0:00- Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Change Your Mind Podcast.

0:03- I'm your host, Kris Ashley and I am really excited for today's episode because I'm gonna be doing things just a little bit differently today.

0:10 - (Video Introduction)

0:42- I have my very first guest on the show and I can't imagine a better first guest to have you are in for such a treat today.

0:49- So with me, I have Mike Pawlawski.

0:52- Mike is a former professional football quarterback.

0:56- He won a world championship in the arena football league as a college player.

1:01- He was the PAC 10 offensive player of the year.

1:04- And then after his football career he developed and ran his own TV production company where he specialized in outdoor sports TV.

1:12- He won a Golden Telly as a producer and host.

1:15- He's been Emmy nominated several times.

1:17- He's also been a color analyst for both college and professional football for huge networks like NBC ABC Fox Comcast and a bunch of other outlets.

1:29- And he's also a very sought after coach and a motivational speaker, which is why I'm so excited to talk to him today.

1:35- And finally, as if he's not busy enough, he's launching his very own peak performance podcast called Everyday Great, where he's got some really great guests lined up already.

1:45- So I really hope you tune into it once it launches, he has a wealth of experience and knowledge to share and I can't wait to hear where the comment conversation goes today.

1:54- So welcome Mike.

1:55- Thanks for being here, Kris, thanks so much for having me on.

1:58- It.

1:58- Sounds like I have ADHD as I listen to you talk about what I do.

2:01- But,, I just love being able to give back.

2:04- I love the conversations that you and I have had because we're so right there on the same page.

2:09- And so I'm looking forward to today as well.

2:11- Yeah.

2:11- Yeah.

2:12- And for those listening, Mike and I have gotten to know each other over the past few weeks and we just geek out over all of this personal development stuff, which is why I'm really excited to have him here today.

2:21- So now that we've told everyone what all of your amazing high level accomplishments are.

2:27- I wanna rewind it all the way back to childhood and show people that you are a human being too, right?

2:32- So, I know that you suffered from a lot of childhood illness early on in your life.

2:38- And I think so many people out there are struggling with their own health issues and it would be really helpful for listeners if you could give some background on your childhood health issues and how they really affected you.

2:50- No doubt, people have a lot of issues going on right now, especially post COVID and, and where we are.

2:56- I actually, when I was born, I spent the 1st 30 days of my life in an incubator and I was born with pneumonia.

3:04- And so as a child, I was tested for cystic fibrosis.

3:09- And back then, the, the tests weren't as modern or as conclusive as they are today, but it, it tested as inconclusive back then later on in life, after a sinus infection and several surgeries, they figured out that I actually have cystic fibrosis.

3:25- Now it's not as severe as a lot of the kids that you're seeing that end up dying as a result of it, right?

3:31- You have bad outcomes as a result of the very severe cases of cystic fibrosis.

3:35- But I had it and so it caused me to have pneumonia on, well, essentially every single year of my youth life when I was a kid from the time that I was born up until I was 16 years old.

3:48- And there were three times in particular that doctors told my parents that if I made it through the night I would probably survive.

3:58- And as a parent, yeah, as a parent that's, that's brutal to hear that.

4:02- But as a kid it left me in this state of constant fear, scared of getting sick, scared of ending up in the hospital because I would literally have to spend 10 days to two weeks inside of an oxygen tent separated.

4:21- So here's this a young kid who as a baby was separated right at birth.

4:27- And, and you and I have talked about it, but there people need human connection, especially when they're infants.

4:32- They need to have that connection to their caregiver.

4:35- They need that security from it.

4:36- And I was separated early on.

4:38- And then every year I would be separated again, completely apart from my mom, my dad who you know, my parents were phenomenal people.

4:50- I could not have been more fortunate to have the parents that I had and their connection is a huge part of what got me through it and and, but that illness obviously has an effect.

5:01- It leaves a mark.

5:02- There's a great book out there called Your Body Keeps The Score and it talks about these traumas that you endure.

5:09- You know, whether, you know, I know your personal story obviously from your fantastic book.

5:15- I know, you know, a lot of people have different traumas.

5:18- Be it a socio-economic trauma from where they grew up, be it at the hands of family, be at the hands of a stranger, be at the hands of illness, whatever it is there, we all essentially end up with traumas that affect our lives in some way, shape or form.

5:32- And so dealing with that trauma and, and as a young kid trying to get through that and make sense of it, you, you start to become and it's a term that we'll talk about a lot today, hyper vigilant in terms of the injuries, the illness and everything else that's affecting you.

5:50- And it affected me in a big way when I was younger.

5:54- I can't even imagine as a child how terrifying that must have been b being put in the hospital separated in an oxygen chamber.

6:01- That sounds really, really traumatic and really scary.

6:04- How did you overcome those illnesses eventually?

6:07- Like what, what helped you overcome that?

6:09- Because you're, you're doing great today.

6:11- Right.

6:12- Right.

6:12- Yeah.

6:12- Doing great today.

6:13- And it's a super point.

6:15- It is scary.

6:16- Nobody ever said to me when I was a kid.

6:19- by the way, if you make it through the night, you'll probably survive like nobody's gonna tell a 10 year old or a seven year old that.

6:24- But I can see the look on my mom's face when the doctor is talking to her, I can see that concern and people are absolutely genetically designed to read people's emotions, to be able to connect through facial expression, through tonality, you know, through even in your neck, the tension in your neck, we are designed 70% of what our vagus nerve does is actually feedback to the brain.

6:51- So it's input.

6:52- They used to think that the vagus nerve was just about sleeping and digestion.

6:56- But it's literally about the inputs coming from your senses, your central nervous system and and keying that up to your brain to take those inputs.

7:04- And so as a kid, I got, I used to see that my parents and that fear scared the hell out of me.

7:09- And that at one time when I was seven years old, I was at home and I was watching a wonder woman back when Linda Carter was wonder woman and I was sitting on the couch and, and I was indoors because I had to be indoors because I was sick and getting sicker.

7:23- And I can remember my lungs tightened up so bad that I literally felt like a fish out of water.

7:29- I could not breathe.

7:30- And at the time, she was in this like glass cage and there's ooze coming down the walls.

7:35- And it was just this perfect metaphor for how I felt like I was just being smothered.

7:39- And so my parents had to rush me to the hospital.

7:40- It was one of those times that they were told that I, you know, if I made it through the night and they decided on that trip, they're like, we're doing something about this.

7:49- And so they put me in sports, they talked to doctors and the doctor said, you know, this is the seventies and the doctors like, yeah, I guess sports would probably help, you know, and get them breathing harder.

7:59- And so they literally put me in every sport possible.

8:03- My mom was a German, beautiful German lady.

8:07- Fantastic.

8:08- She was speaking of trauma.

8:10- She survived World war two.

8:11- She lived in six different countries during World war two, all over Europe.

8:16- My father was a former G I former paratrooper badass 82nd airborne.

8:22- And so it was kind of the perfect mix of my mom was the mama bear and she was tough and she had, you know, some, some thick skin from her history in her youth.

8:31- My dad was tough paratrooper, but they were both incredibly loving people.

8:36- And so they, my dad was really big about pushing me out there and then my mom was really big about giving me a hug when it hurt.

8:43- And so it was this great combination where I, I would run and I would play these sports and, and my lungs would hurt so bad.

8:51- And I felt like I couldn't breathe and I felt like I was suffocating and trying to get air and it was so bad at points that I would cry and my dad would be like way to go, way to tough it out.

9:01- So I could literally see the look on his face like that's my boy, you know, and, and so that pride from my dad that I could see that I could read, made me want it more.

9:10- And then in discussions with them, it was, well, this is making you better, right?

9:16- So this became my armor, overcoming the illness.

9:20- Sports was my armor in protecting me from going back to the hospital again.

9:25- And every time it hurt that bad mom would give me a hug and some love.

9:28- And you know, and so I had this perfect combination of, of parenting that pushed me out, helped me develop grit, helped me develop that growth mindset.

9:37- At the same time, nurtured me enough to make me feel safe, which is what I needed.

9:42- And by the time I was 16, I did not spend another night in the hospital for pneumonia because I had through my lungs.

9:49- But it was soccer, baseball, basketball, football, track and field, swimming, diving like you name it.

9:55- I was surfing, I was skiing, everything.

9:58- If there was a sport that could make me breathe hard.

10:00- My parents put me in it and fully promoted it and, and, and I got to love it.

10:05- And it became my identity in that a, obviously I had a genetic predisposition to be able to play sports.

10:11- You, you can't get to the levels that I got to without that.

10:14- But at the same time, emotionally, I, I had a hole to fill.

10:19- It was the fear of dying.

10:23- Essentially that fear of being sick again.

10:25- I did not want to spend another night in that oxygen tent.

10:28- And so I used that, I used sports to overcome that fear and it was a big one and, and it was armor at that point, I'm sure we'll talk about it later, but it was armor.

10:39- It was, it was holding things off for the moment and it took a whole evolution of my life later on down the road to kind of reconnect to myself.

10:47- But, but it was great for me in my youth.

10:50- It, it helped me to get to the, the pinnacle of sports playing professional football.

10:55- I was in the NFL for a couple of years playing in the CFL and had a great career athletically.

11:01- That's what amazing foresight of your parents like to, to even think of that.

11:05- That's so incredible.

11:06- And you, you know, you touched on something you were talking about how painful it was.

11:10- What does it take on an emotional level, on a mental level to get out there and run even though you're in so much pain and there's so much fear and I I mean, I'm sure when you started, there was still this fear of, I don't even know if they, this is going to put me back in the hospital.

11:25- Right.

11:25- I don't even know if this is something that's going to hurt me or make me feel more suffocated.

11:29- So, can you talk a little bit about that because I'm sure you built them a mental and emotional stamina throughout that process as well.

11:36- This is, this is Angela Duckworth talks about developing grip, which is doing the little things every day, even though it's hard.

11:43- And that was the hard part getting through that stuff and, and you have to attach emotional belief to it if I believe that this is going to make it better.

11:53- Not just I think it is or I feel like it's gonna, you have to absolutely 100% believe this and this is for me, I believe in law of attraction, but I believe it in more of a mechanical sense and that it, it, it's not a magical, you know, thing out there happening to us.

12:10- It's us tuning ourselves up to that level where when first we want it and we start focusing on it and we start to manifest it by doing the things it takes to make it happen.

12:26- So I wanted to get better.

12:29- I knew this.

12:30- I knew that when I ran hard, it hurt my lungs, my lungs were the organ.

12:36- That was the problem for me when I was ending up in the hospital with pneumonia.

12:41- And so if I was doing something that was going to affect my lungs, that didn't put me in the hospital, I felt like it was an improvement.

12:47- And so if I could get them to expand, if I could get them to, to function better through this, even though it hurt, I believe that was gonna make me better.

12:57- And so that was a huge piece of it.

12:59- I love the reward of success of winning of being a really good player, no matter what sport it was of learning new skills.

13:09- I was always a learner.

13:10- I love learning new things constantly.

13:12- And so I constantly read, playing new sports is a great way to learn new things because you can, there's no end to the skills that you can pick up over the course of your career.

13:20- And so that mindset of I'm gonna tough it out.

13:23- My dad used to love that.

13:24- One of his favorite savings was rub a little dirt on it because he used to jump out of planes for God's sakes.

13:29- And so, you know, he, he was, he was pretty damn tough himself.

13:34- And, and, and he brought a lot of that to me.

13:36- I actually asked him one time because I was hyper competitive, hyper, competitive and I've had an epiphany in recently, but I asked him, I'm like, what did you do to make me so competitive?

13:47- And he said, I, I have no idea.

13:48- You just had it, it was just in you and it, and it, I, I think the competitiveness came from, I was always trying to stay out of that hospital bed.

13:56- That, that's what it was at the time I didn't recognize, it, didn't recognize really till this year.

14:00- But that was what drove me.

14:02- It's like Tony Robbin says, if you give someone enough leverage they will change.

14:07- And that was your leverage, you needed that.

14:09- That was totally my leverage.

14:10- Yeah.

14:10- And, and again, I could have had they at the time said, oh, this is cystic fibrosis that probably would have shut all of that down.

14:20- Hm.

14:20- And the truth is it was cystic fibrosis.

14:24- Yeah.

14:25- But we didn't give it the power to shut me down.

14:30- We said we're gonna fight through this anyway.

14:33- Now, o obviously, like it all depends on the level.

14:36- I didn't have an extreme case of it, but the mucosa in my body was so thick that I couldn't clear it.

14:42- And, and it led to six different sinus infections.

14:45- It led to other physical problems, it led to lung issues.

14:48- It's had some other issues with me.

14:50- But we didn't let that become the obstacle that held me back.

14:56- Marcus Aurelius, who was, you know, one of the stoics great Roman Emperor wrote sometimes the thing that stops you and I'm paraphrasing here because he wrote it much better than I did.

15:06- But sometimes the thing that stops you becomes the way, sometimes the disease becomes the way.

15:11- And in this case, the disease became the way because in overcoming that I turned to sports and as I turned to sports, that became the way for me that that is what got me out of that obstacle.

15:24- And so it was a huge piece for me back then.

15:27- And I think oftentimes people don't even realize when they're going through it that that's the piece, but that's what it became for me.

15:33- And, and it took retrospect in hindsight and perspective to be able to tell, I love that.

15:39- You said that if you had known it was cystic fibrosis, it might have been different.

15:45- And I also love that quote, it becomes the way because so many people identify with their disease, right?

15:52- They're told you have this thing and it becomes their identity and, and not even on purpose, right?

15:58- They're, they're told they have it, everyone's saying this and it becomes this thing, this loop that just plays in their head and pretty soon they're like, I'm a victim of this thing, right?

16:08- It, it almost worked in your, it worked in your favor that it was like your lungs are weak, we just need to strengthen them, right?

16:14- If everyone could just have that change in perspective, how powerful would that be?

16:19- That is such a fantastic insight.

16:22- It is really, it's so good and it's, it's it's your book, right.

16:26- It's, it's changed your mind.

16:27- It's changed your perspective.

16:28- This is what you write about in that.

16:32- There are, everybody faces hard times here, here's the thing about the human experience that everybody wants, everybody wants it easy, but nobody ever gets it easy.

16:42- Even the trust afar and Children of super rich parents.

16:47- If they don't, if they don't face obstacles, if their parents don't present them with obstacles to overcome, if they don't find times in life where they have to fight, they will create their own problems because it's the human nature.

17:01- Think about the, the kids of who are gonna have all the money in the world to become drug addicts or who get into other problems.

17:08- And so people will create their own problems if they're not faced with enough.

17:12- And I think that's part of our boredom and curiosity in that we need to have struggle.

17:17- It's part of what we do as a species we are, whether you believe in Christianity and creation or whether you believe in evolution, somehow we got to the point where we are geared with the tools to overcome the obstacles in our life.

17:32- And if they lay dormant long enough, they want to get polished.

17:36- And so they pull themselves out and you find a way to create diversity in your life to the extent that you create your own problems.

17:43- But if you can reposition, if you can reframe the way that you think about it, change your perspective or change your mind in your case, like your book, then what you get is I'm gonna see this as an obstacle but not a barrier.

17:58- And if I approach this as an obstacle, I can attack it and I can beat it and I can figure out the strategies and the paradigms that helped me to overcome this issue.

18:11- For me, it was illness.

18:13- Other people have had other traumas in their life.

18:16- One of my best friends, who was one of my teammates who was my roommate.

18:19- Absolutely love.

18:20- This guy.

18:21- Grew up in the inner city Watts and had to join a gang in order to survive when he was a kid and got to see all kinds of horrific shit.

18:30- And I apologize for cussing on your channel, but that's the only way you can describe it.

18:35- Yeah.

18:36- And he survived it and not only did he survive it, his wife who had a similar type of experience in Oakland growing up went on to be because he became like the regional director for Customs and Border Patrol like this, this guy, I, I can't tell you how much how proud I am of this guy.

18:56- He and his wife own travel agencies, they own several rental properties.

19:00- His wife went on to become one of the top people in the L A school district like superintendent or right below the superintendent and, and just phenomenal people who could have very easily said, oh, we can't get there because our socioeconomics didn't allow us to get there.

19:15- And that's it.

19:16- And we're victims and they didn't, it was an obstacle for sure.

19:21- We all face obstacles, but they didn't make it a barrier.

19:25- And so they overcame it to become great and they are both such phenomenal people and so deserving of it.

19:32- But there's so much victimhood out there today and people are trying to teach victimhood and, and I don't care which side of the political spectrum you're on.

19:42- If you are telling people you are victims, you are taking away their power.

19:47- And so if you claim to be an advocacy group and you are saying, oh, you're a victim, you're not an advocate, you're one of the people who's oppressing somebody else.

19:59- You are never a victim until you allow yourself to become a victim.

20:03- And yeah, there are bad circumstances as a kid.

20:05- I almost died three times bad circumstances, but I wasn't a victim.

20:10- I wasn't a victim, but it was an obstacle.

20:12- And I think that's what people need to learn is that you can overcome anything if you have the perspective to throw yourself at it for long enough and hard enough that you can find a way to get through stuff.

20:24- I love everything you just said so much.

20:26- And again, we like always vibe, but I love the barrier verse obstacle because 11 allows you to grow and that's why we're here, right?

20:38- We're here to have experiences.

20:40- We're here to grow as human beings.

20:42- And if we're not growing, we just become stagnant, we become stuck.

20:46- We live the same, you know, two people can live 20 years and one lives the same year, 20 different times, right?

20:53- Because they're not growing the next one.

20:55- It's 20 different years because they're growing.

20:57- So, yes, change your perspective.

21:01- Everyone has trauma, everyone goes through things.

21:04- But it's the story that you tell yourself, right?

21:08- It's, it's the, the story that allows you to grow and this, this kind of puts us like perfect where I wanted to go with us.

21:13- So, you know, I've never played team sports, but I was a horseback rider.

21:18- I'm a yoga practitioner and so often what I tell my yoga students is, you know, how you show up on your mat and these tools that you learn, they're a direct reflection of how you show up off your mat and these tools that we learn like breathing, right?

21:34- How you can slow your breath down to slow your heart rate down?

21:37- That's a tool that you can bring into the rest of your life.

21:40

So I'm curious what kind of lessons or what kind of tools you picked up playing team sports?

21:44- We already know a little bit you talked about, but I'm sure there's a lot more in there.

21:48- Yeah, such a great question.

21:49- So all athletes and like you said, for yoga, for horse riding, all that stuff, you have to be able to control your physiology.

21:55- And this is where I take it because as a pro athlete, I was always super dialed into my physiology and maybe part of that was the illness is growing up too.

22:05- Right.

22:05- I, if I could feel my lungs were a little tight or whatever it may be.

22:08- I was a little off.

22:10- So I was hyper vigilant about my physiology and I always knew it and felt it.

22:16- And so when I was in college, we had a, a sports psychologist, sports psychology was just becoming a thing that and his name was Bill Coy.

22:24- And we talked about things that affected our physiology, breathing visualization, all of that.

22:30- And this was way before anybody ever even suggested meditation for athletes.

22:35- But the visualizations became my meditations where I would be calm in the moment it was directed and I would go through play by play, visualizing every possible result.

22:49- Every possible change and playing quarterback, especially at elite levels is the most difficult single position in all of sports because you have the input and the exchange of not just your 11 guys, but the 11 guys in the opposite team too who are trying to do things to trick you change things, they're moving you your pocket, you have to stay on balance, be able to throw while you're reading defenses.

23:14- Like there's a lot going on, you're smaller than the dudes out there.

23:17- The big dudes are trying to eat you.

23:19- And so it can be pretty violent and it can be pretty dynamic in terms of what you have to do.

23:24- And so the visualizations literally gave me the repetitions that I needed.

23:29- I could, I saw it before I did it.

23:31- I already had the answer as soon as I saw the question.

23:34- And so the visualizations in that regard helped me with the mental part of the game.

23:40- But in terms of slowing myself down and controlling my breathing, that the physiology of it is amazing because I, you'll hear me talk about the vagus nerve all the time.

23:51- It's the biggest piece of our central nervous system.

23:53- It's the longest cranial nerve in the body.

23:55- And what it does is it literally makes the connection between the brain, the heart and the gut.

24:03- And so if you hear people talking about heart coherence or heart and brain coherence, it's literally the vagus nerve that's signaling that coherence.

24:11- And as a result, if you can find a way to help manage or to help, I, I call it petting to help pet the Vegas nerve to calm it down, you, then you improve your overall perspective.

24:27- What happens when we start to get scared or when we start to get nervous or, or when we're s startled or anything else stressed out, our body goes into what's called fight or flight fight flight or freeze actually.

24:40- And the freeze response is more of what they call the reptilian because it's the oldest, it's to just freeze.

24:45- Oh, don't move.

24:46- Nobody will see you.

24:47- And so that's, that's kind of part of it.

24:50- And then the fight response is do something about it.

24:54- So your body is now dumping huge amounts of hormones from adrenaline, which is epinephrine to,, norepinephrine.

25:04- It's dumping,, cortisol.

25:06- And then recently Columbia did a study, they found that there's a, a hormone.

25:13- Oh boy, it's called, I believe, osteocalcin.

25:15- It's a bone hormone.

25:17- But it is, it, it, it, they, they're actually, they suppose or they, they Presuppose that putting this into your system, even people who are adrenal insufficient can still have fight or flight.

25:29- So there has to be more than just your adrenal hormones that are causing this.

25:33- And so this is a good answer for that anyway, that's scientific.

25:35-But the physiology of it is, it's what it does is it increases your heart rate.

25:40- It makes your breathing shallower because your chest muscles get tight and everything around it get tight, your blood gets thicker, you get more glucose in your blood, you, you can transport more oxygen through your blood like it prepares you for all of these actions.

25:59- Am I gonna fight?

26:00- Am I gonna run?

26:01- I need to be able to do that.

26:03- But it also, and this is the part that gets everybody.

26:07- Is it your perception narrows.

26:10- So you get what's called perceptual narrowing.

26:13- And as a result, that's that dissociative feeling where you feel like you're floating or you're not actually there, you can't really grab on to what information is being, you know, thrown at you.

26:26- Anybody who's ever had test anxiety where you have to go back and read the same question time after time after time because you're not locking into it.

26:34- That's that dissociative feeling.

26:36- And so that's fight or flight, that's the physiology of it.

26:39- And if you can understand the physiology now, once again, you can change your perspective.

26:45- Yeah.

26:45- Oh, wait a second.

26:48- This is my body getting ready.

26:50- It's not holy crap.

26:52- Am I scared?

26:52- What's going on freaking out?

26:55- Now, I understand this physiology.

26:57- I understand what's oh my book.

26:59- My body's doing this.

27:00- It's increasing my heart rate.

27:01- Oh, the vagus nerve is involved.

27:03- And so the only thing that calms that you don't have control of your, your sympathetic nervous system, like it's gonna run on its own.

27:08- If we had to think about our heartbeat all the time, we'd be psychotic because like I gotta keep my heart going.

27:15- Wait, I gotta keep my breathing going.

27:16- Wait.

27:17- So all these things, if you had to manage all that yourselves, you, you'd be insane.

27:21- So your nervous system takes care of most of that.

27:24- But the one piece that's available to you in your parasympathetic nervous system, which you have some control over is breathing and breathing is a signal to your entire body.

27:34- Remember in fight or flight, I just talked about it.

27:36- You're breathing is shallow and, and you start to take these like tight breaths and you're panting and you're ready to go.

27:43- But if you can now overcome that and start to breathe deeply, inhale and really the key, the key to the trigger is at least six second, exhales, get that six second out.

28:01- So if you do that all of a sudden, your Vegas Ner goes, wait a second, we're not panting, we're not freaking out.

28:08- Our breathing just calmed down.

28:11- I think we can send the signal that we're OK.

28:14- And so it starts to literally soothe and that's why I call it petting the vagus nerve.

28:18- It's like when a dog is nervous, you pet it and it kind of settles down and calms down.

28:21- Same thing with your VGA nerve, man.

28:22- It, it it is there, it is for you.

28:25- It's trying to protect you.

28:27- And so you pet your VGA nerve and you're like, hey, it's all good, man, we're all gonna be fine.

28:32- Just, you know, give him a couple of deep breaths, four or five deep breaths, change your breathing and it changes your whole perspective.

28:39- It gets you out of that dissociative state.

28:42- It calms the body down and now you can go, you know what this is me getting ready.

28:46- I am.

28:47- I am now ready to do battle.

28:48- I am ready to fight.

28:49- I am ready to take this on.

28:51- My mind is sharper because of all these changes.

28:54- My physiology just made my muscles are ready.

28:57-My blood is ready.

28:58-I have more energy like let's go.

29:01- And so pregame, I would do that.

29:04- And it got to the point where I would literally start yawning because my body was trying to take on more breath and I would, I would do that and that became a ritual for me and my teammates would look at me like, man, what is wrong with you?

29:15- You're like, are you tired or what's I'm like, nope, my body is getting ready to go right now.

29:19- I was trying to get that oxygen in and it knows it's ready to rock and roll.

29:22- And so if you can change that perspective again, your fear can be a barrier or it can be an obstacle.

29:28- And if you learn to manage it, there are just certain physiological things you can do another way to do.

29:33- It would be to get down on the floor and do 30 sit ups like right now, boom, get down the floor and do 30 sit ups, change your breathing pattern and your body be like, oh, ok, well, that was our flight.

29:42- We're all good now and it would kind of reset.

29:44- You could also sprint.

29:46- I used to love to sprint before games.

29:48- So run four or 550 yard sprints and it changes your breathing, it changes the way that your body is reacting and takes care of some of that burns off some of the excess hormones.

29:57- But like there's, if you understand your physiology for me, at least it is a game changer in terms of the way you deal with fear and anxiety and panic because now you have a little bit of control and the switches, you're breathing.

30:11- Absolutely.

30:12- And it, it's, it's changed your physiology and you change your state, right?

30:16- You pull yourself out of that panic and suddenly you can make those decisions.

30:21- And this, this goes for off the field too.

30:23- You know how many people out there suffer from phobias like public speaking.

30:27- You and I are in a public speaking club together.

30:29- That's most people's a lot of people's worst fear in the world, right?

30:33- But if, if you can change your mind, listen to what Mike just said, use that energy to amp you up because your body is getting ready to perform for you.

30:43- And I love it.

30:44- It just made me think too that, that conversation we were just having about how you're never a victim and everyone in the world kind of has anxiety.

30:51- Nowadays, if you could change your perspective around it, understand the physiology, go for a freaking run, do some sit ups and then you can change your state, right?

31:01- That's it.

31:02- And that's, and that's also why when they're prescribing physical exercise when they're prescribing, working out as mental health tools, you're changing your physiology, you're breathing deeper, you're petting the Vegas nerve again.

31:17- So that's my little, I love having little stupid jokes and things about it because it also keeps me in shape.

31:22- One of the other things I used to do is I would, if I started to feel nervous, I would look over my shoulder to make sure t Rex wasn't standing behind me.

31:28- And as long as he wasn't standing behind me, I knew I was safe and I'll tell young quarterbacks, I said, if you don't see a snake or a gun, then you're just being nervous.

31:38- And what nervous is actually being excited.

31:40- If you can change your perspective, your perspective, it feels exactly the same.

31:44- Think about, you know, you, you the first, you know, for you, a guy for me, you know, the first girl I tried to kiss and boy, I was nervous and, but it was excitement.

31:52- I was, I was kind of excited, you know, to, to get this first kiss out of the way and like that's excitement.

31:58- That's exactly what nerves feel like too.

32:00- And so as long as you change your perspective, it, it can be a good thing as well.

32:05- And like, and, and I love your point the way that you, that you framed it perfectly, you're no longer a victim.

32:11- Once you own what you are naming that emotional state, you are no longer a victim to it.

32:17- It's not anxiety anymore.

32:19- I, I'm excited, I'm pumped.

32:21- I'm ready to go and I, and I get it.

32:22- I, you know, I suffered from general anxiety.

32:24- This is, we talked about the injuries, it came back on me and, and it became general anxiety.

32:28- And so I understand that I'm not speaking like some macho sports guy here thinking, oh yeah, just get over it and, you know, big chest.

32:35- That's not it.

32:36- The point is that if you can control your physiology and you have the, the, the trigger for you is the breathing, you can trigger that breathing and if you can use it to your advantage, then you are much better off and, and understanding why it's happening is what allows you to do that.

32:50- Yeah.

32:50- And I love what you were talking about how anxiety and excitement are really just two sides of the same coin, right?

32:57- Which is why I always encourage people to get out of their comfort zones.

33:01- Go do things that scare you.

33:03- You're gonna, you always talk about doing the reps, you're gonna, you're gonna practice flexing that muscle, you're gonna be able to do it with a different mindset and it's, it's not going to be this terrifying thing anymore, right?

33:14- You're gonna kind of look forward to having that feeling.

33:16- I don't know.

33:17- I'm kind of a freak.

33:17- I like that feeling, right?

33:19- I like, I like that anxious feeling.

33:21- And if you are not, if you are not uncomfortable, it gets back to what we were saying earlier about the about the trust aarian Children, right?

33:26- If you are not feeling uncomfortable, then you will find a way to make yourself feel uncomfortable one way or the other.

33:32- And so you might as well use it for good rather than evil in this case, because boredom is bad too, feeling uncomfortable is bad, but boredom is also bad And, and we wanna, we wanna, there's this perfect soup where you're at the right temperature that I've got, I'm uncomfortable.

33:48- I'm pressing myself out there.

33:49-I'm making stretch goals.

33:50- I'm doing the things that I need to, to continue to grow because a human wants to grow.

33:5- That's part of our nature.

33:56- And if you're not growing, you're stagnating.

33:57- If you're stagnating, that's also uncomfortable.

34:00- So you might as well use it for good rather than use it.

34:02- Use it for evil and then you just do that by changing your perspective.

34:05- Ok?

34:05- It's a little uncomfortable.

34:06- But let's try this.

34:07- And let's see if you know, if I can improve on this and then after three or four sessions, you're like, well, I got that what's next and you pick the next thing and you just keep moving along and then you take the reps, they say 10,000 reps to become an expert, but 1000 reps till you become competent.

34:20- And that happens pretty quick.

34:22- If you're, if you're, you know, not constantly dialed into watching it.

34:25- Those 1000 reps happen in a hurry.

34:27- Yeah, absolutely.

34:29- And I like what you're saying about how the trust fund kids like you, you just go out looking for that there.

34:35- I think there's also another piece of it too that, like you said, life wants you to grow and life or the universe or whatever you believe God will put these difficult times in your life, right.

34:46- Those traumas we were talking about earlier to make you grow.

34:49- So if nothing's happening, you might as well put yourself outside of your comfort zone.

34:54- Do it yourself, don't wait for life to come, like throw a wrench at you, right?

34:58- Like take charge, do it yourself?

35:00- Feel empowered?

35:01- Exactly.

35:02- You know, and II, I like that you touched on another place that I wanted to go as well where you were talking about how you did have generalized anxiety.

35:10- And I'd love for you to just share that story too because it's so relatable.

35:13- And just before you do, one of the things I love about you is, you know, we tend to make these assumptions, someone who was talking about this last night at the meetings, we, we tend to make these assumptions about people when we meet them and you're like, oh NFL quarterback, OK, like this guy has the biggest heart and such a open mind and an amazing perspective.

35:33- And I just, I love that you're so relatable and it's just such a beautiful lesson.

35:39- And hey, you know, not every jock is this meat head.

35:42- Hey, everyone has so much more to them, so much more complexity to them.

35:46- So, yeah, tell us about your anxiety.

35:49- I think people are gonna really, really relate to that story.

35:51- Well, first off, I really appreciate that.

35:53- That's, that's fantastic.

35:54- I've always believed and, and I think if you, we always tend to pigeonhole people because we're trying to put them in this box because our mind is always trying to categorize things.

36:03- And athletes, you got a bad name, probably reasonably.

36:10- So, you know, back in the seventies and eighties, but most guys now playing sports, they're doing it because they're trying to excel just like anybody else.

36:18- They're trying to get that growth for me.

36:22- The anxiety came from my illnesses as a child.

36:26- I talked about the playing, I describe it as my armor like as long as I was out there playing and I was competing and I was at the highest level and I was pushing myself that sickness couldn't catch up to me.

36:38- And it felt fantastic because I had beaten it right.

36:43- I had won.

36:44- But part of football is you do get injuries as well.

36:48- And so I've had now 29 different either surgeries or procedures since the end of my playing career.

36:55- And there was a time when I had had several in a row, finishing in the XFL I had broken my neck and I had several different spinal surgeries.

37:07- I had a fusion in my spine.

37:09- I had decompression in my spine.

37:12- And recently I just had four artificial discs put in over in Germany.

37:17- And I'll tell you this too.

37:18- Like I'm not a victim.

37:19- I would do it all over again in a second, knowing what I know now.

37:21- So I'm not, there's, there's, I'm not complaining about it and actually it was an incredible lesson with that.

37:27- I also had to take a bunch of medicines to kind of manage that.

37:30- And I ended up with diverticulitis which then led to serious sepsis in my body.

37:35- I I was literally infecting myself with the sepsis and it was almost again one another near death experience in the fact that I was so sick and the insurance companies were haggling over who was gonna pay for it.

37:49- They wouldn't pay for it.

37:50- And it got to the point where I literally had to threaten them and say, look, I, I'm gonna do a documentary.

37:56-This is all documented and not only me but all the other athletes who have had this where you have denied their surgeries.

38:04- I had one person on the phone literally tell me, well, you know, you play professional football, right?

38:09- You should expect this.

38:11- And I told them, hey, dumb ass, you know, you insured a professional football league, right?

38:16- Like who's dumber?

38:17- And so anyway, but that all, all, neither here nor there.

38:22- I got so sick that I had to have the surgery to remove this and to finally take care of it.

38:29- And I got through all that.

38:30- My body, your body finds a way to keep you buoyed and it's with cortisol and it's with all the stress hormones, but it causes problems for your nervous system and in the end of it all, at some point, your body is like, ok, I'm done like it shuts down and we get used to having all of those hormones, we get used to having all of those that help in your body to kind of keep you up there.

38:53- And once it's gone, now, all of a sudden you're exposed to those raw emotions and to your body not being there.

38:58- And that's when you start, I was again hypervigilant from the injuries and I started getting anxiety and that anxiety got worse and worse and worse.

39:06- And it got to a point at one point where it literally became agoraphobia.

39:10- I was almost scared to leave the house because it was, and it was just fear, it wasn't fear or any reason per se, there wasn't anything out there that was scaring me.

39:20- It was just this constant beat of anxiety and so it was miserable.

39:26- And so that's why I say I get it when I'm telling you to change your perspective.

39:29- It's not about, you know, I'm not coming from this macho standpoint of it.

39:33- I understand what that's like to, to be there.

39:35- And it took me understanding this through, through the help of an incredible friend, Doctor Cio Hernandez, who is she is one of the top psychotherapists in the country.

39:46- We went to college together.

39:47- So I've known her since she was 19 years old.

39:50- We go way back and, and she helped me out both through counseling and through E MD R therapy to help me learn about what I was doing.

40:01- And I literally, she had to take me all the way back to reconnect and that's, that's a big piece for me connection.

40:07- I had to reconnect to that baby who was in the incubator and I had to reconnect to that seven year old kid who was scared to death could see the tears in mom's eyes and I had to hold that baby, you know, figuratively, hold that or, or, you know, in my head, hold that baby and, and that seven year old kid and say, hey, look, it's not just about you're gonna be ok because you're gonna be ok like that's a given, you're gonna be here.

40:31- I am.

40:31- You're gonna be ok, but not just that.

40:33- Look what we did like how cool we got to.

40:37- I literally got to play professional football.

40:39- I stood on a world championship stage playing football.

40:43- I have flown over 12,000 ft cliffs in New Zealand hunting.

40:49- I have chased Elk in Colorado, I have gone fly fishing for Tarp and in the keys catching massive fish.

40:57- And it's been incredible.

41:00- And this kid this little baby and like you have to have this full body recognition to reconnect with yourself, to say, you know what it is gonna be.

41:09- Ok?

41:09- You gotta heal those traumas and we all have our traumas and so to be able to go back and have that connection and to heal those traumas was, was absolutely phenomenal, which then also allowed me to go back and reconnect with my father.

41:23- And you and I have talked about that.

41:24- I can go on about that if you want.

41:26- I, that's where I was going to go with this next.

41:27- So yeah, so we're right there.

41:29- You and I are on the same page here together.

41:31- I did want to ask really quick though.

41:32- Do you feel like you still have that armor on or do you feel like that's armor that you've completely taken off and set aside?

41:38- No, I actually like the armor like II, I like having that because you have to keep the edge.

41:43- And I think you, there's a way to, to keep the edge because I love that.

41:48- That's part of my identity.

41:49- Like that toughness is part of who I was and, and part of what my dad loved about me too.

41:54- And quite honestly, it's part of what my mom loves about me too.

41:57- My mom loves the fact that I'm a tough little bastard.

41:59- And so, you know, she, she loves that, but that's, that's part of who I am.

42:03- So I didn't lose it.

42:05- I now know how to use it way better than I did before and when to use it way better.

42:10- So that, that's a huge piece of it for me.

42:13- , and I said I reconnected with my dad.

42:15- My dad passed away in 2005 and we had all those huge rains in southern California.

42:19- My dad had had a quadruple bypass and he was eight months out and he was doing great.

42:26- He was doing fantastic.

42:27- And then we had all the rains and they had recently had their lower yard re cemented.

42:34- The guy didn't put in drainage for him.

42:35- And so my dad was literally out there digging a trench eight months after quadruple bypass surgery again.

42:41- He was tough.

42:43- Yeah.

42:43- And and he, he always used to joke with me when we were kids.

42:46- He had a tattoo, sorry about that.

42:48- He had a tattoo of a boot with a parachute on top, which is the classic paratrooper tattoo, right?

42:57- 82nd airborne.

42:58- And he had that and he would always point it and go, yep, I wanna die with my boots on, which was an old military thing, right?

43:03- You wanna die doing the work.

43:05- And so to his credit, my dad was out there, you know, saving the house and he had a massive coronary and, you know, horrible.

43:11- We lost him.

43:12- But at the time with me, I didn't even cry.

43:15- My brother called me and like I knew the second my brother got on the phone, you talk about being in tune that my dad had passed.

43:25- And although it hit me, it didn't, it didn't, I mean, it registered all that stuff.

43:32- It just, my, my armor went up, I guess is the best way of seeing it right away.

43:36- Boom.

43:37- And it wasn't until this year that I was able to actually, once I got through the anxiety over my illness and once I got through all that stuff that I was able to get to that with my dad and my dad was amazing.

43:56- He was my best friend.

43:57- He was my, my best advisor of all times.

44:03- Like dad always had the most sage wisdom because he knew me better than anybody else on that male level.

44:10- He, he was funny.

44:12- He was such a good dude.

44:13- He was voted citizen of the year in our hometown twice, not just once, twice, he was so beloved and he was such a, such a good man and such a good dude.

44:27- And I'm, you know, I miss him every day, but now I have reconnected with my father and, and so I go on my morning walks.

44:35- It's part of my routine now, which is a whole another podcast.

44:38- We'll talk about morning routines.

44:39- And like doing something hard every day.

44:41- Yeah.

44:42- But I go out and, and, and I literally just kind of meditate on the hill when I'm up there.

44:48-And I go through a whole breathing and then visualization and then meditation and I can literally feel my father and it's not, you know, I studied ancient religions for years when I was playing, I thought it was fascinating.

45:04- And the one thing that we all have in common, every religion is that we all believe that there's something else out there.

45:12- You can call it God.

45:13- You can call it heaven.

45:14- You can call it the quantum field.

45:16- You can call it whatever you want to.

45:17- But we all know, we feel it, we know that there is something else out there.

45:22- And we all believe that you get there through breath and focus and that prayer for Christians and prayer for Muslims and prayer and meditation for Buddhists.

45:35- And like there's a way to get to that place and that is now how I speak to my dad.

45:43- And not, I don't even wouldn't even call it speaking as much as I'm just now connecting with my father.

45:48- And I can feel what he is thinking and I can, I, he, you know, I can talk to him and I can bounce things off him.

45:53- And it's, and it's, it's amazing.

45:56- It's, it's just been amazing to reconnect with them.

45:58- And so you can call it, you know, crystals and magic and candles, whatever you want.

46:03- But I know he's there.

46:04- I can connect with him and it makes me feel about a million times better than I did before.

46:09- And it took me getting through my traumas of the, of the illness, of kind of exposing those and healing those to be able to get through that trauma with my dad.

46:19- That's so beautiful.

46:20- Thank you for sharing all of that.

46:22- You know, I if, if you don't mind me prying a little bit more into it, I would love to just hear what pry away.

46:30- Yeah.

46:30- Thank you.

46:31- I would love to just hear about that moment, that breakthrough moment where you first connected with him because you know, you had, you had gone through the E MD R with your friend, you had released that.

46:41- Did you go out seeking that connection with him?

46:44- Were you just meditating?

46:45- And it just happened like I'd just love to hear the details about that.

46:49- So Doctor Cio had kind of instigated it with me about my dad.

46:54- She always, she know she knew my parents.

46:56- She got to go to a bunch of my games when I was playing and she met my parents and she knew him really well and, and she would always talk to me about, you know, my dad and how proud he was and my mom and those things to kind of establish that connection.

47:08- She's, she's a big practitioner of the Polly vagal theory and connection and all that stuff.

47:13- So, she's, that is really quick.

47:14- The Polly VL theory.

47:16- So that's what we were talking about earlier with the breathing.

47:18- There's, there's two different sides to your vagus nerve.

47:21- You have a dorsal side back and ventral side front or maybe that Yeah, I think that's right.

47:27- Anyway, 11 or the other, your, your, yeah, your, your dorsal fins on your back.

47:31- So your Dorsey is on your back, right?

47:33- So, but, but the one of the other side I think is the ventral side that controls your parasympathetic nervous system, that's your connection.

47:42- And so that's what we were talking about with the breathing and being connected.

47:45- It's, it's through that and it's, I think it was Steven Porges who came up with the concept with that theory and it's, it's fantastic reading, but it's all about human connection, how we need to connect and the connection is what brings us out of the anxiety state, the fear state.

48:01- And so that the poly vagal theory is about having the two sides to the vagus nerve and how you can through structure, through therapy and swear to God co through magic could literally connect with me like that.

48:17- Like she had an X ray vision in terms of being able to bring it out of people to kind of find right where there's some people are just that are just so in tune, they can make it happen.

48:27- And she's, she's one of those people that's so in tune to be able to to reach people and reach me.

48:34- But anyway, so she, so she did, she used to talk to me about my parents that way.

48:38- And so I, I was literally in her office and we were talking about when I, you know, the baby and, and the seven year old me and, and like tears, like I could just feel the release of that anxiety of, of those the the babies and the, and the young kid holding back that fear of dying.

48:59- And all of a sudden it was just like Tom, it's gonna be OK and not just OK, but look at what you guys did and I went holy shit.

49:06- Yeah, you're right.

49:07- And then it was like this and you know, tears coming down and like just this amazing, I can feel it right now.

49:13- You know, I'm starting to feel that that release right now is just incredible.

49:17- And so she had kind of triggered that with the thought of my dad in that and I started taking to reinforce all of that, started taking walks.

49:30- And I thought, man, I would love to talk to my dad right now like that would be to tell him, thank you for everything that he did.

49:38- And I just meditated right there and I went book and he was there like it was, I was connected to my and he was laughing because his laugh was like the most amazing thing ever.

49:48- like his laugh just brought me safety and comfort every time he would laugh.

49:53- And so he was laughing and I could literally feel what he was thinking.

49:57- and he could feel that and I could, and I initially, I saw it as like this, you know, if I don't know if you saw the old movie Tron, but there was this wall where it's like just this grid pattern and colors.

50:07- And I, I initially saw it like that.

50:10- And then it became this cross section of this energy that that and, and then, and, and now whenever I get to that place, I can just kind of move in it.

50:19- And I can relate with my dad and with the source and like all of it, I can just kind of move within it when I get to that place now.

50:27- And I feel like everybody else, you know, when I meditate, sometimes I'm thinking about my laundry list, but then sometimes I'm thinking about, you know, those moments and when I can get to those moments, it's pretty incredible.

50:35- But the first time I, I saw my dad again, tears and this release and, and, and just absolute bliss like it, it, it was just magic and, and it starts, it starts with having gratitude.

50:54- Like for me, gratitude is the key to unlock that going in.

50:58- Being thankful for my mom, thankful for my dad, thankful for my incredible wife, like the opportunities that I've had in my life, thankful for my illness because I needed my illness to get to this point.

51:08- Thankful for the injuries and like everything that's happened to me in my life has all been a blessing and realizing that accepting that owning that and using that gratitude, that gratitude for me is the key to then be able to connect with my dad and with the source and with everything else that's really beautiful.

51:29- I was getting a goose bumps while you were talking, that's so powerful.

51:32- I can like feel the energy from it.

51:34- And I love how you just brought it home and wrapped it all up by saying it's all been a blessing, all of the shit, right?

51:40- When you look back at the end of your life, it's all a blessing.

51:44- It's all for you, right?

51:45- Life isn't happening to you.

51:47- It's happening for you and that's the perspective.

51:50- Yeah.

51:51- Yeah, that's, that's your book, right?

51:52- So that, that is your book.

51:54- It's happening for you.

51:55- Like that's why I say in your book and I'm gonna, you know, give you a little love here because your book is awesome.

52:00- And it talks about all this stuff from a different perspective.

52:03- I come at it from the athlete, I come out, I come at it from you know that American male kind of perspective of, of big and armor and all that.

52:11- But you come at it from a different perspective and you have your own stories and your book is incredibly powerful for those reasons that, that people can find themselves in your book.

52:22- And after all, for what we do, trying to help people about coaching, it's allowing people to see themselves within our story that we're telling so they can find their own road then back out of our story because everybody has their own unique perspective.

52:36- But we all live the human condition and we all there's so many similarities like anxiety is right next to excitement, same thing, human emotions, right?

52:48- Fear is the emotion of the future, but hope is the future emotion of gratitude, right?

52:58- You think about that fear is the future emotion of anxiety and panic and lack.

53:04- But hope is the future emotion of gratitude.

53:08- I'm thankful for what I'm going to get and, and they, it's just all a counterbalance.

53:14- So we live these lives, we do these things that people can see themselves in our stories.

53:18- And if we're good enough storytellers, they can see themselves and they can grow from that.

53:23- And your book does a wonderful job for people of doing that.

53:28- And so that's you asked, talked about me being open.

53:30- That's why I love to be open.

53:31- I love to give back to people.

53:32- Because if I can help anybody, if I can help a kid who's suffering through illness.

53:36- If I can help somebody who's suffering through anxiety, if I can help anybody who's having self doubt or anything else right now, that's what I love doing.

53:43- I know your heart.

53:44- I know, I know what you're about and I know that that's what you're about too.

53:46- Like you want to help people so much and your heart is massive.

53:50- It's bigger than your small frame can handle.

53:52- , and, and, and, and that's a beautiful thing.

53:55- And I think that,, you know, among a million other reasons to buy your book, you know, outside of the great information contained inside of it, I just think that's a great reason for people to get it because you're out there to help people.

54:07- Thank you for saying all that.

54:08- That was really, really sweet.

54:09- I appreciate that.

54:11- And I think that's a great segue, you know, I, I'd love to hear a little bit if you could tell people about your podcast that's coming up, your, your coaching, your speaking, what's next for you?

54:20- You know, what's, what's on the horizon?

54:22- What are you up to?

54:24- So, the podcast, I, I have coached football for a long, long time, right?

54:29- It's my nature, it's my business.

54:30- It's what I do.

54:32- And so I have through that, seeing the other side that, that what the young athlete truly needs as much as the skill development, which they need is the emotional development of being an athlete and the parents as well in terms of how to handle this, the beauty of sports is, it's like life but concentrated.

54:53- The same things that win in life are what win in sports.

54:59- But you don't have two years to hem and haw about, should I make this decision?

55:05- Should I not make this decision?

55:06- Who am I really a victim?

55:08- Are they doing this to me?

55:09- Like,, you gotta make this decision now or else you're gonna lose your job.

55:15- And so you have to be so refined and you have to be so concise and efficient with the things that win.

55:22- You have to clear out the junk, clear out the clutter and then your filter needs to be what wins.

55:30- How does this parlay into a victory for me?

55:33- How does this parlay into me getting better?

55:37- And once you have that model in place, it's fantastic.

55:42- And so I call it being everyday great and it's a double entendre because you're living everyday great.

55:51- But if you're practicing this, you are an everyday great.

55:55- You are a goat in your own life and that's what you have to be.

56:01- And so II I talk to incredible people like yourself.

56:04- I talk to people who help build human beings, peak performance coaches that are the strength and conditioning side and the best strength and conditioning coaches aren't about the reps and sets.

56:16- They are about the emotionality.

56:19- They are about the psychology.

56:20- They are about the things that make athletes truly great.

56:24- And so I talked to them about it.

56:26- I'm gonna have great coaches like Urban Meyer who is a, you know, a national champion college coach is gonna coaching Hall of Fame guy.

56:33- So there's gonna be a bunch of great coaches on with me as well.

56:36- I talked to, I, I just had a, a great friend on who was a teammate of mine in the arena football league.

56:42- His father was a pro first round pick.

56:44- He was a pro athlete.

56:45- His son was a first round pick in the NFL who is a fantastic football player and, and he gets the whole perspective from being the son of to being the athlete to being the parent of.

56:56- And it's an incredible conversation.

56:58- And so there's a lot of really cool people that I've been fortunate enough to get access to over the years, with great stories and great lessons for everybody, but it's about being great every single day, not just in sports, but in life because the lessons that we learn on the field and on the gridiron, help people in the mainstream.

57:18- and I just think that that I love to give back that way.

57:21- Like I said, I want people to learn from what I do.

57:24- And if people learn from what I do, it, it, it helps me grow because that sense of giving that sense of service, that sense of helping to me brings me so much joy because that little kid wanted to help.

57:41- And I think it helps fill that for me as well.

57:44- That I'm now helping that little kid.

57:46- That I was, that's really, really beautiful.

57:50- And I love that analogy.

57:52- That sports is like life condensed.

57:54- I've never thought about it that way and that makes so much sense.

57:57- , before we, before we sign off, is there any way people can find you?

58:03- , do you have a website, do you have social media to share or anything like that?

58:06- I feel like I'm so overexposed, but we, yes, we have.

58:09- So there, we have a website for the athlete side of it, which is elite athletes, tv.com.

58:16- And there's a bunch of training on there for athletes, for younger athletes, linebacker training, speed training, quarterback training.

58:23- We have the podcast, of course, everyday.

58:27- Great, which will be launching here soon which people can get to.

58:30- And then we're building out, it'll either be Mike ploy.com or elite athletes, tv.com, but we're building out the personal development side of that, right?

58:41- The life coaching side of that where people can get on there, learn these lessons, there'll be a full blog, there'll be video.

58:48- I'm also on youtube, elite athletes TV, on youtube.

58:51- If you want to learn about what US C is doing to be so effective on offense.

58:56- You know, there's a lot of Xs and Os on there, but we'll be talking about mindset as well and a lot of that mindset pertains back to people.

59:01- So I'm kind of all over the place because I'm in sports.

59:04- But I'm also now trying to help kind of gen pop general population people as well because there, there's so much that transfers over and I i it would be a shame to be given everything that I've been given as my life blessings and not give back.

59:17- Yeah, that's beautiful.

59:18- Well, thank you so much, Mike.

59:19- It was really great having you on and I'm excited to keep continuing the conversation.

59:24- Hopefully have you back.

59:26- Yeah.

59:26- And at some point you and I have to do something in terms of getting out there corporate speaking, speaking to the general population and creating for people.

59:36- They get to see Kris here every day or on her podcast when you're seeing her content.

59:40- She is fantastic in person.

59:42- She is even better.

59:43- She is phenomenal and, and her insights and the stuff that, that that she has that she can bring is incredible.

59:48- So look for us at some point to do something together in terms of helping people because I think she brings such a great perspective.

59:54- I bring that that kind of condensed version like I said, the sports version, but Kris brings such a great life version to it as well.

1:00:00- So I think it makes it a pretty powerful combination.

1:00:03- Yeah, we have some exciting things in the works on the horizon for sure.

1:00:07- So yeah, good tea there.

1:00:09- All right.

1:00:09- Thank you so much, Mike.

1:00:10- Always great to see you.

1:00:11- You have a fantastic day.

1:00:13- You too.