“If you want to be a drunk, why don’t you just go over to Montezuma Street and stop hurting your family?” Devon Wayt joins us from Circa Behavioral Healthcare Solutions. He talks about the journey of finding recovery, relapsing, ignoring the typical advice to avoid relationships for the first year and about getting involved in the operations side of the business. He talks about consulting and advocating in the treatment industry. Enjoy.
The Illuminate Recovery Podcast is about Mental Health, Mental Illness, and Addiction Recovery. Shining light on ways to cope, manage, and inspire. Beyond the self care we discuss, you may need the help of a licensed professional. Curt Neider and Shelley Mangum are a part of Illuminate Billing Advocates (illuminatebilling.com). They are committed to helping better the industry and adding value to the lives of listeners by sharing tools, insights, and success stories of those who are working on their mental health.
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if you want to be a drunk why don't you just go over to montezuma street and stop hurting your family devon wait joins us from circa behavioral health care solutions he talks about the journey of finding recovery relapsing ignoring the typical advice to avoid relationships for the first year and about getting involved in the operations side of the industry he talks about consulting and advocating in the treatment industry enjoy welcome to the illuminate recovery podcast we shed light on mental health issues mental illness and addiction recovery ways to cope manage and inspire beyond self-care we will discuss you may need the help of a licensed professional my name is kurt neider i'm a husband father entrepreneur a handyman and a student of life i avoid conflict i deflect with humor and i'm fascinated by the human experience and i'm shelley mangum i am a clinical mental health counselor and my favorite role of all times is grandma i am a seeker of truth and i feel like life should be approached with tremendous curiosity i ask the dumb questions i fill in the gaps the illuminate recovery podcast is brought to you by illuminate billing advocates make billing and collection simple with leader in substance abuse and mental health billing services verification and analysis of benefits pre-authorizations utilization management accurate claim submission and management denial and appeal management and industry-leading reporting improve your practices cash flow and your ability to help your clients with eliminate billing advocates devin waite who is an nba and is founder and ceo of circa behavioral health care solutions devon is with kurt and i today and we're super happy to have him devin's um leadership philosophy is based on the understanding that leadership itself takes practice he believes that everyone can be a leader and the best leadership skills include ethical application of honesty authenticity transparency integrity and a commitment to self-respect and learning by example um those those qualities and skills definitely caught my attention devin thank you so much for being on today and being willing to talk with us oh thank you for having me um i know that you know as we were kind of getting ready to start recording we had some pretty good conversation about some of the things that you're doing so i'm really anxious to listen and learn more about about circa and what circa is doing but maybe just to start out let's get a little bit of background from you of of you know what ended what got you here where you're at now what got you working in the recovery space um and and maybe some of your own journey there yeah yeah absolutely thank you shelley and thank you kurt yeah i came into the field of treatment through uh obtaining treatment myself i grew up on a 72 acre cattle ranch in southwestern colorado which was in a town of 400 people in the population and it's now 800 and i had a great upgrade upbringing really learned the value of work you know working on a ranch my grandpa really didn't allow us to have summers off me and my brother it was uh you know we were building fences and and doing stuff around the ranch which in you know looking back it was it was great i remember being a little jealous of some of my friends that lived in town that could you know swim and play and have fun and and all that stuff but but we had the lake and uh you know lake on the property a little pond and we made the best of it so but i i say all that because i i really grew up in a wonderful family they were very supportive of me and uh you know showed me the you know just great values but i still found my my way into uh you know going overboard with uh alcohol and drugs and that started with some experimenting um pretty young just you know through peer pressure and and and all that or or the opportunity i shouldn't even say peer pressure it's just the opportunity was there and so uh so i i always wanted to get out of the small town it was a a dream of mine and a lot of our friends went to college and neighboring cities you know some of that was like denver or phoenix arizona was somewhat close those were kind of the two hubs and i actually made my way over to phoenix arizona but that was after uh really deciding to leave my family's home because my my alcohol use had got to the point where they said look you're not going to be able to do that here in this in this house with us and so of course you know my head said okay well then i'll leave and i did so i left and um i i was able to graduate high school um which was wonderful and then i went over to phoenix on a uh on the thought that i would do graphic design over there there was a graphic design school and so i was able to get into it but i certainly didn't go to school because i i got into heavier drugs rather than just alcohol over in phoenix there was more of an opportunity for that there and unfortunately the one person i knew over there was was into heavy heavy drug use and so i had already crossed those boundaries where that's what i was into as well too so i i remember using um it was methamphetamine at the time i was using and i remember my friend told me he said well you know once you use this you're never going to be able to stop and i remember thinking gosh that's uh that doesn't sound great but i did it anyways you know and uh and so i was 19 years old and things were just not going well for me at all you know i wasn't uh holding down a career i had i had already been kicked out of school and my family came and visited me and i remember them telling me i think we're gonna have to have you go into a mental health facility is is what they called it and i was just appalled that that that would even cross their you know hemisphere the thought process i remember and i said i don't have mental health issues you know and i was thinking more of like a sanitarium you know type of facility and so i just kept doing what i was doing and um but then they did a surprise intervention on me and they brought a lot of my friends there and they had a facility set up and and it was it was a really good intervention i i don't remember the details of it really but they gave me the ultimatum and and i said yes and you know the next step i remember was i was in the car on my way to the treatment center so uh but i remember going there and they and i was like i said how long am i gonna be before and they said four weeks and i went four weeks you know um i i thought in my head well i've got all this stuff to do and i had nothing going on you know so um so i went to that treatment center it was called cottonwood day tucson in tucson arizona and um you know i come from a small humble upbringing the ranch but my grandpa was a rancher but my mother and father were educators my father was a administrator in the uh elementary school system and then my mother taught the hearing impaired in depth and taught sign language and and all that and so they certainly didn't have back then this this was in 1999 i wanted to say and uh there really wasn't you know access to insurance at the time as as far back as i can remember and so it was it was cash pay and i i don't know how they swung it but it was probably my college tuition you know that went to that but in retrospect i i never would have made it through college had i not gone to treatment so that was that was my first experience with treatment i was introduced to a variety of self-help modalities while i was there in terms of you know different meetings meeting types and all that and you know i really had a good experience so i didn't start working in treatment after that though i i ended up coming to california for aftercare and i had a wonderful counselor that was there her name was mary and i i looked up to her and she was wonderful but i remember she said well you're going to have to choose the next step and she said would uh what do you want to do and i said well i want to go to school because i've really botched that opportunity in phoenix and so i remember she was talking to me about going to a collegiate recovery community i believe is out of austin texas with uh over at ut austin and she showed me a brochure and then she showed me a brochure of silver living by the sea which is a treatment center in newport beach california and i looked at that peninsula with those palm trees and i said i want to go there so so that's how that's actually how i moved the california and i've been in california ever since but i i went through a program there and they had a program called the teach program which allowed you to do residential treatment and and go to uh school at the same time and it was a lower you know stage of treatment and and i had already gone through an intensive program and it was it was really good i met a lot of great people but i'll tell you you know on that journey to recovery because i didn't have drugs and alcohol to fill whatever void i was still working on i navigated towards relationships and i got into a relationship with uh with a another client that was there and uh despite in spite of everybody telling me not to and all the reasons why i shouldn't and unfortunately what it did is i i i didn't work on myself in retrospect as much as i could because i was worried about you know looking good and and all that you know in this relationship and so i i really learned what not to do in treatment and and i've had a long career in treatment so i always i like to tell people that but to make a long story short i ultimately i ended up relapsing it's it's a very unfortunate story but it's just a part of my story and it was on a we decided to go on a snowboarding trip me and my girlfriend and another friend who we had all completed treatment and we're trying to support each other but uh you know i i felt like i had this great foundation of recovery underneath me and it was kind of the last minute trip and and we went up to a local mountain to go snowboarding we went you know rented a cabin and all that and my girlfriend at the time i remember she really wanted to order uh sake with uh you know with the sushi we were eating sushi and me and the other person were like no you know don't do that and and it should have been a concern to me right that she wanted to uh relapse but that was my girlfriend and i wanted to you know support her so we're we're trying to you know say no and all that at some point we we turned you know we just flipped and so we ended up having sake and and then it was it was on so it was so interesting how quickly that happened and in retrospect i i can see how i was on the road to relapse and and on that road there were many things along the way that led me to that point where i was i was in a vulnerable enough you know place just personally to go ahead and relapse and so um i did stay relapsed for a couple of months i had tried to tell everybody that i was sober and there were plenty of people that did not believe me but i had plenty of people i thought bold as well and um and so when it was time for me and this was unfortunately for two and a half years and i got back into recovery and this was november of 2002 november 4th in 2002 and that same treatment center silver living by sea they had a men all men's intensive outpour sorry intensive inpatient program in riverside california and my counselor had gone out there to become the program manager or program director and so i stayed in touch with him and when i needed help again he said he said you need to come here and i'll tell you my family was done with me by the time they knew what had happened you know they uh they're really saying hey this this is a devin you know if you can't get it here you're you're really on your own and that's exactly what i needed to hear from them and uh and so there was a a time when i i left california went back to visit colorado my hometown and and i wasn't sober this was right before i went into treatment and got sober and it was just deep you know demoralizing you know when they you hear the term incomprehensible demoralization that that was that moment for me i just was not healthy i couldn't hold it together and um i had broken up with that girlfriend and uh you know when and because i wasn't comfortable with myself i had put all of myself into that relationship and so when the rug was you know pulled out in terms of the relationship i just lost my identity lost who i was and boy i tell you that was just a dark time for me so when i when i my father drove me to california and then i entered into the treatment center that was that was when the tables turned and so i had looked back and thought of all the reasons why i relapsed and really you know tried to do what what i didn't do the first time and i'll tell you one of the things was the best thing for me was go to an all-male treatment center and uh and what happened is i just ended up staying there uh i i really connected with the program and a couple of local self-help groups and all that and they told me hey if you want to stick around and volunteer you're more than welcome to i stayed for 60 days of treatment and then i volunteered for for a couple of months and the counselor who was the my ex counter that counselor that was the program director he ended up telling me hey if you go out and get your commercial driver's license maybe you could drive the band and take people to meetings and and all that so i did in the day i remember i got the driver's license they hired me and uh that was march 18th of 2003 and i've been working in the industry ever since so that's how i got here well and you started right at the very beginning where you know we're most recovering people dealing with addiction have to start there if they want to be in the addiction recovery world right yeah yeah i've worked with many addiction professionals over the years and you know a lot of a lot of them are in recovery or you know they're they've got some higher purpose of working in the field and you know it's wonderful to be able to identify with our own experience and i will say too that it's it's also a nice balance to have uh people that aren't necessarily in recovery but but have the passion uh and the higher purpose of that work that they do as well usually because a family member or some other type of experience they had but uh but yeah it's it's great having that experience as i was listening to your story and and talking about you know at a young age when you started drinking and and and how you talked about being in a town of 400 people out on the ranch and and working out there and and in my mind i'm thinking isn't that the very kind of a place that parents will move their kids when they're having problems and i don't think i don't think you can move to enough places to avoid addiction when that's part you know when that's part of of your experience it really has to come down to doing those you know learning the steps or learning you know learning what recovery is and looking at those drivers of that and the the underlying things so that thought crossed my mind um i also was wondering and and maybe you've wondered this as well how long do you think you would have stayed in your addiction had your family not done an intervention that's a great question you know and it's hard for me to say because i see people get sober all the time which is you know a huge benefit of working in treatment and recovery but i don't i don't know i believe i was the type of person or i am the type of person that needed some type of intervention so unfortunately it probably would have come through law enforcement or you know some type of negative consequence and i'm just grateful that you know that i didn't hurt anybody but with addiction oftentimes um you know before we get into recovery we end up hurting the ones we love the most and in fact on that uh that demoralizing experience i had when i went back to visit home before going into treatment i did have an opportunity to meet with the therapist my grandma had set me up with a friend who was a therapist and they were just willing to talk to me it wasn't you know really a formal session that i knew of i just went and talked with the gentleman but he was great he really turned the the he did a little reverse psychology on me i guess but uh there we were near uh native american reservation and unfortunately they have a a very large uh alcohol problem and oftentimes don't allow alcohol on the reservation so uh to to utilize alcohol uh the people that live on the reservation will come over to the town and and they end up you know if you get drunk there's a street called montezuma street where a lot of people would get drunk and just kind of sleep in the park and the therapist told me he said well devin you know if you want to be a drunk and you know why don't you just go over there on montezuma street and hang out with everybody and but but just stop hurting your family and for some reason that it just it got me you know and i'm sure other people had asked you know i'd put that in my mind before but it did stick with me at that time so that was kind of the road to recovery for me you know just like there was a road to relapse and if i look back there were signs and things that i was doing like the relationship that led me down that path there was these signs you know that led me to recovery where these little light bulbs came on and i'm really grateful for those people but what i will say is i think a person's ready when when they're ready to listen because i'd have that same message maybe put in different ways given to me before but i was i was ready to listen so i don't really know when i would have been ready to listen had i not had some intervention what about his statements stuck out to you was it the picturing yourself you know in the park with the other drunks or was it the causing pain to the family which part was it that stuck out to you yeah i think it was causing pain to the family you know i was very very close with my grandmother and grandfather and feel very fortunate about that that was on my father's side and they both passed on now and in fact when i when i did get sober in 2003 my grandfather i guess over in november and then he passed away in february and um and so and he had been battling cancer for four years but one of his wishes was that interesting enough one of them was that i got out of that relationship he felt like that relationship was really bad for me and it was you know when you put two unhealthy people together it certainly doesn't make a healthy relationship but but it was to also to stop he said creating smoke screens he wrote me a letter i'll never forget what it said and it was create stop creating smoke screens for your family and what that meant was stop lying to your mom and dad and and then the last was to get clean and sober and so um you know it's that was just another you know another sign along the roads recovery and so it really hurt me to know i was hurting them and you know my grandfather had been battling cancer for uh ten years prior to um to when he finally succumbed to it he had a type of cancer called sarcoma cancer and um and so i just i love my family you know very very very very much and i have the family now and and carry that same love forward so that was it that got me hurting the family that's uh it's i love that that's the way you share that and i love that you answered my question even though it really wasn't a fair question as to you know who knows who knows how long you would have stayed in in addiction and in that pattern without intervention but it's an interesting question to look at um but and but i like the way you were able to pick those pivotal moments of things that you know your grandfather said and things that the counselor said and things that really set you up to say yes during that intervention because not everybody says yes and not everybody's willing to say yes but you did and and i think for people that you know that are thinking about recovery that that's probably one of the most important things is despite the fear and and you know the addiction that says you'll die if you stop using it's that courage to be able to say yes to to help absolutely yeah that's right it's a great way to put it and i i think that you you put this quite well as doesn't matter how often you tell someone a relationship in the first year or so of recovery is probably a really bad idea it still seems to be something that like you said it you know we kind of we kind of tend to shift from one addiction to another but not really recognizing that's what we're doing and and we can we can look at that and say yeah we made bad choices but how else are you going to learn those things without going through those experiences and so you know sometimes we judge that was just a bad choice or a bad moment but i would say that what you learned from that experience was probably more valuable than anything else yeah i agree with you really do and and you know those experiences are what an individual can take and and then you know impart on to others who are getting into recovery and uh you know help come down to you know me meet the individual at the level that they're at and whether or not they're willing to hear you or not that's that's not on on us right that's on them it's just our responsibility to have the message there and and you know help them however we can and that comes in a variety of ways right sometimes it's through boundaries and you know but uh i i really loved working in treatment when i i started working i just really found i felt like i found my spot and i really thought about becoming a clinician but it it just didn't uh i i don't think i had the the knack for it really i love talking about recovery and helping people but i always ended up working with really good clinicians and and i just saw the work they did and really they admired it but realized that i i wasn't that person that would be capable of doing that so um so i just i you know i i've made a pretty good career surrounding myself with with really good people that work in the field and i had a wonderful experience i wanted to tell you too at that treatment center they had a staff housing uh trailer on the property it was a 11 acre ranch um just kind of you know um which is ironic but the ranch itself it had a staff trailer and i ended up staying there for two years so i stayed in the staff trailer and then i worked and if anything i would say you know i a relationship or anything like that you know i've always tried to eat somewhat healthy i've had my doubts and you know it's just you can if i i can i'll make it personal can't get into you know cross addiction and things like that so because i have that type of personality you know i try to do healthier things but i stayed out of a relationship but i would say i ended up working a lot i already had a pretty good work ethic but uh if anything i've had to work on that over the years it's just watching how much i worked you know to make sure that i dedicate you know time to myself and obviously now time to my family but uh but i've only worked at two treatment centers and i've been in the field for 18 years and it'll be yeah it'll be 19 in march and the first one was there i ended up just getting into like operations management and i had gone to school at pepperdine uh university which was it was actually i was seeing a therapist at the time and you know and you know in recovery we just we have to do that right i had to take care of myself in fact as i was learning management i had my program director or the executive director who was my boss and and a lead counselor approached me and said devon you're going to have to like take care of yourself i was working too much i wasn't delegating as well as i could and i was really you know suffering um on the inside by just through stress and stuff like that and i tried to like go back to school and you know it just took a lot on my plate but i started seeing this therapist and um he had told me that i should check out pepperdine so i was always grateful to him for doing that his name was dr patrick mcafee and he's passed onup now but i was going to riverside community college at the time just you know getting the the foundation for school and and i got the reps down where i was able to do school and you know go to meetings and have you know uh work and do somewhat of a balance with all of that and i remember going to the admissions counselor there at pepperdine and she was saying i was doing my associate's degree and i wanted to enter a bachelor's up program with them and she was like well you can join you know she checked all the boxes and said it's it's time and i said no no no i've gotta finish and get my associate's degree from riverside community college did she let me do that the first time i could tell it kind of bothered her i couldn't put a finger on it really but then the second time when i saw her uh she and i'm grateful to her for this and she was i kind of looked at it it was like she channeled my grandma or something but she i remember she slammed her hand down on the table and she said now devin you're just procrastinating and she said would would a future employer you know appreciate that you've got your associate's degree from riverside community college or where they enjoy you know that you're you're working on your bachelor's degree from pepperdine and the light bulb came on so i entered into that program and started a master's program right after that was actually a a joint program where you could do your bachelor's and your master's next to each other it was a cohort of us that decided to do that and to go through with it but fulfilling that education knack was really you know it was important to me my family were all educators and so i i just and i i had to all the funds that would have gone to education you know so i was doing it on my own and and that was really good for me as well too and so i ended up getting the bachelor's degree and wanting to move up in the organization i was at but my mentor and boss who was this executive director was very honest with me and just said devin i think you've capped out you know what you can do here and so it was very mutual that i started putting my resume out there and i ended up moving over to a treatment center called northbound treatment services in southern california and that was in 2010 and while i was at the other treatment center i had learned a little bit about compliance there i was operations manager but they said hey you're going to be the health and safety officer and you're going to be the risk management officer and i remember asking well does that come with more money they're like no it doesn't so but they were trying to get an accreditation and so they uh they threw me the manual and said can you help figure this out and so i did and i got the organization card for credited alone but with the team but i really led the charge and i enjoyed it and i what i noticed was how it really got the organization from growing in the same direction and and i loved that and i was learning more about leadership and so when i joined northbound i actually joined as the director of quality and compliance um and just carried over that experience and and was helping them go through the same you know process with accreditation and licensing and um at northbound ended up uh really honing in operational more operational skills i eventually ended up becoming the chief operating officer there and this was over a 10-year period and i think it was about six years in that i became the chief operating officer but it was such a compliment they made me a partner in the organization as well too so i i just had a lot of fulfillment and had you know gotten my mba uh prior to well right after joining northbound i guess and uh and so that was just able to get more reps in and the treatment in industry and practicing leadership and i i'm you know i can't imagine doing anything else that's an incredible journey and and kind of um it sounds like you're trying to figure out where you fit best and where your skill set had the greatest um benefit to what you were doing and and as a you know with an mba that you have now i mean i'm sure you went on to get your mba you could have done anything and yet you chose to still contribute and give back to the recovery industry which i think is admirable oh thank you thank you yeah now i appreciate it yeah i was able to join a board um called the california consortium of addiction programs and professionals and i i did that at northbound and i actually when i when i left northbound i was at risk of being i was off the board for a little bit because i joined as a program member and when you join as a program member you have to be working with the program i was fortunate enough that another program hired me um and so i and i've stayed on with them and and have helped that organization and that organization is called opus uh opus health and they're they're also based out of newport beach and i helped them with compliance but um i stayed on as a program member and uh you know joining that board was it got me more into advocacy and that's what i really appreciate that you all are doing here and you know sharing that message and after joining the board i was able to be the committee chair of something called the addiction recovery communities of california and what that organization does is it helps oversee the accreditation or certification rather of of recovery residences throughout california it's the nara affiliate for california and uh you know we're a big proponent of of course safety and you know it's it's the best thing out there in terms of a credit accreditation or certification for uh silver living homes or recovery residences and then we also uh really uh gear up every year for the recovery happens event which is actually in in california at the sacramento uh state capital west uh steps on uh september 1st which is coming up and if you know when september is recovery uh is recovery month and so we help with the planning for that and and then again we also get involved with advocacy and there's another organization that i'm able to be the chair of and it's called sakara and it's a group of organizations and and arc my other committee is a part of that organization and we really focus on grassroots advocacy through legislation and and trying to have a voice at the table if ever there is the thought of legislation or anything around recovery you know we really want to um help with that and and where you know we can provide clarity or assistance and and and all that so it's it's been wonderful you know on the advocacy side we've really had some big wins because in california there's uh also large pockets of nimby nimbyism which means not in my backyard and this and stigma you know as well too and he would think with such a progressive state um that that when it exists but it really does both on mental health and substance use disorder and i uh when i was you know part owner and operator in the treatment center the city that we operated in decided to come up with the ordinance that said that you can no longer operate the types of facilities we are operating and um really at the end of the day it was a an mb and stigmatizing ordinance that that violated the rights of persons in long-term recovery essentially told them that persons in long-term recovery cannot live together and if they want to live together then they're going to have to only do it in the areas that the city says that that's okay and you just can't do that with any group of people much less you know people who are protected you know they're protected class and so um we've been able to advocate a lot around that and work with these local governments whether they're willing to hear us or not but we did get a big win with with some of the larger entities that help with funding with local governments and and so some of these ordinances that have been put into place are now being redacted um and and uh and taken and unwound and so that's that's just been wonderful wonderful work but i would consider doing this podcast with you a part of a part of the advocacy work and that's really raised my higher purpose of spreading the message and helping individuals that are vulnerable and need that help and just really recovering out loud um it's a statement that like you'll see and you know i i didn't that's not my quote but the idea with it is that you know you share your story and you do it out loud so that people can connect with it and you know maybe one day they could recover out loud as well too and help the people that aren't willing to do that you know find some identification with it powerful purpose and passion um that you have given in the work that you've been able to do with you know with not just yourself but with the groups and the the boards that you're on is impressive um i'm i'm wondering how circa behavioral health solutions falls into all of the work that you're doing and and and is that kind of the same kind of work or does it have a little bit different branch yeah so circa behavioral healthcare solutions um when i left northbound i was already doing a little bit of consulting on on the side mainly with partners that that we were working with i i just got really good at licensing and accreditation over the years and also really enjoyed consulting on organizational health and what uh when we when i formed it was originally called weight consulting group and then in between the dda to circular behavioral healthcare solutions but we've formed a team of professionals you know we have a nurse on our team and a counselor clinician on our team and other compliance specialists and you know we've found a very much a higher purpose of helping organizations do better work so that they can be more effective get better outcomes and and potentially offer services in areas that they didn't you know offer them before and so when when an organization you know whether they're expanding or they're uh you know trying to figure out how to lower barriers to access to treatment or improve their services you know and oftentimes that can be done through expansions usually through licensing but the improvement of services can be done through accreditation or or other formats but again it's that idea of rowing in the same direction and and really you know stepping up their their game in terms of uh or their performance in terms of having measurable uh goals that they're working on on a regular basis and you know getting input from different stakeholders and watching outcomes and you know just achieving better results all the way around so we've we've gotten so much fulfillment out of helping other providers do that and i'm wondering um devon as you as you do all of this work and you've got your hands at a lot of different plates and but that seems like it's kind of been you know part of your you know part of your makeup from the very beginning always doing a lot and always being involved in a lot and figuring out how to balance that you know those efforts which is really cool um and in doing all of that how do you maintain your own sobriety and your own recovery what does that look like today as opposed to you know when you first were in recovery yeah no thanks for asking that's a great question so you know i do that through participating in my own recovery early on i i was fortunate when i was working in treatment and getting into recovery i um or having been having been in recovery working in treatment i realized and i had people tell me this they said you know you've got to you know take care of yourself do not make this your recovery and then i saw some people around me who did that that unfortunately had relapsed and uh and so it's it as unfortunate it is i just learned from their from what had happened to them and and uh and so what i do is i um you know i have a lot of disciplines in my life and part of those are you know attending the uh meetings that i go to and and staying accountable to the groups that i'm a part of and um and when i say accountable it's like truly being accountable you know whether that's to um my sponsor or to other i i often will surround myself with a lot of people in recovery but i i have a core group of men that i stay really close with because um when when i'm sharing what's going on with me um you know that's it it's just uh you know i'm close enough with them that that we can share anything um that that we ever need to so i've got a men's group and in fact we meet every friday morning and um and it's really we call it a mastermind group and um you know it's a mix of a little bit of recovery and you know business and and all that stuff but you know it's it's really having the disciplines and taking care of myself and what i can say is in my journey in recovery um going through programs and you know perhaps doing the 12 steps or smart recovery or or whatever outline that an individual takes there's many path ways to recovery my experience was is that that gets you as far as you want it to and with me when i when i did it i realized that i had a lot of other work to do as well too meaning that i had some individual you know personal work and stuff from my childhood and stuff from you know past relationships and of course we can do that through treatment but you know i i had been in treatment in a really long time so what i ended up doing was going to a place called onsite and at northbound we had a wonderful organizational health initiative and we our culture and um we ended up sending 40 of our staff to a place called on-site uh which is out in cumberland furnace tennessee and it's a wonderful wonderful program and they have these intensive workshops and um so you know you can go there while you're while you're in re recovery and you know they're just about living in balance but they really focus in on family of origin and you know other trauma that you may have experienced and it just really allowed me to go deeper and um and to touch on the things that that i might have you know decided not to left my own devices and you know today i'm a big proponent of you know being in recovery but also being very disciplined i i have been vegan for the last two years so that's a discipline that i do just as an example but another discipline that i do is really trying to watch my thoughts because as a leader what i realize is i can show up because i i can deal with a lack of self-worth and so sometimes when i show up i show up trying to be a perfectionist or having unreasonable expectations of myself or others or avoiding conflict because i'm i'm a people teaser and i want everybody to like me and so i've had to do a lot of work on that and um you know you have to be careful not let the pendulum swing too far on the other side of that equation because that stuff makes me who i am but what i what i realized is um i was you know i have these accounts now uh that that i service that are team services and this is just a quick little example is the other morning i woke up and and one account had stopped using our services and it was on very good terms and and and all that but i was just thinking about it and i remember i i was looking at the clerk and i had been awake for 20 minutes and i realized i had been thinking about losing this account for 20 minutes from the moment i woke up until that moment when i realized it and and i i was getting wrapped into this lack of self-worth and gosh would could i have done something better and you know what did i do wrong and you know all this stuff and so i i you know unfortunately it went on for 20 minutes but i tried to be very disciplined with my thoughts because um you know when i mentioned my grandfather passing away he passed away of sarcoma cancer and it was literally a tumor that grew inside of his stomach and i remember after he passed away my grandmother unfortunately they had two of their children die my dad was the only survivor one was the disease and one was of a fatal gunshot accident and um and she had told me after he passed away i remember i was sitting here with her that night the day he passed away and we were you know at the edge of the bed and and uh you know we're we're of um of uh christian faith and so we had said a prayer and stuff but she had told me that my grandfather really never forgave um god you know was where she used for her for his son's passing and that that really she felt that that had contributed to his cancer and so i you know i can't imagine the thoughts that went through my grandfather's head you know throughout the years and i just really feel like that is the next level and my responsibility is to try to help individuals that may you know um go to those negative thoughts or lack of self-worth in being disciplined and the way i look at it it's like a conveyor belt and i grew up on an apple orchard in that ranch so i always like to picture apples and there's all these red apples going down the conveyor belt and every now and then a green one goes and if it goes that's a negative five you just flick it off as an example and so you know being really disciplined with my thoughts it's it's taken my recovery to a new level and my performance and my ability to help others on a whole new level i love that i love that concept would you um do you have do you have specific books around that idea of you know i love the the visualization of the conveyor belt with the with the red apples and and if you see a green one then you got to get rid of that one that thought do you have books that you read that help you um grow that concept yeah yeah i'll actually put in a plug he's my business partner but also the gentleman i was doing the the podcast with and he has a coaching firm called motive for life and he wrote a book called the bug in our brain and uh it's a wonderful book and it's it's a lot about that i mean that's the bug is is the negative thoughts and it's got a wonderful discipline and exercise within it to um to help you know shape and transform somebody's life but that's you know that's one of those books so it's the bug in our brain by robert christiansen and it's available on amazon that's fantastic i love that i love anytime we can contribute more information to the concepts and skills that you've talked about um on the podcast today you've uh certainly brought a lot of wealth of information and experiences to the to our audience today and i'm super super grateful that you've been willing to take some time with us today and share your share your experiences share your recovery story super touching that relationship that you had with your with your grandfather and his um influence on your life and as well as your parents and the rest of your family which is um it's huge family's huge and so anyway thankful um really thankful for you being willing to share those things with us today i'd also love to give you the opportunity to maybe share some of your contact information if somebody wants to reach out to you and learn more oh thank you so much shelly and yeah and thank you kurt for the opportunity to be here and share it uh but yeah you can always reach me on linkedin it's uh devin waite d-e-v-o-n and last name is w-a-y-t um and then please look up circa behavioral dot com that's c i c behavioral.com and you'll find our contact information on there and if there's any you know listeners that are involved in the treatment or recovery industry if there's any way we can help you we certainly will and if if we're not the right firm to help you we'll certainly find one that is or make a good referral so i appreciate you allowing me to do that shelly yep i appreciate it thank you thank you so much for what you've contributed it's been fantastic i know i'm going to go i'm going to go read this book the bug on the brain if i got that title right but i know i'll go find it and and learn some more for myself i always love increasing my own skills from what i learned from you know people like you thank you very much yeah thanks for the opportunity