We were lucky to catch up with Dannie De Novo recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Dannie, thanks for joining us today. Can you share an important lesson you learned in a prior job that’s helped you in your career afterwards?

When the stress is dialed up, you still need to be able to make a decision. I’ve had a few careers in my life so far. Prior to going to law school, I was a paramedic. I was working an overnight shift when a priority 1 call came in for a man in his 40s, unresponsive, not breathing. My partner and I got on scene and found a very large man unconscious of his very small bedroom floor. His wife and young daughter were both on the bed looking over him, crying, and screaming at me to save him. I had to straddle the man’s body to have some room to work, but I did my best and jumped into action. He didn’t have a pulse and there was no activity on the EKG monitor–not a good sign. The little girl grabbed my shirt. She was so close her tears ran down my cheek. “Save my daddy. Don’t let him die!”

I ran through my protocols that I had run through a million times, and luckily, I began to see some activity on the heart monitor. That never happened. His only hope, which was small, was to get to a hospital very quickly, but I had another problem in front of me. There was no way I was going to get the man through the bedroom door. My partner continued rescue breathing and I called for help from the local fire department. The chief was on scene within 2 minutes, popped his head in the bedroom door, and asked me what I needed. “A bigger door, Chief. I need a really big door.” A couple of chain saws later and we had my patient in the living room, onto a stretcher, and into the ambulance. I lost all heart activity on the way to the hospital, and a bunch of us were taking turns performing CPR in the back of the ambulance, which was traveling around bends at 50mph. My arms felt like jello. I gave the emergency room a heads up and we came in as a code. My crew, the firefighters, the nurses, and the ER doctors worked that code as long as we could. Unfortunately, that man was called home that night. I let his little girl down.

Sometimes you will find yourself in really bad situations–situations that only seem to get worse. No matter what you do, you won’t be able to win. The outcome is ultimately out of your hands. Being prepared helps decrease the stress because you feel prepared, but never feel so overly confident that you aren’t able to bend and move in the moment. I had to give the order to cut open a bigger door in a random stranger’s house (with the wife’s consent, of course), but that was not something I ever thought I would have to do. No training and no practice ever prepared me for such an event.

I quickly learned in that job that any decision was better than no decision. My decision that night didn’t help save my patient, but hopefully I did show his family I was willing to do whatever was in my power to try to save him. Hopefully.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Not too long ago, I was living the life that I thought everyone wanted to live. I had a good-paying job as an attorney, a husband, a house, and the most adorable baby girl. The problem was, though, that aside from the time I spent with my baby, I was actually pretty miserable. I was depressed but still functioning at a level of basic survival from day to day.

The scariest part about this for me was that, growing up, I had suffered a very hard depression beginning in my teens and lasting through my early twenties. I had a terrible time with antidepressants and was hospitalized in a psych unit more than once for suicidal tendencies. Finally, after no therapy appeared to be working, I was given only one more option—electroconvulsive therapy. Not knowing any better and simply wanting to be free from the prison of my mind, at age 19, I dropped out of college and consented to weeks of the tortuous “treatment.”

The treatments were so intense and horrific that I started pretending I was no longer depressed just so everything would stop. Along the way, I often heard that if I stopped being so much like “me” and started acting more like everyone else, I wouldn’t be so depressed. So, I set out on a course to be like everyone else and live happily ever after.

But there I was. I had everything I thought I needed, and yet, I couldn’t have been more unhappy. I remember one evening, mindlessly stirring a pot on the stove, lost in my misery. My baby was sitting on the kitchen floor playing with some pots and wooden spoons of her own. Suddenly, she looked up at me with her big brown eyes, picked up a pot and a spoon and started mimicking me! I thought it was the coolest thing I had ever seen. I bent down and said to her, “Yes! Just like Mommy!”

And then, I fell to the floor. A crushing wave of nausea came over me and I was faint. It immediately became apparent to me that my daughter was watching me and copying everything I was doing, and what I was, in fact, doing was teaching her how to live a very depressed, lonely, anxious, unoriginal, and uninspired life. So, that day, I set out to learn what real happiness was because I could not bear the thought of my daughter ever having to go through what I had forced myself to endure for so long.

I started studying happiness at the level I had once studied law—the spiritual side, the neuroscience side, the health side—everything I could get my hands on. I studied with spiritual leaders and gurus and coaches all over the world. The next thing I knew, I was at my lawyer friend’s office signing my divorce papers when I got a call that the company I was working for was being acquired and that I was not part of the deal. It seemed like the universe opened a new chapter for me right then and there.

For a long time, people made fun of me. A lot of people exited my life. One day, though, my little brother came to me and asked me what I was doing and what I was reading. I said, “Why, are you going to make fun of me too?”

He said, “No. I’m curious because I have never seen you happy before.” He continued, “…and if it worked for you, do you think it could work for me too?”

I gave him some stuff to try out, and his life started to change. I saw that I could help others do what I had done and I started speaking and coaching on happiness. To date, I have 4 bestselling books. (I have one international bestseller, Get in a Good Mood & Stay There, which chronicles my first steps of pulling myself out of depression, dealing with anxiety, and finding happiness.) When COVID hit, I wanted to help as many as I could, so I started going on TV. I am now a resident happiness television expert on multiple stations nationwide and have done well over 130 TV appearances across the country.

My goal is to help others avoid the pain and suffering I once felt and see that they have the power to create happiness in their lives.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Everyone runs to social media these days to self-promote, but I managed to make more of a name for myself by going on television. I’ve been on TV news and talk shows all over the country, and that has allowed me to connect with people from so many different places–people that I never would have met or connected with otherwise. What that did for me was confirm that it doesn’t matter where people live, everyone needs help. I am so grateful that I have been able to get my message out to people who needed to hear it.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Before I started speaking and going on TV, I had a very poor self-image. My self-worth was so low that I could not make eye contact with myself in my own bathroom mirror. I honesty did not believe I was of any value, and I hated myself. I needed to change many beliefs about myself and change my self-perception. I had to unlearn how I spoke to myself and train myself to speak to myself as a supportive, respectful, loving friend.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.DannieDeNovo.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danniedenovo
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/danniedenovo
• Linkedin: https://www.linked.com/in/danniedenovo
• Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/danniedenovo
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@danniedenovo
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@danniedenovo