Be a coffee bean!

This episode of beyond you'd why is brought to you by our why App. Head over to yinstitute.com to take the why app so you can discover your why today. Knowing your why is the essential first step in having the clarity to move forward faster and have a bigger impact.

Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually helping you discover and then live your why. So if you're a regular listener, you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys. We talk about that why and then I bring on somebody that has that why. So if you have not yet discovered your why, go to whyinstitute.com, discover your why and then come back and listen to the podcast because it'll have much more of an impact for you you when you know your why. And so today we're going to be talking about the why of Contribute to Contribute to a greater cause, make a difference, add value, or have an impact in the lives of others. Now these are people that yearn to be part of the greater good, right? They don't have to actually be the cause. Rather they want to be part of it in a meaningful way. They make a difference in the lives of others in an organization or a cause that they believe in. They support others and relish the success of the greater good. There's somebody that's going to use their time, their energy, their money, their connections to help other people do better. And so for today, I've got a very fascinating guest for you. His name is Damon west and let me read you his bio because it's not the typical bio as we're going to talk about in just a little bit. He is a motivational speaker and best selling authority. The Book the Coffee A Simple Lesson to Create Positive Change. His first book, an autobiography, the Change How a Former College Quarterback Sentenced to Life in Prison Transformed His World, was published just three years after his release from a Texas maximum security prison. Sentenced to 65 years in Texas prison, Damon west once had it all. He came from a great family and in a home full of God, love, support and opportunities to reach any goal. A natural born leader, an athlete with good looks and charm, he appeared to be the All American kid pursuing his dreams. Underneath this facade, however, was an addict in the early stages of disease. After suffering childhood sexual abuse by a babysitter at the age of nine, Damon began putting chemicals into his body to alter the way he felt. Once he was introduced to methods, however, he became instantly hooked and the Lives of so many innocent people would forever be changed by the choices he made in order to feed his insatiable meth habit. After a fateful discussion during his incarceration with a seasoned convict, Damon had a spiritual awakening. He learned that a coffee bean changing in the application of heat and pressure was capable of changing the environment around him. Armed with program of recovery, a renewed faith, and a miraculous second chance at life, Damon emerged from over seven years in prison a changed man. His story of redemption, grit and determination continue to inspire audiences today. Today, Damon lives a life of recovery and service, going to meetings and sharing his story all over the country with schools, churches, athletic teams, corporations, conferences, and inside correctional facilities. Over the past few years, he's been sharing the coffee beans lesson with dozens of college football teams such as Clemson, Alabama, Georgia, and Texas, and countless schools and businesses. His Be a Coffee bean message has inspired thousands, winning him the Service of Mankind Award in 2017. Damon, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here, Gary.

Thanks for having me, man. Thank you for this opportunity to be useful today. That's all I try to be is useful, and I really appreciate you letting me do that.

I heard about you through one of my mentors. We were playing golf, and one day after we played, we were sitting down having breakfast and he told me your story, and I don't want to tell it. You will do a much better job than I could. And after I heard your story, I was like, wow, I got to go check this guy out on YouTube. So I went and watched one of your videos on YouTube and then I went to my mastermind meeting and I told some of my friends there about your story, and that's how we got connected. So I just appreciate you being here.

It's so wild. It's such a small world when you hear about it like that. When someone from another state or another region or even another country gets in touch with you, it tells you where they heard about you from. But it lets you know, too, that we are all connected in some way and that the message that I'm trying to go out there and share all the time about being a coffee, being about changing from within, is resonating. It's getting out there. It's just. It's very humbling to hear that story.

Yes. Well, so tell everybody that's listening. Tell us how you heard about the coffee bean story and how that affected you.

Well, you know, tell how I heard about the coffee bean story. I mean, you almost got to give a little bit of the backstory yes. You know, you know, I grew up in a town called Port Arthur, Texas, and grew up there. I was born in 75. My father was a sports writer. My mother was a nurse. Got an older brother named Brandon, younger brother named Grayson. Nice knit, little happy home. But, you know, we had our problems too. Like, you know, you talked about. I was molested when I was nine and by the time I was 10, I started putting in chemicals to change the way I felt. I was drinking, smoking pot when I was 12. But basically the worst part about this is I have a bad belief system. And bad belief systems, they tell us how to do something the wrong way over and over again. And the longer we hold on to a bad belief system, the harder they are to get rid of. And so my bad belief system is saying, hey, all I'm doing is drink a little beer, smoke a little pot. It manifests into something bigger and bigger as life goes on. But, you know, I was a really gifted football player. You know, this is Texas. You know, high school football is a big thing. And I was a three year starting quarterback from a high school team. Got a football scholarship, played Division 1 football at the University of North Texas, played quarterback there for a couple years before I got hurt against Texas A and M. You know, after football was over, I put in a lot of drugs to, you know, compensate for the fact that I was, you know, I didn't have football anymore. And it went from, you know, drinking beer, smoking pot to do coke, you know, pills, ecstasy, you name it. Graduated college in 99, moved to Washington D.C. got a job working in the United States Congress for a congressman from Houston. After that, I worked for a guy running for president, United states. And in 2004, when he dropped out of the race, I moved back to Dallas, Texas to train to be a stockbroker for one of the biggest Wall street banks in the world, ubs, United bank of Switzerland. And it was at that job, Gary, as a stockbroker that I was introduced to meth for the first time. And in 2004, I was introduced to meth. And it was a game changer for me, you know, all these other drugs, these highs that I've been on in my addiction, you know, I was semi functional still, but meth was different. Meth was one that was so strong, it grabbed me and never let go. And I gave everything away for that drug. We talk in addiction all the time about addicts are different than regular people. We will give up the good things in our life to. We'll give up our Goals to meet our behaviors. And people that are not addicts, people like you, will give up bad behaviors to meet their goals. But addicts are not like that. And so I gave everything away for that drug. And I ended up becoming a serial burglar with a bunch of other meth addicts. And they call these burglaries the uptown burglaries. And they went on for about three years. And so it's July 30, 2008. I'll never forget that date. And that was the day that I. I was sitting on this little rundown, this couch in this little rundown apartment in Dallas, and I had my meth dealer sitting next to me, this guy named Tex. And I'm smoking meth with text, and I'm telling Tex, hey, Tex, I think the end is near. You know, I think the cops are going to come get me. And about that time, a flashbang grenade came through the window and it blew up in my face. And there was a bright white light and a loud noise, and it blew me back on the couch. And when I came to, when I could see and hear again, this cop in full swat, right gear, man, he had his boot on my chest and the barrel of a machine gun and was digging in my eye socket. And he was screaming, don't move, don't move. And another cop was screaming, we got him. We got the uptown burglar. And, you know, for all the good I like to do in life and what I talk for, I talk about putting back in the stream of life and being a giver and, you know, back then, you know, and that's what addiction is all about. Addiction is a very selfish thing. And I tell people all the time that addicts aren't bad people. We're sick people. We're sick people that do bad things in pursuit of our addiction. But July 30, 2008, was the day the uptown Berkeley's came to an end. And they threw me in Dallas county jail. And I spent what was going to become the first days of a long incarceration process. They threw me in there with an organized crime charge that carried a potential life sentence. And at the end of 10 months waiting to go to trial, I finally got my day in court. Actually, I got six days in court. And six days is a long criminal trial in Texas. And at the end of six days, the jury of my peers deliberated for 10 minutes on my sentence. And 10 minutes is not a long time to deliberate on the sentence, Gary. Not after six days of testimony. And it's usually bad news for the defendant if it's that quick. And it was bad news for me, too. And when I got back into the courtroom, the judge read the verdict. He said, damon Joseph west, you are hereby sentenced to 65 years in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. And, I mean, it took my breath away. It took my mom's breath away, took everybody in the courtroom's breath away. You know, that's a life sentence. 65 is life. And, you know, right after that sentencing that I was put into this separate room, and my parents got to visit with me one last time before I went to prison. And my mom made me promise to her that I would not join one of these white prison gangs, these Aryan Brotherhood type gangs while I was in prison. You know, that I was raised to not see race. I'm not going to start now. And that I wouldn't get any tattoos on me. I wouldn't become. I wouldn't look like the institution. And she said, you know, you come back as the man we raised or don't come back at all. And it was after that, that was on my journey through Dallas County Jail, waiting to go to prison, that I met with this guy, and I call him Mr. Jackson because I don't know his real name. He was a guy that had converted to Islam, so he went by the Muslim name of Muhammad, but his name is Mr. Jackson for the story. And Mr. Jackson was a seasoned convict. He's in the 60s, you know, African American guy, been to prison four or five times, but a real positive guy. Gary. He saw that I was struggling with the whole idea of going to prison. And that's when he told me. He said, I want you to imagine prison as a pot of warm water. He said, anything we put in that pot of warm water is going to be changed by the heat, the pressure inside that pot. He said, I want to put three things in that pot of warm water and watch how they change a carrot, an egg, and a coffee bean. So he walked through it with me. He said, the carrot, when it goes into a pot of warm water, turns soft. You know, carrot gets beat down by life. Their carrots are sad. He said, an egg turns hard inside this soft, liquid core. His heart becomes hardened. He said, if your heart becomes hardened, you're incapable of giving and receiving love. He said, if you're incapable of giving and receiving love, you have become institutionalized, and you will not come back as someone your parents recognize because your eggshell will have swastika statute all over it. And he said, the Coffee Bean, the smallest of these three things, had the power to change the entire atmosphere inside that pot. He said, everybody in life puts that energy negative or positive. He said, what I got, every kind of energy you put out, you attract back. He said, so if you're going to survive prison and come back as someone your parents recognize, you will have to be like that coffee Bean. You have to change the atmosphere around you. And, you know. So the last thing Mr. Jackson told me before I got on the prison bus In August of 2009, Dakota to transfer to the Texas Department of Criminal justice, he said, the last thing he told me was, go out there and go be a Coffee Bean. And so that's where I heard the Coffee Bean for the first time, which is, you know, Gary, it kind of wild to think about that. The Coffee Bean message was given from one inmate to another inmate in an effort to help. But, you know, I asked Mr. Jackson when he told me, I said, you know, what do you find more of a prison? And he fired back at me real quick. He said, eggs. He said, the egg is a natural evolution of a human being inside of a maximum security penitentiary. He said, we are not made to withstand what you're about to go through. He said, you'll probably become an egg, too. So I wonder what he would think if I could find him today and tell him how far his story has gone. You know, John Gordon, bestselling author and motivational speaker John Gordon. I'm in my office last month in August, I get a phone call, and it's John on the other end of the line. And he says, hey, Damon, it's John Gordon. And I'm thinking, first, Gary, I'm like, john, how do you even know who I am? How do you have my number? He said, damon, Dabo Sweeney can't quit talking about you and that Coffee Bean story. He said, listen, I want to write a book with you. He said, we'll call it the Coffee Bean. We'll get this message out all over the world. The whole world used to hear about the Coffee Bean message. He said, write this book with me. And I thought he was crazy at first. And I told him, I even said, john, you don't have to do this book with me. Go do it yourself. And he said, no. He said, God told me to do it this way. Let's do it. And so we did. The Coffee Bean came out in July. And I tell you, Gary, and every week we get another email from the publisher saying the rights to the Coffee Bean have been sold in China or the rights to the coffee bean have been sold in Saudi Arabia. So the book is now in Arabic, it's in Chinese, the rights have been sold in France. It's in French. No, it's in Vietnam and it's a Korean. Yeah. The book though, literally the call to be message is going all over the world. So it's wild, Gary. Yeah, it's really neat to be a part of.

Could you ever have imagined that when you were sitting in prison that, well, what did you, what did you think when you were sitting in prison, what it was going to be like if and when you get out?

You know, when I was sitting in prison, my thoughts of, you know, because I knew I was getting out because I got sent to a six month facility. In the end, when I made parole, I had to go through a six month drug treatment center in prison. Therapeutic community. And the thoughts that I had about what life was going to be like on the outside were not what life really was on the outside. I was so nervous, so scared about would people accept me. What, you know, what would life be like with this felony? You know, I've got a life sentence in prison, I'm on parole the rest of my life. But it wasn't like that, Gary. You know, fears for the most part aren't real. We give fears their life, their presence. We make them bigger than what they are. It's like I tell people all the time, like the boogeyman or the monster that was under your bed or in the closet, you never found that monster because it wasn't real. It was all imaginaries, all in your head. And my fears of when I was coming out of prison weren't real either. I ran into a woman in prison that was a volunteer chaplain, Ms. D. Doucet. She was in her 80s and she, you know, I talked to her one day, I was struggling in prison and she gave me some sage, sage advice, Gary. She said, if you're going to pray, don't worry, and if you're going to worry, don't pray. You can't have it both ways. And so I had to remind myself of that all the time. Still this day that, you know, there's things that I might fear or things I may worry about, but they're really not things that I control. And that's one of the things I've learned in recovery, is there's really four things that I control in life. And those four things are what I think, what I say, what I feel, and what I do. And if it's not one of those four things, I really don't control it. So I really have to let you know, the God of my understanding deal with that. And that's been one of the most beautiful things about a program recovery, is the understanding of what I do. And then I.

So what impacted that? I mean, did you think while you were in prison about the Coffee Bean? I mean, was that a conscious thing, or how did that play out for you while you were there?

Oh, yeah, No, I would go around telling people about the Coffee Bean. In fact, you know, one of my first cellmates in prison, you know, once I got out, I, you know, caught up with him again. He's still in prison. And one of the first things he asked me, he said, are you still running around telling everybody that Coffee Bean story? I was like, yeah, as a matter of fact, I am. Let me tell you where I'm telling it now, and I'm telling all the places I've been. He's like, wow, I just can't believe that the story, you know, because, I mean, he saw me right when I got to prison, and one of the first things I'm telling him about is that Coffee Bean. And, you know, that story, I told it when I was in prison, but I think it has such a big, bigger impact now in my old prison, because those guys that were locked up with me see me coming back into prison, and they all said the same thing. Man, you told us you would come back. You told us you would come back, and you did. I always ask them, do y' all remember if I was smiling or not when I was in prison? They're like, yes, you were always smiling. You always had a smile on your face. And I said that was the Coffee Bean story. And I think it is. Like I said, it's even more impactful now that I'm out of prison than whenever I was in prison. Because when I was in prison telling the Coffee Bean story, you know, that's just another inmate telling it to him. But now it's a guy that was doing time, that got out. He's on parole the rest of his life, but has been largely successful and has been able to accomplish and achieve the things they want to accomplish, too. You know, one of the things. I was in a prison yesterday. I was in two different prisons in Huntsville, Texas, and Texas has got 104 prisons in it, by the way. We got 155,000 people locked up in Texas, so plenty of work for me to go and share my story. With people in prison, I volunteered to do it all the time. So one of the things these guys will notice, I'm married now. And so one of the things these guys will notice is that I have a wedding ring on my finger. And one of the main questions I get is, how did you do it? How did you find somebody to love you out there with your background and your past? You know, that's such a big deal for people that are incarcerated. You know, Gary, the people I ran into in prison, they made mistakes, but they're paying for it. They're paying the ultimate price for their lives. You can't pay a greater debt than giving up your life. And time. Time's the one thing you can't replace. All the money in the world can't buy one more second of that stuff. And when you're in prison and you're doing time, you know, you want to be loved, you want to be accepted. That's a natural need of a human being. But you don't think you will be able to find it. You feel like you're subhuman. And so I think it's important to go into as many prisons as I can to volunteer to do that, to show those men and women that you can do whatever you want to do. No one can hold you back. But you have to have a different belief system. And everything is about culture, too, Gary. I mean, you've got to change your belief system and your mindset. My mindset had to be changed from looking at prison as a punishment to looking at prison as an opportunity. And like, we talk all the time about finding our why. I found my why in prison. And just because my station in life has changed doesn't mean my intentions change. You know, I say the same prayer that I learned to pray when I was in prison. I say the same prayer every day, Gary. I get up and it's two part prayer. It's quick, man. And it's, you know, God, put in front of me what you need me to do today for you, and let me recognize it when I see it. And I'm off. I don't pray for anything else because I know that God has my needs in mind, and if I'm taking care of others, that my needs will be met. Maybe not my wants, man. I don't know that anybody gets everything they want, but their needs will be met. Wow.

So when you got out of prison, I can't imagine you walked out of prison telling the Coffee Bean story. When was the first time you told that Coffee Bean Story. And how did that go for you?

You know, I started telling the Coffee Bean story to school kids. I mean, it was, you know, within a few months, getting out of prison, I started talking about the Coffee Bean story. You know, it just. When I first started doing my presentation, I didn't know exactly what to put in, what to leave out. You know, there's recordings from the earlier presentations. You know, the earlier presentations had all kinds of stuff in it that aren't even in there now because I felt like there was, you know, it was more of a testing ground to see what to put in there, what to put out. There's still so many stories, Gary, that I could tell from prison and stuff like that, that. That I can't. Just because, you know, you can't do in 45 minutes to an hour, I can't tell all the stuff I want to talk about. But I had to build the right presentation, and that took a little bit of time. And so once I got, you know, into the groove with the right presentation, I have a PowerPoint built up. The Coffee Bean became a centerpiece of it. It took a few months. It took a few months to figure out, hey, you know, that's something I can put in there. And people can use on the outside, too, because you got to think about it this way, too, Gary. Before that, it was just me telling the story on the inside of a prison. The coffee, the pot of boiling water in my eyes, was always prison. And so I'm getting out of prison and I'm talking in front of audiences, bouncing ideas off of this guy named Michael Orta that was, you know, real instrumental in helping me get my message together, especially with social media. He's a videographer, and I'm bouncing him off of the ideas about the Coffee Bean. He's like, hey, you need to include that. That's a big thing for people out here, too. So it just took a little time to develop the right message. But once I put that in there, it took off. People latched onto that, and it's been going ever since.

Did you know, coming out of prison that you were going to go back into prison to speak? Did you know you wanted to tell your story?

How did that happen? Absolutely. There was a letter I got in 2011 while I was in prison from my seventh grade Texas history teacher. He was a social studies Texas history teacher. Guy named Mr. Jelen. Mr. Jelen was now a principal at one of the junior highs locally in the area where I lived. And it's important to note that I Did my time in a prison that is right by where I grew up. I mean, I grew up in Port Arthur. The town I was locked up in was Beaumont. Beaumont, Port Arthur, neighboring city. So Mr. Jellyn's local, and he gets in touch with me. He writes me a letter In September of 2011, I'll never forget. And the letter says, basically, you know, Damon, you've been to the highest. The highest, the lowest lows. You've seen the world from everywhere you can, and you have an amazing story to tell, and you need to consider that when you get out one day, sharing your story with our youth, because our youth don't. He's basically saying that none of our youth understand their why. He said, I think you can help them find that, and I think you can help save lives with your story. And that's when the seed was planted. That's when I got my why, you know, and. But, you know, the hows and all the other stuff were gonna. Were gonna come, but I got my why, you know, the why of my life. Why did all this happen? Why am I going through this? And why am I gonna wake up every single day and work on myself spiritually, mentally, and physically until I get out of this place and then continue to do that on the way out? That was what planted the seed. And, you know, and what's crazy about it, too, Gary, is when that seed gets planted. I mean, we're talking about a little seedling that barely grows, but now it's grown into a forest of trees, so to speak. You know, it has grown and spread, but it's all from that one letter from that one teacher, that teacher that meant so much in my life when I was growing up as a kid that reached out to me and said, hey, why don't you think about doing this one day? And that was it.

And what kind of response are you getting from kids? And what. In college? You know, I know you spoke at Clemson and Alabama and Texas and all these big schools. What kind of response are you getting from these students?

Oh, man. I mean, you know, from grade school on, I mean, you're. I'm getting a response. I mean, just parents, especially parents will get in touch with me on Facebook. You can. You can message anybody on Facebook and they'll, you know, hey, Damon, thanks a lot for the conversation. You know, you started today in our home that we didn't even know we needed to be having about drugs and bad choices. You know, depending on the age group, it gets. It's a different presentation everywhere you go. Obviously, elementary school kids don't get the same presentation junior high, high school, or college will get. They're all going to get something different, or a corporation is going to get something different. But the message is still the same. You know, at its core is you have the power to change your environment. Now, the stories that go around it are a little bit different. You know, the higher I get in levels of understanding, the older the kids are, the more stories I tell that are, you know, to drive the point home. But when these kids get in touch with me, I'll get letters from kids all the time. I get letters from students. You know, there was in August, Jalen hurts the quarterback at Oklahoma. You know, he was front row, center seat whenever I speak to Oklahoma, and he was also there two years ago when I spoke to Alabama. And so, you know, I recognized Jalen in the room. We talked to him a little bit and gave my presentation. Two days later, they're announcing him as the quarterback at University of Oklahoma at a press conference. And he tells all the people in the press conference that he wants to be a coffee bean. I've got sports writers all over the country looking me up saying, hey, what's the story in this coffee bean thing? We heard you're the one that started. But I get kids all over the place talking about wanting to be coffee beans. And they go around and parents have even sent me these videos of these kids saying that they want to be a coffee bean, too. There was a principal in Southern California that sent me a message on Twitter. He said he has a kid, a fourth grader in the school. And this fourth grader is going through a tough time. His parents are going through a divorce. Life is tough for him. Came into school one Monday morning in tears, had a rough weekend dealing with his parents. And this principal shares with him the coffee bean story from the book the Coffee Bean, which is about this kid named Abe. And then he gives him a coffee bean that's on his desk. This kid goes out and says he wants to be a coffee bean and finds, you know, this. The snow cone truck comes to school and he's spending his money, the only money he has, on these kids that he's befriended that have down syndrome. And when the teachers found out about that, they asked the kid, why are you doing that? What made you want to do that? And he said, I want to be a coffee bean, too. Just to hear that, that impact some little kid, it helped him with his life as a nine year old. I mean, that's the greatest compliment you can be given man that you help some kid understand his purpose in life, his why. Wow.

And so when you and I were going to talk, and I had you take the why app to discover your why, and it came up with the why of contribute, add value, have an impact in the lives of other people. How did that feel for you?

I mean, it felt like it was spot on. I was with my dad that night, hanging out with him, watching football, and I showed my father and I said, hey, man, what do you think about that? He said, that sounds like it's spot on. Sounds like, you know, they know you well, and it is. I want to contribute. You know, it's funny you say the word contribute, because when that parole officer came to visit me at the Styles unit back in 2015, she says, like, you know, she was looking at my parole package. She said, look, you know, Mr. West, we don't see a lot of guys come through like, you had this amazing life and all these opportunities before prison, and then you make these huge mistakes. You. You make victims. You get this massive life sentence. Then you come to this prison, and you turn this prison around. You change the entire culture inside this prison. And she said, Mr. West, I've got one question for you and one question only. She said, if you could be remembered for being anything in this life, give it to me in just one word. Go. And this is in the book, Gary. And I thought, because I was a coffee Bean, because I have a program recovery, because I'm just a passenger in the car and God's driving now, I had her answer for her, and I fired it back as quick as she asked me the question, and I said, ma', am, useful. I just want to be useful. I said, I can be useful in here, as you've already seen, or I can be useful out in that world finding coffee beans. And they let me go. They let me go and say, we're going to give you one shot. But if you come back in handcuffs anywhere between now and the year 2073, we can keep you until 2073.

Now, how were you able to be the coffee bean in prison when you're incarcerated? What does that look like for us? I mean, you walk into the prison you were just talking about, what was it like? And then how did you become the coffee bean in there and change the environment?

So it took a little while. You know, the first couple months. It's chronicled in my book, the Change Agent. There's so much terror wrapped up in the first couple months of prison. I've got to fight for my existence. I've got to fight for the right to even exist. You know, it's with the white gangs first, because everything's about race in there. I got to fight the white gangs. And after I get through with them, then the black gangs are coming because the white gangs have sent the black gangs after me. And then I'm out on the basketball court trying to earn some respect out there. And then there's one final fight that happens. And this is all in the book, the one final fight that happens when I'm told this guy's gonna come rape me in the shower. And so I take a fan motor in there in a bag, and that's my weapon, sling it like a ball and chain flail. And so at the fighting was over after everybody backed off and gave me my right to exist, because they saw that I spoke the one language everybody speaks in the maximum security prison. And that's violence. You know, violence is the only thing, the one language everybody's fluent in. Either you speak violence or someone speaks violence to you. But you become fluid in violence. And that's why I figured out Jackson said, most people become coffee beans because the violence and hatred and negativity in there is so off the charts high. And at the end of two months, when I was done with my fighting, I had a serious problem, Gary. I had become the egg. I had to become the egg. And I did not want to be the egg. I did not want to become institutionalized. But it was happening to me, and I could feel it. So I did what Mr. Jackson told me to do. He said, man, if you want to find all those coffee beans, he said, get down to the chapel. He said, it's where a lot of coffee beans hang out. And I got down there and I found the answers to my questions. I found other people that were coffee beans out there. I found other positive inmates, and I learned what it was like to become coffee. I figured out there were about five different necessary things to do to become a coffee bean. And the first one is what Mr. Jackson told me. He said, if you walk around with a frown in that place, and you want to look hard, you know, you want to look like you're tough. He said, the problem with that is you attract the same kind of energy you're putting out, you're going to attract guys that are hard. He said, you're going to get a lot of wrecks. He said, but you walk around with a smile on your face and you let those guys know they're not getting you. No matter what they do, they're not getting to you. He said, you'll change prison from the inside out. So the first rule about being a coffee bean is having positive body language. Positive body language can change the entire energy in a room, just like negative body language can too. Your energy affects everybody around you, negative or positive. And what I've learned about rooms that people are in is that if there's more positive people in a room, the negative people will do one of two things. They will either get with the program, become positive, because like I said before, people have a need to want to belong and be loved. So they'll want to get with the group and be positive, or the truly negative people will get out of that room because they don't like to be around positive people. And any one of those is fine when you're trying to find a room full of positivity in places negative like that. So I walked around with a smile on my face over that place, Gary. And energy level around me was always positive. And even, especially not even, but especially on the days that I didn't feel like it. I put on that smile, man, and went out there and it was amazing. The results of that, man. You know, at first, you know, people want to knock the smile off your face and eventually they give up and want to get, you know, figure. Want to figure out, how are you so happy? What are you doing that makes you so happy? I want to smile too. And the second rule about being a coffee bean that I figured out in there is you have to get up every day and work out in those three areas. And I talked about them a while ago. Spiritually, mentally and physically, you have to get in shape. You have to stay in shape every day. This is a daily deal. This isn't like a once a week routine. Every day you got to get up. What does it mean to spiritually work out? Well, spiritual workouts are, you know, at the end of each day, whatever God you believe in, you talk to your God, you say, hey, man, how was I today as a human being? Was I a good human being? Do I owe someone an apology? Did I put back in the stream of life? What did I do for others today? And the big one, do I owe someone forgiveness? That forgiveness thing, Gary, is a two way street. A lot of people want forgiveness. Everybody wants forgiveness for the things they've done. You know, they want to be forgiven. They're not always ready to hand out that forgiveness 100% of the time. And that is a spiritual Exercise to be able to do that. It's also a spiritual exercise to be able to go out and make amends, to make apologies when you are wrong. Just go out and say, you know what? I am wrong, and this is what I did. Spiritual workouts are all about keeping your side of the street clean. Because that is all you have to do. You don't have to clean the other guy's side of the street, but you have to keep your side of the street clean. A mental workout. Mental workout means, you know, what kind of books do you read, what kind of videos do you watch, what kind of websites do you go to? What are you feeding yourself? Because we are what we eat. And speaking of that, physically working out, you know, physically, you know, do we put in the right foods, do we get enough rest? Do we exercise? These are things that are important. You only get one life, one body. So the third thing about, you know, changing to that coffee, being in prison is I had to learn what the secret to life was. And this is core to the why, Gary. This is the whole ball of wax right here. Because the secret to life I learned in prison. And the secret to life is simple. It is two words. It's called servant leadership. Servant leadership is helping other people achieve their goals in life. It's helping other people get to a different station in life. Because when we are helping other people, that's how we help ourselves. Because the universe works that way. You can't be a taker. There was a quote that I came across, Gary, and I'm sure you love quotes, you know, so here's a quote. I came across this quote by a guy named Charles A. Beard. Charles A. Beard was a 20th century historian, real well renowned historian in the 20th century. And someone asked him one day, what lessons has history taught you? And his answer was stunning. I memorized it because it was so unbelievable. So here's the answer. What lessons has history taught Charles A. Beard? Whom the gods would destroy, they must first make man with power. The mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly small. The bee fertilizes the flower that it robs. When it is dark enough, you can see the stars. That's it. Think about that for a second.

Wow. Can you say that again?

Yeah. Whom the gods would destroy, they must first make man with power. The mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly small. The bee fertilizes the flower that it robs. And when it is dark enough, you can see the stars. I mean, it gives you chills to think about how deep that is. But that third part of that quote, the third sentence, is the one that really hit me when I read it. The bee fertilizes the flower that it robs. That means to me that you cannot be a taker in this life. You can't take. You have to put back. You have to give back. Everywhere you go, the world, life is about you putting back into it. I mean, if this bee is going to, you know, rob pollen from a flower, but it fertilizes at the same time, I mean, that is what life is all about. The bee fertilizes the flower that robs. We have to fertilize the flowers of life, make them grow. So that quote had a big impact on me. But servant leadership. Servant leadership was something I learned from a lot of men and women that came into the prison to volunteer. These people would leave their homes, their lives, their jobs, their families for four days to spend time inside these prisons and minister to us. No one wanted to be around us, Gary. No one likes the incarcerated. I mean, we're the curse, the wicked, the sinners, and only people that you know. And I'm gonna say it from a Christian perspective. I'm Christian, but I know there's other faiths that are all about charity and giving and helping others. But the book that I, you know, my book, the Bible, you know, Matthew 25:36, talks about. When I was in prison, you visited me. I don't ever quote scripture. That's the one scripture I'll quote because that means so much to me. Because what? The people that truly live out that gospel were the ones that I met in prison that brought in hope, and they were smugglers of hope. Today I get to be a smuggler of hope. I was in prison yesterday. I told those guys, all those inmates, I said, when they patted me down and ran me through the metal detector, I smuggled something in they didn't catch. And everybody was holding their breath for what I was going to say. And I said, hope. I said, I'm here today to bring you all hope, man. And everybody was relieved because that's the one thing that's in the shortest supply in that prison, man. So servant leadership was the big thing. And the fourth thing about being a coffee bean is, like I said, knowing what you do not control, you know, the four things you control. What you think, what you say, what you feel, and what you do. And if it's not one of those four things, you really don't control it. And it was when I learned that Lesson that I could focus my energies, focus that positivity, that desire to be useful, that desire to give back, I could focus that into those four things. And really, I eliminated a lot of thought that was wasted on things. I don't control things that I fear. You know, I don't control those things that I fear. It's like somebody asked, told me one time, I've used this in presentations outside of prison. Make a list of the three things you love the most in the world, and then on the other side, a list of the three things you fear the most in the world, and ask yourself, is it one? All those things, do you control any of it with what you think, say, feel and do? And you can rip the list up because I promise you, the things you fear are beyond your control. The things you love, that's God's realm, man. They can be taken away from you in a heartbeat. You know, you control what you think, say, feel and do. And once I learned that, my life took off in the fast lane and things started changing around there. The inmates took notice, the guards took notice, and the parole board took notice. And they eventually let me go after seven years, three months on that life sentence. And that's when I learned what the fifth rule about being a coffee bean was. When I was out of prison and doors started opening for me and I met a guy named Dabo Sweeney at an award show in Houston. And that's when I learned that the fifth rule about being a coffee bean is your past doesn't define you. Your past doesn't define you, man. Your past is your lesson. You learn from your past. Your past wins don't matter. Your past losses don't matter. Your past is your past. Your past is your best. You learn from it. The present today is a gift. The future is your motivation. And you've got to be motivated by the right things, Gary, you can't live a successful life. And I'm not talking about successful financially. I'm talking about successful as a human. And be motivated by the wrong things. Your motivation have to be pure. You know, I read a lot in prison, Gary. I've read probably a book every other day in an effort to feed myself the right stuff mentally, right? And so I read all I could about the history of world religions. I was fascinated with it. And I found out there's five major religions in the history of the world. There's Hinduism, there's Buddhism, there's Christianity, there's Judaism, there's Islam, you know, five major religions. And at the core I mean, and 95% of the world believes in one of those five religions, right? And at the core of all five of those religions are the same four spiritual principles. And they come up all the time. And I mean, I've read every book. I've read the Quran, I've read the Bhagavad Gita, I've read the Torah, I've read the Bible. And these four spiritual principles are in there. And those four spiritual principles are in the big book. Alcoholics Anonymous, too, they call it the four absolutes. And that's unselfish, honest, pure and loving. And they're worth repeating. I'm going to repeat them again, Gary, because they're so important in life. The four absolutes in life are unselfish, honest, pure and loving. What they become is a matrix for all your decisions in life. Because you ask yourself, is what I'm about to do, is this unselfish? Is it honest? Is it pure, Is it loving? And if it's not, then I know where it resides. The decisions that are outside of those four absolutes or on the other side of the spectrum and we're words like selfish, self seeking, self want, self desire, and self delusion define everything we do.

I'm amazed at how much you've read and how much you've been able to take that and assimilate it and put it into something that's useful for, for the rest of us. I mean, you've taken your challenges and made it into awesome lessons for us. That's just powerful.

And that's. I mean, that's what life is about. Like, you know, the stuff I talk about, I didn't invent any of this stuff. Even the coffee, the coffee bean thing is, you know, a guy gives it to me in county jail where he heard from, who knows? And it's probably been around for hundreds of years, ever since carrots, eggs and coffee beans have been being put in hot water, you know. Yeah, but that's what we do. That's what life is about. You find ways to get messages out there and reconfirm for people, give positive affirmations wherever you go and make it digestible for people to understand. None of this stuff is mine. It's not unique to me and my story, Gary. I mean, the stuff I overcame and how I did it, I didn't do that. To me, that's a God thing to me. You know, and that's. And I never go around trying to convert people, people to a religion or trying to push a religious agenda. In fact, I tell people all the time that there's a real big difference in life between religion and spirituality. I'm a very spiritual person and I think that God, my higher power, has used me in a way to show the strength of what he can do and show that, you know, give hope where there's no hope and shine light in the darkness. You know, like the last part of that quote, when it's dark enough, you can see the stars. How much darker does life get than being locked in a maximum security penitentiary with a life sentence? It's as dark as it gets, but it's always dark. It's right before dawn. You know, that's what we have to understand, that no matter how bad things get, there's light coming. But you've got to change that. Those are choices. You've got to change your mindset and you've got to not allow the outside pressures to change you.

Wow. Now, how were you able. So if you've got 65 years, how were you able to get out in seven?

So I made parole. And here's the way that works in Texas. You have two different classifications of crimes. You have aggravated crimes, which are crimes where people are physically hurt in the commission of the crimes. Rape, murder, child molesters, you know, aggravated people assaults, those things have a physical victim. My crimes were property crimes where no one was ever home. If anybody had ever been home, it would have been aggravated. It would have been a crime where someone was physically affected. They were there. But no one was ever home to the commission of my crimes. So my crimes were listed as non aggravated, which means that I don't have to serve as much time as someone with an aggravated offense. So being that my crimes were non aggravated, I get special treatment of. I get good time, I get work time credits, I get the ability to make parole at a sooner amount of time without having to do as much time in my sentence. So when I got to seven years of my sentence or six years and some change, I was eligible for parole in a life sentence. And look, the chances of making parole on your first time up on a life sentence, slim to none. That never happened. In fact, when I got out of prison, I met my parole officer for the first time. She looked at my time and she looked at me and she said, Mr. West, I've been doing this for years. I've never seen anybody parole a life sentence on their first time. She says, something is working in your life and I call it God. She said, I suggest you let it keep working. And so knowing that I Made it out where no one else does. Also just feeds into my thoughts that this was something that was planned way. On a way higher level than what. What I have control of, you know, because, Gary, think about it like this, man. There's a guy that goes out and has all this opportunity potential in life and blows it all and becomes a terrible person and hurts a lot of people on the way, gets into addiction, hurts a lot of people on the way, loses his way completely and makes victims all over the place. Victims of my crimes, victims of my family. My family's probably my biggest victims. You know, I've hurt so many people, and I get slammed with this massive sentence. You know, it's almost like a huge overcorrection for what went wrong. So, you know, and I get thrown into the worst part of the Texas Department of Criminal justice. And in there, in that dark, deep place, that dark, evil deep place, I grow to become the man that I am today. And when I get out, I'm blessed with the ability because I've never taken public speaking. I've never tried speaking in front of people. I've never written a book before. But I sit down and start writing a book, and I get out, start speaking to people, I'm blessed with the abilities to articulate what I saw, what I experienced, and the lessons I learned through the written word and the verbal word. That's a God thing to me, Gary.

Oh, for sure. And, you know, when you took the why app, I just seen some of your videos and we had had a brief conversation, but I hadn't kind of had my own mind up made about you and what I thought your why was going to come up to be. And it came up as contribute. And I didn't think that was right just because of the little bit of interaction that we'd had. And then when we talk now, it becomes blatantly obvious that it is. But here's my question for you. Drugs changed, took your why and destroyed it or masked it, or how would you describe that? Because when you were doing drugs and hurting people, that was definitely not contributing to other people's success. Unless maybe it was the other people that were in the. In the crack house with you. But how did drugs just. Can drugs just destroy your why? Is that what happened?

Drugs absolutely destroy your why? That's a great question, Gary. Because what happens is your why changes. When you're an addict, you're into substance abuse, your why is out the window because your why becomes the drug. Addicts have what we do as addicts I'm going to try to explain addiction to you a real quick way. Addicts, we think differently than other people. The problem with addiction, with addicts is we have a thought. And let's say that thought is to drink or do drugs. And then we obsess over that thought. So we think, then we obsess, and we obsess long enough that we're going to put in physically if we don't do something with that thought, that obsession. And so, and addicts, like I told you before, they're not bad people. They're sick people that do bad things. People that are truly addicts because it's a disease, Gary, and we can't stop. We can. Once we start, we can't stop. They say in addiction all the time it's not the 10th drink that gets you, it's the first one, you know, we can't stop. So my. Why? You know, it's always been instilled to me to be, to be a good person. I had a great upbringing. I mean, as good as you can have. But I've always been into substance abuse since age 10. I was very selfish. And it took that humbling, that massive humbling. It was a combination. It's a two punch of that massive humbling of that life sentence in prison that knocked me off my feet. I mean, that was why I call that first chapter rock bottom. And then it took me getting to recovery to find the tools in life to find out my why again. Because in recovery, what we do is we surrender. The first three steps, the 12 steps, is it's basically you're coming to your higher power and you're surrendering. And the next steps, you start, you know, mapping out your shortcomings in life. You start putting out your resentments that you have and what you feel about things and your fears. You put all those down on paper and then you come over to the eighth and the ninth step. The, the eighth step is you make a list of all the people you've harmed. These are really humbling steps right here, Gary. You make a list of all the people you harm, and in the ninth step, you go out, you start making amends to those people. Except when to do so would cause people harm or you harm. For example, in my ninth step, you would think, well, God, it's going to take forever with all the victims of your crime. But I can't contact the victims of my crime. I can't reach out to them. I can't apologize to them. I can't apologize to them on a Podcast, I can't apologize to them on an interview or in person or anything. That's another felony conviction. So instead of apologizing to my victims, I do what's called a living amends. And a living amends means you go out and you do good works for people, you do service work. And the way I figure it, Gary, is I'll be doing service work the rest of my life to be able to put back in the stream of life and fix the things that I've done wrong. But the beautiful thing about that is when we are doing service work, when we were out doing God's will, we're staying sober. And that's the secret to my life. The secret to my life today is that I'm in a program of recovery that requires me to work my program recovery to keep my side of the street clean. If I owe apologies, I give them wherever I can. Part of my program recovery is to go out and do service work, Gary. So, I mean, I spend all my time that I can helping other people. Most of the stuff I do, I mean, I get paid to go out to some of these schools and corporations and stuff like that. And sure, I get paid some roll and the books and some merchandise and stuff, but 99% of the stuff I do is free, man. I'm talking to kids all over the place. There's tons of stuff I do that no one ever hears about because they're not supposed to hear about that stuff. That's between you and your higher power, you know.

Wow. So the drug addiction can overcome your why? When you get rid of the addiction, your why comes back?

Well, if. When you get rid of your addiction, your why can come back. But I would say 100% of the time your wife will come back if you have a program of recovery. And I keep coming back, I keep using that term because I think every addict needs a program recovery. You talk, you know, recidivism. I went back to school and I got my master's in criminal justice. Gary. I just got. I just graduated in May. Matter of fact, May 17, 2019, the day before. Thank you. Thank you. The day before my 10 year anniversary of getting a life sentence, May 17, 2019, I got. I graduated from Memorial University. I gave the commencement speech at my own graduation. I've got a master's in criminal justice. The next day, May 18, 2019, on the 10 year anniversary, I got married. And so. But with that master's in criminal justice, I have gone on to become a professor. In January, I'll be Professor west at the University of Houston Downtown, teaching a class in criminal justice to college students about prison. My. My class is going to be on prisons. So one of the things I've learned is that recidivism is very high. Whatever figures you look at, whether they say it's 60% or as much as 85% that I've heard of in the first three years, people go back. But one of the main reasons, and I talked to inmates and parolees both about this, is that 80% of the people that are locked up have substance abuse issues. If you have substance abuse issues, if you are an addict like me, then you have to have a program recovery, because without a program recovery, you do not have the tools. You may get sober, but you won't be able to maintain the sobriety, because life is going to happen, and life is going to be tough. Life is going to throw you curveballs. I will give you an example. When I was out of prison for a year, I was at a Christmas party with my friend and his wife, and I am standing there with them, and she is drinking a glass of wine. I am close enough to her that I can smell the wine. This particular wine smells good. And look, Gary, I'm in recovery. I don't drink, I don't do drugs, and I live my life the right way. But I smell this wine, and I immediately have the thought about drinking a glass of wine. Immediately I catch it, too, and I'm like, oh, my God, what just happened? So I left the party, I went and called my sponsor from the car, and I said, hey, look, man, something bad just happened. And I told him, I said, I had a thought about drinking, and he laughed at me, Gary. He laughed at me. He said, you know, Damon, he said, you're an addict, you're an alcoholic. You're going to have those thoughts. He said, your brain likes to repeat success, Gary. He said, it's called euphoric recall. And so your brain is only remembering the good times you had when you drank and did drugs. And without a doubt, you have some good times in there. But the greater majority of the times are terrible. They're miserable when you're an addict, but your brain only remembers the good ones. He said, so what we need to do now is another tool of recovery. You use the first tool, which is to call somebody, because remember I told you, you have to get that thought out of your head. And I'm going somewhere with this, with the why thing, Gary. So walk will be on this. So my sponsors. My sponsors tell Me. He said, so you used your first tool. That's a great first step. He said, we have a program recovery. Use your first tool, you call somebody. He says, so now's the next tool. Now, this is the tool we use when someone actually makes the phone call. It's called playing the tape out all the way to the end. He said, damon, I want you to imagine that you had that glass of wine. He said, tell me what happens next. And so I'm a little bit nervous about it, Gary, because I haven't really thought about drinking. And the thought of it, it just kind of makes my skin crawl. He goes, look, you know, just walk with me on it. Do this exercise. He said, all right, you take the glass of wine at the party. What now? And I said, okay, well, I'm going to be drinking bourbon at some point, because bourbon was way better than wine. Wine was something you did if that's the only thing there. But bourbon was my poison, man. I love bourbon. He said, okay, good. Drink the bourbon. What next? And I said, well, I mean, if we're doing bourbon, and we're gonna have to do cocaine, because cocaine and bourbon go so well together, right? Right. And so he said, great, do the cocaine. He said, what next? I said, well, if I'm doing cocaine, and then I'm gonna end up doing meth, because meth was the biggest drug of them all. And it had me so hard. I said, but meth would be the where I'm finally end up. He said, good, do the meth. He said, how's parole going? I was like, oh. He said, you can't pass your piss test if you're doing drugs. He said, so what happens if you violate your parole? I said, I go to prison. He said, all right, where are you now? I said, I'm on the prison bus, chained up to another person. Again, I'm going to prison. He said, all right. He said, now that you're at that prison, you're going to serve the rest of your life sentence out till 2073. You're going to be there. He said, I want you to go to the chow hall. He said, tell me what the worst thing you ate was inside that prison. What was the worst meal they served? And, man, without a doubt, without hesitation, I told him, pork noodle casserole. Gary, I don't even know what's important about. He said, and this guy's an ex con, too. I've got a lot of ex cons around me. My AA group. And so he says, good. He said, Go to the chow hall, get you a big old bowl of that pork noodle casserole and wash it down with that glass of wine. He said, because that's where that glass of wine is going to take you. And he said, now you've played the tape out all the way to end. You feel okay? I said, yeah. He said, you think you got the point? I said, yeah, I got it. He said, good. He said, hang up the phone and go out and have fun. Go back to the party and have fun. Be a normal person. And that was it. Wow. That's the only time I ever had the thought. But the reason I tell you that story is that you can get sober and still find your why, get your why back. But it's not a guarantee that you can hold onto that why. But if you have a program of recovery and you're willing to work that program recovery, you get a sponsor and you work the steps. This is if you're an addict, man. If you're an addict and you're really, truly an addict, you need a program recovery. You need to get a sponsor, you need to work the steps. If you will do those things, you can not only keep your why, but you can expand on your why, and I guarantee you'll be able to keep it. My life is unbelievable. I have to pinch myself to make sure I'm not dreaming. And my sponsor told me, if you will work this program the way it's supposed to be worked, you will have to pinch yourself to make sure you're not dreaming. Every now and then he'll call me and say, hey, have you pinched yourself today? I'm like, yeah, I had to. You know, I've got a ton of perspective in life on what a bad day looks like, Gary. And I'm going to tell you something. Every day that I wake up, my feet don't hit the cold concrete floor of a prison cell. I'm having a pretty good day.

That's awesome, man. And you know, it almost feels like everybody should go through a 12 step program. Just in life, you know, the thing, the tools that you have now that you've learned can apply to anybody, not just an addict.

Absolutely. No, you hit the nail on the head. You stole my last piece of thunder from me just now. Because I was going to say everybody should be taught this in the first grade. Everybody should be taught that, hey, look, you know what? You're not the giant of your dreams. And you know, and you've got shortcomings. And if you put them out on paper, and talk to somebody about them. You realize how ridiculous some of these things sound. You can start working on them and that you're going to make mistakes and you're going to make. You're going to do things that are wrong and hurt people on the way. And when you do it, you say you're sorry and then you move on. Then you repeat the process every day of working all those steps every day. Because what we do all day long is we work the fourth step to the tenth step every day. We go back. And everybody should have that. And if everybody had that framework, life would be totally different on earth. And it's like me. I can just talk from me, from my perspective. I've never been in a position in my life to have a mature, adult relationship because I've always been selfish and it's always been about me. There's no way servant leadership would mean anything to a guy like me before all this, because all I served was myself. And I served drugs and vices, every vice I could, but it was when I was humble. And I truly think. This is why. I think it's God's hand in all this, Gary. Because if I don't get that life sentence, if I get like a 20 year sentence, and I know that because of, you know, the way sentencing goes, I've got to go to prison and stand on my head for two years and I'll get out. I wouldn't have made this change. I made this change because I got put at the very bottom with no hope and no prospect of ever getting out. But I knew that if I wanted to be that person on the outside when I got out one day, I had to become that person on the inside. Dabo Swinney, my buddy Dabbo. Dabbo and I have become close personal friends. Dabbo will tell his teammates, and he told me all the time, you bloom where you're planted, and it doesn't matter where you're planted, you can bloom wherever you are. And I got planted inside of a maximum security prison, the darkest place on earth. And I bloomed and I blossomed. And it wasn't because Damon west is just so amazing. It's because I allowed God to do what God does. Wow.

You know, the last thing. And I don't know if you're comfortable with this or not, but I'm curious if you're comfortable telling us about your wife.

Sure. Absolutely.

So how did you meet her? And how did all this go?

Met her through a friend. She's a nurse practitioner. And There was another friend of hers that was a nurse practitioner. I work at a law firm, we're working a medical malpractice case and her friend is a nurse practitioner, was answering some questions for me about that case and, and Kendall was there and I met her through a friend and you know, we started hanging out. We started dating at the time, a little six year old daughter. And you know, eventually I got to meet her daughter and then her daughter's name is Clara. And so I got to meet Clara. And you know, it's funny, in May, Kendall and I have been dating a little over a year and I got a lot of family coming in for graduation. And at this point, Kendall and I have a home together, we bought a home, but we haven't been married and we've talked about marriage. But Kendall's thing is like, look, you've got to get Clara on board for this, for this to work, you know, so I'm real nervous about it. It's May and I've got Clara in the front yard. So like the first couple days of May and graduation's coming up on the 17th and family, bunch of families coming to town. So I just get this crazy idea and I asked Claire in the front, Claire and I are doing some projects, she's seven at this point and we're doing something in the front yard. Glitter on poster board, everything's glitter with little seven year old girl. And so I asked Claire, I said, claire, listen, I said, what if I asked your mom to marry me and she became my wife, I became her husband and I became your stepdad. How would you feel about that? She jumped up, she was so excited and she said, damon, I've been wanting this for so long. And you know, she started repeating off to me before. The first time I met Clara when Kendall and I were dating, you know, Kendall said, hey, you're going to meet Claire this weekend. And so I ran to my office, my boss, it was in his office, got him, Chris Kirchman. And my boss is my best friend, man. He's, you know, he's the guy I've gone to since I've been out about, you know, I need to get a tailor. Where do I find a tailor? There's things that normal guys would know about, but a guy's been in prison doesn't, you know. And so Chris is my best friend. He has a daughter that was a senior in high school at the time. I said, Chris, I'm about to meet a six year old girl, what do I do? And he Said, oh, man, this is great. You're gonna have a great time. The best years, man. He said, just play with her. Just be your friend. And I told him, I said, you know, she's got a great father. It's not like I'm trying to audition to be your dad. He said, no, just be your friend. And he said, you know, play with her. Let her paint your nails, Let her put mud mask on you. You know, play pretty, pretty princess. Do all these different things that she likes. You know, tea parties, all this other stuff. And I did. I took Krista's advice and I played with Claire. I became her friend. Her mom told me, you know, Kendall told me, she's like, look, you know, she has a wonderful father. She doesn't need another dad. She needs you to be her friend, her role model, and to be there for her, to always be there for her. Let her know that you're always there for her and things will be just fine with you and Claire, you know, And I did that. And so when I'm asking Claire in front of the house in May about marrying her mom, she starts repeating to me. She's like, oh, my God, damn it, I've wanted this for so long. She's like, you taught me how to ride a bike. And she tells me all the different things, things we used to play, we played together. And she said, I'm going to go get mommy right now, and you could ask her to marry you right now. And so I'm like, whoa, that happened real fast. Here goes. A seven year old girl. She's got it in her mind. I didn't plan for that, Gary, because I didn't even have a ring on me. So I set my cell phone up and you can find this video online on YouTube if you. I mean, just. Just YouTube Damon west engagement. And it is literally the most priceless video. The way I set my phone up on the back of Kendall's cards, you were recorded. I was like, you know, might be one of those moments you want to catch. And Clara brings her mom out there and she's like, you know, mom, Damon has a question to ask you. This is what he wants to ask you. And she's like, you know, you can see the video. She's like, go ahead, do it. I'm like, I'm like, what do I say? So I get on one knee, I ask Kendall to marry me, and in the time I get my question out, would you marry me? And I'm waiting for Kendall's answer. Clara is jumping up and down saying, say yes. Say yes, mommy. Say yes. Say yes. It is the most precious video in the world, man. So, you know, I tell people all the time, Gary, that my life has so many good things happening in it. But on May 18, 2019, 10 years ago, 10 years to the day that I got sentenced to life in prison, the best part of my life happened. I became a husband and stepfather, and that is what life is all about. Life is all about those relationships we make along the way. And being that aware and being present for Kendall and Clara is a gift that I owe to recovery.

Wow, man, I got tears in my eyes just. Just thinking about you proposing there with their daughter, you know, background. I got two daughters, so I can just imagine what that's like.

And you got to see the video, man. You got to go to the video and check it out, and there's a couple more videos with it, man. Claire and I dancing, because we dance. We dance a lot. She loves dancing, so we dance in the living room all the time. And then there's a video of me saying my vows, because I said vows to Kendall at the wedding. I said vows to Clara, too, because I did a lot of research on, you know, stepdaughter vows and stepdad and stepdaughter and there. Man, you talk about tearjerkers, man. I can't even watch them. So, yeah, I'm not crying. You're crying.

I'm crying now. You know, you got me crying on this darn thing. Well, man, I appreciate you being here, Damon. I know we've gone a little bit over time, and I just, like, am so glad that you and I got to meet. Meet, and I got to hear your story, and I get to spread what you're doing to more and more people, because it's awesome, and it just needs to be told and need to be heard, and you're doing amazing work, and I'm just excited for you. Wow.

Thank you for the platform, the opportunity to share that story, because here it is, man. I'm always looking for that one person and the one person that needs hope, that one person needs to hear of someone being an example, what not to do, change their life around. I truly believe that your show is going to let me reach at least one person a day, and that's. That means my life was useful and my purpose is met today. Gary.

Oh, that's awesome, man. Thanks again, Damon, and have a great. Now I got to go, you know, blow my nose. Thanks to you. But I'm not crying.

You're crying.

That was awesome. I appreciate you, man. Thank you.

All right, Gary. Thanks a lot, man.

Take care.

Take care. Bye. Bye.