Hurt can harden us—or it can teach us how to heal.
We sit down with David McKee to explore how a childhood marked by a parent’s mental health struggles spiraled into years of anxiety, avoidance, and creative silence, and how learning the basics of neuroscience, neuroplasticity, and behavior change opened a kinder, more sustainable path forward.
David shares the turning point that brought him back to music after his mother’s passing and the practices that helped him find peace: therapy, structured grief, meditation built in small steps, and compassionate self-talk that primes the brain for better days.
We dive into the mechanics of change for ADHD minds, from using novelty intentionally to building tiny habits that stick. David unpacks the reticular activating system in plain language and shows how evening and morning self-priming can rewrite the “I’m always tired” script into a different reality.
If this conversation resonates, follow the show, share it with someone who needs hope, and leave a review to help others find us. What one habit will you commit to this week?
If you wish to follow, work with or connect with David follow him on Instagram at @davidmckee84 or his business page @anotherangleconsulting
To download a free chapter of host Sylvia Worsham’s bestselling book, In Faith, I Thrive: Finding Joy Through God’s Masterplan, purchase any of her products, or book a call with her, visit her website at www.sylviaworsham.com
Transcript:
If you’ve ever struggled with fear, doubt, or worry and wondering what your true purpose was all about, then this podcast is for you. In this show, your host at Sylvia Warsham will interview elite experts and ordinary people that have created extraordinary lives. So here’s your host, Sylvia Warsham.
Hey Lightbringers, it’s Sylvia Warsham. Welcome to Release. Today is David McKee. And he has quite a story of transformation to share with each of you today. I read his profile on podcast, uh, potmatch.com, and I was really blown away because he said all the right things, all the things that I could relate to, neuroplasticity, neurobehavioral therapy, how his whole family had mental health issues, and that’s what started him on his journey. And to be truth and to be quite transparent with the audience, so did I. There were a lot of aspects to a story that really were very relatable to my own journey and my own story and why released out reveal purpose was even brought out into the open. So without further ado, David, thank you so much for joining us on Released Out Reveal Purpose.
Thank you so much for having me.
It’s a pleasure to have you hailing from New York City to big metropolis, Austin and New York City. Nothing quite like New York City.
Okay, nothing quite like Austin either.
I mean, we have a whole different vibe down here. But here’s what I love about our stories is that there’s a lot of points that we’re gonna relate to as we navigate this interview. So please tell us that amazing story transformation as it relates to mental health.
Sure. So for me, it all started at around eight years old. Um, I grew up, uh my dad was a Methodist minister. I grew up uh bouncing around. I uh I was born in Syracuse, New York, and made my way down to New Jersey. Uh I city after city, just lived in eight different places between when I was born and eight years old. And things started uh going downhill. And uh unfortunately uh my dad was dealing with mental health issues that we didn’t know about at the time, but he uh cheated on my mom, and our family really just got split up and broken up pretty badly. And there was a suicide attempt. There was a lot of just uh awful stuff that was going on that he was dealing with, demons that we never understood, and he felt like he couldn’t talk to anyone about it. And his holding that back made things so much worse. So I realized I caught it at a point in my life about 10 years ago. I was doing that same thing, not to the same extent or the same level, but I was not really investing in like trying to do the self-work to like work through the trauma that I had gone through. And to this day I still have to. It’s it’s something that it never really goes away from people, and you always have to kind of keep an eye on it and be cognizant of it. Uh, but yeah, it’s it all started uh from my dad having manic depression, and I wanted to figure out why he did the things he did and try to find a base-level understanding, and it really made me feel so much better because when I started to learn neuroscience, neuroplasticity, and how the brain works and what what’s going on, I realized it it wasn’t really a mean or uh a thing that my dad did to me. He was in a bad situation and he didn’t know how to react and he made bad decisions that they’re bad decisions. We all make them. So it was just one of those things when I was able to humanize that, I realized that I’ve been in that situation a lot. And man, if I was in his same situation at that same age, I might have made similar type choices. And uh I I always believe that having parents or someone in our lives that have that big effect on you, you really need to zone in and realize that happened for a reason and how other people are dealing with that same thing, and I’ve been just trying to spread the message as much as possible.
I love how you framed it. If you had been in your father’s situation, you probably would have made the same mistake. And I think most people miss that. I think most people come at it from the judgment piece right away. Like, oh, if I were them, I would have done X, Y, or Z. But the truth is, if you when you understand the background of why it happened, it brings in a layer of compassion that wasn’t there before, that allows us to then step into a space of forgiveness and release. That release that we all search for, that peace and that stability comes when we go through those journeys. And I find that so courageous on your part. The wanting to understand where did this come from? And I know that I went through a similar journey and why God prompted me to write the book. And now it was interesting that you brought this up this morning, the timing of this, because I remember just sitting there this morning in my coffee chat with God saying, Why didn’t I listen to you 10 years prior? Why did I wait so long to listen to your prompting to write the book? Because as I wrote the first edition of In Faith I Thrive, I healed those parts. I went back and reflected on why my father was the way he was. And he had anxiety, and he came from a highly abusive, emotional, and physical abuse household that really gave reason as to why he was led by fear and anger as his first response. When fear shows up, anger was his response and his trigger and his way of reacting. And it caused a big rift between us when I was a little kid. And when we were eight, I was seven. It took decades to get past that. Why did my father do that? I didn’t understand because the mind is so powerful, and it blocks those pieces of information to protect us, which is great when we’re eight and seven, but it’s not awesome. I think we get older. So tell me more or tell us more on how you discovered the why.
Like yeah, so it’s um so I wish I could say it was all from my dad right from the start, but that it’s a it’s the first piece of of the puzzle of kind of how everything, the domino effect of what happened. Um, so as a result of that, my mom was pretty much everything to us. Uh, like I have a brother and sister, I have a middle child, and my mom to this day, like I it got to the point when I was in college that I started buying groceries for myself. And I started running the I’m I was going to school for business and accounting. So I start running the tally in my head of what’s going on and how much everything costs. And then I started, for whatever reason, started thinking about my mom being able to afford it for four people plus a house and everything she was doing while my dad was skipping out on alimony payments and and other things that she was just really stretched. And I don’t know how she did it. Like it’s to this day, I don’t I can’t make any of the math work, but she just figured out a way and made it happen anyway. So she passed away in 2014, and I had a really low, again, of that same low feeling I had when I went through everything with my dad. And it I I handled it as badly as you can. And this is a big part of why I wrote the book and why I try to tell people deal with this these things up front. Um, I knew my mom was dead, I I saw it, I was there, um, but I almost treated it like she was on vacation and she’d be back again. And I didn’t let myself fully go through the grieving process when it first started. And I just wanted to, I wanted to kind of be able to, I knew it was done and I wanted to kind of keep moving. And what do I need to do now? It was my mindset, and I needed to go through the grief, and I didn’t allow myself to. And so I having all that, um, I ended up going to therapy and walking through through what I was going through. And my therapist ended up telling me because I had stopped playing or doing any type of music, which was always a release for me and my happy place. And it was because my mom taught me all that stuff. So going back through it, I thought it would be too painful because I was like piano, anything, the basics, she taught me everything. And having that release that you were talking about, I was able to hit that level as I started going back to music again. Because I, for whatever reason, I learned the art of letting go. And it didn’t mean that I didn’t love her anymore, but it just meant that I was like, I can’t do this anymore. And I it’s the weirdest thing, but I tell people I’m like, I feel closer to her than ever. I’ve had the craziest things happen. I’ve had um I go to sleep while uh this is a 100% true story. I was writing a song with two clients. Um, this was about two years ago, and we’re in the middle of it, and we just can’t figure out we’re we’re stuck on this course and we can’t figure out how to end it. And it’s just kind of a loop, and we’re just getting nowhere. And after three hours, I was like, all right, I’m calling it. We need to just sleep on it, come back tomorrow night, see what we do. And my mom was a musical theater actress, so she had this like she had the operetic, very uh vibrato type voice, whatever she would sing. And we’re doing a pop song. So that like obviously that voice doesn’t fit. But as I go to sleep that night, I meditate before sleep and prayer, and in like an hour or two in, she sings exactly what was missing in the song. I hear in her voice in the head of like that’s where it was. And then that got me just fascinated with the brain from there. Because I was just like, how did that happen? Because I was like, I know internally there’s a part of me that is there, but I just have this feeling that even when people lose their physical selves, we never really overly lose them. There is some connection to some extent, and I know I’ve had that with multiple levels with my mom that’s just uh hard to explain. I can’t really find the science behind it yet, but yeah, there’s just this thing of she’s said things at perfect times, or when I’m in dreams, when I need something, that it just comes there. So it’s like when I’m hit about to hit a low, she pops in, and it’s like it’s just the coolest thing.
I love that. I so love that. And I love it for many levels because you leaned in, and I want to point that out to those listening. When you lean in, when your whole ego wants to say don’t, you’re so saying lean in, lean in and and go through the motions of your grief and actually work through that and be intrigued by it and be curious by it, and that curiosity actually helped you step into a space that most people talk about stepping into, but never really do because of the pain associated. We know that in neurolinguistic programming, there’s two different you know, ways of operating. Either we’re avoiding pain, which a lot of people are really good at and have messed up, or moving towards pleasure. And we know that when we move towards pleasure, which is what you’re doing, by stepping into your music, into the space that your mom created when you were a little boy, in your safe space, in your creative space, and the space where you can meet her in your dream. It’s a courageous step because it’s facing that big fear you had. And so you’re moving towards pleasure by doing that. Um I commend you for that because most people don’t do that, yeah. They want and they desire this big outcome of peace and joy, but I don’t want to go through the fear, and I don’t want to wait for it. But how exactly do they expect to get there exactly?
Yeah, and uh I agree, and it made me like I as you’re saying that, it made me realize that uh just in this moment, uh, even though I’ve done inner child meditations and I’ve worked on stuff of like going back to that, but a lot of this was healing that is that that kid is that that version of me is what learned all that stuff. So it kind of crossed back and really had a real big emotional impact.
And I love that, and here’s why. Because sometimes as adults, we tend to look at our past in a negative light where all our pain is at. Part of the healing part that most people miss is acceptance and forgiveness of that child. Your child. I know that in 2020 when God prompted me, it’s time to let go of your anxiety because it is it is affecting your parenting, it’s affecting your marriage. It’s time. And I’m ADHD. To sit and meditate is a big thing because our mind is always going, right? There’s I also have some OCD uh being triggered in there. So to sit quietly and follow a meditation was not an easy thing for me in 2020. But I sat in my chair and I started at five minutes, and then when I mastered five, then I moved up. And by the end of 2020, I was one hour into meditations, which is a really big feat. Yeah. And we find that in research, and maybe you can help us out in this piece, but research shows that 20 to 25 minutes of meditation daily does create new neuropathways in our brain. Can you share some more information on that?
Sure. So it’s anything that you do that will be different outside of what you do, uh, when you talk to neuroplasticity or anything along that line, you our body wants to be autonomous. It’s uh our body is trying to find essentially like the groove of what happens. So if you think about it in this way, uh you tend to go to sleep on the same side of the bed, you wake up around the same time every morning and you get your morning coffee or you take a shower. You have your morning routine and you do a lot of these things that we don’t even think about automatically, that it’s just kind of crossing things off a list and I’ve got to do this, and you walk through. And your body almost craves that stability of the same thing over and over again because that’s what it’s used to. So anytime you do something a little different, it’s like when you work out a new time to work out or a new kind of exercise and meditation for me is the same thing in this ballpark of if you’re not there yet, you need to practice it. It’s a skill and it’s not something that’s gonna come naturally right away. Um, I’m so glad you shared the ADHD. I am too. Um, so I have the same thing and I had that same exact struggle. So the way you were saying that is I I had a friend who had told me you have to treat it like the gym. Yeah, like you can’t lift 200 pounds the first time you walk in if you if you’ve never been to the gym before. You gotta work up and get to that point. And now I get to the point where I can do two to three hour meditations and I love it. Like I I I I if you told me that three, four years ago, I would have been like, you’re out of your mind. I could never, I couldn’t do it for 20. And so uh it’s you hit those, but doing those new things really step up and amp it up. So, like very simple things that you can do to change immediately if you’re just trying to make the basis change or trying to get uh your brain kind of firing a little bit more, go a different route to work. Uh brush your teeth with the opposite hand. Do little things like that that forces your brain to be like, this isn’t normal, but at the same time, it’s really not inconvenient or hard for you. It brushing your teeth opposite hands is a little inconvenient. But it’s uh one of those things that you can get through, it’s not gonna hurt. It’s not but it’s just one of those um things as you walk through that the more you can change and the more you can kind of add new things to your life that you haven’t done already, your brain starts looking for that and finding opportunities to help you with that. Our whole uh reticular activating system, it’s our brains are looking and filtering to what we want. So if we think positively, it’s gonna be looking for positive things that we’re looking for within our mindset. If we’re thinking negatively, it has that same effect. And I I I related so much of what you had said earlier because even with the anxiety, um, I had stomach aches. My ever since that childhood story I was telling you about, I was always known I had bad stomach aches, and it felt like somebody I would I would the way that I describe it now is like someone was like twisting the bottom of my stomach. And it just it was awful. I couldn’t like the anxiety was just it would hit other levels. And I just thought that that was what people dealt with, and like that was what struggle was, and I really just I never got medicated for it. I didn’t get diagnosed with ADHD until a couple years ago. Uh so I really went through all that and I look back now and I’m like, I can see that it’s torture in some cases for a lot of people, having to go through those um monotonous steps and thinking this is all you got and there’s no change to it. And uh as I started embracing it, um, when I thought when I first thought of the ADHD, I thought of it as like uh negative or like something that was holding me back. And I’ve started really leaning into the neuroscience of how can I make my brain as active as possible, as productive as possible, as efficient as possible. And we can trick it any way we want, but if we’re stuck in that negative loop, we’re only going to be into that kind of mindset and frame of what we’re working with.
You made so many points. It’s really hard to ping point one or the other.
I think part of it.
Uh mindset. Well, because this is the ADHD way we kind of ping pong off of like thoughts, right? So I get it. I get it. But let’s let’s uh bring it back to the audience members that are listening. You made the point of you gotta do things differently. When change hits, this is where I’m going to emphasize. Make sure that you stay consistent with that change. Make sure the consistency is there because change will your ego will come in, your old programming, meaning your self-image, for those that are have listened to some of these episodes. If these belief systems are negative and fear-based, it’s gonna throw off or fire these thoughts that are like, what do you think you’re doing? Why do you think you can do this? Don’t pay any attention to those thoughts. Basically, tell yourself, no, I am going to do this change. I want this outcome. In order to get this outcome, I’ve got to be consistent in these small acts every day, much like we did with the meditation. We started small and we built up. That’s why most people quit because deception hits within two weeks to a month into a change, and then they just nope, it’s too hard. I’m gonna let it go, I’m gonna avoid pain over and over and over again. So just realize that when change hits, your mind will come in and try to get you out of it, and that’s where your soul and spirit can really help you kind of push past that initial thing of like look deep into the purpose of why you’re making these changes. If if the purpose is strong, you will continue doing it even when it’s hard. Yeah, you know, you and I are both authors. How many of you out there want to write a book, but don’t realize the discipline it takes and the consistency it takes to physically write out a manuscript, go through all the editing, go and find a publisher if you want a publisher. I mean, that’s a big undertaking. And you did mention that you wrote a book. So tell us more about that book. Was it about these experiences?
So it uh I lead into why I wrote the book. So the book is the why is because of what we talked about in my past. Um, because I realized that if I went through this, um, as I started helping musicians, um, I started working uh around COVID with musicians who were dealing with writer’s block or mental health. And I started fusing psychology and neuroscience into the songwriting process if it applied. And I saw that there was this need that it a lot of the things that I thought was just me as I’m starting to deal with other artists who are very similar to me, personality wise, um, were creating together. And I see they’re going through a lot of the same struggles I went through. And I was able to give just very simple advice. I’m like, hey, I did this. This is not the way. Try A, B, and C. And I had five different clients of mine on the music side say, You gotta write a book, because man, like every time you give me something, it’s so good. It’s easy. It’s something I can incorporate. And uh, so I decided I should. And it was a mix of feeling that uh that I think that there’s some real basic things that um it’s not like it hasn’t been said before, but I don’t think it’s been said quite this way. Um a lot of times when you get into the mindset and neuroscience, it gets overly complicated on the science side of things. And a lot of people it goes over their head and they don’t understand it. So why I tried to differentiate with this is I tried to make it that anyone from seventh grade on up can understand this.
Okay.
And it the guide was for younger, the younger generation who went through COVID, whose attention spans got shortened during that time period being on social media as often as they are. It’s happened to all of us. Uh, but it really happened to that generation that in their formative years, as their brain is still growing, they got stuck at home and they had to look at screens all the time. And they weren’t getting the human contact, they weren’t getting that. So it had this big impact. And I had this feeling that what they went through through COVID is similar to what I went through, even though it’s a different situation with my family. There’s gonna be some type of trauma or some type of break that they’re gonna be having these negative internal limiting beliefs constantly flowing through them, and think that that’s normal and that’s okay. And it’s I I just try to educate that it’s you can live differently. And I use myself and I use this basic example as something that’s really fixed it for me uh over the last eight months alone. My internal story, and I caught myself doing it after I knew about limiting beliefs, and I had kind of gone out and I’ve worked out anxiety, worked down my cortisol, uh, really like done a lot of that stuff. But I was constantly saying, I’m tired all the time, I need this much sleep, and I’m not getting this much sleep. So I’m gonna be tired. It was like literally like this calculated program that I was always gonna be tired no matter how you got to the end of the answer. And um, I started just priming my brain at night, um, saying that in the last 10 minutes before you go to sleep, and the 10 minutes when you first wake up, your brain is still in a partial theta state. And it’s very uh essentially, it’s the easiest way to talk to your subconscious and your internal self at those moments. You can always do it, but this it has a multiplier effect if you can do it during these times. So you’re very, very um prone to listen to whatever you’re going through. So I started saying it before I go to sleep, when my alarm goes off, I’m gonna have so much energy. Uh it I’m gonna get through the day, I’m gonna have so many good things happen, I’m gonna be lit up and just uh just like this internal talk of like, hey, this is how tomorrow’s gonna go. I just this is it. And as I started doing that, granted, we all have bad days and sometimes things go a little haywire, but I could tell you, I I’ve not been tired. It’s like that that that side of it’s gone. So it’s one of those things that if you’re telling yourself all the time that you are something, you could be that. But the cool thing about it is it doesn’t have to be that way. Is that it? It’s a thought that you’re putting in there and you’re making it essentially reality.
Totally agree, and you know what’s popping in my head, and this is when I know the Holy Spirit is like nudging me. This is something you need to say. It’s even in scripture what they’re saying. Proverbs says there’s power in your words. Yes, yeah. And we don’t think of it that way because you’re like, oh, well, action speaks louder. Like my husband’s one that’s like, well, actions have to line up with words, and I said, But they’re both independently powerful to your mind. The words, the it’s setting the intention the night before is so important because your mind is like you’re providing it a GPS. You’re basically saying, I’m typing in the directions of what’s gonna happen tomorrow. Yeah, yeah. That’s essentially what we’re doing. And so in the morning, what do you do? You you tell yourself the same thing? Do you repeat what you told yourself the night before?
Um, I I do a little bit different based off whatever’s gonna happen. Um, similar to I know we were talking about a little bit pre-show of I don’t like monotony and I don’t like it to feel rehearsed or anything along that end. So I really go based off what I’m feeling in any given moment. Um, and where I catch it is if maybe I get overwhelmed or I get really busy and things are I I forget to do it or whatever, and then I’m if I am tired or if I’m feeling a little off the next day, um, I’ve in within that process, what I do do consistently every night is I ask myself, because I have a very clear vision of where I want to be in three, five, and ten years, um, I ask myself, did I get closer to those goals or did I get farther away today? And uh I had a situation two days ago where I was not my best self and that kind of uh flared up and at the end of the night I caught it. And it’s just one of those things if you catch if you have that accountability every single day, we’re gonna have bad days, but that helps prevent it being bad weeks and bad months. Is like it’s one of those that if I know I didn’t like something or how I reacted to something or how a result happened, uh I go through how could it have played out differently, and if it’s nothing I can sure can control or it’s not something out of my control, I learn to let that go. It’s uh you can control what you can, and for me that’s you can control how much anxiety I have and not letting yourself get stressed out. That takes a long time to really like pull down the cortisol levels, but um I started going through whenever I’m on a podcast. Uh so if you don’t mind, I’ll ask you the same question that I’ve asked others. Uh so I get into this basic. Um, I’ll I’ll just get into it. I won’t even explain. So name me the three best decisions you’ve made when you were really, really angry.
I stayed at Pfizer, even though my whole body wanted to go. By staying at Pfizer, I was able to put myself in a financial position for when my husband asked for a divorce. I when he did ask for a divorce, I didn’t immediately take a promotion that they were offering me uh to leave South Texas and go to Houston because that would have been a mistake and it would have caused more time to meet my second husband. So a lot of these were decisions that by being obedient to the first one to God saying stay, don’t leave actually led to three two other decisions that followed shortly thereafter because of my anger towards my company.
Wow. Okay, all right. So um in your opinion, would you say you make better decisions when you’re calm or when you’re angry?
When I’m calm.
Okay. Uh so I what I love to do is try to challenge people of getting to calm as soon as possible. And I this is something that I learned myself. I always thought anger was a weakness and that it was something that was really bad or off with you. And the reaction’s not the problem. It’s usually it’s uh it’s judging off that reaction because we’re we get so out of sorts, we get so uncomfortable, whatever it is. If you’re hungry, uh uncomfortable, whatever the situation is, you get and usually say something, and I found out like 90 to 95% of the time, people don’t mean anything of what they’re saying when it’s like actually coming out. It’s just like you’re you’re just spewing out because you don’t know what to do. Uh so it’s finding that calm, being able to get back to it. So getting angry is fine, but I started challenging myself. I’m competitive, and I put myself into the situation where I started saying, okay, can you be only angry for five minutes? Five minutes is fine, but after five minutes, let’s move on, let’s get to the next thing. And then I started working that down from five to four minutes to three minutes, and I’m like, I could do it in 20 seconds. And it it got me. I used to have road rage when I would drive, and I would like someone would cut me off, and I would just immediately as like everything that I was never allowed to say in church or at my house growing up, it’s coming out of me. And I’m like, this isn’t good. It’s uh I caught myself doing that, and I had someone just really look at it, and it’s where I got my company name is another angle consulting, is to look at it from a different angle. Have you ever driven your car with the intention of trying to hit someone? But have you been on your phone, or or if something’s like surprised, you’re you’re in a whatever, something’s going on, and something happens and you swerve, and you almost it’s that’s that’s the reality, is we usually are dealing with that. It’s something that is totally innocent and it’s not meant to do something. We made a mistake in that moment or whatever the case is. But uh, I was realized, I was like, I was holding on to all this anger, and it’s man, it’s not it’s not okay. So when I learned that, okay, anger’s okay, it’s not an on-off switch, but you can get off of it within a certain period of time. When I was able to kind of crack into that, it really helped me so much because I could still get the initial anger out, feel like I could get that push, but at after that, be like, that’s not realistic, that’s not where I am at. How do I calm down and how do I actually make a logical decision from here?
That’s awesome, actually. Because I like you, I don’t I didn’t like anger. I saw anger a lot with my father. And then when I saw it with my second husband, I tense up. Like anger shows up, and I’m like, I don’t like it. It triggers me in ways that I do not feel comfortable with. And for a long time, it took me a long time to realize that anger is just the bigger umbrella. And below anger, there’s so much more going on there. There’s a lot of sadness. There’s a lot of in my husband’s case, there’s a lot of sadness there of not being heard when he was a little boy. And so when I inadvertently would interrupt him, being an ADHD or and just not being able to sometimes we blur it out at the wrong times, but it excuses us because there’s no excuse to do that to someone we love, but it’s reality of like a mental illness, right? And he would take it so personally, and his anger would flare up so quickly. And then we both went into individual therapy because it was affecting our marriage, and he sort of realized that below that anger there was a lot of sadness and why and where that was coming from, and it helped him understand hey, my wife isn’t doing this to me. It’s not like something she’s doing to hurt me or anything. This is just something that is a big wound inside of me, and so I need to just realize that to move forward, right? To keep moving forward. It’s okay to feel angry, it’s okay, it’s okay to feel disrespectful, it’s not okay to stay in that negative loop forever. Um, and I find that that’s part of your story that I really love, that I know that can help actually a lot of men, because men do express more anger than women, in all honesty, right? It’s like a manly testosterone-driven emotion. And as women, we just it it makes us really uncomfortable. It it actually makes us unsafe, feel unsafe. And and that’s the part where I I kind of that’s on me though. I’m I’m dealing with that in in therapy myself because it’s not the way I want to operate anymore.
And I I understand where you’re coming from. I I my dad never some of the things got to certain levels, but when it was the raising of a voice and that that yelling uh for years, it it’s just it was something that I would immediately just shut it down or not know how to react. And it was just it you’re 100% right. It was that fear of as I was a kid that I could never get out what I wanted to say or get out my full idea. So now like then we become people pleasers and like almost force everything out just because all right, I never was able to get anything out, now I’m getting everything. And no, there’s a happy balance in between. We don’t need to do the 180 all the time. Uh so I’m I’m in that mode now where I’m learning that I’m like, oh, I can I can kind of chill back a little bit. I don’t need to share as much, but it yeah, it’s it’s just it’s really been the coolest thing being able to be on your show and and shows like this to I I said from day one, if I can help one person, that’s why I wanted to try to do this. Um I love what I do, I love what I do for work. And uh this on the side, I just think there’s so much that we as I started traveling with music and um was traveling around the country in different countries. I work with artists from LA, Nashville, all the way out to New Zealand. Uh so truly worldwide. And it was the coolest thing during COVID because we felt so disconnected, or so many people felt disconnected. And I felt more connected than ever, and I really felt like I met truly good people who I never would have met if that situation ever happened. Um, I I was forced to it was it it created an opportunity with my music business that um prior to COVID, everything was pretty much you went into a recording studio, you spent time and paid money to go into a studio to record anything, whether it was a podcast or any of that. The COVID made it that you could do this stuff at home. And then you didn’t, it didn’t have to be this big extravagant production. You could just get a message out. And I I just think it’s the coolest thing that uh you’re doing what you’re doing and uh having this impact because it’s uh I it’s had an impact on me just today, so I’m sure your listeners it’s had a massive impact as well.
Love it, love it, love it, and I love that you work with musicians because musicians are a particular breed and I love them. I respect them so much. The creative side, I’m very creative. I married an engineer and very creative, interestingly enough, because you always think electrical engineer are very logical, very math science, and that’s it. And he has a lot of creativity to him, which I love and I’m very attracted to. He’s very good with his hands, he does woodworking, and and he’s he’s the only one of those that can sew costumes for our little girl for Halloween. Well, he creates her own Halloween costumes, which I think have been like amazing. He’s dragons because she’s fascinated by dragons and um and has done it from head to toe. I wish I had a picture to show on the show. I think it’d be so neat. But I find it interesting because music is a tough, is a tough industry, and I know that most individuals people just see the um the end result with that. They don’t see the journey behind the scenes, like they see the instant uh sensation, like whoa, they’re already fighting as it, but they don’t see all the writing blocks and all those things. So kind of if I were a musician, what three tips would you give me if I was struggling with a mental block right now?
Sure. Uh so yeah, this is uh some of my favorite stuff. Um, the perfect day is my first thing that I start working with them towards is usually they’re stuck. Uh, if you’re in writer’s block, it’s typically not always linked with depression, but usually something. Something happened or something like some event that it just kind of threw them. Uh so I walk them through uh having them tell me right now, in this funk that they’re going through, what is a perfect day for you? And we map it out, and then we slowly try to build to that. Uh, but then while we do that, we also then investigate of a lot of these people usually had at some point, if they’re in a block, some create they know that they were creative at some point and that they like the ideas were flowing and things was good. So uh I asked them when they felt they’re most productive in their life. And we try to literally close our eyes and lock into what were they doing every day on the most simple level? What were you eating for breakfast on those days? What would you do for fun? What would you go back out? And then we go back through the perfect day after they’ve gone through when things were successful, and then they start lining up, and we start lining up some of those things that made them successful within that perfect day, and then they’re building towards it and they’re starting to do essentially they’re seeing that they’re doing acts that used to get them to where they wanted to be before. And it doesn’t always sometimes it works after a couple of those dominoes, sometimes it takes a little bit more with some people, but usually they end up hitting it, and the whole point is getting back to their authenticity. How are they then? What makes them them, and how does that come out? Um, I don’t care what people want them to be or who what they’re trying to like, what they think their friends or what they should be, they get stuck into that uh cycle a lot, and I relate to that a ton. So uh I let them just kind of drop whatever people’s expectations are. Who are you, and how can we get back to that?
I love that. I love that. And I know you mentioned there’s like a time frame to that. So on average, how long are they working with you?
Um, some it’s as short as 10 days, but usually it’s uh about like six to eight months in that ballpark. Um, it’s usually it’s 10 to 15 days when we get the first song out, is usually the formula of what we’ve kind of gotten into. Um past that is why it ends up being more than that, is I end up usually then writing more with them. Is that it uh we tap into something and it usually is something very emotional or something that they went through, and they want to get all of it out. And so then we we go through all those processes of okay, we start writing down what made you upset. And it’s the whole list, literally, it’s very much journaling. It’s writing out everything that wronged you, everything that you were upset about, every like going through all those things so you your voice can feel heard, and that you can get that out, and then okay, how do we write this out productively? And um, it’s not always uh sometimes it’s very pointed that it’s like a breakup song or something like that, but a lot of times it’s it’s masked and it’s not really in that mode of like it’s written as so totally something else, but it was such a healing method for their whatever their something for me. A lot of people is a breakup song has had impact for me of stink thinking stuff with my mom for whatever reason. It’s weird. I’ve had that cross of stuff I’ve written for my mom. I’ve helped give people ideas for breakup songs, and it’s like, yeah, it shouldn’t cross, but it’s the heartache and it’s the heartbreak. We all kind of if we’ve felt that feeling before, we all know it. And though it comes in different forms, I I really feel that if people can have felt that, they’ve got a story to tell.
Absolutely. Absolutely, because you’re right, journaling, just getting it out, decluttering the mind, is really important to be heard and to feel heard, especially in those moments where like you and I were talking about earlier. We when confronted with our demanding fathers, we couldn’t get what we needed to say out because they would tell us to be quiet or to they would their anger would shut us up. I think it’s so important to do that for yourself and for the artists that you work with. So if I were an artist and I wanted to buy your book, first off, what is the name of your book? Where can I find your book? And um how can I contact you?
Sure. So it was supposed to be out three months ago. Uh it’s looking like the end of this year. I started talking uh I was gonna self-publish, and then I got talking with a publisher and then a second publisher. And so then it became that a whole other thing, uh, which I didn’t expect, but it’s very cool. Um but it will be coming out later this year. Uh when I realized that the publishers could put it on a bigger scale, I was like, okay, this could impact more, and that’s all I cared about on that end of it. Um, but yeah, on Instagram, uh David McKee84 or another Angle Consulting, uh feel free to reach out uh if you are a musician or anyone kind of going through something. I always I’ve got different groups and different uh kind of things that we do to help people really uh get their feelings out and just become their best self.
Awesome, David. Well, thank you so much for joining us on release at Reveal Purpose. I know that this really hit home for me, as I’m sure for those listening, it will hit home for them as well. They’ll be able to relate to David’s story as a young kid and kind of going through the gamut of change and and us kind of just discussing ADHD and our impact in our world. So thank you, David, truly, truly for being on the show today. And for the rest of you, remember Matthew 5.14. Be delight. Have a wonderful week. Stay safe. Love y’all. Bye now.
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