#19 - Damon Parker: Beat Out Loneliness by Leveling Up Your Mental Health

Chris Miller: And with that, we are officially live. So welcome to the dining room studio.

Damon Parker: Thanks for having me.

Chris Miller: Yeah, you made it. We've been excited to get together. And I was talking about the conference I was doing, but yesterday on my presentation, anytime I showed Sunny, they were like, oh, my gosh. So it's like, all I need to do is use the dog and that'll reel people in. But once I started talking about the actual content, I could tell they started checking out, checking, you know what I mean?

Damon Parker: Every fifth slide photoshop, a picture of them in there.

Chris Miller: Yeah. Um, so when did you first get involved with wrestling?

Damon Parker: Oh, man. Uh, 7th grade. I got a little bit of a late start compared to where most kids start now. But it was one of those things I had, um, a, uh, time in my life where it was like I was not very happy with the way things were going for me and saw the flyers hanging up in the hallway and thought that this was an opportunity to change a few things in my life. So I'm very grateful that I did.

Chris Miller: And did you have a really good coach at the jump, or was it middle school?

Damon Parker: Wrestling is kind of a different animal because it's a much shorter season. And so I had a guy named Dave Raider who was my coach, and he was great. And then he kind of developed that love for me, uh, for the sport. The difficult thing about it was I was terrible. Um, I didn't want to match 7th, 8th grade. And then kind of got to high school, got a little bit of hair on the chest, and kind of figured the thing out. Like, I wanted to quit after 7th grade, but my dad had just bought me wrestling shoes and he wouldn't let me. So I'm very grateful that he wouldn't let me, uh, back out of that thing when things got hard.

Chris Miller: So were you just getting pinned?

Damon Parker: Yeah, it was pretty terrible, man. I was not a huge fan of the sport. Uh, and also, my football coaches were like, you should wrestle and make you a better football player. And as it turned out, I ended up being a better wrestling football player.

Chris Miller: Wow. Uh, so wrestling is one of those sports. It's kind of like track. Whenever you lose. Whenever you lose, it's obvious. Whenever I did track, if I got blown out, the person would be finishing, people would be clapping, and I would still be running, trying to finish the race. So it's like whenever you get pinned, you're laying on your back and that guy's standing up and celebrating. So it's a different animal learning how to lose.

Damon Parker: It is, uh, and it's only on you. There's no help from anybody else. I mean, you got a coach in the corner, and now as a coach, that's one of the most frustrating things for me. Is it's like you can't do it for the kids, it's all on them. The way we explain it to people is like, every time that you go to a practice or you go to an offseason activity or you lift weights or whatever, you're putting a penny in the jar. And then when you go out there in the middle of that circle, there's nobody else that can help you. And you take your jar and you dump it out on the line and they dump their jar out and whoever has the most pennies usually wins.

Chris Miller: Oh, gosh. So it's those reps that you put in. So you start wrestling 7th grade?

Damon Parker: 7Th, yes, sir.

Chris Miller: And then you get better at wrestling than you are football. Was that a surprise to you?

Damon Parker: Um, if you would have asked 9th grade me, it was when I would be better at I would have told you football. But as I went through my high school career, I had a fantastic high school wrestling coach, Lee Woodford. Uh, and he knew what makes high school kids tick and what motivates them, and he put me in a position to be successful.

Chris Miller: So favorite high school wrestling moment.

Damon Parker: Oh, gosh. Um, I would probably have to say, uh, watching I had a teammate that won a high school national championship and had a come from behind win in, I think we were in Pittsburgh for that one. And that was a pretty special thing because that's not something you see every day. Wow.

Chris Miller: So, best racer in the nation.

Damon Parker: Yeah. Scott Coleman, he went on, he was an, uh, All American for Iowa State University down the road. Wow.

Chris Miller: Did you ever wrestle Scott?

Damon Parker: I did. He was one of my practice partners and he beat the tar out of me just about every day, which is that's one of the things about our sport is you don't get better by pounding on people, you get better by being pounded on. And even though I had 50 pounds on the guy, he pounded on me pretty much every day.

Chris Miller: Because it's all about technique.

Damon Parker: Right, indeed. Yeah. I mean, if you've got, uh, you just got to have that elusive combination of physical attributes and techniques, strength, speed, quickness, all of those things kind of roll together. And Scott had all those men.

Chris Miller: So who's the Michael Jordan when it comes to wrestling?

Damon Parker: M, it depends on who you talk to. Uh, Kyle Digg, Jordan Burrows, guys like that. Uh, I would probably say Jordan Burrows just because he's been so dominant for so long.

Chris Miller: Mhm, I didn't know anything about wrestling, but I heard about Jordan Burrows and then I went and I looked up his highlight tapes and I didn't know the rules about wrestling, but I could tell he was dominating.

Damon Parker: Right.

Chris Miller: Yeah. He's just so fast and so big.

Damon Parker: And he's a great example for our kids, too, because you think of someone that's a multiple time Olympic champ. Ah, world champ. All this stuff that they have to been just this phenome since they were little and no. Jordan Burrows wrestled in Nebraska and was a one time high school state champ. He started coming into his own his senior year in high school. Uh, and then from there, just by putting in just an unimaginable amount of work and fine tuning his craft, he became the greatest of all time.

Chris Miller: And now he's, like you said, Mr. USA, when it comes to wrestling. So you shared a cool fact with me. You shared that you were the first coach to win men's and women's state championship for a high school team in.

Damon Parker: The same year our school was. Yes, sir. Uh, first one in the United States. It's rare that you get the opportunity to do something that's, like, truly historic. And there's something that I love about being the first to do something. We've had a lot to do, uh, a lot of opportunities to do that with the advent of our girls wrestling program, and that was one of those very cool moments for us. Within 48 hours, winning two state championships doesn't happen very often.

Chris Miller: Yeah. So do you coach, like, girls and boys differently? What's that like?

Damon Parker: Yeah, you have to, um, just for the main reason is we have so many more newcomers on the girls side. On the boys side, we had and I don't coach the boys anymore, but we have so many of the kids in that program have been wrestling since they were little. They've been in my system for a while. With the girls program, especially that first year, we had 62 girls come out, and only one of them had ever set foot on a wrestling mat before. So, um, on the girls side, we tend to try to be a lot better at some very specific things. Uh, that first year, we called it our big 15. On the boys side, there are literally hundreds of thousands of variations on wrestling moves that you can do. On the girls side, we showed them 15 and that was it. And we got really stinking good at those 15. And that was good enough for our beginning girls to beat 85% of their opponents, because we were just so solid. Fundamentally. Now, that wasn't enough for us to beat those girls that have been wrestling since they were in second grade. But at the same time, our first year kid probably wasn't going to beat that kid anyway, so we just kind of played the numbers, and it's like, okay, let's get really solid in these positions. And then every year, we open up the playbook just a little bit more, because now we're starting to get that foundation of girls that have wrestled for a while now. At the same time, it's like people hear, oh, you've got so many girls on the team. What an advantage. It's like, well, yes and no. Yes, because it gives us depth. But at the same time, every single year, half of the girls on the team have never done it before. So we have to go at a pretty slow pace at the beginning of the year. And we can't give the individualized attention that every other school can give to their experienced, uh, wrestlers.

Chris Miller: Um, because such a large quantity, it's kind of like, we got to make sure we don't compromise on quality.

Damon Parker: Right.

Chris Miller: Yeah.

Damon Parker: And you never know which one of those first year kids that comes in the room, m is going to end up being one of your stars. We had that happen every single year. So it's like, you can't ignore the new ones, but at the same time, you don't want to ignore the veterans that have been around for a while. So it's a delicate balancing act.

Chris Miller: Yeah. How do you recognize potential and capitalize on that?

Damon Parker: It's really hard to explain. Um, your listeners that are wrestling people, they get it. Um, you can just look at someone and you can say, they move like a wrestler, they fall the right way, uh, their footwork moves a certain direction, and you can just kind of tell. We had this girl named Ashley this year that she walked in and on the second day of practice, I caught her on the way out of the room. I was like, have you done this before? Did you wrestle for another school? And she's like, no. And she ended up placing fourth at state this year. Like, having no experience whatsoever coming into the year, which is, uh, pretty unheard of.

Chris Miller: Yeah. They just have that out of the box.

Damon Parker: Right.

Chris Miller: They have that certain skill set that aligns with what's needed, for sure. Yeah. And I hear a lot of churches or not churches, a lot of coaches say you can't teach work ethic. Like, the talented person can get beat by the harder worker. Do you see that?

Damon Parker: Uh, somewhat. I think everybody has their own set point. Uh, I've heard some people say, well, you can't teach work ethic or you can't teach speed. You can't teach quickness.

Chris Miller: Right.

Damon Parker: In a way, I think that's kind of a cop out. Uh, you can improve in those areas no matter who you are. And sometimes it takes a little bit more mental conditioning with some kids to get them to that spot. But, uh, if you've got a kid that, again, out of the box, has a higher work ethic, then that's going to be a little easier. But there's no kid that you can't teach to invest more in themselves.

Chris Miller: Yeah. It's kind of like just teaching them that it matters.

Damon Parker: Exactly.

Chris Miller: Yeah. That it's worth it. And oftentimes they don't get that from somebody else. One of the things I'm curious about and I'm asking a lot of wrestling questions because I'm curious about wrestling. And I have, like, a mastermind right here, so I better tap into it, but with basketball or with football, you will have scout teams, and they will replicate the playing style of who you're about to play. With wrestling, do you know in advance who you're about to wrestle? And if so, do you have people replicate their style?

Damon Parker: Uh, not so much when we get to the postseason, yes. But during the season, they seed out every individual tournament. So you've got a general idea of who's going to be there, but you don't know when you're going to match up with them. So we spend probably the first seven eighths of the season focusing on us, and then when we get to regionals and state and we have a good idea of who we're going to wrestle in what order, then we start focusing on our opponents a little bit.

Chris Miller: Yeah, totally. And then what's been your favorite moment as a coach?

Damon Parker: Uh, man, that's a tough one.

Chris Miller: Um, is that harder than the wrestler? Like me asking you your favorite moment as a wrestler?

Damon Parker: Yeah. Uh, that one's really difficult because a lot of those moments come in the losses that we've had, where we see girls that interesting. Ah, gorgeous old guys. Um, we had a match this year where we've got this one girl named Tayani who's just she's a bulldog, man, and she weighs about 150 pounds, and she's wrestling 170 and very oversized, but she's every bit as strong as anybody. And she's wrestling this girl. They got third at state last year in the finals at this one tournament, and Tayoni just starts throwing her all over the gym, establishes a big lead, then the other girl has a dramatic comeback, and we have a chance to win it as time's expiring, but we lose ten to nine. And as she's coming off the mat throughout that whole match, our whole team is on the sideline, everybody's pounding on the mat, screaming for and she comes off the mat after losing and just gets mobbed by her teammates with a big group hug. Gets carried off the mat, and it's like, when do you see that in other sports? When a pitcher gives up a base hit to lose a game, or quarterback throws an interception and then gets carried off the field? That doesn't happen. And we get those moments a lot, especially in girls wrestling. Um, we had one that was pretty special this year, Addie Brocksman, um, who is the all time career pins and wins record, and she has a bunch of other career statistics that are state records in Kansas. And she lost a match at State like, she was the favorite to win a state title, uh, as a senior, and took an upset in second round, I think. And then you come back the next day, work your way through the backside of the bracket, and going for third and fourth place. She was wrestling the same girl that beat her the previous day and ended up scoring a pin for us, which that secured the state championship. And so it was, uh, like, you have that moment. And another great thing about our sport, man, you have that moment where it's like everything that I've worked for for the last four years gets ripped out from underneath me. When she got caught and got pinned by this girl on the first day, because once you lose one, there's no way you can win a title. Ah. I just told her at that match, I was like, you have a decision to make, and you're the only one that can make it. You can either tuck M tail and run, or you can stay in battle. And she did exactly what we thought she would do. She stayed in, battled, and then comes all the way back. And in that match for third place, she pins that gal, which then secured a team state championship for us. So it's like the wrestling gods, the universe, whatever you want to call it, had that plan in place for her so that she could have that one moment where she's the one that gets carried off the mat and the whole place just goes absolutely bonkers for roof blew off the place. It was awesome, man. Um, so, yeah, very pleased that she got to have her moment.

Chris Miller: And it's despite her failing in that one moment, or losing, really, it wasn't a grand failure because she came back.

Damon Parker: Right.

Chris Miller: And do you have speeches prepared whenever people lose?

Damon Parker: I don't. No. Because every situation is different, every kid's different. You have to respond to them in different ways. And I don't have anything in the chamber, because a lot of times those losses come at the least, or, uh, when you least expect them. And so you just kind of kind of read the situation, read the kid, and lean on your past relationship with them and let them know what they need to know in that moment. A lot of times, it's just, don't go break anything. Because people aren't when you have that short term traumatic moment where, um, something that in your 18 year old eyes is not great, that just happened to you, you're not in a place to receive coaching a lot of times, so don't go break anything. Give them five minutes, and then once they've kind of calmed down a little bit, then we try to get really curious about why what happened just happened and what we can do to correct it in the future. Yeah.

Chris Miller: Uh, that's really good word. Don't go break anything. Yeah, that's a good response as a coach. There's this NBA playoffs right now, and the Milwaukee Bucks were expected to win at all, and they just lost to Miami Heat underdogs for one. They only got one win, and they lost four times. So in the post interview, you got the star of the Milwaukee Bucks, Janice, and he's answering these questions, and a reporter asks him, do you consider this a failure? And he got a little emotional about it, and he was thinking about it because he said, really, in his mind, there's no failure in sports. It's all different steps to Success, because two years ago, they won the national championship. And he said, prior to that, we hadn't won the national championship for 50 years. Do you want to consider those 50 years a failure? Or was it steps to success where we ultimately won the national championship?

Damon Parker: Smart.

Chris Miller: Yeah. And it's hard to think like that in the moment, but truly, with sports and really any creative endeavor, it's like the stuff that you're not going to win all the time. Like, Michael Jordan played 15 seasons and won six. So he lost the national championship more than he won, yet we still consider him the goat. So that's interesting.

Damon Parker: It is. Yeah. Ah, and we experienced that last year. Girls wrestling starts the 2019 2020 season. We won a state championship. We won another one the next year. Last year, we got second. And it is really hard to reframe for high school kids. It's like most coaches are blessed are blessed if they ever bring home a trophy from a state tournament. I know a lot of coaches that have coached for 40 years and never once even sniffed a second place trophy. And it's like, here's this monumental achievement that you guys had, but yet everybody's walking around like the dog just got hit. It's hard to keep perspective there sometimes, but yeah, just because you don't win doesn't mean that you didn't learn invaluable lessons along the way and yeah. And that you you didn't cultivate relationships that you didn't have before and strengthen the ones that you already had. Um, I will never attach the value of one of my teams to the size of the trophy that they bring home. I've had some really successful teams in the past, um, that, quite frankly, probably didn't develop in some of those interpersonal areas as much as I would have liked them to. Um, and I've had some teams that weren't great, and gosh, they were fun to be around, and it was such a valuable experience for everybody. So it really depends on where you are in your life, but it's super important to keep perspective there. Yeah.

Chris Miller: Ah. I've been on teams where we're winning, but it's almost boring. It's almost like, is this it? We won. We even blew them out. But still, this can't be it. And then you get on those teams where there's friendships, you get on those teams where you can tell you're actually growing as a person, and then you're like, you lose, but you leave thinking like, hey, I've improved the quality of my life, though. Right. Um, one of the things I was thinking about whenever Ku lost this year, they weren't supposed to lose. They got beat early on the March Madness and people were really sad. And it's like we just won the national championship. Okay?

Damon Parker: Right.

Chris Miller: There are teams who are celebrating making it into the playoffs for the first time ever in school history. But we're being sad that we didn't win the whole thing. So it's cool to be sad about that. But at the same time, recognizing how lucky you are if you ever win at all is really important.

Damon Parker: For sure. Yeah. And it's like whenever I have a kid that takes a loss, or a team that takes a loss, uh, to try to reframe it, it's like, who won your weight last year? Who won state at your weight? And they never know. And it's like, okay, well, who won that match? That happened right before your match. I don't know. When paying attention, I was like, it was right in front of you, and you didn't even know nobody. A year from now, five years from now, is going to remember that you lost this M match, except for you and maybe your mom and dad. So are you getting something out of this experience overall? If so, then it's worth doing whether you get your hand raised or you don't.

Chris Miller: Yeah. And that's good to have, especially when you win, too, because I think you're like hot stuff. But it's like nobody's going to remember that.

Damon Parker: Nobody cares.

Chris Miller: Yeah. In a week, your, uh, friend's going to be worried about what he's going to get his girlfriend for a date or something. You know what I mean? That idea of you being the champ, um, in the old school Olympics, way back in Greece, they did their, what, the crowns with, like, ivy or whatever it was to symbolize, hey, this is going to be dead soon. It's not going to be fresh forever. But for the parade, it looked green, it looked beautiful, but a few weeks later, it's brown because it's like, hey, so temporary, right? So, so temporary. So all that being said, but now you're traveling around the state speaking full time, which is a change. But how'd you get involved in that?

Damon Parker: Oh, man, it's a long story. But, um, the recap is I'd done a good deal of professional speaking when I was still teaching. Didn't, um, coach anything during the spring or during the summer, so that I had the opportunity to do that a little bit. And then it kind of dovetailed a little bit with Cody, um, Foster over at Advisors Excel, who had this vision for starting up this nonprofit for mental health and suicide prevention. And we had gone out to a few lunches back and forth and kind of kicked around ideas on what this thing might look like. And, uh, he's been the driving force behind making this happen. And with his help and, uh, Fat Holsted, who has also given me a ton of great advice there, we've been able to accomplish in eight months what it would have taken me eight years to do on my own. And this thing has really taken off to the point where we're probably going to need to add some people here. We got a board meeting here or board retreat here in June where we're going to get some real clarity on where this thing is going to go because quite frankly, it's taken off quite a bit faster than we thought that it would.

Chris Miller: Uh so what is the Jones project?

Damon Parker: Okay, the Jones Project is named after a pillar here in the Topeka community who died by suicide on March 5 of 2021. And the catalyst for that I did not know Josh Jones. Um, the first time that I think we were in the same room together was at his funeral. But that was what he worked with my wife at Advisors Excel. And so I went to be supportive for her, but in that moment, just kind of had my moment of clarity that if I didn't make some changes in my life, it wouldn't be long until my family were in the same position. And so we made some of those changes, had to step away from some things that were very important to me. Um, I invested a decade of my life in the coach on our boys wrestling program and I was spread way too thin and putting way too much pressure on myself. And you couple that with the preexisting mental health conditions that I had going on and it wasn't a good recipe. And so from that point, that's why I started meeting with Cody. Uh, and we kind of pointed the compass in the right direction. And so what the idea behind the Jones Project is early intervention with secondary students in the state of Kansas, so middle schools and high schools. And so I kind of view myself as the tip of the spear. And what we decided was, let's use my skill set of the things that I'm fairly good at, which are connecting with kids and being on stage with microphone. And so we started going around and I view myself as kind of the tip of the spear. I'm there to get the kids to realize that, yes, this is something that's real. This is something that affects the people that are sitting in your row right now that you have no idea, because just like me, they got really good at hiding it. And this is something that you're going to need to address at some point in your life. And the sooner you do it, the better you will be down the road. Um, if you're one of those people that struggles with your mental health, if you were to go to a school where we've got 2000 students or 20 in a graduating class, the majority of the presentation is going to be the same because the majority of it is my story. And your story doesn't change. Um, but then with the other 15 minutes. We try to really highlight the tiers of intervention that they have going on at that school, the processes that a kid that were struggling, that needed to get the ball rolling with getting help, what they would go through, because that looks different at every school that we go to. So we collaborate with administration and the counseling department at each one of these schools and go out and see how we can be best of service. And so the majority of the time, that's me going giving an hour presentation, hang with kids afterwards, whoever wants to hang, and we just stay there. On those days when I do a presentation, I tell them, the day that I come visit your school is your day, so you can utilize me however you would like to. So some days I'll finish my presentation and two or three kids want to talk afterwards. And some days there's a line out of the auditorium and I'll stay for three or 4 hours after I get done. It really just depends. Um, but, yeah, the cool thing about it is, with Cody's backing, and with the backing of all the connections that we've gotten through the topeka community, through the advisors, Excel community, um, we are a true nonprofit in every sense of the word. We don't charge a penny for what we do. And I think that's one of the reasons why it's been able to take off so fast is because schools have limited budgets, and it's really difficult for them to bring in a really high quality, paid professional speaker to come talk to their kids. And with what we're doing, everybody can afford free. So this is just a matter of them clearing their schedule, moving some things around a little bit. And we've had a really positive response so far.

Chris Miller: Wow. Yeah. Whenever I learned that you don't charge anyone to come speak there, I was like, no surprise that it's growing so fast.

Damon Parker: Right.

Chris Miller: You know what I mean? Because these administrators and these teachers can recognize I had a high, uh, school biology teacher on here whenever it was just starting, and he talked about how the hardest part about teaching it wasn't about getting the content into their heads. It's about whenever the kids show up, he can tell they're bringing all the stuff that they're dealing with at home as well. And you can't separate that. Right. And if we get so good at separating that, at compartmentalizing it, then we got to deal with it later. Just like you said, we get really good at hiding it, and that kind of shoots us in the foot later on. So you mentioned that you share your story, and then you mentioned you talk about tears and intervention. What's the presentation look like? What are you talking about? For the most part?

Damon Parker: Well, I tell kids on the front end, I give everybody the same standard disclaimer. Um, I'm not a mental. Health professional. I'm just an old PE teacher that happens to be good with a microphone. When I ask a kid what I do for a living, a lot of times I'll get the answer. Oh, you're a motivational speaker. I mean, kind of. I'm not really trying to motivate you. What I'm trying to do is make connections with you. Um, my job title, self titled, I guess, is I'm a Storyteller. That's it. And I tell stories about myself, the mistakes that I've made, the adventures I've had, and the adventures and interactions I've had with kids I've worked with for the last 20 years. And hopefully, through these stories, you can make some kind of connection to your life that will be beneficial for you. And so, um, the things that we talk about the most, again, tell kind of the stories that illustrate what this looks like for someone who's accomplished a lot of those things that the kids want to accomplish. Ah, I'm like, yeah, this is what it looks like for the captain of the football team, and this is what it looks like for that state champ, division one athlete, whatever. And this is real. And there's a whole lot that goes into that. And then at the end not the end, but towards the back half of the presentation, we tell them that there are essentially three critical steps. And, of course, there are stories that go along with these. And for a kid in that age group, like the things that I think that are most valuable for them to know, critical step number one is understanding that if you're struggling with this thing, you're not alone in the way that you feel. Um, because our brains can be tricksters, because we know intellectually that, yeah, of course other people struggle with this kind of stuff, but our brains can convince us that, oh, no, your situation is so different. There's nobody else that could possibly understand. And so we try to illustrate to kids that you're not alone in the way that you feel. And then the second key point that we try to get them to understand is that you're not alone. I didn't tell my wife about this thing for the first 16 years that we were married, uh, because, again, like most people in my situation, we get pretty good at hiding it. And I had a kid wants to make, man, there's no way that you could have kept that a secret from your wife, the person you love, person you live with. And it's like, man, that's baloney. Because people in our situation, we get really good at reading other people's social cues. We know what they want to hear, what they don't want to hear, and we get really good at hiding it. And I tell all my audiences, that the only thing that I regret out of this whole entire process, because even the really down or dark time, I learned a lot from that. But my only regret was that I didn't tell Lindsay sooner because she was right there ready to help me out. She's been the most supportive and loving person in my entire life. And the only reason that I regret not telling her sooner is because I don't think that I was as good of a husband or as good of a father as I could have been had I told her about this thing 15 years earlier, and we could have addressed some of these issues. So, um, the first critical step we tell them is, you're not alone the way you feel. The second one is you're not alone in the fight. And the third one is, to them, not understanding, but knowing that things can and will get better. But you got to put in the work. Anything that's worth having in your life takes work, and being mentally healthy is worth the work. And it's one of those things where I tell them and this is just my own personal opinion, but I refuse to tell kids the old standby phrase of it's okay to not be okay because I don't believe that. Um, I know that's probably a dissenting opinion, but at the same time, it's like, of course there are elements to that that are true. Of course it's okay to not be okay, but we can't be okay with sitting there. We got to find a way to get to a place where we are okay. And then we start talking about different tools that they can use and how you need to take a multipronged appro approach. There's not a magic pill that's going to all of a sudden make you better. Uh, that can be a part that can be one of your tools. But putting in work doesn't mean you go get a prescription. Putting in work means that you develop what I call a healthy obsession with getting better. Because if you're really struggling with your mental health, there is nothing else in your life that's more important than getting that in the right place. It's just that, uh, you're not alone the way you feel. You're not alone in the fight, and there's hope, and things can and will get better, but you got to put.

Chris Miller: In the work now. I want to go to a presentation.

Damon Parker: You're welcome anytime. Come on in.

Chris Miller: I'll join your crew, and I'll just run to the crowd and sit down in the back.

Damon Parker: Do it. We have visitors all the time. We'd love to have you.

Chris Miller: Okay, cool. We'll set that up. You had mentioned 16 years ago you would have shared with your wife 16 years early. Now, was there a breakthrough moment? What was that breakthrough moment where you finally did share with her?

Damon Parker: It was after Josh's funeral when I just again had kind of that moment of clarity where it was like I've kind of hinted at it for a while, um, from probably 2018 to 2021, and tried to handle it all on my own and realized eventually at Josh's funeral that was like, this is something that I can't handle on my own. M I need to enlist help of other people and I need to take the coaching that I give to my athletes. I need to take it myself, which sometimes that's a tough thing for coaches to do, but I found that a lot of the advice that I give them is pretty useful if I would put it to work for myself. Yeah, it is. I don't want to say it was a do as I say, not as I do situation, but at the same time, there are some things that I should have been doing that I told my athletes to do quite a bit. So I was very glad that I finally got to I mean, I hate how we had to get there, but at the same time very happy. I was finally humble enough to take some of my own advice and put it into play.

Chris Miller: So what were you dealing with?

Damon Parker: Uh, just, ah, a lot of, uh, impostor syndrome type stuff. Uh, that was crushing at times. A lot of we'll stay up and work till three in the morning because if I don't get this one thing done, then these people are going to be upset with me and then they're probably going to be upset with me anyway. And just, um, substance abuse issues, things like that. They're kind of all if you look at warning signs on a website, then I checked a lot of those boxes. It was a long process, uh, but we're definitely taking steps in the right direction. It's one of those things I tell kids, if you're really struggling with mental health issues, it's kind of like a boxing match and a boxing match that you can't win, but you can defend yourself. So in this boxing match that you can't win, but you can defend yourself self. If, uh, you keep putting in the work, you become a better and better boxer and you can knock this thing to the mat for an eight count and it's always going to get back up again eventually, but maybe its knees are a little wobbular and you can unload on it again and knock it back down. So it's going to pop up here and there. They're going to be trigger moments for you, but as long as you put in the work and you've given yourself strategies and supportive people around you to help you, when that thing pops back up, then it becomes easier and easier to knock it back down again.

Chris Miller: Yeah. Dang, that's such a good analogy. Because despite how socially connected we are, or healthy we are, or physically fit, or great at being vulnerable, there are still disasters where all of a sudden, everything that you had in order hits the chaotic frenzy. Now, you mentioned the dark times and the dark moments, what were those like for you?

Damon Parker: Gosh, man. Uh, that's really tough. In 2018, we had a particularly difficult wrestling season. And this was one of those where we went into the wrestling state championship finals and we had seven kids that were wrestling medal matches, and all seven of them won. We went seven, and including three state champions. And that just doesn't happen. And so it's like, oh my gosh, we're actually going to win state. This would have been the first one. And keep in mind, seven years earlier, we finished last in the state. So, uh, we had this meteoric turnaround. And I shouldn't say meteoric, it was more like turning around an aircraft carrier, which next time. Uh, but it was finally like that moment where it's like, we're going to win a state championship and all this work was worth it. There was another school that had four kids in the finals, and that was it. And the only way that they could have beaten us was if all four of those kids won by pin in the finals, which doesn't happen. Guess what happened next?

Chris Miller: A lot of pins.

Damon Parker: Yeah, all four of them won by fall. And we ended up losing state by a point and a half. So out of a two day tournament, this was, uh the analogy I give people is imagine you're on a football team that's behind by two with 2 seconds left on the clock, and you try to kick a 60 yard field goal to win it, and it dinks off the upright. That's how close we were to win in a state title. And it was like, this was absolutely the best team I ever had. We graduated a bunch of seniors, and it was just that crushing realization. And this is back before we won any state championship. So I was still in that mode of chasing trophies like all coaches, I think, go through at some point. And it was just like that moment of this was the best team that we're ever going to have. And even with this best team, we're never going to win it. And so this past decade worth of work was, uh, it's start telling yourself all the nonsense like, it wasn't worth it and you're a failure, and all this kind of stuff. I didn't get out of bed for five days, something like that. And it got to the point where my wife was like, hey, you got to get your butt out of bed, go back to work and pull yourself together here. Um, when you ask about what did the dark times look like, a lot of times it was that kind of stuff. Um, but a lot of wait until everybody else goes to bed and then just kind of have my own little freak out moments. I was good at punting it down the road until I, uh, was by myself. Honestly, it's tough to remember sometimes, because that's kind of stuff that you block.

Chris Miller: Out, it's that self presentation. We want to present ourselves, particularly with athletics and coaching and leadership. You got to be the guy who's unshakable. You have to be the one who, despite the biggest opposition and the most strenuous adversity, he never faltered. And you hear that and you want to be that person. But when you get down to it and you take a big fat L, you're like, man, it's like that. It don't matter how hard you get hit, if you get back up.

Damon Parker: Exactly. It's funny, man, because I go around and I speak in all these schools, and usually the teachers and the staff, they're in there also. I don't think there's been a school I've been to yet where I haven't had some coach come up to me and be like, thank you. I needed to hear that, because I think we all go through that where we think we have to put up this public facing facade of this impeccable human being. And now that I don't do that anymore, I'm an infinitely better coach. I have better connections with my kids, just because I think that vulnerability builds trust. And when kids understand that, yeah, you're going to forget things as coach, uh, you're going to make mistakes and you're a human being, then they're a lot more likely to open up with you about the mistakes that they've made and things that they're worried about, things of that nature. So, yeah, if I had any advice to give coaches out there, it would be, stop being fake, man. Talk to your kids like they're human beings. Act like you're not perfect and let them see the human side of you. And when they do that, or when you do that, then possibilities are endless with kids.

Chris Miller: Yeah. Quit being fake.

Damon Parker: Yeah, exactly. Which we all do to some degree. But I think coaches probably do it more than most humans, and maybe other people in position of leadership do, too.

Chris Miller: How do you deal with weight management and weight cutting?

Damon Parker: I take a different approach. When, um, I first started at Washman Roll, uh, again, we weren't very good at that time. Uh, I should at least say we had some work to do. Um, and so my approach was, we're not going to out athlete anybody right now. And so what we need to do is we need to train completely differently, take a different approach on pretty much everything. Because if we're teaching different techniques that other people are using, then they're not drilling against those things every day. And we got a chance at those working. If my team shoots double eggs, his team shoots double eggs. That team has been doing it for longer, is going to be better at it. So we had to come up with some unique things. One of those was our weight management. Um, I've taken a different approach than a lot of coaches. And I tell kids, like, I'm not going to tell you what weight class you need to go to. I will give you my objective opinion and I will lay out all the facts, and then you make the choice. And that's one of the beautiful things about our sport, is I don't have to pick out a starting lineup. The kids determine it because they just challenge each other for the varsity spots. And sometimes there are some feelings that get hurt a little bit, because if a kid drops down and takes somebody else's spot away, that was a senior, that's not good for the senior. But at the same time, that's the nature of the beast. And so I've always told kids, you're going to choose your weight class. And if you choose one that is significantly lower than what you weigh right now, you're going to need my approval to do that. I know a lot of places out there, they got kids that suck a ton of weight. And it's just I did that when I was in high school, and it is not fun and it doesn't make it an enjoyable experience. And so I'd rather not bring home a trophy from State and have my kids enjoy the experience than have Susie cut to this weight class and Sally cut to that way class. And plus, I find that I think kids wrestle better when they've got gas in the tank, when they didn't spend the whole night previous in the sauna. And so especially on the girl side, man, because there are certain times of the month where they're going to retain more water than other times. And if you're wrestling at your natural weight and you don't have to worry about sucking off some of that water weight at the last minute, then that makes that whole process a lot easier. Um, and again, more enjoyable. So we might have one or two that lose a pound, two pounds, whatever, throughout the year, which is not a big deal. That's one hard practice. But it's very rare when we have someone that's like, all right, Coach, I'm going to go down 20 pounds from where I started the year. Um, and sometimes they tell me that, and I don't know, you're not that's not going to happen because it's not safe for you.

Chris Miller: Yeah. Do you see that? Like, you did it whenever you're younger, big weight cuts. And did you have a negative relationship with food or was there any lasting impact?

Damon Parker: None whatsoever. Um, in fact, it was a beneficial thing. I was talking with my younger brother, um, Olin Parker, who was also a wrestler for Manhattan High School back in the day. And he did a much bigger weight cut than I did. I remember asking him, like, was it worth it? Would you do it again? And he was like, I hated every second of it. And I can attest to this. Everything he said he was like, I hated every second of it, but at the same time, it taught me what I was capable of. And now he runs ultra marathons, and.

Chris Miller: He'S like, free gaffe endurance athlete.

Damon Parker: Yeah. And I would agree with that assessment. It did not give me any kind of negative, um, association with food or anything like that. But, uh, what it did was taught me how to keep things under control. And so you won't find me in a sauna anymore or anything like that, or wearing a plastic suit or any of those crazy things we did back in the 90s. Um, I can feel myself when I'm getting a little bit, uh, on the soft side, and I can get back into the gym, and I take care of what I need to take care of, make adjustments to the diet, all.

Chris Miller: That kind of stuff.

Damon Parker: And that's another common misconception with our sport. And I hear it from parents. It's like, I know this one gal from a PE class. I try to recruit her to wrestle, and she said, oh, my mom won't let me because she doesn't want me to develop an eating disorder. What we found is it's quite the opposite. We've got girls that had no idea how to manage their diet. They're eating absolute garbage. They come into our program and realize kind of how this thing works. And we've had girls completely transform their bodies. Had a girl that came to us that, uh, weighed 254 pounds on her, uh, initial weigh in with us her junior year, and now she's wrestling in college at 167. And she's not doing any kind of crash diet nonsense or anything like that. She just learned healthy ways to eat, and I think just got tired of being a bigger person. And you see her now, and she looks phenomenal, and it's like she did that all on her own. Just with the, uh in a four year process, she lost a human being. And it's just by developing a positive relationship with food, realizing that it's fuel and not a coping mechanism, which that's something that I still struggle with every once in a while.

Chris Miller: Yeah. The takeaway there is it sounds like it gives them that nutritional competency of, like, knowing nutrition wise, energy wise, there's only so much we can get. That's a bang for our buck. I love chips. I love salty things, but I also have a sweet tooth. So my goal has been to bulk up. Right. Yet I can't really do that unless I'm consistently cleanly eating and being intentional about everything I'm, um, putting into the tank. And I know that with athletics, we have to double down. So that's good that you talk about that, because I've heard that same thing.

Damon Parker: Right? Yeah. Uh, all of the girls that come into our program, for the most part, are going to lose some weight. Reason being, you go from your normal existence to now all of a sudden burning 1500 more calories per day at practice. You're going to lose some weight naturally. Um, but yeah, we just absolutely don't encourage the old school vision quest type nonsense that people used to do when we didn't know any better.

Chris Miller: Yeah, it was women's wrestling growing.

Damon Parker: It's the fastest growing sport, uh, regardless of gender, regardless of season in the United States, it's exploding. Yeah. Our participation numbers in Kansas have increased 600% since the first year.

Chris Miller: Why is ah, that?

Damon Parker: Just because girls are realizing that it's such an empowering sport and it's so entertaining. Girls wrestling is probably more entertaining than boys at this point because it's more high flying. And boys, you get two guys that have been doing it since they were four years old and a lot of times you're not going to see a lot of scoring in that match because they're kind of cat and mouse game. But with girls, they let it rip, man. And it's very fun to watch. And so I think our girls are realizing that, hey, we can do this thing too. I, ah, think that was the biggest change for us. And this is other advice that I give to other coaches as well. For the first eight years that I coached boys wrestling, but girls were allowed to wrestle if they wanted to. I could probably count on one hand the amount of girls that came and wrestled for us. But the second I, uh, split it and it got approved to have girls stand alone, it was like, all right, we're not going to do what most schools are going to do. I think most schools do is they kind of open the door and like, hey, if any girls want to wrestle, come on in. Totally. But they don't really invest in it. With our girls, it was like, uh, all right, we're going to have a different practice time, a different coaching staff, different uniforms, different logo. This is your team. And once we told them it was like a thing of their own, then they just started flooding in because it was something that they obviously wanted to do. And then once word gets out, they're like, hey, this is awesome. You guys should try that. Not just at our school, but all over the place. It's just blowing up. And it is so cool to see around the state now. We tried to be pioneers in having our standalone, uh, girls coaching staff and now you're seeing that everywhere, which, uh, we knew is inevitable, uh, because this thing is going to continue to grow and girls wrestling will save boys wrestling because boys wrestling numbers nationwide were dwindling. And I saw it as an opportunity to play the long game because if you go into our kids club room, most of those kids that are in there, the boys, their dads wrestle like dads just get their kids involved in the sport because they see what it gave to them. Um, but moms didn't moms were the ones that didn't want their kids to wrestle because they didn't want their babies to get hurt. But now, if I can bring 60 girls into our room every year, teach them to develop a love for the sport, their kids are going to wrestle their boys and their girls. And selfishly, if half of those girls on our team end up in the Topeka community and some of them end up in Southwest Topeka, like, I'll get to coach their kids someday. And so we're trying to play the long game, but I think that's how girls wrestling is going to save guys. In fact, that all of these girls out here that are loving this thing are now going to eagerly get both their sons and daughters eventually into the sport rather than not wanting them to participate down the road.

Chris Miller: That's awesome.

Damon Parker: Yeah. They're saving the sport, man. It's really cool to see.

Chris Miller: I had not expected that. Is there university programs?

Damon Parker: Absolutely. Yeah. Um, there are so many out there. It's like as part of the National Wrestling Coach Association, we get weekly updates or whatever, and every week I get an update on a new school that's adding a girls wrestling program. Uh, women's wrestling is saving Olympic sports at the collegiate level as well, because back in the 90s, when, uh, title nine stuff started really popping off, these school administrators were to meet proportionality. What they were doing was they were cutting men's Olympic programs that were non revenue generating sports. And then all of a sudden, like, early two thousand s I don't know who started the trend, but some genius administrator was like, wait a minute, we've already got a wrestling room. We've already got wrestling mats. We get more people enrolled in our school if we start up this girls wrestling program. Um, all we got to do really is buy uniforms and find a coach. And so it kind of started spiraling there and now it's just blown up. Uh uh. I tell girls there are very few guarantees in life. But one of the guarantees that I can make you with this sport, I can't guarantee you're going to win a state championship. But I can guarantee if you come to me and you wrestle for two, three, four years, and you do all the things that we ask you to do and you get the grades, I guarantee you I can pick up the phone and finding a scholarship whenever you told me to pick up the phone. Uh, because there are just that many spots out there and I didn't say anything about they have to wrestle a varsity match for me. We've had several girls that have gone on and wrestled on scholarship in college that never wrestled a significant varsity match for just because they're adding school wrestling programs in college at such a rate that they're having a hard time, in some instances, filling up those rosters. Um, and so that's going to change here in the next couple of years. But as of right now, anybody that wants to commit to the sport, commit to their academics, I can commit to them and I'll find them a scholarship to do so in college.

Chris Miller: So how does it feel to be someone who is a coach who you figured some of the stuff out, you wrestled yourself, you did boys wrestling, but you're a coach who's positioned to also be in the heyday of women's wrestling.

Damon Parker: It's pretty cool, man. Like I said, it's one of one of the things I really enjoy is being on the front end of something or being the first to do. And it seems like every year those opportunities to do something for the first time are becoming fewer and fewer. And that's a good thing because that means that this thing is growing and other people are being innovative and coming up with new ideas. But it's something that I take a lot of pride in, that my family was kind of on the front end of it. And people call us when they have questions. And we're trying to grow the sport not just within our community and not just statewide, but nationwide. We've counseled a lot of schools. Like, last one was in New York that, uh, just kind of called me randomly out of the balloons, like, hey, can you help us get this thing rolling? It's like, yeah, let's do this, man.

Chris Miller: And it's cool because I'm learning right now. And one of the things I say to myself is anytime I'm learning, then everybody else who's listening is also learning.

Damon Parker: Absolutely.

Chris Miller: So thinking about all of the people who listen to this and hear how it's growing, you know, the sport that people are always talking about fastest growing sport is pickleball.

Damon Parker: Yeah. It's borrowing up. Love me some pickleball.

Chris Miller: Me too. So it's like women's wrestling and pickleball are two of the fastest growing sports. But the unique thing about women's wrestling is that there's scholarships there. And people love scholarships. They should because school is bonkers expensive right now. But I don't think there's any pickleball scholarships out there.

Damon Parker: Not yet, hopefully. I love pickleball.

Chris Miller: Yeah. Have you been playing?

Damon Parker: Um, no, I haven't. But when I was teaching PE, I didn't even know pickleball existed. Look up. Like, I was just trying to come up with some ideas for what to do with my class and I found a video on pickleball. I was like, Wait a minute, this looks pretty cool. We start playing it and after a couple of years, uh, I got pretty good at it because was teaching 6 hours of PE a day. So I was just playing pickleball all day. And then, uh, I started looking at pickleball national championships and I was like, wait a minute. Everybody on the court right now is 74 years old. I. Could smoke these people. So I think there's, like, an 18 month window where I might have been in the top ten pickleball players on the planet. And then, uh, last year, we went to Los Angeles for a football game, and, uh, on Venice Beach, they had all these pickleball courts. I was like, I wouldn't even be in the top 100 people that are at this beach right now. That's how much that thing's exploded.

Chris Miller: It has exploded. I was playing in Phoenix, and a guy showed up who was a professional pickleball player, and he was lights out. It was so impressive. But, uh, the growth of that sport and the growth of women's wrestling is inspiring. And, yeah, get involved in women's wrestling. Holy cow. Like, hearing you particularly talk about scholarships, because I know whenever I was coming up, I couldn't afford school, so it was like, I need to find scholarships. And that is a great way to do it, but also a great way to learn work ethic, for sure. One of the things you had mentioned was whenever you're speaking to the kids at schools, you share with them how there's not one magic pill, and I think that's really important. I've been reading this book, depression Cure, by a professor, Dr. Olardi, at Ku, and he outlines a six step or six part system, and I could list all the six parts if I remember them. Um, but it's like exercise, sunlight, exposure, social connectedness, making sure you're a part of a great community. Having he does, like, omega three, something like that, but nutrition, um, mental engagement. And then there's one other thing, but all to say that there's a lot of different ways that our mental health could be improved, but also that it could be, um, damaged. You know what I mean? Like, a lot of ways that we have to keep watch. So what are those changes? Or what are some changes that you are encouraging kids to adopt to and to bring into their life?

Damon Parker: Oh, man. There's a lot that we go over in an hour, but, um, the main thing is we tell them the two most important tools they have are their people and their trusted adult. Uh, their people are not like their friend group. Their people are not the people that are in their fourth hour. The people are the people that they get together with outside of the school day and work towards a common goal. Because I think that that's a really important piece of it, because, yeah, you get your friends, but as a friendship group, you're really not working towards something. Um, so having your people is super important. And then the other thing would be, um, your trusted adult. Um, and I have them all at the beginning. Long story short, I give them 3 seconds. I want your gut reaction. Do you yes or no? Do you have a deep, dark secret? I was like, don't tell me what the answer is, but give me a thumbs up or thumbs up.

Chris Miller: They're like, yelling it out.

Damon Parker: Yeah, well, some of them are like, uh, uh, I don't think that I do. It's like yes, you do. Yes, you do. We all do. And sometimes they're good secrets, but we all have something. Um, and I tell them then at the end of the presentation, it's like when we're talking about trusted adults, it's like now the next question is, do you have an adult in this building? It doesn't have to be a teacher. It could be a counselor, cafeteria worker, custodian, coach, sponsor, whatever. Do you have someone in this building that, if push came to shove, you would feel comfortable telling that secret to? Or at least you could make yourself tell that secret to? And if the answer to that is no, you got to find one. And the way you find one is by finding your people. Because when you find an organization that you like being a part of, whether that's dance or band or forensics or theater or sport, then usually a big part of you enjoying being a part of that group is the leadership of that group. So then you developed a relationship with a trusted adult. Um, and then if push comes to shove and you got nobody that you could tell about that, then that's probably when we want to talk to our school counselors. Um, so those are the two things that I tell them that are the most important. Um, and then if we go a little further on that, there's, uh, a guy named Hal Elrod who wrote a book called The Miracle Morning. And we all read books that are good. We read some that are so good that, uh, if you really enjoyed it, you'll tell some people about it. But if you're fortunate enough, you'll read one or two books in your life that'll, like, really change your life. Like that'll change who you are as a person, the way you go about your daily business. And in Hallowad's book, the the Miracle Morning was one of those, uh, because in that book, he highlights just a short series of things that he packages in a way to where if you do these six things in the morning, it's pretty dang tough to have a bad day. And he calls it the savers. He's got, like, silence, affirmation, visualization exercise, uh, reading and scribing or writing in a journal. And if you go through and you spend you don't have to spend an exceptional amount of time on that, but you spend ten minutes on each one of those things. It's really hard to find yourself in a dark place when you've done all of those things in the morning. Um, and of course, it's not limited to ten minutes. I'll do my seven minute workout in the morning that fits in that ten minute thing. And then I'll go to the gym later or I'll write more later, or whatever is important to me. But, um, it's just a really unique way that they've packaged that. And then you look in all these different books that are about the habits of highly effective people and there's some or high achieving people, there's some structure that involves most of those things.

Chris Miller: So tell me the six again.

Damon Parker: Okay. It's silence. So, like doing some sort of meditation or mindfulness practice. There's affirmations, so positive self talk. There's, uh, visualization, which is like looking at what you want out of your life in not just the long term, but like, today. How do I visualize today going? Then, um, you've got your exercise. So that could be something as simple as a seven minute workout app on your phone or doing 100 push ups in ten minutes, or however you want to do it. Then, um, there's reading and what ah, I tell kids, man, it's very simple. Smart people read and dumb people don't. So be a smart person. You, uh, need to pick up a book and not like, scroll through articles on your phone. Like, pick up a physical actual book. And, uh, then the last one is scribing or journaling, like putting your thoughts down on paper. And I encourage kids to the first thing you should do in the morning, uh, you don't have to follow them in this order. If, uh, I did my silent stuff first, I would probably fall back asleep. But, um, the journaling part is what I always do first. I think the first thing you should do in the morning is write something that you're grateful for. I, uh, think that just kind of sets your mindset for the day. And so, again, you do those things and you're just kind of setting the table for having a really good day. And I don't do it every single day, but most days I do. And the days that I do are definitely better than the days that I don't. Um, but, yeah, I think the important thing about this, though, that I think everyone could implement, uh, whether you do it in this order, you pick and choose pieces from other good books out there. Um, the morning thing is important. I think that there's some commonalities between people that have accomplished great things. I think the majority of them have a good morning routine reason. Uh, being like, if you if you just kind of fly by the seat of your pants and all of a sudden you look at the clock, it's like, oh, it's 830 at night, what did I do today? Um, but the other thing that I tell adults, kids, everybody, is your bedtime should be sacred time. Your bed should only be used for sleep. And if you have a phone next to your bed, I always ask kid will tell me they're struggling with something. It's like, okay, what time you go to bed? Uh, I don't know. Okay, we need to get real clear on that. What time do you go to bed? Next time I ask you, you should say 830 or 930, like on the dot. You know what time that is. And that doesn't mean what time do you get in bed? That means what time do you go to bed? And it's like one little change that would change everybody's life is if instead of plugging that phone in right next to your bed, you plug it in across the room. You'll never oversleep an alarm again. Because if you do that, then you're not laying in bed and scrolling through TikTok or Instagram until one in the morning. Uh, and then when that alarm goes off, you're not going to get up out of bed, walk across the room just to hit the snooze button, walk back and repeat that process nine minutes later. So it's like once you're up, you're up. And so they make that change. Then all of a sudden, the bed becomes for sleep and not for scrolling. Then all of a sudden it makes it easier to get up and do that morning routine every day. And that will have a tremendous impact on your life if you just make those little bitty changes. Now, um, you do six things ten minutes at a time. People are, oh, Coach, I could get up an hour earlier than I do already. Yes, you can. What were you doing productive between 10:00 P.m. And midnight last night?

Chris Miller: Right?

Damon Parker: I mean, that's Netflix time, that's scroll through Insta time and you plug that phone in, you go to bed at 830. If you have to wake up at four to get your hour in, cool. You still got more sleep than just about any human that you know. So it's not about getting up super early and like, um, putting forth that facade of, look how hard I work, I get up. No, because your sleep is important for this thing too.

Chris Miller: Right.

Damon Parker: It's just about making a little bit of a time shift, go to bed a little bit earlier so that you can wake up a little bit earlier and then you can accomplish before 06:00 a.m., what the vast majority of people don't accomplish in an entire day.

Chris Miller: Yeah, that's great. That morning routine. And I'm glad that you mentioned, uh, it's not about bragging about waking up at 04:00 a.m., because I know that sometimes we associate rise and grind with the lack of sleep. But it's like that's going to catch up to you for sure. Yeah. If you don't have sleep, then you are going to be a shell of yourself. And have you been reading Atomic Habits? Did you read that?

Damon Parker: I have read that one, yeah. James Clear.

Chris Miller: Yeah. And he talks about how in Vietnam there were a lot of soldiers addicted to heroin and they came home and 5% of them, or 95% of them dropped the habit, dropped the addiction. They're like, what the heck? I thought addiction was this really unbeatable thing. And the people who had it just lacked self determination and discipline. And they just weren't the best people. But it turns out that once they got back home, they weren't around war. They weren't around other people doing heroin. They weren't away from their family. And they had the loved ones all next to them, and they didn't do heroin. And it's like that environment, how so much of it affects your life. And then the book transitions to how we cue ourselves with the environment. So, like you said, instead of your bed being a place for scrolling, now, you make it a place for sleeping. And I've been thinking that same exact thing. So I got one of those alarm clocks that has on the top of it a light panel. And on the bottom of it, it has a little clock. And the light panel mimics the sunrise.

Damon Parker: Oh, that's cool.

Chris Miller: Yeah, it starts off, uh, like light. And then as it goes, it goes brighter and brighter and brighter. And the goal is that your room starts to fill with light. But I've been leaving my phone out here, like on this table. And then I have a place where I'll read in the morning. And I sit in that chair whenever I read. And then I sit in a different chair when I eat, and I sit in a different chair when I'm on social media. So it's like, I don't have a lot of space in here. Like, you've seen my house. But what I do have is the ability to associate behaviors with places, even if it's chairs. And that's like queuing myself.

Damon Parker: That's really smart.

Chris Miller: You know what I mean? That one, yeah. You're going to have to buy some chairs. You have all these chairs in your house. What do you think about night routines?

Damon Parker: Honestly, I don't put a lot of probably as much effort into that as I probably should. Um, but one thing I do try to do is you try to win the evening so that you can win the morning. So I'm a coffee guy. I have to have my coffee in the morning. So I set my coffee pot so it'll start to brew 15 minutes before I wake up. So it's warm and ready and waiting for me. And on the days that I forget to push the button and I wake up in the morning and it just kind of starts the day off as a bummer if I know I've got a long run in that morning or training session or whatever. I'll set out my clothes the night before so that I try to make it as easy as possible to do the hard things, if that makes sense. Um, because right now with training for an event coming up and so my, um, nighttime training looks different, just about every day. So there will be some nights when I have to go out on a midnight run and then some nights I'm done with everything by eight. So it's a lot tougher to set an evening routine for me with where I am in my life right now than it is to set a morning routine, but just try to take care of the important things at night that I really need to take care of so that I can have a successful morning the next day.

Chris Miller: Yeah, totally. So find your person, find your people, and then be thinking about starting your morning off with structure. That way you can own your morning and more than likely greatly improve the rest of the day. So those are two really good thumbnails or two really good structures that these kids can use to improve the quality of their life. What are some of the stories that you've heard from these kids?

Damon Parker: Man, that was one of the tricky things going into this because I've always been, at least in my past life, a very tangible, goal driven person by this date, I want to accomplish this, and I'll have this data that can back up the fact of whether or not we accomplish it. And that's been very successful for me throughout my life. But then get into this thing and there's really no way to quantify whether we're making a difference or not. Five years from now, when we look at suicide data around the state of Kansas, we might have an idea because we can kind of break it down by county and see. But it's really tough to see any kind of tangible data out of this. And I've kind of had to do a mindset shift here because I found through this process that some of the best data that you get doesn't come from numbers, it comes from people and from their lived experience and what they share with you. And we try to be really intentional about letting kids reach us through social media. So I get tons of messages from kids and most of them are relatively innocuous, but, uh, thanks for coming, that kind of thing. But a lot of times we'll get one that was like, man, that was the kick in the pants that I needed. And I was like, okay, well, where's that kick going to take you? Because kids now are not as comfortable always with face to face conversations or with phone conversations, but they'll tell you whatever they want to tell you over a direct message through Instagram. And so it's like, okay, well, where's that kick in the pants taking? And like, well, I just finished up an appointment with my counselor and she hooked me up with a mental health liaison so I can go see someone at an actual therapist office. And it's like, wow, okay, this is working. And we've had some kids that have sent us some messages that made us realize that what we're doing is worthwhile and that sometimes kids just need to know that there's someone else out there that's been through this thing that will have their back even after he leaves the stage. And I think that that's been probably, uh, the most rewarding thing about this whole situation.

Chris Miller: Yeah. Is those DMs yeah, it is.

Damon Parker: Mhm. And thankfully we get so many of them. I have, uh, an assistant who lives in the Philippines. Hi Mary, if you're watching. Um, but she's awesome. She goes through and helps me sort through the ones that it's like, okay, this is one that you need to get back to today. And this is one that we can probably table for a minute, but we end up getting back to everybody.

Chris Miller: Right.

Damon Parker: Uh, it's a weird thing because it's like going into this job and knowing that I was going to be traveling all over the state, spending one to 4 hours in a school, and then essentially not going back there probably for years. I was like, am I going to lose that relationship piece that was so important to me when I was teaching in the same building for twelve years? No, we haven't. And it's kind of transition, it's a different kind of relationship. But there are kids that we went and talked to in August that I'm still sending messages back and forth with periodically or talking to on the phone every once in a while. And uh, it's really cool to be able to spread that reach around and make connections with kids all over the state instead of just in one part of the town.

Chris Miller: Yeah, that makes sense that you would have missed the relational aspect because I know that in teaching oftentimes, content delivery is one thing, but being able to see the kids grow is the most rewarding thing.

Damon Parker: For sure.

Chris Miller: Yeah. Now you do something that a lot of people are very scared of public speaking. Have you always been naturally inclined to public speaking?

Damon Parker: No, I haven't. Um, I spent the first, I think, nine years of my teaching career as a kindergarten teacher. Uh, partly because of that. Kindergarten kids are going to love you no matter how bad you are.

Chris Miller: If you're um uh I didn't have.

Damon Parker: To be in front of adults, except for at parent teacher conferences and meet the Teacher night, which I used to just oh, man. I would get flush red and just pouring sweat when I would have to stand up in front of these parents and tell them about what we're going to do in kindergarten that year. I think one parent one time thought that I was having a heart attack or something. He was like, Are you okay? I was like, it's just like anything. The more at bats you get, the better you get at it, and the less you get nervous, um, or stage fright or whatever. And the other half of that is like, I'm a natural introvert. And people whatever I tell them that say, man, you're not an introvert. Like, you go on stage for a living and it's like, yeah, but when I'm on stage, I'm the one holding the microphone. I'm the one in charge of the direction of the conversation. And nobody expects me to remember the names of the 1500 people in the audience. Uh, when it's a one on one on one, or if I go to a work function where there's a bunch of people there that I kind of know I might have met before, that's tough. That's not my wheelhouse. Um, but yeah, it's one of those things. People have asked me that before. It's like, what do you do for a living? I'm a social studies teacher. Okay. You're in public speaking. You stand in front of the hardest audience that exists, high school kids every single day, and you give a speech on Kansas history or whatever. So I think a lot more of us do the public speaking thing than we realize.

Chris Miller: Yeah, right. And a lot of I have someone who I know pretty well. She's a phenomenal public speaker, but she's like, oh, I'm just talking to whatever audience and like, oh, I'm talking to kids or, oh, I'm talking to older people or oh, I'm talking to people who have to listen to me because I'm their manager. But the truth is, you're getting your reps in. And the more you're in front of a group of people, then more than likely the better you're going to get. Now, do you still have a lot of nerves before you start?

Damon Parker: I don't. Um, there might be certain situations, but, um, it's one of those things where you do it enough times and it just becomes second nature to you. Now, um, I'm going to be speaking at Washburnural here, may 11 and May 12. And to be completely honest, man, you throw me out of midfield at Arrowhead and hand me a microphone, I'm fine talking out there. That's no big deal. But now I have to go tell my story to a bunch of kids that I really, really care about that have never heard it before. And I'll be real. That makes me nervous.

Chris Miller: That's hard.

Damon Parker: It is. Um, because I know that there are going to be some kids there that I have a great relationship that are going to walk out and be like, wow, I had no idea. And that's going to be a, ah, tricky thing. But I've always preached an honesty first policy. And I'm not going to admit anything that I wouldn't tell someone at a school that is on the other side of the state just because I know these kids. So we're going to be real with them and tell them about our shared experience.

Chris Miller: It's like that when you're on an airplane, sometimes people spill their guts because they're like, I'm never going to see you again.

Damon Parker: Exactly.

Chris Miller: And even though they can DM you and stuff, they're still part of that. We're not managing a relationship.

Damon Parker: Right.

Chris Miller: It's always like protecting yourself and sharing what you want to share. Now, you mentioned speaking at Arrowhead. Have you wanted to not have you wanted have you spoken at a venue kind of that large?

Damon Parker: No, not that big. Um, and I really don't have the desire to, not at this point. I think that would pull us away from the mission. I still do a few things per year that aren't related to the Jones project because we essentially have to follow the schedule of the schools. Right. So we've got a couple of months off there in the summer that I can use for content development and doing outside engagements, things like that. But, um, right now, we're just kind of laser focused on what we're doing here. And, um, I've had some larger audiences before, but, um, nothing to the scale of Arrowhead or anything like that. Um, but right now, we're focused on everything within the borders of Kansas.

Chris Miller: And your mission to reach Kansas, it makes a lot more sense, particularly with the content that you have to speak to smaller audiences and to be leisure focused that way. Because the more people you get, the more likely that the content you are delivering to them and sharing to them is going to get lost because there's so much noise. And they talk about that. There's the communication model, and there's the sender and the receiver. And in, uh, between the two, there's noise. And the noise is if you're at Arrowhead, the noise is that person in front of you who hasn't shaved or showered in 98 days. And you're like, what the heck is that smell? And the noise is the person above you who is drunk and the person below you who has a flag. And there's so much noise. So listening to somebody talk gets harder the bigger the venue. Um, now I am thinking about one thing, and maybe you don't have anything off the top, but do you have, like, embarrassing moments, public speaking? Like a moment, like a faux PA or something? Because I've had some moments where I've been like, oh, man.

Damon Parker: Yeah, there was one. I don't know about embarrassing, but, um, tech issues, that's been a strange thing because sometimes we're in a high school that's got 1800 kids, and you would like to think that sometimes those schools have best tech. You just walk in and plug in. Doesn't always work that way. My system doesn't always talk to theirs. And so that can be tricky. We had one where I went on stage with, uh we, uh, only had about 600 kids, but it was in a gym, so the acoustics aren't great to begin with. And literally 11 seconds into the presentation, microphone cuts out. So then I was like, all right, well, clock is ticking because they have to at the 1 hour mark, they got to be up and out of here. And so it's like, we'll test the coach voice and see how it works. Uh, and it went pretty well. So, I don't know. I tell my athletes, it's like, you leave as little to chance as possible, and so in your preparation, people see when you guys go out there and wrestle or play football, whatever they see when you're in the field of competition. But what they don't see are the hours that you put in before that to make sure that you take care of everything that you can possibly take care of within your control. And so I try to do that when I was just doing the professional speaking thing, and people would hear about, uh, a speaker's fee, they'd be like, wow, they pay you that much for an hour? And it's like, no, they don't. They pay me for every single day that I got up at 04:00 a.m. And worked for 2 hours before I started my morning routine so that could get all of that done before my kids woke up. And they pay me for spending four months on content development for 160 minutes speech. I try to eliminate as much of that as possible and be as rehearsed as I can so that when the inevitable happens, it's a little bitty speed bump and not, like, a huge obstacle. Um, now, one day, I'm sure I will fall into an orchestra pit or something like that. Um, but, yeah, we haven't had anything terribly embarrassing happen yet. Uh, I'm sure it's coming long enough timeline.

Chris Miller: You got to be careful about what you're saying, because I've had things where there's, like, you know, tongue twisters, and sometimes you can say something you didn't mean to say.

Damon Parker: Right.

Chris Miller: Sometimes that can go terribly wrong, especially when you're talking to kids. But I'm glad you shared that, though, because that's really good about knowing your value. And for anybody who's an entrepreneur or they're creating their own thing, that's a, uh, really common trap to get into. It's like, oh, well, technically, I'm only on site for an hour, so it's like, well, what's an hour worth of work? But like you said, there's so much before that to know about. And I think a lot of people undercharge for their services, be it speaking, teaching, consulting, whatever that looks like, because they just think about their time on site, and they're not thinking about all that time they're putting in.

Damon Parker: Right.

Chris Miller: Uh, yeah. So I'm really glad you share that. All right, I got two questions for you. Okay? First question being, what is one thing you wish more people knew about you that not a lot of people do?

Damon Parker: Gosh, I'm not sure there is anything at this point. Um, we had an article come out you find on Yahoo. Sports. Brent Maycock wrote it a couple of years ago that they kind. Of chronicled my history of struggles with mental illness and things of that nature. And then after that, it was just like, all right, well, now I'm an open book because we put out the things I was trying to hide for the last 40 years. So at this time, it's like anybody asked me something, I'll tell them straight up. And so I don't think that there's quite honestly anything that they don't already know. Um, I would think that the one thing might be I don't know if people actually believe me when I say it, because it sounds like coach speak, but with whatever it is that you're doing in your life. I'll just make the wrestling analogy. But it's like, if you make it about championships, you'll never be satisfied with no matter how many you win. But if you make it about relationships, then it doesn't matter how many championships you win, because everything else is so much less important than your relationships, your love for other people. And I know that coaches are supposed to say that. I don't know if everybody believes it when coaches say, but I really mean it. And it took me winning a state championship to realize that when we won the first one. And I had to leave girls state to drive straight to boys state. So I buckled that trophy in the backseat of the car so it wouldn't fall over. And literally, by the time I left the parking lot, I was like, uh, well, that was cool. All right, what's next? So you got this thing sitting 2ft away from you in the backseat that's like, you worked your whole life for this, and it's here. You can reach out and touch it. It's like, whatever. You set those trophies on fire, man.

Chris Miller: You've been wanting it so bad, right?

Damon Parker: And that was my moment of clarity, where I was like, man, people are so much more important than stupid trophies and awards and that kind of stuff. So, uh, i, uh, guess if there's one thing I want people to know, it's like, when I say that stuff at parent meetings and all that, I mean it, man. I think love is the most powerful force in the universe, and if you focus your attention on love and relationships, then things won't go wrong for you.

Chris Miller: Well, you answered my other question. What's that final message?

Damon Parker: Oh, that's it, man. Uh uh. What else in the world can cause someone to go to war or cause a mom to pick up a truck off of her infant? Or, like, love is the most powerful force in the universe, and that's where we need to invest our time and our energy, and not in the little things that really don't matter. And there's a law of reciprocity that goes along with that. It's like the more love you give to people, the more love you give in return. And I think that helps with a lot of the other things that we talk about at the Jones project, which is once you start giving love to other people and you feel that love come back, then you start to develop love for yourself. And I think that that's a big part of what a lot of kids are struggling with, is finding a way to love themselves. And once you do that, then, ah, your sky is the limit, man.

Chris Miller: Well said. Let's go flying. Thanks for being here, coach.

Damon Parker: Absolutely. I appreciate you having me, man. This was so cool.

Chris Miller: Yeah, it's a blast. Uh, great setup.

Damon Parker: I love your podcast.

Chris Miller: Thank you for listening. And, folks, we will see you next time.