376: When the Career You Love Ends: How to Pivot to an Even Better Role

David Nurse 00:01
Ready, fire, aim, just go. There is never going to be a perfect time. You want to make your pivot, you make your pivot, and understand that everything that you have done to this point has been a preparation for an opportunity to come.

Introduction 0:22
This is the Happen To Your Career podcast, with Scott Anthony Barlow. We help you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what does and make it happen. We help you define the work that's unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you're ready to make a change, keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:46
Imagine for a second that you were in a job that you loved doing, you kept having success, you were doing really well. And then one day, that job that you love was ripped away from you. What do you do now? Can possibly find something that is as good or as fulfilling? And even how would that work? How can you possibly find that role?

David Nurse 01:07
I go back and I'm living on my parents couch in Kansas City where they moved to at the time. My mom would always say these motivational quotes and she said, "David when one door closes, four open and an entire beachfront patio overlooking the ocean."

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:21
That's David Nurse. He was a well known NBA shooting coach, and at the height of coaching success, he lost his job. In this conversation, you'll learn how four new doors open for you when one door closes, and how you can pivot to make your next career move, even if it's a role that you didn't know existed. Here's David and I talking about where his career began.

David Nurse 01:45
So it all started in Iowa, the middle of nowhere cornfields of Iowa, and my dream, my goal, my life was all based on playing in the NBA. Now I got two 6'2 which is very tall. I've never done to basketball in my life, so I'm not very athletically gifted. So my parents probably should have said "hey, play tennis or ball or something like that" but I was dead set on playing in the NBA. And I poured everything I had into this, every waking moment into how I can improve to play in the NBA. Now fast forward, I get to play college basketball, pretty much grinded my way to do so. And I'm playing overseas and in Europe and now it sounds really cool to say hey, "I'm playing professionally in Europe" but man it was more like the 'Will Ferrell Semi-Pro' joke of a league than it was actual professional basketball. So I'm playing for the Second Division team in northern Basque region of Spain. They don't even speak Spanish, it's basically miserable. The players are more interested in where the party is going to be at after the game than they are the actual game. And here I am pouring all this extra work, all this details, all this study and I get cut from this team. So not only are all my hopes and goals and dreams, I had no backup plan taken away, but they're also turned upside down in my heads, rob in the dirt, so I have nothing going for me. I go back and I'm living on my parents couch in Kansas City where they moved to at the time. I was there for about five months and my mom would always say these motivational quotes and sayings and I usually like, "okay whatever mom" in one...

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:15
Okay, I want to know about that. I'm super curious, what were some of the ones that your mom say at you?

David Nurse 03:20
Oh, yeah, she's saying it all the time. Like literally every time I stepped out of the door, she would have tell me something like it was gonna have a huge impact on me. But the one that I remember the most, stuck out to me and changed me and helped me pivot. She said, "David when one door closes, four open and an entire beach front patio overlooking the ocean." I don't know where she got that from, but I was like, wow, there's something to that. And it triggered me I was like, "hey, all of this that I've been putting into play in the NBA, was actually me learning all these details and studying how I can coach players to play in the NBA." So right there I went from nothing, I made a small pivot and it's not a... it wasn't a huge change. It was like, "Hey, I lost all these years of putting into the NBA, a small pivot that turn in the perspective that opened up what I was really meant to do, coaching in the NBA." So we can go into depth on that but that made that my goal and it was a long process to get to where I got to coaching in the NBA. Basically, I ordered some basketballs custom made from China, had them ordered to the Oakland seaport, got in my car, drove 29 hours to Oakland, put them in my car and drove around the country given basketball camps to basically any team or player that would want them for the next five years until I woke up to an email from the Brooklyn Nets asking me to be their shooting coach. While I was doing a camp in Australia.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:42
First of all, let me just say that, your mom has a way better version of that quote or that cliche than I've ever heard before, because it normally isn't it... "hey, once the door closes, then another opens" and that was way better. So already like your mom and the thing that jumps into my mind is just how true that is. But I don't think that most people necessarily focus on that, like that is really challenging when you're in the moment to be able to see that, you know, what? If this thing that I really wanted in one way or another kind of shuts off or shuts down, then that actually is going to be potentially a great thing and potentially lead to even more opportunities. So here's my question for you. I want... when that happens, going back for a moment, when that happened, what was it that caused you to say, "yeah, you know what, this actually really is going to be a good thing" because I heard what you said about, you know, grabbing the basketballs and everything, but what, do you remember what took place that led you to focus on the positive rather than the oh my goodness, this whole entire dream that I've had is like...

David Nurse 05:53
Yeah. Well, it was really the realization of that, like how true that is, in understanding that it's the enemy of great is not bad, the enemy is good. I could have continued to pour in the plane. And maybe I would have had a couple more years over in Europe in Second Division leagues, but I saw this as, "hey, this is actually what I can be really, really good at." And I was like, "hey, I have to try it out." I started working out one of my friends who was a teammate of mine, when we played over in Greece, his name's Aron Baynes, he's playing for the Suns right now, had a long NBA career, he liked it, he was bringing in teammates and agents got involved. So I realized, "Hey, I'm really good at this. I'm not as good at playing basketball, but this is where I'm really good at and I'm helping others I'm pouring into others." So it wasn't like a thing of like, "Hey, I know this is going to work 100%" but I also went into as like, "I'm going to give this a chance. I'm going to take this risk. I'm gonna step off this ledge and see what happens. If I fall on my face, I fall on my face, but I'm a big believer and failure is not just a way that we learn and we grow, failure is the only way you learn and grow and whether it's you liked it or not, it's the honest, brutal truth."

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:09
So why then have we somehow found ourselves in a society where education is the solution for learning and growth? I'm more curious about, you know, just your opinion on that, because I believe that truly what you said about failure, I mean, the only way, I don't know if it is necessarily the only way, I don't know if I entirely agree with that, but I think it's certainly the best way by a longshot, and one of the most effective ways compared to nearly any other way. So what's... how on earth did we get to here? What are your thoughts?

David Nurse 07:43
That's a great question. And obviously education is very important. But I think as a society, we get stuck so much on what we're learning, and well, a lot of us are these high performers. We're all about just taking in books, taking in podcasts and just learning and learning. And we have all of this knowledge, but knowledge is powerless. Like it doesn't do anything unless we know how to actionably do it. And one of the only ways to really learn is to get your hands dirty, is to literally step off that cliff and wait to the wings grow while you're falling down, like action and doing is the only way. I went to business school, I was blessed to go to business school while I was playing in college. And I'll tell you what, I learned nothing about business that I applied during those college years, everything I learned through creating my own business and actually doing it. So we think we might know what we think this education and this knowledge is great. But even as you see right now, as this world is changing, the more educated people are the people that experience life, whose parents will take their kids to vacations overseas to see different cultures and will really have them out there in the world doing things as opposed to just sitting there and reading books and getting all this great knowledge but there's a big disconnect between knowledge, actually knowing and actually doing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:07
So my first thought is, of course, that all of the... remember those ads in the, I think they were in like the mid 80s, maybe early 90s on TV? There is like the, what is it, a Conjunction Junction and then they were always followed up by knowledge is power. Yeah. Schoolhouse Rock. Yeah, that's right. Schoolhouse Rock. Oh, man, I forgot about Schoolhouse Rock. But the knowledge is power thing was almost always followed up someplace like they show it at the end, or they would mention it someplace. And I think well, that can be true, it's totally incomplete, like you're saying, like without the application of that knowledge then it's powerless, which is I think what I heard you say and that's great. Actually, I think you're the first person that I've ever heard term it in that way. And I think that's a very useful way to look at it. So here's my question to you then, as it relates to go back to before you got offered the position with the Brooklyn Nets and you're touring around, you know, what were some of the things that you got the opportunity to learn or fail on in between there that ultimately led down that road?

David Nurse 10:17
Yeah, that's a great question. So during these five years of basically living out of my car, sleeping in well lit Walmart parking lots, doing basketball camps, what I realized was, I love doing this like people, when I tell people that story, they're like, "Oh, my gosh, you didn't have a house? You got... Where's your mail come from?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:35
What are you doing?

David Nurse 10:37
Yeah, "what are you doing? Get a real job." The times I've heard get a real job and I enjoyed this, like, I loved this, what you could call daily grind of trying to accomplish my goal and on this journey, and that's a big disconnect that I think people have as well as they see what they want, they see their goal up there. My goal is coaching in the NBA. But if you don't, if you can't see the journey, and I quote, in my book is "you mark your x where your treasure is, and you have to mark the different points where to reach there." If you don't enjoy that journey while you go to that so called goal that you want to hit, you're going to be miserable, because even when you hit it, you're gonna want more and one more. What I realized and learned was one, you have to enjoy what you're doing. If you don't enjoy what you're doing, you're going to be miserable. There's no way around it. We all have the opportunity. Now, all get to do our dream job and we can't just drop everything and go chase being a professional artist, but you can always weave those passions into what you're doing. I'm a big believer on doing that. And the other thing I learned during those five years of traveling all over the place, I got to go 50 different countries, amazing cultures, great food, but there was also a part of me that was like, "hey, this is cool. I want another stamp on my passport. I want to get to this next country, I want to get to this next one." So as much as I enjoyed what I was doing, I also didn't take the time to really embrace the cultures, embrace the moments that I should have, like really soaked it in. So yes, I enjoyed it. But also, I should have been able to slow down. And that's a really, really important thing for us, for people now, especially to when there's no really shut off time, like you can just keep working and working and miss your kids growing up during this time. And it's just tough balance of enjoying the journey while also taking a step back, taking a deep breath, and just embracing the moment.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:38
So that is... I'm chuckling only because that's something that I have seriously struggled with over the years and I think I have... I've had probably thousand conversations, not a joke, with people that also struggle with something similar. So, while in fact, okay, so today's my wife's birthday, actually. And I, which is wonderful. She's actually out with her friends here or leaving shortly with her friends, and she's going to go and hang out and do some things. And I found myself looking at my calendar, a while back on this day and realize, I had a huge chunk of time in the afternoon. And I think it... I'm almost embarrassed to say that if you would ask me, you know, 10, 15 years ago, I probably would have filled that up with work and like, justified it, but instead, I ended up, you know, blocking it out and say, "look, I'm just going to spend time with my wife on her birthday." And unfortunately, that sounds like what we all should do, maybe or that's the choice that most of us should make. That was a really hard choice for me if we would have gone back a couple years. It isn't even hard now in some way. So here's my question to you, what have you found that makes it easier for you or others that you've seen, makes it easier for us to slow down and, you know, "enjoy the journey" if you will? Because it really, it is so much difficult than...

David Nurse 14:00
Yeah. Number one, I hope you're spoiling your wife today. That's awesome that you're taking the rest of the day off and doing that. So yeah, and it comes to a mentality that first off you got to understand like, what is the most important things to you? Is your relationship with your wife more important than your work? And you have to... you just ask yourself that tough question, that's where you have to start off. I have a mentality that I called a "full plate mentality", meaning at the beginning of each day, we have a plate given to us, a dinner plate given to us with all the food everything on there that we will get done during that day. Now when our day ends, that no matter if we didn't get everything done or not, that's okay. It can carry on to the next day, it can be the leftovers, but everything you're going to get done is right there and you don't have to stress and worry about sending that next three emails at seven o'clock at night or if your phone rings that you have to answer that call. I've made sure that I have a shutoff time, like exact shut off time, it changes, it varies each day, but there's a ton that I'm done with my phone, I'm done with work and I'm focusing solely on my wife because she's the most important thing to me. And I'm going to pour into her. I love spending time with her. But if I find myself, if I keep my phone by me, I'll want to constantly check it, "oh, someone sent me a text. Oh, someone sent me an email, I have to get back to them." No, you don't have to get back to them. It actually gives you more power if you don't get back to them. You don't want to be that person who's "oh, we can count on David because he replies within two minutes to an email." No, that's miserable. You can be that person that, hey, your time is essential. And you set up that structure, that sort of full plate mentality is a mindset that I constantly tell myself and I have it written on my fridge, where I see it, like the full play with the dinner, I see it every morning when I wake up. So it kicks my subconscious into that knowing that hey, I'm gonna get done what I get done, and I don't have to worry about the rest of it. I have another tool that I use and I'm big on tools, I'm big on the house, like we talked about the knowledge but the actual doing and actually having tools that you're able to use, I called the "three big things". Every night before I go to bed, I write down the three things that I want to focus on my three main things that are on that plate that I'm focusing on for the next day. So after my morning routine, I'm able to go right into it. I don't have to wonder, "oh, what am I doing? What am I got going here?" I know my focus. And then at the end of the day, I assess it. And I think a lot of us just go through life just doing and doing and doing like me and you were talking about, "hey, what is keep doing the doing doing and go and going, but we don't take that time to assess?" And I think that self assessment is so important. There's three big things really structures it into, hey, this is what I'm going to focus on. If I don't get it done, that's okay. It moves on to the next day the leftovers in that plate. That full plate mentality, you can rest in knowing that everything that you're going to get done today, it's going to get done. You don't have to worry and stress about what you didn't do.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:58
You know what's really interesting about that because I've done something really similar for myself and experimented with, I don't know, really similar thing. Now we're doing have a friend who acts as an accountability partner for me or we do for each other every morning. But so I still do the three big things, which I found to be very, very effective. But the part that I did not anticipate in doing that, that I think is the most helpful is that it mentally releases me from having to think about that beyond whatever time period I am focused on it. So like I do my three big things and then I don't have to worry about it after that, or mentally it's not floating around my head because I know that it's going to be taken care of. And that sounds like a small thing. But that was huge for me. And I just... I would never have anticipated that coming from that simple activity that you're talking about.

David Nurse 17:50
Yeah, I love that and know what you're talking about is decision fatigue. We have so many decisions that we have to make throughout the day and we really only get like people will say, "maybe you can have two or three hours of deep flow state" I don't think we can even have that much. And as many notifications and things that we have going on throughout our day, it's really tough to get back into that zone. So the less decisions you have to make, the more efficient you're going to be, the more efficient you are, the more you can get done in a certain allotted time. And overall, the more that you'll be able to do to spend this time with your wife, you'll have it blocked off and you don't have to feel bad, you don't have to... one of the worst things that I think is that we put a timeframe on when you need to work, like nine to five, like you can't be done until it's five. Now what if you do this amazing work? I love the companies that will just let their employees do it on their own time. They know they're motivated, they know they're intrinsically driven that "hey, if they get all this stuff done in two hours, that's better than just sitting around and wasting a bunch of time just to be there till 5pm.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:53
So that's so... that fascinates me. Like not, I mean, I used to work in HR leadership for a long time. So I was pretty deeply entrenched in that line of thinking in some ways. And now that I have been removed from that for a while, it just... it astounds me that somehow we arrived at the conclusion that that's a good idea, because it's just like what you were talking about before, David, where you said, "hey, you don't want to be the person who is responding right away" because essentially, you're training everyone around you to know that you're going to be there responding instantly. And then that wrecks your world in some ways, makes their world pretty good sometimes until you crash. But I think the same thing is true for, you know, you must be there from nine to five because that trains us to spread things out throughout the entire day, or throughout the entire time period. And instead of focusing on, hey, what actually needs to be done? What are those three big things? What are the most important things that actually need to be done? And then going and doing other stuff that's important. So yeah, I so appreciate you pointing that out. One of the things that I wanted to ask you about is how, you know, as you went from the Nets, and you got that opportunity, first of all, can you share a little bit more about what happened from there? And then where did you really start to leverage more of your strengths and recognize, hey, I'm actually really good at this, because I know that there's some pieces of your story where, you know, you got some clues early on, but then as you started pursuing it more, some of those things became much more evident. Help us understand about that.

David Nurse 20:36
Yeah. Absolutely. Great question. So when I got on with the Nets, here is something that you got to understand. So being an NBA coach now was my dream and my goal and I was 27 years old when I was given that opportunity. That was before I was ready for it. And I'm a big believer that if something if success comes really fast and really quick without building the foundation and doing the 10 years to become an overnight success, we're gonna burn out, we're gonna phase out. And that happened to me. When I got to the Nets, we went from 28 and three points shooting percentage to second, that was... I was a shooting coach. So that's big. That's a lot of publicity coming to me and I loved it. I loved, oh yes, this guy's came in and he's changing the Nets around. And I was thinking it was all about me. And I learned this lesson, I was working with one of our players with the nine time NBA All Star great player, we were doing a workout and I was like, okay, this is my chance, this is my chance to really show off and I'm doing all these crazy drills and all this cool stuff. It looks really cool given my best stuff. And at the end of it, like I thought I just killed, I thought I did awesome, like I'm changing this this nine time All Star, I'm helping his game get even better. He took me a size and David none of this had any relevance to anything that I do in the game. Like it was completely pointless because it was all about me. And it wasn't about who I was working with. So that was a lesson that I had to learn through that process now. While being with the Nets, we went from like I said 28 the second so we improved and after the season, the GM was talking three year deal like extension, everything like that, a new coaching staff comes in. Now in sports normally when a new coaching staff comes in, everybody on the other coaching staff is out. So I'm thinking, hey, I'm set for life. I'm in the NBA. This is my dream. I've got this long career ahead of me and then instance the doors shut and another door closes. And then when I say, the four open and a whole beach front patio overlooking the ocean, which is kind of ironic, because right now as we're talking, I'm in Marina Del Rey overlooking the ocean. It's crazy how life works like that. But like I thought I was meant for the NBA. But if I didn't get fired from that, I would have never met my amazing wife. I would have never been able to write a book to speak, to work with players individually, which I think which I know is much more viable then when you're just with somebody, when you're just with a team and they have to come to you. Now players will come out here and they want to come to me, they want to learn, they want to grow. So what I... basically was another, what I used of a pivot where what I thought that I was going to do, what I thought was my calling was actually still just grooming me, sharpening me and leading me to something even better to come. So basically, to wrap that up, I learned the lessons of, if something happens to you too quickly, success comes to you too quickly, you're probably going to burn out because you're not ready for it. So go through those long, tough years, go through those 10 years to become an overnight success. And I like to tell the story about my uncle. He's a head coach for the Toronto Raptors and they won the NBA championship last year, his first year as an NBA head coach, and everybody is looking as like "oh my gosh, lightning strikes in a bottle. He got so lucky first year head coach." He's been a head coach for 27 years before that. In countries that you don't even know play basketball. I've seen him pop coordinate halftime, taking players ankles, but he lived in that moment of that's where he was going to get. He was going to enjoy the journey, the everyday process of getting there and understanding that it's not gonna happen overnight. It is going to take time.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:14
I think, first of all, so many things popped into my head, but one that I wanted to ask you about is that, it's not going to happen overnight part because I think that especially high performers, especially people that have done well, in one area of life or another, we have this expect, even if we've been through it, and we know what it takes to get there, we still somehow have this expectation that it's going to happen faster than often it is. So really two questions from that. One is you know, what have you seen help with that for yourself? And I hesitate to use the word reality, I don't want to say bring it back to reality because, you know, we help people every day do what most people would consider to be unreasonable or impossible, but more bring you back to getting where you're focused on what it's actually going to take more realistic perspective so that you're still getting there. But you recognize that, hey, this is going to require a lot of energy, time, action, whatever, in between, what's helped for you?

David Nurse 25:17
What's helped for me has been the mindset of taking 1% steps, setting these big macro goals, by taking these small, tiny micro steps, and celebrating those little micro steps, like I love it when I know I go to bed at night and I've improved 1% and it's just... it's the compounding effect of momentum building momentum. And the hardest thing to do is when we want something is we look at that and that's the only thing that's gonna make us happy. Happiness is fleeting. Joy can be eternal, joy can be found in just enjoying these 1% steps. So look at it as like, hey, celebrate often. Like me and my wife, we celebrate all the time, like any little thing that happens that is a 1% we'll celebrate, we'll celebrate every month of our marriage, like celebrate often these little 1% steps. And that's a compounding effect, understanding that when you hit that spot, if you didn't enjoy the process during the whole time, you've just got there for no reason to know no purpose, and you're burnt out. And the other thing being, and I know this is easier to say, after you've been there, and you've been able to help a lot of people as we have. But if you can help one person, if you can encourage one person, it could change the trajectory of their life. That one person, they could go help another and another and another. It could be that compounding effect that you just helped a million people by helping one person and that's telling yourself you're living in the service mode and have a tool, we all have this tool, is our hands, there with us all the time. Every room that I entered, door that I open, I look my hands and I say, "Sir" this... I know when I walk into that room, it's not about what I can get out, it's not about what about me, it's about what I can give. And when you truly fully embrace that, not only are you helping people around you and you're making your life full more purpose, you're also taking a lot of weight and a lot of pressure off yourself. And when you... I'm a huge believer, when you pour, and pour, and pour into others without expecting anything in return, that's when everything starts pouring down on you in return.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:28
You mentioned the celebration piece. First of all, I love the idea and cue of when I walk into a new room and you know, look at my hands because I think that that sounds like it's turned into a habit for you over the course of time and you've made it that way. So that's pretty awesome. I love that cue. And you had mentioned the the celebration piece and I'm super curious, like what are some of the things that you have done recently to celebrate as somebody who has been working on this for seven years and I still do not consider myself anywhere close to good at celebrating. Just for our listeners, give an idea of some of the ways that you've celebrated recently on, you know, either big or small things either way.

David Nurse 28:08
Yeah. So when my book came out on August 4th, me and my wife, we decided, hey, we're gonna take this day off, and we're gonna go down to our favorite resort, have lunch there, walk around, and we're just going to celebrate it. My wife just had her TV show that she's writing, got picked up by a great producer, great writer. And so we took that, we decided, hey, we're going to plan this day or we're going to just take it as a little getaway. We went up to this small town, Sylvania in California, which is like, European city, I think Denmark, it's like the Denmark city. And we just embrace that moment. We celebrated it. We had a, we plan our celebrations in, basically, it's not just like, yeah, you have these little wins and you can celebrate and my wife's having the support of her and it is just unbelievable. So first of all, find yourself a great support team around you, we could go into talking about setting up your environment, which your environment is not just things around you, but it's the people around you that have the biggest impact on you. But, I mean, it's just like, we'll have dinner tonight, we'll have some desserts, we'll go out for our favorite ice cream, if we're going to celebrate something small, just really scheduling your bigger celebrations and just embrace the people around you, enjoying the time around with the people with small little things that you both like and that's kind of how we have done our celebrations. And I mean, we're just... we're constantly scheduled putting things on the calendar to look forward to. So I'm really big on having things coming up that your anticipation. I think anticipation is 90% of the enjoyment as it is. So we're really big on that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:47
Interestingly enough that has worked us all the way back to what we were talking about earlier about enjoying the journey. So building in that anticipation and learning to work with rather than against that anticipation is something I found for that whole concept too.

David Nurse 30:03
For sure. My family growing up, we'd go to Disney World, basically every year for family vacation. Now actually being in Disney World, I'll be honset, it wasn't the greatest but looking forward to Disney World, man. And anticipation just got me through days and it was just the best. Yeah, I totally understand. If you break it down, you're in line so many hours out of the time that you have. However, you know, looking forward to all of those great things that maybe don't take place in line as much is pretty wonderful. And I love that you're mentioning that and this actually leads me around to one of the things that I wanted to ask you about, I have seen you say in multiple places, it's been in writing I guess I haven't actually heard you say this. But something to the effect of, you know, if you're looking for problems, you are absolutely going to find them. If you're looking for something else, you're pretty likely to find that too, whether that's a joy or otherwise. And I think that intuitively makes sense. But what I wanted to ask you about it is, you know, how do we apply this because this going back to this whole knowledge is power thing, but it's not actually a power unless you can apply it. What can we do to apply this more often? Yeah, and we are like, we are the thoughts that we tell ourselves and I call it your mental headphones that you put on. What you are hearing, what you are seeing your mental glasses are where your thoughts are gonna take you. And we have 50,000 on average, 50,000 self talk thoughts per day, and 40,000 80% of those are negative. So think about that. All the talk that we're having to ourselves is that we're not good enough, or we can't reach this level. And it's a lot to do with what society says. And I'm also a big believer on basically everything society is saying is important, you should probably turn and go the other way because it's really not. So I'm big on redefining terms. And I do this throughout the book and redefining what actual success is, redefining what your rich life actually is, what failure is, what confidence is. And I have a seven steps of confidence to gain unshakable confidence that really takes you away from this negative thought and puts you in your true self awareness. But to give the listeners all you guys a tool to use, going back to our hands, which I'm really big on because this is a tool you have always with you. Now that you have to go out and buy something or you have to remember to get this out of your drawer. Your hands are always with you. And every morning when you wake up, we all have some type of self doubt in our selves. Is it the imposter syndrome? Are we actually called to do this? Are we good enough to do this? And we'll all have a mirror probably most of us have a mirror. So when you walk by your mirror in the morning when you wake up, it's what I call the foggy mirror. Self doubt is the fog that creeps in and it fogs up that mirror. Now we have the choice, our superhero power of choice to be that let that mirror become foggy and stay foggy and ruin our day and have what we think about is our negative thoughts or we wipe it clean and you simply take your hands and make an action of wiping the mirror clean and it puts your subconscious in the mode, me continuing to do this as we talked about the 1% steps you don't just do it one day you do it the next day and the next day the next day, you make it a habit. You make a routine which becomes a lifestyle in a rhythm, you wipe away this self doubt. Now your mind, you're going to be focused on the positive things once you have your strengths. We're often told we are our weaknesses. That's what society will tell us, we have to raise our weaknesses. No weaknesses are a compliments wish list. There's a reason people have different strings that puts together for the ultimate team. Like you give me the best five NBA Players, and you put them all on one team, I guarantee they won't win an NBA championship because they don't have the different parts to put together, they all have one of the same parts. So we all have different strengths for a reason. And just kind of wrapping that all back up, what we talked about earlier is the environment that we set ourselves up in not this physical environment, but more important than the overall environment. The people that were around, that's the people, those people that were around that's what's going to shape, that's what's going to shape us, shape our subconscious like literally we are, you've probably heard it we are the sum of the five people we spend the most time with, but I'm a huge believer on keeping positive, encouraging truthful people in your life because there's too many things in society, too many people that are taking it away from you telling that you can do something these vampire energy suckers that I'll take it away from you. So it just creating the environment around you of the iron sharpens iron.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:57
David, I really appreciate you taking the time, making the time, coming and sharing your story, your experiences on the podcast and two questions just to wrap us up here. Question number one is, you know, if people are interested in learning more about you, your story or getting the book, where can they go? Where can they do all that?

David Nurse 35:19
Yeah, anywhere books are found Amazon, my website, davidnurse.com the book is "Pivot and Go". And if you enjoy some of these actionable tools to pivot your perspective, there's plenty more, there's 29 of them in there, 28 days to make a habit, 29 to make that choice to make it a lifestyle, make it a life, what I call a rhythm. So yeah, you can go on my website, you're on Amazon. I have a podcast, the 1% podcast, social media is DavidNurseNBA, Instagram and Twitter. And so you can just, you come out to LA, hang out at Erewhon, get some good food, looking over the ocean and we can hang.

Scott Anthony Barlow 35:56
So here's my second question then for all of those folks that are listening that are about to make a pivot or about to make a change in one way or another, what advice would you have for them? What's the biggest piece of advice that you would have for them as somebody who has made quite a few pivots on your own? And now gets the opportunity to come on and do things like this and teach people about what works well for making pivots? What advice would you got?

David Nurse 36:23
I love that question. So first off, ready, fire, aim, just go there is never going to be a perfect time. You want to make your pivot, you make your pivot, and understand that everything that you have done to this point, has been a preparation for an opportunity to come what your true calling is, is your opportunity. You don't know when it's going to come, you don't know what kind of box it's going to come in, but it will come. But you won't be ready for it if you don't prepare for it. So every day is these 1% steps of a preparation for opportunity to come with this term that I call lists consistency, how you show up every day, how you show up to improve yourself to pour into yourself so that you can pour into others. I think if you have those tools of just knowing, hey, just take that step. Well I could talked about it. If you fail, that's great. You learn. Not only do you learn, but you also are able to teach somebody else who's going to go through the same thing at some point in their life as well. So you become a mentor that. So just take that leap, understand everything you've done to this moment has been a preparation for the opportunity to come that you want to attack and just do it with relentless consistency of enjoying the journey, live and enjoy, encouraging others, serving others pouring into others. And trust me, just great breakthroughs in your life will open up.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:46
Hey, I hope you love that conversation with David. Next week, we have an interesting conundrum because we've seen that high performers have a tendency to stay too long at their organizations. Not always but a lot of the time. And they don't always leave for the same reasons that everyone else leaves. This next episode, next week on the Happen To Your Career podcast, it isn't for everyone. But I was invited to come and talk on my friend Dave Stachowiak's podcast, which is called "Coaching For Leaders" and he wanted me to come and speak about the biggest reasons high performers leave other organizations. We discussed some pretty key things that most leaders and high performers don't realize, like for example, why high performers have a tendency to stay too long, and why they finally quit. Now, we're airing a portion of that episode right here, next week on the HTYC podcast. And if you're in a leadership role, you'll doubly benefit from this episode because you'll learn about how to retain high performance people and, no doubt, you'll hear a few things that are true for your situation, and what you want in your next opportunity. See you next week right here on Happen To Your Career. Until then, I am out. Adios.