[00:00:00] Daryl: I have to take care of my inner workings before anything else. I have to take care of my heart and my soul as I try to become successful in life.
If I try to do other things in life, I have to start there because what I present to myself and what I present to the world needs to be congruent with what I believe. and so that's how I started in recovery. And it's been a beautiful exploration ever since.
[00:00:32] Aneta: We often hear people wishing us a long, happy, and healthy life, but what if the length isn't what matters most? What if instead, it's the breath depth and purpose of each day that matters most? Welcome to the Live the Width of Your Life podcast. My name is Aneta Ardelian Kuzma and join me weekly as I interview guests who made changes in their own lives to live more fully with intention, gratitude, and joy. Be prepared to be inspired by their stories of how they shifted their mindset, took courageous action, and designed the life that they always wanted to live.
Welcome back to the Live the Width of Your Life podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in again. My guest today is Daryl Dittmer. After a humble and often tumultuous beginning to his life, he worked relentlessly on himself for the last 40 years. He hailed from a blue-collar family bringing a strong work ethic.
He was put to work as a farmhand at an early age, making a dollar fifty an hour, and he learned the immense value of hard work and long days.
Since those days, Daryl has been a carpenter, a sales professional, a business owner, a builder, a landlord, a real estate investor, and a consultant.
Now he also is an author. He has published one book. He is publishing another later this year. And as a third in mind.
And he feels very fortunate to have had mentors who assist him with his life's journey. And he wants nothing more than to pass that on so graciously to others as it was given to him.
And we had a great conversation. Daryl talks a lot about the lessons he learned back when he was 19 years old when he went to treatment for drug and alcohol abuse and his journey of recovery ever since.
All of the lessons he learned there, what he was able to learn from his mentors along the way, and just some of the practices that he has every day that allow him to stay on this course of continuous growth and development in his personal life.
I think his story is very inspiring to others and I hope you enjoy it as well. Take a listen.
Daryl, thank you so much for joining me.
[00:02:35] Daryl: Thank you, Aneta. I appreciate you having me on.
[00:02:38] Aneta: Yeah. So excited to have our conversation today and have the audience kind of hear more about your background. I've already shared in the bio a little bit about your background, but for those who maybe haven't read your book yet, or aren't as familiar with you, share a little bit about your background and how you find yourself here today.
[00:02:58] Daryl: Sure. Well, I started in the midwest Michigan as a kid. And in Michigan, it was Protestant work ethic. Seemed like everybody's dad worked at either General Motors, Ford, or Chrysler. And it was just this interesting sort of dynamic.
And looking back, I didn't know it then, but everybody was kind of the same, that's just sort of how it rolled out. So I grew up in a pretty strict household. And it was centered around listening and not talking back and manners and doing all the things you're told to do.
And I grew up Lutheran, which was part of that Protestant work ethic. So I was, here's your box of things that you're allowed to believe. And here's the other box of things that you're maybe not allowed to believe. And that's how my life began. And in saying that I don't have any complaints. I don't have any regrets.
It was a fine upbringing. Other than the fact of what I did, which is, I got involved with drinking and drugs at a fairly young age around 13, and don't want to necessarily belabor that ride, it progressed fairly quickly.
And by the time I was 19 years old, I was put into a drug and alcohol treatment program. And I didn't want to go. I was scared to death. My life was characterized at that point by being very dishonest with myself and with others. And just not living a life that was congruent with what I knew to be right and what I knew to be true in here.
So it was kind of tearing me apart because I was trying to hide on one hand and I was trying to be something that I thought those friends that I was hanging out with wanted me to be on the other hand. So I was right in the middle and I was getting ripped apart by that emotionally, spiritually. That was a very difficult ride.
So I went, into treatment, and two things I got out of treatment. One was hope that I could have A much better life because I saw people doing that. I met people who were doing that, who had been where I was. And the other thing I got was, I was introduced to the 12 steps.
And for me that was a road map to start to live a different life, start to live a life that I could expand as I learned, as I went along, I could expand into whatever I wanted it to be. So that was back in 1985. So, I've been doing this recovered guy, sober thing, searcher, explorer for a long time now. And I'm sure we'll get into some of that stuff, but that's what brings me here today.
[00:05:40] Aneta: Yeah. It's so interesting. I live in Ohio, so I think that some of what you saw is very similar to your upbringing in Michigan. And so you said something that was kind of interesting is that even though you were on this journey of the drugs and the alcohol at a young age, you still felt like it was out of integrity, like that the actions you were taking weren't aligned with what felt right to you.
So how did you find yourself in recovery? How did you get out of that some people go into recovery and they get out and they continue with the same pattern of behavior. Did it work the first time you went in or did you struggle with staying sober after you went through treatment?
[00:06:22] Daryl: I would say I struggled with staying sober, but I didn't relapse. So I've been sober since that time. And that's such a great topic Aneta because people can look at recovery as being sober. And it's so much more than that. And that's one of the things that for me, the 12 steps taught me or at least began to teach me that there is something greater than me. I can have faith. I can rely on something outside myself or whatever we want to call it.
We can call it the universe. We can call it anything we want. And that was what I started to explore. So I got involved with a mentor very early on who was just a beautiful soul and a beautiful human being, and very much lived from within and was so connected to recovery from the perspective of soul and just being. So that was a beautiful person for me to learn from.
But one of the first things he said to me was first things first and the rest shall be added on. First things first to me, as he explained it to me, and that expanded as time went on was I have to take care of my, inner workings before anything else. I have to take care of my heart and my soul as I try to become successful in life.
If I try to do other things in life, I have to start there because what I present to myself and what I present to the world needs to be congruent with what I believe. and so that's how I started in recovery. And it's been a beautiful exploration ever since.
[00:08:07] Aneta: Congratulations on so many years on your journey. And so do you feel like that instance, because you were young when you started treatment, how old were you again when you went into treatment?
[00:08:20] Daryl: I had just turned 19 about two weeks before I went into treatment.
[00:08:24] Aneta: Yeah. So some kids might be going off to college or maybe starting a job and living sort of carefree and you went into treatment and how long was your program, your treatment that you went through?
[00:08:34] Daryl: 30 days inpatient.
[00:08:36] Aneta: 30 days in patient. So you leave after 30 days. And were you in with folks that were older than you as well? Was it different age groups or was it primarily folks your age that were there with you?
[00:08:50] Daryl: It was almost all people older than me. And interestingly enough about, I don't know, two, three weeks after treatment, I went back for some aftercare sort of thing and outpatient stuff. And two to three weeks, the number had been cut in half and within, I'd say probably three months. I was the only one left who hadn't gone back out, which was amazing to me.
[00:09:16] Aneta: Wow. Okay. Some people believe that things are always working out. It's a benevolent universe in which things were given situations for various reasons. So how do you look back on that time and how do you feel that it's impacted the work that you're doing today or have done since?
[00:09:34] Daryl: With complete gratitude part of the 12 steps is to clean up the wreckage of the past with other people and with myself so I did all those things and I made amends and I changed my behaviors and I changed myself.
So that I was in a position where I could, as I cleaned my side of the street I could go forward with a free spirit. I didn't have things that were, anchors that were holding me back or chains that were attached to me that were full of these regrets, and all of these things that I did that I didn't feel good about. So that's why I was so enamored with the 12 steps. And I'm still enamored with the 12 steps because they can go as deep as we want them to go, but with those cleaning house parts of the 12 steps is crucially important to get to a point where we can be.
Grateful, and we can feel good about not necessarily good about the behaviors or the past, but good about where we are now and I'm not a everything happens for a reason kind of person. Although it does, but...
[00:10:48] Aneta: Was going to say, what do you mean by that?
[00:10:50] Daryl: I don't lead with that. And the reason I say that is because life unfolds the way it unfolds and I went through what I went through to get me where I am today.
So I can't go back and say, well, if I hadn't gotten sober or if I had never gotten into drugs that sort of thing because it all lines up the way it's supposed to line up. And one of the greatest things I've learned is I'm not in charge of how that happens. So that's where my gratitude comes from.
[00:11:23] Aneta: What do you think we are in charge of if we're not in charge of how it happens?
[00:11:29] Daryl: I am in charge of how I present myself to the world. I am in charge of me and there's a chapter in my book called the nouns and it's one of the things that I write about, there's only three things in this lifetime that I can't control and it's people, places, and things.
So the only thing that I can do anything is about myself. So that's what I'm in charge of. Presenting myself to the world in a way that is beneficial to me. But in saying that it's also beneficial to other people and presenting myself in a way that's peaceful and calm and enjoying my life and grateful and able to smile at people and have beautiful conversations with people that I don't know helps. I feel like it helps everyone.
[00:12:20] Aneta: And speaking of your book, I have a copy here. Thank you so much for sending it to me. When I Stopped Fighting the Unexpected Joy of Getting My Head Out of My Ass. So tell me why you wrote the book and maybe share a little bit of the highlights for folks who are listening and maybe need this exact book for their life right now.
[00:12:42] Daryl: Thank you. Well, I'll start with a quick little story. About 20 years ago, my fiance at that time, Christina, who is now my wife. I was relating one of the stories of my youth and she looked at me and she said I don't know who that guy was but that's not you anymore.
And I said, no it's not me anymore. And we had that conversation several times. And at the end of that conversation, I'd say remind me to write a book someday. So that is sort of how it started and how that little seed got planted.
But I wrote the book because I want to help other people with my story. and that was one of the most important things for me in writing the book is not to tell people how to live, not to tell people what to do, not to say if you have to do this to become something it's by relating my story and with the hope that somebody will be able to relate to my story and maybe pick a little seed out or something gets planted that germinates and takes root over time.
And that was the reason I wrote my book. And the first three-quarters of the book is my story. Or maybe the first two-thirds and then the final part of the book are the lessons that I've learned along the way. So there's funny stories, there's sad stories.
I've had a lot of people tell me they got emotional reading the book and they laughed reading the book. Just sort of a myriad of things that happened as they read and I thought that was cool because it's my first book. I had no idea that I could write a book.
But so that's what the sort of book is. And that's my hope in terms of just hoping people get something out of it, that helps them with their life.
[00:14:28] Aneta: Absolutely. And was it difficult writing from such a vulnerable place, going back to some stories of times where maybe you weren't so proud of your behavior, or just kind of sharing how you went through the experience, especially the early adulthood years?
[00:14:45] Daryl: It wasn't. There were certain things that I thought well, do I go down this road? Do I share it? But for the most part, I just laid it all out there because it is the story and it is my story.
And I feel the more vulnerable I am, hopefully, the more vulnerable people can be when they read the story and allow themselves to be vulnerable and maybe to say here's something that may not be working in my life, or here's something that might help to talk to someone else about, or here's a place maybe where I need to change.
So from that perspective, it was not difficult because my intention wasn't to worry about me. It was to consider what I'm putting out there for other people.
[00:15:33] Aneta: That's wonderful. And you said this is your first book. Are you planning on writing more or are you currently writing more?
[00:15:41] Daryl: I am. So this book took me 20 years to start, but it took me about three months to write once I sat down and started writing and I'd get up at four o'clock in the morning and have ideas and just start going and I can be a little extreme in that way, which has turned out to be a wonderful thing in my life, as long as I temper it correctly.
So in saying that within five to six months, I had written two books. And so the second book is written. And it'll be out in September, maybe October. Just doing some final touches and that sort of thing. And the plan is to write a total of three.
[00:16:22] Aneta: Can you share a little bit about the second book? What it's about? Or even the title?
[00:16:26] Daryl: Sure. So the first one, When I Stopped Fighting The Unexpected Joy Of Getting My Head Out Of My Ass. The second one is When You Stop Fighting, The Road You're On Is Your Asphalt. So It's about trajectory. It's about taking a look at our lives and sort of breaking them down and saying, okay, where am I headed?
Where am I headed because of the things that I'm allowing in my life? And how does my trajectory look? And if it looks like something other than what I want to be in five years 10 years 20 years, or tomorrow, maybe there are some changes that I can make in my life to get my trajectory on the track that I'd like it to be on.
[00:17:12] Aneta: Yeah.
[00:17:14] Daryl: And that's the gist of it. And then toward the end, it goes into some of the mile markers that we can recognize as we go and some of the changes we can see in ourselves as we go to know that we're growing and know that we're moving forward. And some of the actions we can take to get there.
[00:17:34] Aneta: That's so exciting. And you said the third one. You don't have to share if you don't want to, but do you already have a sense of what the third one is going to be? There must be some on this continuum.
[00:17:45] Daryl: I do. The outline is done, or I should say about 90 percent done. And it's about the paradoxes in life. And there's so many. The outline probably has 30 or 40 different ways that we see things versus the way that things work in the world, we're taught to believe this, but this is actually how things unfold in the best manner for all concerns.
So that's the gist of it. And it's formulated in here and in here, it's just not on paper yet. So I'm excited to start writing it though. I'm kind of itching to start writing it. I've got to do my audiobook for book two and do some of the marketing for book two and that sort of thing. But once I do that, I'd say probably early 25, I'll start writing book three.
[00:18:36] Aneta: isn't it amazing when you start writing, you're like, I can do this. It's sometimes the first one takes forever. It's like an idea and a seed. And then you go through the process and I don't know, it's amazing when that happens.
What are some of the things that you've learned just in your journey that could be inspiring to someone else who's listening and maybe feeling like right now they're in a stuck place or a low place in their life?
[00:19:00] Daryl: There are a few, but one of the best things I can do is surround myself with people who also want to move forward in their lives. and sometimes we can feel stuck. One of the things that I was told early on when I entered the 12 steps was when you change the game, you have to change the players.
And I did that and I did that early. And I did that in a very sort of cut it off and don't look back manner and that worked. And that was an important thing for me to do. One of the other things that was important for me is I can't be in my head too much early on.
I can't sit around and think the better thing for me to do, at that point was to do was to investigate the things that are going to move my life forward and not only investigate them and think about them but do them and move forward with a plan, doesn't have to be a great plan. Doesn't have to have an end goal necessarily.
I've lived my life from an intentional perspective as opposed to from a goal perspective. So my intentions are what drive my life and my job is to do. And over time, as I continue to do life gets presented to me on a silver platter. It does.
And my job is just to do. I allow myself to be led. And that's, very helpful. So those are a couple of things that I think are extremely important. I think if I was going to say one last thing if there's a way, and it's difficult early on, especially if we're young, if there's a way we can quiet ourselves and quiet our minds and quiet what's happening inside of us.
It's really important to move forward. And it's really important to be able to resonate with whatever the plan is going forward. If I can quiet myself that could be breathwork. that could be meditation. It could be walking in nature. It could be sitting on a chair outside for five minutes and just being there.
[00:21:10] Aneta: Yeah, I love that you brought those things up because I was going to ask you, what are your disciplines? What are the ways or devotion you spend your time every day because it is hard to continue to make progress, to take action, to write your books, to do all of the work? And I know for me if I don't have my routines, if I don't do the things every day, the devotion, it makes it challenging to keep my energy up.
It makes it challenging to have the focus, the clarity, and even the desire sometimes to take aligned action. So you'd stated, breathwork, meditation, and walking in nature. Those are all wonderful things. And those are things that are part of my practice. Did you learn those along the way, or were they some of the things that were taught to you earlier on as part of a recovery?
[00:22:01] Daryl: I learned those along the way. And it's interesting life presents itself to us. When I was doing things that weren't good and I was doing drugs and drinking, those people came into my life. And when I change things, as far as how I do things. Beautiful, wonderful mentor people came into my life and taught me those things.
so I learned them along the way, and we mentioned gratitude earlier. That's the foundation. The breathwork, the meditation, and just making sure that I check in with gratitude as part of my morning routine, but then at different times throughout the day, sometimes I get a feeling and I just say, thank you.
And I get a chill down my spine in a good way. and I just feel gratitude, overwhelmed with gratitude. It's something over time and it's not immediate. I want people to know that it's something that we have to practice over time and then it really starts to integrate, but then it also reverberates outside of us. And that's a beautiful time.
[00:23:03] Aneta: I love practicing gratitude and like anything at first, like you said, it's a practice, It becomes a habit. It becomes more habitual the more we do it, but it feels so good to be grateful. it feels so good to acknowledge and notice the blessings. the small and large.
And it's always one that people feel so good when they leave because you can't be in gratitude and not feel good. It's such a high vibration, such a high energy and frequency. And our brain, whatever it is that we seek, our brain will find evidence of it. And so if you are seeking to be thankful and to be grateful and to find reasons to acknowledge that you will find it all day long.
And so I love doing gratitude in the morning. I love doing gratitude before I go to bed, making sure that I go to bed with those thoughts. But just this continuous practice, like you said, as well is so important. And so if someone's starting a new gratitude practice, how did you start?
Was it just something you said out loud? Did you say it silently? Do you like writing it down? What are some of the ways that you found that you can make the practice more habitual over time?
[00:24:14] Daryl: I started by doing a lot of writing a long time ago, and it's because there was so much going on in here, and some turmoil in here. And I just wrote and everything that popped into me got out on paper. And that was such a beautiful, relieving practice. And as we've moved, as I've cleaned the house years later, I pick up some of that stuff.
I'm like, wow, that's pretty heavy stuff. But it's beautiful because life has changed so much. So I started with gratitude very simply, and it was very connected. They told me in the 12 steps I needed to start to believe in something greater than myself.
And so it was, I'm not who makes my eyes see and I'm not who makes the grass grow and it was as simple as that. And that's how I began my gratitude journey because it was recognizing that there's so much out there and there's so much in here that I don't understand and that I can't do and that there's something just beautiful and powerful and wonderful that's outside of me.
But that's also in me and infuses everything. And that's how it started. And it just grew from there. There's a story that I'll just relate real quickly, but I think it was a physicist who said the possibility of us showing up on planet Earth as we are, is about the same in terms of chance as a box of refrigerator parts, in a hurricane turning into a refrigerator.
And if that makes sense, I think about that and I'm like, you're right. There's an intelligence, there's a wonder, there's something that we can connect to and with that's beyond what we're able to understand. The good news is we don't need to understand.
[00:26:19] Aneta: It's so interesting. I just interviewed someone yesterday and we were talking about this one in 400 trillion chance that we are alive. It is just, that you can't even get your brain around it to think about all of the things that had to have happened for our parents to have gone through their experience, been born when they did end up in the same place, you choose to, or not choose to conceive like all the things that had to have happened.
And then the pregnancy to be successful and the birth and all of those things for us to be here. And it is a responsibility to say, what will we do with this one precious life as Mary Oliver says. And so that ties into. A question that I love to ask everyone towards the end of the podcast is what does it mean to you to live the width of your life?
[00:27:07] Daryl: To me, it means that there is no encapsulation for me. There is no box that I fit into. There are no boundaries or there are no boundaries. As far as the universe can go, I can go. To me, that's infinite and it doesn't mean outside of me.
And I've been fortunate from a business perspective and several wonderful things have come into my life from that perspective, but it means inside of me, it means how much peace I can feel. And how much beauty I can feel. And how much reverence can be in me? And how much gratitude can in me that there is no limit to these things? There's no limit to what I can do outside myself as well, but the real width of my life is everything inside of me.
[00:28:01] Aneta: That's beautiful. Daryl, if folks want to find you. To work with you. To find your books, where is the best place for them to start?
[00:28:10] Daryl: The best place to start is, daryldittmer.com, which is D A R Y L D I T T M E R. com. My books are there. Links to my books are there. I do a podcast as well, which we have to get you on soon. But that's really where to start. My book is available on Amazon. If you are interested in my book, you can look at when I stopped fighting and the book will show up or you can just type in my name and my book will show up.
[00:28:42] Aneta: And we will include all those links in the show notes, Daryl. I highly recommend that everyone get this book and read it. It's so good and I love how you share so generously your stories and then the lessons at the end, which are beautiful too, because we could take some action directly from thank you so much for the great work that you're doing in this world. And thank you for coming on today and I wish you continued success.
[00:29:04] Daryl: Thank you. And that's why I appreciate it. Wonderful being here and thank you for everything that you're doing as well.
[00:29:09] Aneta: Thank you.
Thank you for listening to today's episode. If today's conversation inspired you to dream again, break out of your comfort zones, or reflect on what it means to you to live more fully, then please follow this podcast because every week you'll hear more stories from people just like you who took imperfect action towards their goals, created more joy and are living the life that they always dreamt of living.