Nick McGowan (00:00.909)

Hello, and welcome to the Mindset and Self Mastery Show. I’m your host, Nick McGowan, and today on the show I have Dr. Dravon James. How are you doing today? Good, good, I know we were just dealing with some.

Dr. Dravon James (00:13.407)

Great. How are you today?

Nick McGowan (00:17.781)

technical issues in a sense and we’re a little cut for time. I know you have episodes that are coming up that you need to get into but I’m really looking forward to the conversation. There are certain things that I know we’re gonna touch base on but hey why don’t you just start us off by telling us what you do for a living and what’s one thing that most people don’t know about you that’s maybe a little odd or bizarre.

Dr. Dravon James (00:38.222)

Okay, that’s great. So what I like to say I do for a living is I’m an actress and a life coach. How I make my money and pay my bills right now is I have a doctorate degree in pharmacy and I run hospital pharmacies. One thing that people probably don’t know about me, especially in my full-time nine to five gig, is that I never aspired to be a professional in the true sense of the word professional. I thought I would go on.

and be an actress and live out my days acting, whether it be on film or on the stage.

Nick McGowan (01:12.749)

Well, most people can’t say, I’m an actress and a doctor. So are you kind of an overachiever? Is that an easy way to put that?

Dr. Dravon James (01:23.382)

I’m a person who believes that when I finish this journey called life, it will owe me nothing. If I want to do it, I’m going to put forth the effort to do it. And I coach that way too. I tell people that you can transform your life into anything you want it to be if you’re willing to do the work.

Nick McGowan (01:41.081)

Yeah, I’m sure you get into some of that within the book that you have. But what led you to the point to where you’re at now, especially being a doctor and an actress? Like, was there something that happened when you were younger that you said, look, I want to do both of these things? And you set out and you did it.

Dr. Dravon James (01:58.05)

Well, I really only wanted to do one thing, right? But my mom encouraged me as mothers do. And she said to me, she said, you know, you need to get a real degree so you can get a real job. And I happened to be really good at math and science. So it was no brainer for my family that I should go to medical school. And so I have been just by happen chance, but there’s no such thing as happen chance, is there, right? But.

Nick McGowan (02:00.994)

Okay.

Dr. Dravon James (02:23.198)

It seemed like half a chance. I was in the 12th grade, sitting in Latin class, and my counselor called and said, hey, there’s some people here who want to talk to you about coming to their college. And so I did, I went down to the counselor’s office, I met with one recruiter, and he sold me on going to pharmacy school and told me from there, I would have an easier pathway into medical school. You know, I was like, okay, so I did it, and luckily I did, because I realized while I was there,

that yeah, that was gonna be my stop. I was gonna stop after pharmacy school and I wasn’t gonna go on to medical school. And it allowed me to have more freedom in my life. I thought, you know, more work-life balance. That’s how I did that. So, and I actually just did that, just did pharmacy for a long time and worked on my everyday piece until I had my daughter who’s now 23 years old. And when I had her, I said,

Nick McGowan (03:06.337)

Yeah.

Dr. Dravon James (03:21.538)

follow her dreams if I don’t follow mine, so I return to acting.

Nick McGowan (03:27.094)

So do you feel that you following your dreams is sort of the main purpose in your life? Is there something within medical or even just acting?

Dr. Dravon James (03:36.51)

I think, yeah, my passion is that I want to help people on a level beyond what they can physically touch. Like to get them to connect to themselves, their true self within. And I think there’s a little bit of that in everything that I do. Definitely in my life coaching and motivational speaking for sure, but in acting too, if you’ve ever sat down and you’ve been engrossed in some creative art, whatever it is for you, you realize that you sort of separate.

And you go into this part of yourself that is your real true self where, you know, all of your fears and, you know, people pleasing, whatever it is for you, sort of take a backseat for a moment. And I like having people to connect with themselves like that. And healthcare does that too. You know, if you have a moment and someone takes a problem away from you, whether it be pain or concern about something that’s bothering you emotionally, it gives you a moment to step back and be part, and connect with your real self.

Nick McGowan (04:03.507)

Yeah.

Dr. Dravon James (04:31.934)

Everything I do, I try to be that part of myself, to give from that space of my desire to help people connect with their true self.

Nick McGowan (04:39.941)

interesting to think about the true self, especially from an acting perspective because you are acting as a character. So I’ve always wondered how people can get into that and be able to pull themselves out. I often think of a Heath Ledger situation where he was so in-depth in that role that he had as the Joker that it basically ended his life. But how do you actually step in and out of those different roles while staying true to yourself without

peppering as much as you probably want to of yourself into those different situations.

Dr. Dravon James (05:15.95)

That is a great question. So I always tell people this is that we step in and out of roles all day long, whether it be parent to being a child, you know, somebody else’s, your child to being a nurse, to being a wife, we step in and out of roles all day long. It’s just that when you, when you embrace acting, and to me it’s all authentic, right? I don’t care what you’re doing, there’s some part of that character that you can connect to some part of you.

Nick McGowan (05:40.121)

Yeah.

Dr. Dravon James (05:45.638)

And so it’s just being consciously aware of that, oh, this is another part of me. And you get to like an onion, keep peeling these layers and start to become more and more self-aware. And it really, to me, bridges worlds. You see no difference between you and somebody who you thought or the media tells you is totally different than you. You realize, oh my gosh, yeah, I could see some parts of that in myself. I could see some parts of that character in me. It’s really a…

Nick McGowan (06:10.509)

Yeah.

Dr. Dravon James (06:11.234)

So it really is your true authentic self. You’re taking away all the judgment, all the shame that caused you to want to bury that part of yourself. And give the world your, give yourself your true self. Introduce you to you.

Nick McGowan (06:22.934)

I’m glad you bring that up.

You know, the judgment, the shame, it’s like the trauma and the traumatic experiences that people have had that have told them you can’t do this or you shouldn’t say that or you can’t speak up in that sort of way. Now, when you’re coaching and specifically even within yourself, how did you get through that to be able to understand that? But then how do you work with people to get through the traumatic experiences, the shame, so that they can actually get close to that true self instead of having some kind of, I don’t know, far distant picture of.

Like I can see the true self, but I have all this shame and all this fear and all that.

Dr. Dravon James (07:02.123)

Yeah, that’s like a million dollar question that we’re going to try to answer in two minutes or so. But first, it starts with just self-love. I know that sounds so cliche-ish, right? But to realize that when you look in the mirror that you know your full story, right? And so someone could look at you and say, oh my gosh, how could you do that? How could you say that? How could you?

And they’re judging this little microcosm that they know about you, but you know all the pain, you know, all the things you had to go through to get to where you are today. You know your triggers. Hopefully you do. You’re getting to know them. Right. And so this is the time when you’re talking about being able to face your true self, that you get to parent yourself, you get to rub your own back, pat yourself on the back and say, Hey, I understand. I understand. I understand. And I love you anyway. I love you anyway.

Nick McGowan (07:36.405)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Dravon James (07:54.43)

Yep, I see that and I love you and I love you anyway. So you just start pulling back that and being able to say, I love you. I still love you. And I’m going to love you no matter what. You could make that same mistake 10,000 times and I’m not going to love you any less. I am committed to loving you. I’m going to do life with you. How many people can say that to you? No one. Only you can say that to yourself. So give yourself that, that love and say, I’m going to do life with you.

Nick McGowan (08:16.483)

Yeah.

Nick McGowan (08:26.073)

I’m glad that you brought that up there. Certain times where, and I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this, but you’re so sick of yourself, you just want to get out of your skin. Like you just want to get the hell away from yourself, and you try to like run away from the being that you are, and you’re like, I can’t. I’m here. I’m stuck, and I have to actually work through it. I think it’s where some people will…

almost poison themselves in certain ways, either with different drugs or different experiences or where people just dive directly into work or something else, but actually being able to face that and go, all right, well, it’s you and me, we’ve got to work through this. How do you actually help people get to that point where they can have that self-love, again, even if they have the shame or the trauma that is literally holding them back or keeping them broken?

Dr. Dravon James (09:10.206)

Yeah. So what most of us, and again, I’m a life coach, not a psychiatrist, you know, I’m a person who spent my whole life studying this concept that I call peace. But one of the things that I know that most of us fear, right, is pain. And one thing we have to remind ourselves of is that we have survived emotional pain before. It is not.

Nick McGowan (09:15.225)

Sure.

Dr. Dravon James (09:32.43)

going to kill you. The ego sets us up to think that, oh, this will be the end of you. If you look this dead in the eye, it’s gonna be like Medusa; it’s gonna turn you to stone, it’s gonna kill you, and it will not. So we just take baby steps towards that, breathing and talking, breathing and talking, and reaffirming that no matter what, I love you. I know it hurts. Breathe, stop, I know this hurts.

Dr. Dravon James (09:58.058)

I know it hurts to look at it because you can’t, you know, people who’ve made horrible mistakes, and we all have myself included. Um, you say to yourself, I know it hurts to think about you did that. I still love you. I absolutely want to keep making that commitment, and, really, that calms the ego down, right? It feels like it doesn’t need to fight us. There’s nothing that you can do to take my love from you. Talk about myself. Right. Once we do all of that and keep making those reassurances.

There are going to be some sleepless nights as part of the process. Self-talk is so important. What you tell yourself when you can’t sleep at night. Don’t hide from that. I can’t, you know, I can’t sleep because I’m so ashamed about this. I can’t sleep because I’m afraid of what other people think about me. Right? Say all those things. Talk that out. Let yourself hear yourself say, these are my fears.

Nick McGowan (10:36.362) 

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Dravon James (10:54.638)

Have you ever had any other fear? Have you ever been afraid of that before? Yeah, but this is the worst I’ve ever done. Okay, today it is, right? And maybe before you didn’t deal with it the way you’re gonna deal with it today, right? It’s not that you’re gonna stop making mistakes. You’re not. What you’re gonna learn how to do is start forgiving yourself quickly, right? So you can be more resilient, so you can learn from those mistakes and not hide from them, and so you can relax your nervous system.

Nick McGowan (11:02.745)

Hehehe

Dr. Dravon James (11:22.378)

Assure yourself that you’re not alone. You have your back.

Nick McGowan (11:29.429)

That’s a big thing relaxing your nervous system. Because even if you don’t have that peace to be able to have that self-awareness, and the nervous system is just fidgety, then you can’t actually break through that to be able to understand what do I do from here. And I do think a lot of people talk to themselves, like we all do, but we don’t think about how much shit we are actually talking to ourselves. And even if it’s like, ah, dummy, you shouldn’t have done that, or you shouldn’t do this,

always fucked this thing up or what have you and even the best of us still have that shit that comes up. There are times where we wake up in the middle of the night and have negative thoughts that are just pouring in at times and being able to actually see it but the important thing is that self-awareness of that. Now you have that, I have that, these are things that we’ve worked on so what sort of advice would you give to somebody that’s like look I know that I hear it I hear you guys talk about it but how do they actually get to that point where they can do that?

Dr. Dravon James (12:28.938)

So you gotta do the work no matter how corny, I don’t know if that’s a word people use anymore, no matter how corny the work seems, no matter how you think, this is stupid, it’s not gonna work, right? It’s okay, do it anyway, right? So the first thing I tell people is that you’re gonna need a mantra because you already have a mantra. You already got something that you got running around in your head and you’re repeating it over and over again. I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough.

Nobody loves me. That’s your mantra. You’re saying it, whether you’re hearing yourself say it, you’re saying it all day long. So let’s change that mantra. And we work together to figure out what that should be. It’s different for everybody. But what should that be? And I simply tell people a lot of times, just start with, I am enough. I know enough. I am enough. I know enough. Whether you believe it or not. You start there.

Nick McGowan (12:54.413)

Hmm.

Dr. Dravon James (13:18.174)

then we start with having a gratitude practice. What are you grateful for? Because we’re gonna switch your focus. Right now you’re focusing on everything that’s not working. And that’s okay, those are valid things, they’re not working, but you already know what they are. You don’t need to focus on them anymore, right? Because it is true that our life goes in the direction of our most dominant thoughts. So we’re gonna gently switch that. No judgment, no shame, no condemnation. But we’re gonna start a gratitude practice and we’re gonna be consistent about it. It’s gonna be the first thing we write in the morning.

We’re going to tell ourselves three things that we’re grateful for that happened yesterday. And that’s because the mind loves the past. It’s safe. You know the outcome, right? So you’re going to focus, you’re going to give yourself, you’re going to take command of your mind and say, hey, whenever you think about the past today, I wish I had a card. I do. So I write these cards all the time. So these are my gratitude cards. I write these little cards.

Keep them with me. So you had three things on there from the past. Why? Because you’re gonna be somewhere and something’s gonna trigger you and you’re gonna start doing one or two things. You’re gonna start trudging up pain from the past or regret, which is I wish I was back there. Whatever happened just yesterday, you’re gonna pick three things from there from yesterday that you’re grateful for from yesterday. You’re gonna do that first thing in the morning before your feet hit the floor. Maybe you work the night shift, do it when you wake up. You’re gonna…

Nick McGowan (14:37.113)

Sure.

Dr. Dravon James (14:38.114)

You’re going to write down those three things from the past. And then you’re going to write down three and flip. You want to flip that card over. You’re going to write three things on the other side of that card that you’re grateful for that have not yet happened, right? That you’re that you’re setting an attention intention for today, not for tomorrow, enough for the day after for today. So you’re going to give yourself a little wiggle room when your mind wants to go to the past and a little wiggle room when it wants to go to the future, because a mind that is frantic

is not looking for more things to concentrate on. It really is looking for a place to land, a soft place to land, but you have to do that. That’s your work, right? Your mind is like a hammer going rogue, right? It’ll either build a house or bust a window, right? So you gotta give it direction. That’s your job. It’s like, okay, the mind is strong, but it needs direction, like a two-year-old, right? You gotta tell it what it’s gonna focus on. So that will help to calm your nervous system down.

Just that gentle practice and you gotta be, you know, consistent with it. You’re not gonna beat yourself up when you’re not consistent. We’re not gonna use the practice to throw us into more trauma, right? You catch yourself, you didn’t do it, oh, I didn’t do it, let me do it. Real gentle stuff, really gentle. We handle ourselves so poorly because we’ve been taught that if we beat ourself up, that’s how you’ll learn. If I knock this through your head, that’s how you’ll learn.

It is not how you learn. You really only learn through gentle love. You could be the biggest, roughest person in the world. You still have to be gentle to yourself. That’s how you have sustainable change.

Nick McGowan (16:16.121)

Sure.

The monkey mind is a crazy situation trying to wrangle that trying to like wrestle with that And I love the idea of gratitude just overall there are times where I know I get crazed at times And I’m like what am I thankful for right now, and you can kind of rattle those things off There are also times where it’s difficult to really let those things sink in because there are certain pieces of traumatic experiences That are just fucking holding you back and won’t actually let you get past that and that’s something that always concerns me

Dr. Dravon James (16:45.954)

That’s why.

Nick McGowan (16:47.462)

and really makes me think.

Dr. Dravon James (16:51.002)

I want to say one something about that really quickly. When you’re in the midst of trauma, it’s very hard to do this. This is why the practice is so important. You start your day with this, right? Before the day starts dragging you where it wants to go, because you’re right, in the midst of it, when you’re in the middle of the storm, you probably can’t think of one thing that you’re grateful for. Someone says, oh, you’re grateful that you’re alive. Yeah, what’s so good about that, right? You can’t think of one thing.

Nick McGowan (16:54.233)

Sure.

Dr. Dravon James (17:15.618)

But if you do this when you’re still in your somewhat calm state, you just woke up and I take that car with me everywhere. I plaster it up when I go to work. It’s right there on my computer because I know it’s going to take five or 10 minutes. So I’m going to try to drag me down that alleyway and I need to breathe. We’ll talk about that. But anyway, I just wanted to interject that because I think that’s important why we do it first thing when we wake up.

Nick McGowan (17:26.649)

Ha ha ha.

Nick McGowan (17:36.773)

Oh, absolutely. I get that. And it’s just like when you’re about to go to sleep as well. If there’s craziness that’s going on, I like to be able to tap into subconscious, be like, I need you to work on this because I can’t. Just let me go to sleep. You continue to work on this thing. And same thing within the morning. And you’re right, being in the middle of the storm, it’s hard to think outside of that storm. Having storms that are still part of your cells, that’s a bit of a situation there. But I want to touch on, I know that stress is an important thing that you talk about.

about and being able to kind of reframe stress. Is that about what you look at?

Dr. Dravon James (18:12.146)

Yes, I look at trying to give that stress, different types of stress is not going to leave our life. You know, you’re getting married, that’s stressful. You’re having a baby, that’s stressful. You’re moving across town or to another country for a job that you want, still stressful. So stress is going to be there. So how are we going to use it instead of letting it use us?

Nick McGowan (18:31.117)

So what does that look like? I mean, is that one of those things where you had been so stressed out that you got to a point where you’re like, enough, I need to figure this thing out? Or do you feel like that was a little bit more of a gift that you had?

Dr. Dravon James (18:44.078)

No, I think we teach that which we most need to learn, right? So I’ll tell you a quick story. And there was a point in my life where I was so stressful. Maybe somebody can relate to this. And if you can, I’m so sorry. If you want to contact me, I’ll try to help you through it. But there was a point in my life where I was so stressed that my skin used to burn. Always in the same spot, in the top part of my arms. And so it would like burn like on fire burning. And to…

Nick McGowan (18:49.715)

Mm-hmm

Dr. Dravon James (19:12.678)

while to figure out like what was causing that and I realized hmm this is severe stress and at that time in my life when that started there were a lot of things going in the opposite direction of what I considered good. I just lost my job, my marriage of 20 years was failing and I got diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. So I called it was my season of trifecta of pain but it was stressful and I had little kids that were in school and you know.

Nick McGowan (19:39.001)

cheese.

Dr. Dravon James (19:42.282)

Life wasn’t stopping because my world looked like it was falling apart, the world that I knew at that point in time. And I was in tremendous stress. And because of that, I was making all of the mistakes that a person with stress makes. Right? So, and I was writing a book. So what I stopped and did was I said, okay, you have these practices. And here’s the odd thing. Here is the odd thing. Because I was so disciplined with my practices. Right?

I realized that I was having these responses, physical responses, but I was still doing the practices. One day I was in my kitchen because of my illness. I couldn’t finish cooking without lying on the floor every few minutes. I get up, stir the pot, lie down on the floor. And when I was lying down on the floor, I asked myself if I had to say what my mental state was right now, what would that be? And before I could finish the question, I said, I’m encouraged.

I’m like, well, what the heck are you encouraged about? You know, your health is valued, you’ve lost your job, your marriage is ending, right? You’re almost out of money, right? So what are you encouraged about? And I was encouraged because I knew that this couldn’t last forever. I said, this can’t last forever. So what I have to figure out is how to tap into my good.

And what I can work on, I can work on. What I can’t work on, I can’t work on, right? And what I figured out at that time was the only thing I could work on was my state of mind. Can’t make somebody love you. I can’t go back and get the job back. And my health situation is not gonna get any better if I continue to stress like this, right? So in that moment, on that floor, I started asking myself, and I gotta back up for one second, that morning I was trying to do my gratitude practice, write up my cards.

I had not gotten out of the bed yet, and I could not think of three things I was grateful for. I thought, and I said, I’m not getting out of this bed until I can think of something. I wrote down, I’m grateful that I can blink my eyes without assistance. I’ll never forget that moment. That’s how low my life was in that moment. Because of the practices, it doesn’t mean that stresses are going to go away completely. It means that you’re going to be finding something to hold on to, and isn’t that what most of us want?

Dr. Dravon James (22:05.878)

When we feel like we’re free falling into a abyss that has no bottom, we’re just gonna keep falling, keep falling, keep falling, keep falling. We’re looking for something sturdy to hold onto. And those practices helped me to anchor myself. It helped me to steady my mind. It helped me, it made me aware that I wasn’t doing as much as I could for my mentally, emotional health. That I need to have more time in the silence. I need to be kinder to myself.

when it seemed like everything that I had built my life on was not treating me kindly. It was my turn to be kinder to myself. How was I gonna do that? Well, I was only gonna do that with my words, which eventually changed my mind. Because if you think about it, external words change your mind all day long about you. It was time for me to use my words to change my mind.

and reroute my nervous system. You know, it’s work, but it works.

Nick McGowan (23:08.577)

Yeah. And what a situation. Lying on the floor. Probably holding yourself. Being like, I’m encouraged. What the hell do you mean encouraged? What? Then, but understanding that you have the power to be able to use those words. It’s interesting how there are certain times, and I think about this every so often, where people just bitch and complain about things, but they watch the news all day long. You’re like…

what’s wrong with you? Why do you keep watching the news and then expect different results to come out of that? You just keep pouring into yourself the same nonsense that’s going on out there where if you can use your own words kind of against yourself in a way, and I know that’s along the lines of like what you talk about with your clients along inner peace, right?

Dr. Dravon James (23:53.942)

It absolutely is. As you’re talking, I’m thinking about a friend of mine. When I was in this point in my life, I had never tried tapping before. And it’s just a different modality. But I had a friend who that’s, she’s a practitioner. And I can remember her telling me, you know, I called her one night and I said, this is just getting out of control. She said, you know, she gave me a phrase and it says, even though, I love it, even though I feel like my world is falling apart, you know, you,

Nick McGowan (24:02.466)

Hmm.

Dr. Dravon James (24:21.302)

put whatever thing you want to put in there. I’m afraid to be alone after 20 years. I still love and respect myself, right? And tapping on these different meridian points and all that kind of stuff. It was for me, the words. I’m big on words and talking and really self-soothing because someone, if you’re talking to a friend, right? They could agree with you on this point, but they don’t see any change, right? And they’re like, look, you’ve been doing that for two years, girlfriend. It’s not working, right? So…

That’s not what I need to hear, right? Because it’s all I got, right? So I need to be able to encourage myself and say, even though my physical eyes don’t see the results, I know that I’m able to calm down. I’m able to feel better. Even in the midst of what looks like the worst season of my life, I still feel encouraged. I still feel encouraged because things happen based on our feelings. If you think about…

Nick McGowan (24:53.345)

Yeah.

Dr. Dravon James (25:18.642)

If you have a flat tire and you just won the lottery, well, you feel good, it’s all right. You have a flat tire, you just lost your job, total different experience, right? And it’s not necessarily about the money so much, it’s about how you feel, because you know, and I know, you probably get that tire fixed really, really easily, right? But it’s how you feel in the process, which is gonna determine how your day goes. Your feelings matter. So being able to talk yourself into that space, that these external conditions,

They’ll change. They always do. I want to control the narrative inside of me. Yeah.

Nick McGowan (25:50.561)

Yeah.

Nick McGowan (25:55.529)

Yeah, what an important thing to be able to control that narrative. It can be really difficult to be able to do it in the moment, but doing hard things is a part of life and you have to be able to do it. And it’s so easy, like I’m sure you have time, so you look later on in the day and you’re like, I could have done it like this. It didn’t have to be that difficult. Or even like years later. But have you found that acupressure continues to work for you? Did you dig deeper into that or was that just kind of a one-time thing?

Dr. Dravon James (26:23.018)

You know, I didn’t go deeper into it. I still do it sometimes, you know, but because I have such a practice based on gratitude and self-talk that really works for me and going into meditation, going into the stillness and just really just letting my mind rest, right? Taking a rest from the constant chatter, you know, so if people have not tried meditation, it’s simple, it’s free.

And I’ve had people tell me, you know, a lot of my clients say, I can’t still my mind. I said, well, that’s because the mind is looking for something. So if you close your eyes and you tell your mind to go find light in the darkness, it’ll shut right down.

Nick McGowan (27:03.437)

Hmph. And there you are speaking words.

Dr. Dravon James (27:04.214)

It will be like a dog running after a… It’ll be like a dog going and takes a bone that you just threw, right? It will… Right? So I encourage people to try that, right? And if you get two minutes, if you have a mind that has… Is as active as my mind has been with trauma, two minutes of your mind just letting you relax is like, what? I just came from vacation.

Nick McGowan (27:12.406)

Yeah.

Nick McGowan (27:33.813)

What a beautiful thing to when you’re able to actually calm that down, the rest of your body can calm down. The reason why I bring up trauma and the traumatic experiences is even in those times when you’re working through that, there are still things that can hold you back and pull you back into that moment. But that mindfulness of being able to actually be in the present moment right now can remove you from that. And I know within the book and within everything you do, with peace being a major part of that,

that came from something when you were younger, was there anybody that, maybe a family member or a friend or something that had a big impact on you that you were able to look at and you’re like, that’s kind of a crucial thing.

Dr. Dravon James (28:16.97)

Yeah, so I would say I did not have what one would call a gentle childhood, but I had an amazing mom. So we had, you know, a lot of trauma in our lifetime, but she had strong beliefs, religious beliefs, and not just, you know, she was, she went to New Age Truth Church, New Thought Church, and she went to, um, gosh, I was, Holiness Church, right? So, but her beliefs, not so much the, the dog one, but

the religion, but the belief in that anything that you are willing to commit to, really, really commit to, you can have show up in your life as a tool to help you. So for her, it was being able to go into the stillness, being able to sit and listen. Because if you have asked the question,

This is going to sound really bizarre, but I can tell you, and if I work with hundreds of people, where this works, the answer is within you. The answer is within, if you have asked the question, the answer is within you. Not if your neighbor has asked you or your spouse has asked you, but if you have asked that question of you, the answer is within you. And so you have to be able to turn within and tap into that. That sounds really like a lot of work, but it really just is in discipline.

Your mind just needs to be able to trust you long enough to sit and be still. We constantly want to be busy. We’ve told you got to do this yourself. You have to do this. What you have to do for yourself is to calm yourself. We’re in constant motion all of the time. We believe in the power of thinking, right? That’s how I, instead of over the power of feeling, right? I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.

And we’re sort of reversing because our mind can do some amazing things, but the truth lies in our body. Like the body never lies. So when you get to this place and you’re just really still, and I teach this in my life coaching classes, if you’re really just still and you ask yourself, how do we feel about that? I know my mind, my brain has got a thousand opinions about it. The past trauma, right? We can feel that all over our body. Right.

Dr. Dravon James (30:38.69)

Let’s be gentle with that and start telling ourselves a different story about it. One thing, and I’ve had a lot of trauma in my life, one thing I tell myself all the time is that the difference between a victim and a victor, the victor gets to tell the story about what happened.

I get to tell you the story. That’s pretty powerful. I get to tell you what I did with that information. That’s pretty powerful. Now I may not like the events that took place, but I’m still here getting to tell you about it. My position in this past event is a sure thing. I am the victor. This is what happened. This is how it impacted me.

Nick McGowan (31:02.314)

incredibly powerful.

Dr. Dravon James (31:24.01)

And this is what I chose to do with it. That’s powerful. I had a choice to do with that event that I did not choose. I tell you a thousand stories of people I’ve worked with who’ve had traumatic things happen to them. That you would think, how could you get over that? Right? But I had to choose something, cause I’m still here. I had to choose something. Am I gonna choose to let it, whatever that it is, keep abusing me?

Once you get to the point where you realize, I am so deep into this, either I’m going to sit here for the rest of my life.

and not make any progress, or I’m gonna claw my way out of this using certain techniques. That’s a choice. We have to figure out which one makes you feel better. Not which one scares you, because you’re scared to do both.

Nick McGowan (32:26.101)

Yeah, the fear is just going to hold you back even more. So along those lines, what sort of advice would you give to somebody that’s on their path towards self-mastery?

Dr. Dravon James (32:35.666)

Oh, if you’re on your path towards self mastery, self-awareness is the first key. Self-awareness again, without guilt, without condemnation. Self-awareness, being able to look at yourself 100%. And I keep going back to this, it sounds so simple, but we don’t do it. 100%, forgive yourself for everything, give yourself permission to continue on your journey. Giving yourself permission to continue on your journey.

Dr. Dravon James (33:07.334)

Everything in love. We’re always moving towards something, never running away from anything.

Nick McGowan (33:17.209)

great way to put that and especially with the self-awareness and removing guilt from all of that and having permission to be able to do those things. Sometimes we just don’t even allow ourselves the permission to think or to ask that question or to ask ourselves how do we feel about it. Now I’m one of the super feely types so it’s easier for me growing up. My dad, I remember him telling me use your brain, use your brain, think, think. It’s like took me years to get to the point where I was like well I actually have to feel

it before I think it. But I get that that’s how you are. But either way they both need to kind of work together with that. So look it’s been awesome having you on the show. I appreciate you being here with us. I know you’ve got another one coming up soon and you need some time. But hey where can people find you and where can they connect with you?

Dr. Dravon James (33:54.359)

I like.

Dr. Dravon James (34:07.098)

Oh, so you can find me on my website, which is drdrabonjames.com. I am also the on series XM on the Road Dog, Road Dog trucking show. On the first Monday of every month where we talk about just how to live a happy life. So check us out.

Nick McGowan (34:28.097)

fantastic and we’re gonna have all that in the show notes as well. It’s been fantastic having you on. I appreciate your time today.

Dr. Dravon James (34:34.37)

Thank you.