out of over three
million shows. So I truly, truly, truly appreciate you
(51:53):
all. If you can think of, I'm going
to challenge you to share this episode with three people that
would receive value from hearing Doug's story. Feel
free to screenshot this week's episode with your aha moments. You
can tag Doug at Dougbopst. That's
D-O-U-G-B-O-P-S-T. And
(52:16):
you can tag myself at TheRealMckinneySmith. A
healthy community is a healing community, and a healing community is
full of hope because it has seen its own people weather,
survive, and thrive. So let's continue to heal her.
I'm Makini Smith. After going through a divorce, my sister passing
away, experiencing narcissistic abuse and some
significant health scares, I realized through sharing my
story that I wasn't alone in my suffering. Suffering, subjective
distress generated by the experience of being out of
balance. In a deep dive to holistically heal mind,
(00:21):
body, and soul is where I discovered peace, clarity,
and connection. It is impossible to be truly wise
without some real-life hardship, and we cannot develop
post-traumatic wisdom without making it through, and most
importantly, through it together. Social
connection builds resilience, and resilience helps create
(00:44):
post-traumatic wisdom, and that wisdom leads to hope. hope
for you and others witnessing and participating in
your healing, and hope for your community. A
healthy community is a healing community, and a healing community is
full of hope because it has seen its own people weather,
survive, and thrive. Doug
(01:23):
Bopes is an award-winning personal trainer, three-time author, speaker,
and podcast host who transformed his life after
facing challenges as a former felon and drug addict. He
focuses on health and wellness and hosts the
Adversity Advantage podcast. Doug has been
featured in national media and recognized for his
(01:43):
work. He shares inspiring stories of overcoming and
has spoken on various events and platforms, and has worked
with organizations like McCormick and the Clemson
football team. He's been featured on the Today Show,
Men's Health, the Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
podcast, Forbes, Gold Coast, and
(02:11):
Thank you so much for agreeing to come on and share your story with
us. I'm someone who is genuinely interested
in people's backstories, how they've overcome adversity. And
I think there's so much that we can learn from each other.
So I'm always grateful when someone is open
and willing to come on and be transparent and share their
(02:37):
So I want to jump, I guess, right in. And
I typically like to start with where things began
before we get to where you are presently, because I feel like our childhood
or childhood wounds, our upbringing, our environment, all those
things have a huge impact on who we are today.
So as an icebreaker question, I would love to ask,
(02:59):
you know, who or what did you want to be as a
Icebreaker question. It's a good one. I think as a child, I mean, there
was a there was a variety of things I wanted to be. I would say the thing that most
stuck out to me is I wanted to be involved in
sports somehow. And that evolved as
I got older. Like when I was a little kid, I wanted to be a professional athlete,
(03:21):
I think, just like many young boys. Right. And then once
I realized that my athletic ability didn't
match up to my aspirations, I
wanted to be some type of sports broadcaster. I
mean, I was obsessed with sports growing up. I was the guy that would
convince my parents to stay up late so I could watch SportsCenter. I was always getting
(03:42):
up early so I could watch the morning edition of SportsCenter. I collected baseball
cards, football cards, basketball cards. I played all the video games growing
up. I just had this immense passion for
Mm hmm. I love it. I love it. So I okay. So
what is your earliest childhood memory that defines
(04:05):
I mean, I guess the earliest memory
I have, which is also probably I mean,
it was a defining moment indirectly was I
remember my dad walking out of my mom when I was like roughly five years old.
And then my parents got divorced from there, and it was a
pretty contentious divorce, pretty rough divorce. And
(04:28):
that really impacted my childhood and
my brother's childhood as well, my brother's childhoods as well.
And I think that began to develop
this what's wrong with me mentality when I was a kid. And
why is this happening to me? And why am I different? where
(04:48):
I grew up and maybe just the circles I ran in, it wasn't
common for parents to be split up. I think divorce, I don't know
what the rates were back then, but I guess from an objective or
my perspective, it was much less than it is now. And
so I would see my friends whose parents were together and I'm like, why are
their parents together and mine aren't? Why am I being shuffled around from house to house? Why
(05:09):
am I having to stay with my grandparents after school? Why aren't my parents here? And
so I began to raise all these questions in my mind of,
like, is there something wrong with me? There's something different. And then
the way they handled the divorce also shaped how
I viewed relationships and even carried on into
my adult relationships, which is what I, which is, which I had to actually work
(05:31):
on a lot. But then outside of that, other things compounded
from there, whether it was just the getting used to growing up in a stressful environment,
whether it was just having a nontraditional family
dynamic. And then I mentioned my passion and love for sports. And
I was always like one of the last kids picked. I never made the special teams
(05:53):
like the travel teams or the club teams or whatever. I was
always kind of made fun of for my athletic ability, even though like I had this deep rooted
desire and passion for sports. Like if passion equals success,
like I would have been one of the most successful athletes as a
kid. And so that began to reinforce this
what's wrong with me mentality because I was like, huh? like,
(06:16):
all these kids around me, we're all the same, right? We
all are trying to do the same thing. We're all spending the same amount of
time practicing, etc. Like, why are they
being picked for the teams? And I'm not like, why,
even though I'm doing everything I can to work hard, like, why isn't that
equaling success? So that started to kind of
(06:37):
compound, I thought that I was broken. And that everything
that I was going to do from there on out, from there on out, I was going to fail.
And on top of that, in school, I was bullied a lot. I was picked on
as a kid for a couple reasons. One,
I started to develop some body fat when I was young. I think
I was like 10, 11, 12 years old, I started to get some
belly fat, and I started to have to wear like husky clothes. And
(07:00):
again, it was like, what's wrong with me? Like, why am I eating the same foods as
other kids? Why am I living the same kind of lifestyle as my friends? And
I'm the one who's gaining some body fat. And
I was told that I was like, I had down syndrome as a kid, like
people would call me like some horrific names. And it
(07:21):
developed this, again, this identity of What's
wrong with me? Why am I so different? What
did I do wrong? What did I do to deserve this? Because it's like
as a kid, you're just trying to get by. You're just trying to be liked by the
kids in school. You're trying to get attention, you know, from
I was trying to get attention from girls, which I think was obviously a very normal thing when
(07:42):
you're in school and you're in middle and high school. You're
trying to be good at something so you
can get admiration from your parents and get admiration from the people around you.
And I wasn't really getting that. in the ways that I wanted and
the ways that I desired. And I would come home at times from school, and I would just cry in
my room, because I just was so
upset with myself and my life. And I was afraid at times to go to
(08:05):
school the next day, because I was like, Well, what's tomorrow going to bring? If today was this bad, what's
it going to look like then? And then that really
set the tone for how a majority of the rest of
my teenage years would play out. As
I got involved with with drugs and selling drugs
and running around with the wrong crowd and getting myself in a lot of legal trouble, which
(08:26):
I'm sure we'll get into. But I mean, yeah, that earliest
childhood moment, as a matter of fact, I think it's the it's the only moment
I remember my parents together is that day is my dad, like walking out
of my mom, walking out of my mom moving out. And
then like shortly after that, we're in two separate townhomes. And
that's it's sad, right, that that's like the only memory I have. Mm
(08:48):
hmm. But from what I understand, it's pretty common that when something traumatic like
that happens, that's kind of the only thing we focus on.
Absolutely. Absolutely. You
know, I reference this book often, but I feel like I
do it because it it helped shift some things in my mind. But
It's called, uh, what happened to you? Um, so it was written by, um, it
(09:11):
was co-written by Oprah and Dr. Bruce Perry. And so
when you were talking about, you know, what, what happened to
you or what's wrong with you, it's like society has
a tendency to automatically say when they see someone acting
or behaving or getting certain results, what is wrong with you instead
of asking what happened to you and, I
(09:33):
can relate to, you know, your childhood where it's like,
I was probably about one when my parents split, when my dad
left to start his new family. And it's
interesting how we have these vivid memories of our
childhood and how they affect us as we,
you know, we become adults, how we view life, how we view relationships.
(09:56):
And you mentioned you as a teenager, so I
would love to know what you were like as a teenager. Um,
because I know, especially for the people who are listening, sometimes they feel like where
they are, um, their situation or
their scenario is, is it, they don't realize that
you can evolve from that or that you can attain
(10:18):
higher things than that. So seeing where you are now, I
I mean, I was very unconfident, had a lot of anxiety. I
was depressed. I was stressed all the time. Um, I
was, I was afraid of my own shadow, a lot of fear, walked very
hunched over, not good posture. Like I said, very unathletic,
(10:40):
even though I love sports. Um, but I was always,
I was, I was like a nice kid. Like I was a kind kid. Like I didn't want
any trouble. I was trying to do whatever I could to fit in and trying to get
people to like me. And, um, you know, that resulted in.
Obviously developing a low level of self-worth because now,
you know, you're losing yourself in order to get the validation from other people. And
(11:02):
then you're getting attention from people just
for the sake of getting attention, even though those people may
not be in the best interest of you. And
so that's what I was like as a kid. I was a kid that was just completely scared, anxious,
not confident, not well-spoken. So people see me now,
(11:23):
and they see me in what I do today, and that I'm charismatic, that I'm outgoing, and
I'm confident. And all that, I was never like
that as a kid. I mean, all that really became, all
that came from me going through hard times
and a lot of adversity. That's what truly developed a
lot of these skills that I have now that people may
(11:44):
look at and say, oh, you must have always been this way. But people who knew me, people
who went to high school with me, they'll know I was not like this.
I was total opposite. Yeah,
I mean, I was just the guy, like I said, just completely mentally
burdened with negative emotions and negative
self-image and self-worth of myself that inevitably forced
(12:12):
So before we get to the addiction piece, I would love to
learn, like, what did you learn about emotions
Um, I mean, I think, Emotions
growing up, and I think as a guy especially, you,
you're told you can't cry, right? So I think that
(12:35):
has an impact on you when you're a kid, even though like, by myself, I
cried a lot. I think that when
you're scared of something, or when I was scared as
a kid, I would think of that as a bad thing, even though that was probably a
sign for me to change paths or change directions. Same
with anxiety, depression, I saw it as all these negative emotions.
(12:59):
We're now, I mean, can those emotions and
states of mind be negative? I mean, of course, I
view them now as just signals and being
like, okay, like if you're scared, What do you like?
Something's off something. Something is telling you something your
body is trying to tell you something your body could be trying to tell you. Oh,
(13:19):
like this is new for you. Maybe you need to step into this because
you will become stronger, wiser, you'll develop into a
better person after doing this. Your body may be telling you
don't do this because it's going to mess your life up or you're
going to get into a bad relationship or you're going to set yourself back
wherever whatever the example is. And you can say the same thing with. when
(13:41):
you're feeling depressed or depressed or anxious. Like I
know at times in my life when I felt depressed. It
was always because something was off or something that happened in my life that
I didn't pay attention to. And the same thing with. Feeling I'm
feeling anxious like people will ask me like, well, what
is it like? Why do you get anxious? I'm like, well, I know that I tend to
(14:01):
like overthink things and worry about certain things, especially when I have a lot of my plate.
If I don't sleep well, my anxiety goes up. If I'm
doing things that are not in alignment. I mean, I'm not talking from
a legal perspective. I'm talking just from a, like a
soul perspective. I tend to get more anxious because I'm
just not as connected to myself. So I totally
(14:22):
view them differently. And I think it's because, you know, as a kid, like
most kids don't have self-awareness like that, right? They're not like, Oh, I'm feeling
this way because of that. Again, like I said earlier, kids are just trying
to get by, survive, have fun in school, you know,
get through it. go off to college if that's their goal, go off and play
sports if that's their goal, go off to a trade school, whatever their goal is. But
(14:43):
when you're an adult, it's your responsibility to
develop awareness around those emotions because a lot more
is at stake now. As a kid, you're under
the responsibility and care, if you're lucky, obviously, of your
parents. When you're an
adult, it's up to you. You're legally responsible
(15:05):
for all your actions, So if you're not, if you're not aware of
what you do when you get angry, like that's going to be a problem. If you're not
aware of how your anxiety impacts your day to day life, that's going to be a
problem. If you don't manage stress well as an adult, that's going
to be a problem. And, and so my ability,
I think, to develop not just the self-awareness around all
(15:25):
that, but the depth and
how deep these emotions go, I think has really
served me well, because I can pinpoint why I
feel these emotions and I can kind of trace it back to
like situations in my life that
maybe were primers for these emotions. I've also been
(15:45):
able to take that and kind of just store it in my back pocket
a bit and not letting that be the driver of
my day-to-day life. Because I think it's easy to get caught up in this cycle of
just going back into your past for everything. And I think it serves a purpose.
I also think it can be detrimental because now you're
not even being present. and you're not even aware of
(16:07):
what your actions are, you're not
even being aware of what your actions are actually doing to your life. And
so you're continuing to just blame your past circumstances for
the way you're behaving today. So that was a roundabout way of saying,
yeah, I think as a kid, I mean, I wasn't as
aware of my emotions, specifically how they impacted me. It
(16:28):
was more It
was more just a feeling in the moment. And I just recognized a lot of what I was going
through was bad. And now I'm coming out on the other side of it. I've
realized that I've realized
that there was purpose in those emotions and that there's just signals for bigger
(16:51):
Yes. I love how you explain your
emotions, how you process them and even the importance of
awareness. Um, you know, I'm an avid reader,
so I always reference books, but there's a book called permission to feel. And, um,
he's explaining that, you know, like you said, like our
feelings are not bad or good or negative
(17:12):
or positive. Our feelings are data. They're letting us know what
is going on. So it's important for us to have that awareness. And
I think, Sometimes ignorance will allow
people to look at someone else's emotions and disregard them
and not ask questions or not be aware. And it's very easy
for us to not be aware of our own emotions. So I love how you
(17:38):
Um, okay, so you mentioned, um, addiction and
things like that. So, um, you know, you're, you're known from,
for going from, from felon to fitness. So I
would love if you like, okay, so I understand how
people, when they have experienced trauma and adversity, we
look for things to numb, whether it be drugs, sex, like
(18:00):
whatever, we look for things to numb the pain that we're feeling and what
we're experiencing. So I can understand. how the
addiction came about based on what you've shared about your childhood. So
I won't really ask you how you got into the addiction piece. But
if you can share, like, how did fitness save
(18:22):
Well, fitness saved me because I got ended up getting I was incarcerated on
felony drug charges back in 2008. And during my
incarceration, my cellmate got me
into working out and to, I guess, paint
a better picture of who I was like when I was in jail because a lot
of things had happened since then. I mean, between the time I
(18:43):
was legally allowed to work, I forget when I was legally allowed to
work. It was sometime as a teenager. I forget. It was like 14, 15, 16. I
forget. But nonetheless, between that time and the time I went to jail, I had
21 jobs by the time I was 21 years old, 21. And
it wasn't because I just found something better. It was because I
was selling drugs. And I thought
(19:04):
that I felt that I could make way
more money selling drugs than I could making $6, $7, $8, $9, $10 an
hour, whatever it was I was making. So I would leave jobs because of that. I
would get fired because I wouldn't show up, because all I cared about was getting high
and selling drugs. Again, I would quit. If somebody pissed me off,
I would quit, because I knew I had this other job
(19:26):
that made me way more money. I mean, the fact of the matter is, after I
started selling drugs, after I graduated high school, like
selling a lot of drugs, I should say, Me having a
job was a front to either if
I needed to get an apartment or if my parents or
people in my family were wondering what I was doing to make money. I
wasn't like, oh yeah, I'm just selling drugs. Even though they knew it, but I couldn't openly
(19:49):
admit that to them with them being okay with it. 21 jobs, that's how I'm 21. Crippling,
I say, when I say crippling, I mean crippling anxiety, like to the point
where later on in my teenage years, I ended up
going to the emergency room twice because I thought I
was having a heart attack when really it was just, it was an intense panic attack, yeah. Crippling
(20:11):
anxiety, heavily addicted to Oxycontin, to drugs. I
was selling a bunch of drugs before I went to jail. Damaged
relationships, tons of legal trouble. As I just mentioned,
I was a convicted felon at the time as well. And just
in my mind, like a terrible human being. And so my
cellmate, who looked like a more jacked version of Brad Pitt
(20:33):
from the movie Fight Club, is how I like to describe him, just to paint a picture. He
was like, you're going to start working out with me when you get through your painkiller detox.
And I was just like, dude, there's no way. Like, have you seen me? I could have been a model for Pillsbury.
Like, I was so fat. Like, I mean, when I say, I mean, just fat, like my body
fat percentage, if I had to guess, was like 40% back then. And
I didn't weigh that much. I mean, I maybe weighed I don't know, like around
(20:55):
200 pounds, something like that. So it wasn't like
anything insane, you know, as far as my weight goes. And
not too long after that, after I pretty much completely declined his
offer, he's like asking
me some questions. He's like, you know, why did you go to jail? Like, what are
you doing here? Why'd you get addicted to drugs? Why'd you start selling drugs? Like
(21:17):
asking me all the questions. I started to blame everybody else
for my problems but myself. I started to blame the girls for not being interested
in me. I started blaming like the sports because
I wasn't good at sports. I started blaming my parents, started blaming my friends
and kids who bullied me. And he looked at me and the PG version
of it is he said, quit being a victim.
(21:39):
And I remember looking at him and I
like hated I hated what he had to say because I was looking for him to call me
and say it's okay dog the world's against you because I convinced myself in
my mind that that was true I had rationalized all
of my poor behavior. Based
on the fact that I did have some adversity growing up
(22:00):
and I was like, oh well because my parents got divorced I
can do this because I was bullied as
a kid I can do that because I'm being picked on
This justifies this and it all makes sense because in my mind
it did make sense, right? But my cellmate pointed out
very clearly He's like you're blaming everybody else
for your problems, but yourself and taking zero responsibility for this
(22:23):
and And he's like, there's plenty of people that
go through life with the same circumstances as
you that aren't in jail. Right, Doug? And I'm like, yep. He's like,
so you have two choices. Be a man and take
responsibility for yourself or go be a victim and cry in
the corner and say, woe is me and blame people
for your problems. He's like, most people will do that. And it was like
(22:46):
in that moment, I realized that the drugs had been out of my started to get out of my system for
a bit. You know, this guy had no real skin in the game as far
as my life. He wasn't a member of my family. He wasn't like a lawyer. He
was just like a guy I met in jail. So I was
like, oh, this guy must truly care about me like unconditionally. And
that inspired me to start working out. And when
(23:07):
I got down and do a push up, I couldn't do a push up. As a
matter of fact, I couldn't even do a push up from my knees. That's how weak I was. And
I remember looking at Eric, my cellmate, and I'm like, man, why can't
I do a push-up? And he looked at me. He was like, because you're
fat. And I hated that word, because I was called that a lot as
a kid. And I was like, well, what do you mean? He's like, Doug, I'm not going
(23:28):
to sugarcoat it. He's like, you have excess body fat. Your upper body
is weak. Your core is weak. You're out of shape. He's like, so you're collapsing. Every
time you try to go down to do a push-up, your body can't physically push
itself back up. And then I took a break, and I would walk
up and down the steps in the common area of the jail. And, and
I was out of breath, like going up and down, because I was also smoking cigarettes, too,
(23:51):
before I went to jail. And with his motivation and encouragement training
me in there every single day during my 90-day sentence, I was able
to do a set of 10 pushups and run a mile by
the time my jail sentence was over. And
the way that worked was, We started with being able
to hold my body weight up from my knees. Then once I was able to do that,
(24:11):
then it was like one push-up, then two push-ups from my knees, and then all the
way up until I was able to do a set of 10. Same thing happened for
my feet, holding my body weight up, one push-up, two push-ups.
At the beginning of jail, the thought of me being able
to do a set of 10 push-ups from my feet, was similar
to if you had said, Hey, Doug, like tomorrow, I want you to go climb Mount Everest, it'd
(24:33):
be the same. Very, like, there's no way it's gonna happen. It's physically
impossible. And and then the running was interesting, too.
Because there's no like, there's no track, there's no treadmills in
jail, at least the jail I was at. And so the
way to measure the distance and how far I was going, we used a
deck of cards. And there was a perimeter in the common area in
(24:56):
the jail where people would sit, they'd eat, they'd watch TV, they'd play games and
stuff, play board games. And so
I would walk around the perimeter, and every time I would take a lap, I
would take a card from my left hand and pass it to my right hand. And
then every time I would take another lap, do the same thing. And then that would, I would, I
would use that to track like how far I went. And then I would progress to
(25:16):
jogging, progress to running. And then, again,
sure enough, during my, at the end, I was able to, to
do the mile and then the 10 pushups. And
I always tell people, it's not, it's
not the direct impacts necessarily of fitness. that
can help you improve your mental health, recover from addiction, and have
(25:37):
it do the same things it did for me. It's more like the indirect. I was
able to finally get comfortable being uncomfortable. I was finally
able to develop some self-discipline, finally able to
prove to myself that I mattered enough to show up for myself every single day. And
even on the days where I didn't feel like it, most of the time in there, I didn't want to work out.
I hated it. It was so foreign to me to want
(26:00):
to exercise. Um, it also just developed this
immense amount of confidence, because I was able to prove to myself that
I could do certain things that I never thought I could do. And that's life changing. Like, I always tell
people, like, they're, they look at me where I'm at now,
or look at other people who have had, you know, success in their life. And
I always say, like, the biggest level of confidence comes from going like, from zero
(26:21):
to three, not from zero to 100. Like that, that time
in your life, where, and we've all, I think, been there in some
capacity, where you're in the thick of mud, the
mud, you can't really see anything. You're like, I'm scared. I
have no idea, like, what's gonna happen moving forward. But I
know I got to crawl right now and just move and keep going. And then once you get
out of that mud, and you're able to make some progress, the confidence you build from that
(26:44):
process is what really carries you for the
rest of your life, I believe. It's not the getting to the top. Like,
I think about what I'm most proud, people will ask me all the time, like,
What are you most proud of? And you know, I could say
it's the books, I could say it's different media stuff I've done, I could say it's the podcast, which
I mean, I think all those things have been amazing. But that jail experience,
(27:05):
by far still stands out to me is the most instrumental,
memorable experience of my life because of
what I just shared and where I was. And I think
if you can develop this whatever it takes mentality and learn to bet on yourself,
even when the odds are against you, I think you'll
win. I really do. And not necessarily in a financial way
(27:26):
or in a personal achievement way, but you'll just tell yourself that
you believe in yourself. So
yeah, I mean, after that, my cellmate gave
me a workout plan that I still have framed here, so I don't forget where I
came from. Lost a bunch of weight, and
then got to a place fitness-wise where I wanted to help other
people use fitness to transform their lives, became a personal trainer, built
(27:50):
a very successful career in the fitness space. And that inspired
me to do a lot of the other things I'm doing now, whether it's the podcast, writing, speaking,
like wow there's there's
so much that you said there that i wanted to um
(28:11):
highlight and make sure that the listeners um really
took note because one with the cellmate like
i strongly believe that every single connection that
we make every single person that we meet can either be a
blessing or a lesson. And you can know that
person for five minutes, five years, 50 years. There's something that
(28:33):
they can either teach you or bless you with. So it's,
it's beautiful that, you know, someone else may
have said, well, if you hadn't have gone to jail, would you
be where you are presently? Or if you hadn't met that cellmate, all
those things. So it's beautiful that, you know, it's
like, well, I strongly believe like, you
(28:54):
know, nothing happens by chance. So that connection,
that cellmate, all of that was meant to be in order to transform where
you are presently. Um, I also understand
like when it comes to habits, like naturally as
people we were we're
habitual like we you know we do things in habits and then when we have an
(29:16):
addictive personality it's just intense and whenever
we're trying to shift a habit or something if we don't replace it
with something then we'll automatically just pick up something
else or go back to that other thing So I think it's
great that you were able to swap the drugs for fitness,
the felony to fitness. And
(29:38):
also, you talked about with the fitness, like it's not just a physical
thing. And, you know, I'm a mindset coach, so
we talk about this all the time, especially people who are going to the gym or
trying to lose weight. Fitness is a mental game. You're
mentally pushing through all of these barriers. You're
mentally pushing through all of these things in order
(29:59):
to transform physically. It's about making the commitment to
yourself. It's about doing the uncomfortable. It's about pushing through
the terror barrier, all of those things. And
then you talked about your present confidence, which
I strongly believe that competence builds confidence. So
you talked about just going from 1 to 3 and not 1 to 10. I
(30:21):
think people often assume that, you
know, you got to do the big jump in order to get there, but it's
I know for myself and anyone else that I've spoken to that have done big things,
it's about the small things. And continuously doing the small things
helps to build that confidence that we have now. And
then I love how you talked about being able to now transform
(30:44):
and utilize what you've learned and what you've experienced to
do all of these trainings and do all these things because a
common theme that i have seen in doing i don't know i
think we've recorded probably 280 episodes or
something by now but wow in every single episode
the common is that our pain births
(31:04):
our purpose. So I love how you've been able to
transform all that you've experienced into helping
others, into, you know, you've transmuted that
pain into something greater, something bigger, something that
will leave a legacy, something that, you know, has a domino effect.
Like, you help one person, and you don't even know
(31:25):
how many people that can help. So you're now utilizing your
platform and your knowledge and your experience. to
Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I think
when you don't have the confidence, it's hard to create confidence because
you create cognitive dissonance where,
(31:46):
I mean, you can tell yourself all day that you're the greatest. You
can tell yourself all day that you're this and that, but
if your actions don't reflect that, I just
think your brain is going to somehow be convinced that
it's not true. It's like the fastest way to build trust with
yourself is to do the things that you say you're going to do. Because
(32:06):
if you tell yourself, I'm going to go to the gym tomorrow and
you don't do it, your brain's going to be like, well, you
told me you're going to do this and you did. And like, how am I supposed to believe you? And then that
carries on into other areas of
your life as well. And I think that that's just
something that we need to, that people, um,
(32:28):
that need, I think it's something that people need to grasp because there's
a lot of noise out there on social media and
it's easy to look at the highlight reels of other people and
say, I want to, you
know, accelerate my success to get to that place because
it looks like it looks cool on social media. It looks like my friend or
(32:49):
my family or whoever it is that they're paying attention to. And
it, I think, limits people's ability to take
action, because they're like, well, that's gonna take so long to get there. I have no
idea how to do it. I want the easy way. But they don't realize that
every person who's had success like that, or has accomplished something
meaningful, has, has really had
(33:10):
to start from ground zero. And I'll give you an example. Like, people
will look at me now, And they'll be like, Oh, it's
so awesome that you're on these big podcasts, or getting these big guests,
or whatever it is. But I'll look back, and I'll be like, I've been sharing my
story for like, over 10 years. Yeah, over a
decade. And it really just started to get picked up, I guess, by
(33:32):
bigger media, maybe over the last five, six years or so. Um,
And so people don't see like beneath the iceberg. They don't see
that it started with me just sharing my story with my clients and
started me sharing my story with like local newspapers and local
media and doing a lot of like stuff here in my
hometown. And then that gave that helped me put the reps in
(33:54):
and it helped me get practice and develop the confidence to
be able to share my story. And that led to a lot of the other things
that I'm doing now. But I just encourage people
to remember that you have to stack small wins, like
small wins lead to big goals. And the only way to get to
the place of that zero to 100, or to
(34:17):
the place where you think people are on social media, is by
starting where you're at. And so it's putting the
shoes on and going out for a walk. It's, you
know, making that first therapy appointment. It's raising
your hand and asking for help. It's, you know,
telling yourself you're not going to drink tomorrow. It's whatever, right? It's that
(34:39):
small step that you can build off of that. It's
that small step that you build off of that. And that all compounds. Like
for me, When I, the day I left jail, like there, I
wasn't like, Oh, I want to be a podcast host or I want to be a personal trainer. It
was about, it was literally about survival. Like I remember exactly how
I was feeling the day I left jail. I was freaking scared. I was
(35:00):
mortified. I was terrified because up until that point, I
had proven to myself that I was a failure based
on the way I lived my life. Like I told you my track record. And
so most of me doubted me. Most
of me knew that I was going to fail. But there was that small
part of me that, that There
(35:22):
was that small part of me that believed I wasn't, that I was going to succeed. And it was because of
the mindset that I had started to develop when I was in jail, where
I was like, all right, I've seen the things that I do
daily that make me a better person. I
know who I want to become. Like, I honestly, to be fully
transparent, like, I just wanted to be ripped so I could get attention from
girls when I was like, getting out of, like, that was like a main goal,
(35:45):
which I think vanity is, I mean, I think vanity sometimes
gets lost in the weeds with, with health, but I think I mean, that is,
in a way, like a lot of people's goals, especially early on
when they're trying to transform their health. I mean, it can't be the only thing. But I
knew that if I wanted to be somebody who was lean, jacked,
confident, thought highly of myself, that there were
(36:07):
certain things I needed to do on a daily basis in
order to get myself there. I knew I needed to work out, eat a certain way,
stay away from certain people, talk to myself in a certain way,
get good sleep, stay away from drugs, obviously, and
selling drugs and all those things. And I knew if I did that every
day, I had control over those things that it would give me
(36:29):
a chance to become that person I wanted to be. But
if I told myself, well, I'm never going to be that person because
of X, Y and Z circumstances or X, Y and Z excuses, I
would have automatically counted myself out of
that transformation just based on stuff in the past. And
so what ended up happening was, I would go like a
(36:52):
few days after jail without, well, I mean, staying on the path and
not doing the, and staying away from all those things that I mentioned and
doing the things I was supposed to do. I'm like, wow, I haven't used drugs for
three days outside of jail. This is amazing. Or I've
stayed on this fitness path for three days on my own without my cellmate. This
is amazing. And then that compounds more confidence. Then a week goes
(37:13):
by, and you're like, oh, it's been a week. Then like three weeks go by, and it's been three weeks, and
then a month. You're like, holy crap. I can run a
5k now, I can do 50 push ups, I can, I
haven't touched drugs in three months, I blah, blah, blah, right,
whatever it is. And it all came from like, just that, that simple
win of focusing on that one day.
(37:34):
And you just never know, you never know how much your life can change in
a matter of months or years, you just don't. But I think a lot of times people
They count themselves out because of what's happened in the past.
And trust me, I get it. Like, I understand how tough it can be to, like, carry
that weight with you. And then on the flip side of that, they
count themselves out because they're like, well, I'm never going to achieve this thing because
(37:57):
of how long it'll take, how old I am, my skill set
right now, my level of fitness, whatever it is. But I'm
not going to say if I can do it, you can do it because that's a tall,
that's a big thing to say. But I'll say if somebody like
myself can achieve some of the things that I
did coming from where I came from, there's a good shot
(38:19):
I think the victim mindset and feeling sorry for yourself, it
I know that sometimes, I know that a lot of times in life, people
have horrible circumstances. Like, I mean, some of the stories I've heard on
my show, or just talking to people that I know, I'm like, Wow, like,
(38:42):
man, I had it good compared to you, right? And
there's people that had a lot better than me, right? So But the
thing is, like, you can't change the past. You can only learn from it
and grow from it. And if the thing that you want, like a lot of times when people are feeling
sorry for themselves and they're trapped in the thick of the victim mindset, what
they really want is they want some sort of guarantee that everything's
(39:02):
going to be OK. They want some level of happiness and
satisfaction and fulfillment. They want meaning. They want purpose.
They want validation. And the only
way to get there is by changing your actions and moving forward.
You focusing on the past and blaming your parents, your
family, the people around you for everything that's happened
(39:24):
to you, it's going to guarantee that you don't get there. I
That accountability piece is big. I've
learned that it's hard for people to take accountability, especially
if it's something that can create shame or guilt
or any of those things. It's almost like they view it as death, like it's that
(39:48):
detrimental to them. So being
able to hold ourselves accountable, it's not easy, but completely necessary
in order to move forward and to be able to help other people
do the same. But I wanted to highlight
something you said about the small wins. Yeah.
I think that is an excellent, excellent point
(40:09):
to share, because like you said, people will look on social media and see
the accolades and the successes and your
highlight reel and feel like I can never attain that. They
look at where you are, but they don't look at the
story of how you actually got there. I
(40:29):
can relate where it's like, I grew up in government housing to a
single mom, had all of these things in my childhood, but
in certain rooms now, because I was mentored by
Bob Proctor, because I've had certain people on the podcast where
people had these assumptions about my life not
realizing, all the small wins that I've had to
(40:51):
celebrate in order to get to where I am presently. And
part of what I love about podcasting versus Instagram is
you get to dig deeper into that person's
story. You get to understand the mindset. You
get to understand the past traumas, the adversities they've
had to overcome, instead of just focusing on, you know, the
(41:12):
tangibles from their present success or all those things. I think it's important
for people to realize that it is attainable if you
are committed to that change for yourself. Oftentimes
people will say they want a certain change, but they're interested in
that change. And I feel like if you're just interested, you can still
make all the excuses under the sun in order not to do that thing.
(41:34):
But if you are committed to that change, you do whatever it takes
and you push yourself into those uncomfortable places and push
through those terror barriers in order to, I
guess, receive those rewards on the other side of what you want your life to
Yeah, there is a big difference, obviously, between being interested and committed. Right.
Because when you're interested, it's like you do it when
(41:56):
it's easy. When you're interested, you do it when it's convenient. When you're interested, like
you do it like on your terms. Right. But when you're committed, you're like
all in no matter what. And I think along
that that same that same along that
those same lines, I always tell people like in life, sometimes you got to play hurt. Like
you think about Like Michael Jordan Game 7 NBA
(42:19):
finals. He like twists his ankle up a little bit. There's
two minutes left. The game's tied. You think he's going out of the game like no way like
he's he's staying in the game for the final two minutes to
make sure he gets the ball and to see if he hits the game winning shot right? And. I
think it's the same thing in life like sure, there's going
to be times where I could. Michael Jordan tears his ACL like probably probably
(42:41):
not going to go back in, but I'm saying. most of the time, our
little pain that we're experiencing, our little hurts in life, are
things that we can still manage and walk through. Some of the emotional
pain, maybe you didn't sleep as well the night before, maybe you got more
stress, maybe you got into a fight with your boss. Like,
a lot of times what happens when those things occur is you're like,
(43:03):
Oh, my day is so bad. I'm just gonna sit this one out,
and then we'll do better tomorrow. And
I think what happens when you do that is you tell yourself that when life gets hard, it's OK
to just quit. It's OK to quit on your goals. It's OK to take the day off.
And it's not to say, again, that there's not going to be days where you're forced to
do that. But a majority of the time, I think
(43:25):
you got to be able to play hurt. You got to be able to say, OK, like, I'm only feeling like
70% today. I want to go into the gym. and
give it my 100% today, even though I'm only
feeling 70%, just because I want to stay committed to the things that
I told myself I would do. Or
you're feeling 60% or 70%, and you're in a
(43:46):
relationship, and you've got this weekly date night that's been
really important for your relationship. You
just go up. You just show up, and you give it your 100%. And you
can use that example with anything. And so when I tell people like
sometimes in life, you got to play hurt. I'm not talking about like you go and
scrape your knee and you got to go still run. It's
(44:07):
the emotional hurts. It's the mental hurts that I think sometimes people have
a hard time moving through. And if you convince yourself that
you have to wait until things are perfect to make a decision or you're only going to
do things when things go perfect, you'll never accomplish anything ever,
right? Because there is no perfection. in
life as it relates to transformation, as it
(44:29):
relates to life experience. I mean, sure, there's the perfect
sunset. I'm sure there's things like that. I'm talking about real
life. And you have
to be able to get comfortable knowing that that's just the
way that life is so that you can convince yourself,
OK, I'm not feeling good today. I'm feeling stressed. Again, signal, like
(44:51):
I talked about earlier. But it doesn't mean that I'm
going to just kind of sit this one out because I look at my
own story, especially the first few years. I mean, there was times I
felt like crap. I mean, I wasn't talking to my mom hardly. I
mean, I was damaged relationships with family. I owe my brothers a lot of
money. Again, like I was on probation for
five years, like a lot of stuff that was stressing me out. Couldn't
(45:14):
get a job for a period of time because of my record. But if
I just said, told myself, like, I'm not feeling good. I'm
just going to wait until things get better. I might not be where
I am today. I might be in a grave. I might be in jail
again. I might be whatever. I don't know, because
that's where my life was going before I went to jail. And
(45:35):
so I guess to close the loop on that, I think you have
to be really prepared in life to
face adversity and to ask yourself, when adversity comes,
am I going to be the person that's like lukewarm with
my goals and just saying that I'm only interested when things are good? Or
am I going to prove to myself that no matter what, I'm going to bet on myself
(45:58):
and I'm going to overcome the impossible and not give up on myself. It's
like one of the greatest gifts I think I got from jail. I don't
know if who said this. I don't know if it was David Goggins. Somebody said something where they
were like, essentially, it's like it's easy to meditate and work out and
do all the things when life is good. It's easy because you really, I
mean, it's not really There's no real reason
(46:19):
that would limit you from doing those things, right? But
when life gets tough, that's when you're tested. And
I had the gift of developing a lot of these tools
when I was in the depths of, I mean, hell in
my life, in the depths of despair, where I was in
the middle of the fire. And I had to figure out how to
(46:40):
stop getting burned. And it was by working
out the way I talk to myself, practicing
the pause, understanding that things will get better if I
put in the work, leaning in on mentors, trusting
myself, holding myself accountable, like all the things that we've kind of talked about. I
happened to learn when I was going through one of the toughest moments
(47:03):
of my life, and probably the toughest moment of my life. And
so yeah, I mean, it's a long way of saying, like, you got to be committed.
You got to play hurt. And you got to show up for yourself, even
Love it. Love it. So, OK, what is your present?
Why? Because I know you spoke earlier about, you know,
(47:25):
when you were younger, your why was to impress the girls or
I mean, I want to change the way that people view adversity and
mental health and how they deal with it. Like, I think a
lot of times, like the the idea
of the show, the adversity advantage wasn't necessarily like, OK, you got
(47:45):
to go like do something crazy challenging to
make your life better. It was more like a reflection of
my story, where I saw how
much adversity I had as a kid. And because I did things like
acted out, abused drugs, sold drugs,
was just careless in the way I lived my life, my life got a lot worse. And
(48:08):
I was able to rationalize it because of what I went through.
And really, my life got worse because of how I behaved afterwards, not
necessarily because of the divorce and the bullying and stuff. And
then the ironic thing was during a
time of massive adversity, my life really transformed. So
I want to provide tools through the content
(48:32):
I share and the people that I interview for people to navigate
different themes of adversity in their life, whether it's mental health, whether it's
relationships, whether it's fitness, wellness, addiction,
you name it. Because it's not the
divorce that destroys your life. It's
typically what happens is, and again,
(48:56):
just talking generally, I'm not talking about like abusive relationships or, you
know, narcissistic or toxic relationships. I'm talking generally speaking, what
happens is people go and they'll drink like two bottles of wine every
day for like, two months, three months, four months, and
all of a sudden, that compounds. And now you're, it's impacting your work, it's
impacting your relationship with your kids, it's impacting your health, it's impacting the
way you talk to yourself. And then that becomes a pattern of
(49:19):
behaviors that end up lasting for a
long time if you're not careful. And then you look back, And you're like,
How'd this happen? And most people who are unaware are like, Oh,
it's because of the divorce. Divorce really rocked me. And it's like, No, what rocked
you was you drinking 2 bottles of wine every single day for the next
5 years of your life. That's what rocked you. So
(49:40):
I want to help people create I
want to help people reduce the amount of pain and suffering they
have to go through when they're experiencing adversity based on some of the
stuff that we we talked about on the show and, you know, sharing stories and
Wow. Wow. Thank you so much, Doug,
(50:03):
for. your transparency for your
gems for. I mean, not everyone who's experienced
adversity and hardship in life openly
shares the lessons that they've learned and are
as transparent. about the things that they've been through. So
I deeply, deeply appreciate, um, you sharing that with the listeners and
(50:26):
the world and using that to make the impact that you are presently making. I
would love if you could tell the listeners where they could stay connected with you
Yeah, for sure. Thank you again for having me on. I love the conversation. I love getting deep
on stuff like this. Best place to find me is I'm at
Doug Bopes on all the social platforms. Dougbopes.com is my
website. If you want to listen to the pod, it's the
(50:50):
Adversity Advantage podcast, wherever you get your podcasts, Apple, Spotify,
YouTube, wherever. And again, appreciate you having me on. I really enjoyed
Thank you. I will definitely have all the links to connect with you in
the detailed section of the episode so they don't have to search too far. And
I just want to thank Koldi Sharma for connecting us,
Robin Sharma's son, for connecting us. I'm always grateful when,
(51:11):
you know, past guests highlight other amazing humans.
So I want to thank him. And I want to thank you once again.
I appreciate you and your time. And if there's anything that
I could do to be of value to your community, I'd be more
And to all you healers out there until next time, subscribe on
(51:32):
all platforms. Don't forget to rate the show and leave us a review on
Apple podcast. I just want to thank each and every
one of you that continues to listen each week to help the
show globally rank in the top one point five percent of
most popular podcast. That's out of over three
million shows. So I truly, truly, truly appreciate you
(51:53):
all. If you can think of, I'm going
to challenge you to share this episode with three people that
would receive value from hearing Doug's story. Feel
free to screenshot this week's episode with your aha moments. You
can tag Doug at Dougbopst. That's
D-O-U-G-B-O-P-S-T. And
(52:16):
you can tag myself at TheRealMckinneySmith. A
healthy community is a healing community, and a healing community is
full of hope because it has seen its own people weather,
survive, and thrive. So let's continue to heal her.
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