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Round Table Deep Dive into E4A's Principles
11 Plays2 years ago
Join us on The Sportlight Podcast for an enlightening round table discussion led by Especially for Athletes (E4A) founder, Dustin Smith. Our esteemed panel features a lineup of seasoned coaches and former athletes, including Cameron Stewart, Clay Churros, Shad Martin, Ali Bills, Nate Wilson, and Brandon Doman. Delve into the heart of E4A as we dissect its fundamental principles: "Win the Hour," "Resiliency," "Compete Without Contempt," and "Seek to Bless, Not Impress." From personal anecdotes to strategic insights, our panelists share their unique perspectives on how these principles shape character, success, and teamwork on and off the field. Tune in to gain a deeper understanding of E4A's transformative impact and discover how these principles can guide athletes, coaches, and individuals towards excellence in sports and life.
Especially for Athletes:
Website: https://especialyforathletes.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EspeciallyForAthletes/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/E4Afamily
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/especiallyforathletes/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmbWc7diAvstLMfjBL-bMMQ
Credits:
Hosted by Dustin Smith
Produced by IMAGINATE STUDIO
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Support the show: https://especiallyforathletes.com/podcast/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Introduction and Panel Introductions
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Sportlight Podcast for parents, coaches, and athletes.
00:00:04
Speaker
The Sportlight refers to the time in an athlete's life when they have increased ability to affect the culture around them and the increased opportunity to learn life's lessons through sports.
00:00:14
Speaker
This podcast aims to help parents and coaches capitalize on their athletes' precious time in the Sportlight.
00:00:19
Speaker
The Sportlight Podcast is brought to you by Especially for Athletes program.
00:00:26
Speaker
Welcome everybody, I'm Dustin Smith with Especially for Athletes.
00:00:30
Speaker
We've gathered a group of coaches, former athletes at all levels of the game, college, high school, even professional, to get together tonight and talk about a variety of different subjects.
00:00:40
Speaker
I want to introduce our panel to start.
00:00:42
Speaker
Cameron Stewart, played college sports, was also coached in youth football as well as high school football, has been a friend of mine for 35 years, I've known him forever.
00:00:54
Speaker
Clay Churros is the athletic director and assistant principal at Bear River High School up in northern Utah.
00:01:01
Speaker
Shad Martin's been with the Specialty for Athletes since day one, was a college teammate of mine.
00:01:05
Speaker
We played baseball together.
00:01:06
Speaker
We've all seen Shad before.
00:01:09
Speaker
Allie Bills was a professional basketball player, college basketball player before that at the University of Utah and a Division I basketball coach at BYU for how many years?
00:01:19
Speaker
12 years at BYU.
00:01:20
Speaker
Nate Wilson was one of the early members of Especially for Athletes.
00:01:23
Speaker
He joined our program, gosh, probably the first day we started it, which was 12 years ago.
00:01:29
Speaker
You were young.
00:01:30
Speaker
And he and his brothers have been a part of the program ever since.
00:01:34
Speaker
And he's now just your first year coaching high school football?
00:01:37
Speaker
Yeah, just getting into the high school football coaching thing.
00:01:40
Speaker
And then Brandon Doman's been a friend of mine since high school, been close to the program.
00:01:45
Speaker
Was a professional football player quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers and the quarterback coach for 11 years at BYU.
00:01:53
Speaker
Eight years.
00:01:54
Speaker
Eight years.
00:01:55
Speaker
Offensive coordinator for two.
00:01:57
Speaker
So anyway, that's our panel.
00:01:58
Speaker
I have a variety of different subjects we want to jump into in regards to our four core principles of especially for athletes.
Principles of Being Present and Efficient
00:02:05
Speaker
So I want to start off with the first principle of especially for athletes, which is win the hour.
00:02:10
Speaker
Now, we have a phrase we use with win the hour.
00:02:13
Speaker
We say go 16 and 0.
00:02:15
Speaker
That refers to the 16 hours of the day that you're awake if you're sleeping eight, which we always stop right there and say that if you are an elite athlete or want to be, you need to sleep at least eight hours a day.
00:02:26
Speaker
So with that in mind, you're awake for 16.
00:02:29
Speaker
How do you win every hour of the day?
00:02:30
Speaker
Go undefeated, go 16-0.
00:02:32
Speaker
And I want to open that up to the panel here on what does that mean to you as a coach, as an athlete.
00:02:37
Speaker
Ali, I'll start with you.
00:02:38
Speaker
And coaching athletes, being a high-level athlete yourself,
00:02:42
Speaker
How important is it for athletes to understand this idea of being present, managing their day, making sure their days are efficient so it doesn't get away from them?
00:02:51
Speaker
When athletes come to college as a freshman, it's so eye-opening because they feel like we're ready to go.
00:02:57
Speaker
They have all this energy.
00:02:58
Speaker
They've got this youth.
00:02:59
Speaker
And all of a sudden, they're more tired than they've ever been in their lives.
00:03:02
Speaker
They can't wait to take a nap.
00:03:04
Speaker
They're like never taking a nap in high school, and they can't wait to take a nap in college.
00:03:07
Speaker
A big part of that is just, you know, that...
00:03:11
Speaker
the mental energy that it takes to get up and work out in the morning, to go to class, to be on time.
00:03:16
Speaker
There's just a lot busier schedule than they're used to, plus the stresses of performing and getting to know new people in a new environment.
00:03:23
Speaker
So a big part of winning that hour that we really work with the freshmen, and it carries over as you get older, never changes.
00:03:30
Speaker
It's just wherever you are, be there.
00:03:33
Speaker
Be present.
00:03:35
Speaker
And when you're in class, be in class.
00:03:38
Speaker
And when you're at practice, be at practice.
00:03:40
Speaker
and coaches that want you to eat, sleep, and drink the sport, you're going to anyway, but make sure that you have that balance so that you can give yourself a mental break and give yourself some credit for the things that you're doing good and not living in these moments of frustration and getting after a tough practice all of a sudden, like just dwelling on that the rest of the night.
Mental Health: Anxiety and the Present Moment
00:04:03
Speaker
Try to move forward and just be in the moment, and that really helps you mentally relieve a lot of stress in your life, but
00:04:10
Speaker
Being present and winning the hour is really critical as an athlete, but just as a human being too, as a parent, everything.
00:04:16
Speaker
Would you guys think that we have this growth in anxiety, depression and anxiety with really, we say youth, but it's really everybody, even adults that are struggling from it.
00:04:27
Speaker
I think I could say that this idea of winning the hour,
00:04:31
Speaker
I've heard people talk about anxiety being either dwelling in negative things from the past or worrying about the future, both of which are out of our control.
00:04:40
Speaker
This idea of being present, Ali, like you say, or being in the moment is
00:04:44
Speaker
I can't affect what's going to happen next week and yesterday's over and so all I can handle is what's happening now.
00:04:52
Speaker
For our own mental health but also as an athlete, Brandon, you are a professional athlete.
00:04:57
Speaker
My guess is when you walked on to the facilities for the first day with the 49ers, you learned really quickly you didn't have a lot of time to waste.
Athletic Dedication and Work Ethic
00:05:06
Speaker
Well, I'll never forget.
00:05:07
Speaker
I walked in the building, there were four Super Bowl trophies.
00:05:12
Speaker
I've been a 49er fan my entire life, and I just was so surreal.
00:05:16
Speaker
And the very first person I saw had his back turned to me with his towel on, and he didn't look like a human.
00:05:28
Speaker
He was so big and so muscular and so put together that I thought there's no way.
00:05:34
Speaker
I figured for sure he was a defensive end.
00:05:37
Speaker
And I thought, there's no way I'm going to be able to escape this guy.
00:05:39
Speaker
For the last 25 years of my life, I've been able to get away from these guys.
00:05:43
Speaker
There's no way I'm going to run away from that guy.
00:05:46
Speaker
And he turned around, and it was T.O.
00:05:50
Speaker
Terrell Owens, and I realized he was a wide receiver.
00:05:56
Speaker
And your receiver.
00:06:00
Speaker
If I just have to throw it to that guy, then that's nice.
00:06:04
Speaker
I can do that.
00:06:05
Speaker
That's not going to be very hard.
00:06:06
Speaker
But he didn't just get there.
00:06:08
Speaker
He didn't become Terrell Owens without... I'll tell you about him.
00:06:11
Speaker
He...
00:06:12
Speaker
he would go out to practice every day.
00:06:15
Speaker
He was the first guy out and he was the last guy to leave.
00:06:17
Speaker
Now he was, he had a personality.
00:06:20
Speaker
People didn't know what to do with him because he was, you know, he had some arrogance and some cockiness to him.
00:06:25
Speaker
My favorite player I played with.
00:06:28
Speaker
And it wasn't because, you know, I didn't care much for off-field antics or things like that.
00:06:33
Speaker
But that guy came to work every day and he would wear what he called his work boots.
00:06:37
Speaker
He would wear these massive cleats, high tops.
00:06:40
Speaker
They were heavy.
00:06:41
Speaker
He would lace them up all the way.
00:06:43
Speaker
And he would go out there and every single day he would challenge somebody to a race.
00:06:48
Speaker
It was the most fascinating thing.
00:06:52
Speaker
Throughout practice he would find somebody and challenge him to a race at the end of practice and he would work all day long in his work boots.
00:07:00
Speaker
with the idea that when it was game day, he was going to put on his real cleats, his speed cleats, and that he had outworked everybody else.
00:07:08
Speaker
He clearly had.
00:07:08
Speaker
I mean, he was light years better.
00:07:11
Speaker
I saw that at every turn in the National Football League, that those guys were there to make a living, most of them.
00:07:18
Speaker
They were there to provide.
00:07:19
Speaker
They were there to take full advantage of the opportunity and what they ate, how many hours of sleep they got, and the lifestyle that they chose to live.
00:07:28
Speaker
Most of them were living elite lifestyles.
00:07:33
Speaker
And if you weren't elite, you didn't last.
00:07:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:36
Speaker
Well, and as a college coach, so maybe we can transition to your time as a college coach as well.
00:07:40
Speaker
I've coached.
00:07:41
Speaker
for 20 years, you coached in college for eight.
00:07:45
Speaker
I can't tell you how many times I've had discussions with kids or had kids or a parent of the kids say, we'll do whatever it takes.
00:07:52
Speaker
We want it so bad, we want to make it to whatever, college or high school, even just make or start on the high school team.
00:08:00
Speaker
I can't tell you how many times I've then followed that up with,
00:08:04
Speaker
Okay, well, what are you going to be doing tomorrow at 6 a.m.
00:08:07
Speaker
or 5 a.m.
00:08:07
Speaker
or what time you going to sleep or how many hours a day do you spend on Xbox or PlayStation or watching TV?
00:08:13
Speaker
And the answers come back that you cannot say, I want to be this and then be doing that.
00:08:20
Speaker
You can't play Xbox for four hours a day and at the same time tell me you want to be an elite baseball player.
00:08:25
Speaker
It doesn't
Modern Distractions and Athlete Focus
00:08:26
Speaker
work.
00:08:26
Speaker
You have to manage your day.
00:08:27
Speaker
And with all of the distractions that kids have now,
00:08:31
Speaker
I've talked to you probably before.
00:08:32
Speaker
We went to high school together, the three of us, but I've talked to you about this before, Cameron.
00:08:37
Speaker
The modern day, or if we were to go back 30 years to high school when we were in high school, imagine walking around all day with somebody, this is the equivalent of your phone beeping or buzzing in your pocket all day, somebody literally saying, hey,
00:08:50
Speaker
Look at my picture.
00:08:51
Speaker
Look at what I just put up.
00:08:52
Speaker
Like it.
00:08:52
Speaker
Like it.
00:08:53
Speaker
Did you like it?
00:08:53
Speaker
Look, I'm telling you to like it.
00:08:54
Speaker
It's just constantly bugging you.
00:08:56
Speaker
Of course kids are going to be fidgety.
00:08:58
Speaker
They're constantly being, how do we manage that, Cameron?
00:09:01
Speaker
You have kids.
00:09:02
Speaker
You have kids that was football player, volleyball player.
00:09:04
Speaker
How do we get kids to be present?
00:09:07
Speaker
And it's so, so hard because I think most kids, it's funny too, because I think the longer the kids have devices and they start to use them, I actually, it reminds me of smokers.
00:09:18
Speaker
I've talked to a lot of kids that wish they could do less or wish they never started.
00:09:24
Speaker
And you literally are listening to him going, you sound like a 40-year-old who's a smoker who wishes they could quit.
00:09:28
Speaker
But they're like, but I can't because it's just become too much a part of who I am and that stimuli that I get every 30 seconds when I get a like or a message or a ping or something, I'm just so conditioned to it.
00:09:38
Speaker
So it really is like a very real weaning process where you have to kind of like take it away later at a time and they've got to trade it out with something else.
00:09:47
Speaker
Because that stimuli is what they're conditioned to.
00:09:49
Speaker
So how do you trade that stimuli out and say, okay, instead of pings or a text or a message or a like or something going viral, instead you're going to chase a different kind of high.
00:09:59
Speaker
You're going to chase a high in success in athletics or working out or in fitness or in eating well or in friendships or socially.
00:10:06
Speaker
You just have to trade that stimuli for something that's more productive and constructive.
00:10:10
Speaker
Because it's hard to just go without it anymore because they're so conditioned to it.
00:10:15
Speaker
Well, Brandon, I want to ask you, and then Clay, I want to ask you something on this, being in education with kids currently.
00:10:21
Speaker
But Brandon, tell me if I'm wrong, but is there four?
00:10:25
Speaker
So Taysom Hill, John Beck, Max Hall, and one more quarterback that started in the NFL.
00:10:35
Speaker
That I had the opportunity to coach?
00:10:36
Speaker
Yeah, that you coached.
00:10:37
Speaker
John Beck.
00:10:38
Speaker
Max Hall.
00:10:39
Speaker
Max Hall.
00:10:40
Speaker
Taysom.
00:10:41
Speaker
Taysom.
00:10:42
Speaker
Are those the three?
00:10:43
Speaker
I thought there was one more.
00:10:44
Speaker
Maybe that's it.
00:10:45
Speaker
The start of the game in the NFL.
00:10:47
Speaker
I remember you telling me about Taysom.
00:10:49
Speaker
First time I heard his name, because I remember you said it and I couldn't understand.
00:10:51
Speaker
Taysom?
00:10:52
Speaker
I've never heard that name before.
00:10:53
Speaker
But you told me you watched him stand underneath the basketball hoop, jump up and just hang on it from right underneath the hoop.
00:11:00
Speaker
Coaching Taysom versus...
00:11:02
Speaker
his work ethic or max work ethic like we talked about when the hour were those guys Austin Colley and also I've heard some stories about Austin who made it as a professional to wide receiver in the NFL what was their work ethic this idea of winning being efficient with their day versus the kids who made it to BYU and then never saw the field but maybe had some talent well those guys knew exactly what they wanted
00:11:26
Speaker
And they were determined.
00:11:27
Speaker
They were absolute competitors.
00:11:31
Speaker
I would say fierce competitors.
00:11:33
Speaker
And there wasn't anything that they did where they weren't trying to win.
00:11:39
Speaker
I mean, if we're going to do a bench press or we're going to go out and do a cone drill, you know, Taysom was an absolute competitor.
00:11:46
Speaker
Max was probably the
00:11:47
Speaker
the greatest competitor that I had the chance to coach.
00:11:50
Speaker
It wasn't, there wasn't anything, we would go play basketball, three and three basketball, and it was, I was his coach, and I was bleeding by the time we were done playing, and that's just the kind of guy that he was, but I really believe that, let me just tell you one thing about Max, and this would be, I think, for any
00:12:09
Speaker
any young man or young woman that's trying to be great is he realized that John Beck who was playing in front of him was really good and that he was experienced that there were a lot of things that he wanted to mimic and to be able to duplicate and then ultimately improve upon and be better then and we were playing in our first bowl game as a staff at BYU and it had been a few years since BYU been in a bowl game and we were traveling down
00:12:39
Speaker
to play in this game, and Max, because he had transferred, was ineligible to travel with the team.
00:12:46
Speaker
So he didn't get to go to the bowl game.
00:12:48
Speaker
We showed up to our first bowl game practice, and this car pulls up, and this kid gets out of the back seat of the car with the back,
00:13:00
Speaker
And I get chills thinking about it.
00:13:02
Speaker
And he comes jogging out onto the practice field.
00:13:05
Speaker
It was Max.
00:13:07
Speaker
He drove himself to the bowl game, showed up at our practice with his bag of football pads and his helmet and his gear.
00:13:16
Speaker
He stood behind the drills.
00:13:20
Speaker
And he mimicked John the entire practice.
00:13:23
Speaker
If John was doing a three-step drop and throwing a pass in seven-on-seven or skeleton drills, he was back there.
00:13:30
Speaker
And we have it on video.
00:13:32
Speaker
It was the most remarkable thing that I'd seen.
00:13:34
Speaker
He'd done that.
00:13:36
Speaker
all year, and why would he stop now?
00:13:38
Speaker
Just because we're at a bowl game and they're not going to travel me.
00:13:42
Speaker
We've got practice.
00:13:44
Speaker
So I'm going to be there at practice and get better.
00:13:46
Speaker
I've still got the chills down about it.
00:13:47
Speaker
I love the guy.
00:13:48
Speaker
But he was back there practicing and, again, like I said, brought his own gear to the practice.
00:13:53
Speaker
And I really believe that those that are going to accomplish great things are willing to put in great effort.
00:14:03
Speaker
to accomplish the things that they want to.
00:14:05
Speaker
Too many of us are pretending that we're going to accomplish something great and in fact we're just not willing to win the hour and do the things that are necessary to accomplish what we really want to and there's some secret sauce there but why not accomplish it?
00:14:23
Speaker
We participate in the hour instead of when it
00:14:26
Speaker
Shad, when we wrote our book, The Sport Light, Shad wrote about this in this chapter, Kobe Bryant.
00:14:33
Speaker
Kobe Bryant would make 1,000 shots a day, which means unless he made every single shot, he was shooting well more than 1,000.
00:14:41
Speaker
They weren't just free throws.
00:14:43
Speaker
These were game shots.
00:14:46
Speaker
That's great.
00:14:46
Speaker
I could tell that story and somebody could say, well, he was hungry to make it in the NBA.
00:14:50
Speaker
He knew he had a chance.
00:14:52
Speaker
Athletics, we would not know this was after he'd already won a gold medal, been an MVP, made hundreds of millions of dollars, was a captain, was an NBA champion.
00:15:01
Speaker
He would still go shoot a thousand shots a day.
00:15:04
Speaker
And I remember Dwayne Wade telling a story when the day that Kobe passed away, they were talking about Dwayne Wade told a story of Kobe Bryant missing a game winning shot against the Heat.
00:15:15
Speaker
and thinking he got fouled on it.
00:15:17
Speaker
And Dwayne Wade said, it looked like we fouled him.
00:15:19
Speaker
We hit him on the arms.
00:15:20
Speaker
He had a 15-footer at the buzzer.
00:15:22
Speaker
And Dwayne Wade was walking out of the locker room, and one of the people in the hallway there said, hey, Kobe's in the gym shooting.
00:15:28
Speaker
He's back in the arena.
00:15:30
Speaker
So Dwayne Wade came around the corner and looked down the hallway, and he said he saw Kobe Bryant out there shooting the same shot he had just missed.
00:15:36
Speaker
But this time, he had a trainer on the heat hitting his arm every time he shot the ball.
00:15:40
Speaker
The point being, instead of making an excuse that I missed the shot and blame the ref, his opinion was, I'm going to make the dang shot next time.
00:15:51
Speaker
So foul me as hard as you can.
00:15:53
Speaker
Next time, I'm just going to make it.
00:15:54
Speaker
He was upset that he'd missed the shot that he'd been fouled on.
00:15:58
Speaker
And instead of hoping he got bailed out next time, his attitude was, I got 30 minutes until the bus leaves.
00:16:04
Speaker
I can go sit on my phone and complain about the ref or I can go out and learn how to hit that shot and get fouled.
00:16:11
Speaker
As an educator, 26 years, assistant principal, coach, I know you've coached, the current athletic director, what's the difference?
00:16:18
Speaker
We'll move maybe transition into resiliency.
Building Resilience in Youth
00:16:21
Speaker
Then, Chad, I want you to talk a little bit about this.
00:16:25
Speaker
What have you noticed the difference in kids maybe from 20 years ago and now?
00:16:30
Speaker
Do you guys talk about this?
00:16:31
Speaker
Because we agree as a group there is a lack of resiliency amongst current high school kids versus
00:16:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:38
Speaker
You know, maybe 20 years ago.
00:16:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:40
Speaker
And I don't know whether that's something that's, that's just not been taught.
00:16:43
Speaker
Um, or whether we naturally had it maybe when we were kids, I don't know if it has something to us going outside and having to, to kind of fight, you know, you see the memes all the time, the nineties kids, man, our parents kicked us out of the house and we didn't come back in the house till the lights in the street lights went off.
00:16:56
Speaker
You know, we had to figure some stuff out.
00:16:57
Speaker
I don't know if kids just don't have that opportunity, but yeah, resiliency is a, is a huge deal.
00:17:02
Speaker
Um, we, we tend to, as our kids tend to right now, when, when things go bad, um,
00:17:08
Speaker
one of their first things is to, well, I don't need to do that anymore or I need to give up.
00:17:12
Speaker
Some of the times it's a parent saying, well, let's plow the road for you so you don't have any obstacles in your path.
00:17:19
Speaker
And then as a parent, I think that's one of the worst things we can do.
00:17:23
Speaker
is to kind of snowplow that path.
00:17:25
Speaker
Let them have some adversity.
00:17:26
Speaker
It's okay to have some adversity.
00:17:28
Speaker
It's okay to fail once in a while.
00:17:30
Speaker
Our greatest lessons come from when we fail, not necessarily when we lose, just like your story about Kobe Bryant.
00:17:35
Speaker
I mean, he took that as a failure, but I'm going to go out and work on it.
00:17:38
Speaker
I'm not going to make any excuses.
00:17:40
Speaker
We're just going to keep after it.
00:17:42
Speaker
I love athletics for the fact that
00:17:44
Speaker
There's sort of a safety net that's built in, in high school athletics especially, that kids can fail.
00:17:51
Speaker
What greater support group could you have than your families there?
00:17:54
Speaker
You usually have pretty decent coaches, teachers, that, okay, if I fail, it's okay.
00:17:59
Speaker
I got people there to pick me up, and tomorrow it'll be a new day.
00:18:03
Speaker
It's not that big of a deal.
00:18:05
Speaker
But if we don't ever allow them to fail, they don't build some of that resiliency themselves.
00:18:09
Speaker
Would you agree that...
00:18:10
Speaker
I don't think kids aren't, I mean, they're not different than they were 20 years ago.
00:18:14
Speaker
We're raising them differently.
00:18:17
Speaker
Right?
00:18:17
Speaker
Like, they're not any different.
00:18:19
Speaker
God didn't make them different.
00:18:20
Speaker
Right?
00:18:20
Speaker
So they're just being brought up in a world where, Chad, talk about the fruit tree.
00:18:25
Speaker
And that's when he said that, I thought about the fruit tree story.
00:18:29
Speaker
We shared this on an earlier podcast, but with Cam, I stirred over some of the comments he made.
00:18:34
Speaker
I look forward to those.
00:18:35
Speaker
But we had this peach tree in our house, and I love peaches.
00:18:40
Speaker
And in Utah, peaches are always in danger of being destroyed by frost because they usually bloom kind of mid-April, and then if it gets below 27 degrees for an extended period of time, it's going to kill all the blossoms, and you're not going to get any peaches in the fall.
00:18:57
Speaker
we got a weather warning that that was coming, right?
00:19:00
Speaker
And that there was going to be a hard frost, a hard freeze is what they called it.
00:19:06
Speaker
So I went out, I had this old neighbor, you know, that was like a farmer guy.
00:19:11
Speaker
And I said, is there anything we could do to save our peaches?
00:19:14
Speaker
And he said, well, I've been doing some research.
00:19:16
Speaker
One thing we could do is we could wake up and when it gets cold, we could go out there and we could mist our trees with water.
00:19:24
Speaker
Right?
00:19:24
Speaker
And as we mist our trees with water, it forms an insulated, like, sheet of ice around the buds and it will actually keep them from falling below 27 degrees and then you have hope of keeping some of your buds.
00:19:40
Speaker
So,
00:19:41
Speaker
We decided we were going to do that.
00:19:43
Speaker
We went out at like in the evening or in the, yeah, it was three o'clock in the morning.
00:19:50
Speaker
And we had like, you know, like weed, the stuff, the spray.
00:19:55
Speaker
So we start misting our trees, right?
00:19:58
Speaker
Well, this neighbor decides he's going to put a sprinkler just at the base of his tree.
00:20:03
Speaker
And all he did was went out and he turned on the sprinkler.
00:20:06
Speaker
But then he fell asleep.
00:20:08
Speaker
And so that sprinkler was going all night long.
00:20:12
Speaker
When I woke up the next morning, every branch on his tree, we have a picture of it, every branch on his tree was broken off because the weight of the ice had actually become so heavy on the branches that it broke every branch off the tree.
00:20:28
Speaker
And as Dustin and I, you know, I shared this with him and we were talking about, we do that as parents sometimes and as coaches sometimes.
00:20:36
Speaker
A frost is coming to our kid or they're experiencing something and we want to insulate them.
00:20:41
Speaker
But our insulation becomes way more damaging.
00:20:45
Speaker
That tree never got peaches ever again.
00:20:48
Speaker
They were so worried about getting peaches that they just never got peaches again.
00:20:53
Speaker
And I think that sometimes our desire to insulate our kids, and we've talked often, Dustin, how do we do that?
00:21:00
Speaker
Like what are some ways that we try to insulate our kids where the insulation becomes more damaging
00:21:06
Speaker
than the frost would have been.
00:21:07
Speaker
And it's the just making excuses for them, blaming everything on the coaches or the refs or that dad's a booster, speaking in a sports realm, in a school realm.
00:21:17
Speaker
It's always the teacher's fault that, you know, bail them out.
00:21:20
Speaker
I'll do this report for you, but it's the last time I'm going to do it for you.
00:21:23
Speaker
And we try to protect them from consequences or from bad things, but that protection that we provide sometimes is way more destructive than what they would have faced.
00:21:34
Speaker
In fact, I would say
00:21:36
Speaker
oftentimes, like you were saying, facing the stress of a grade or facing the hard reality of not getting a part in a dance or not starting on the team.
00:21:50
Speaker
Facing those things are actually going to be good for them.
00:21:53
Speaker
It's not going to destroy their future.
00:21:55
Speaker
It's going to enhance their future if they build that muscle of resiliency to learn to respond to it appropriately.
00:22:01
Speaker
Nate, when you first...
00:22:04
Speaker
When we first started, especially for athletes, you were probably junior high, right?
00:22:09
Speaker
Around that age.
00:22:09
Speaker
How old are you now?
00:22:11
Speaker
27.
00:22:11
Speaker
Yeah, so you're about 14, 15 years.
00:22:14
Speaker
When we talk, you've heard us talk about resiliency.
00:22:17
Speaker
I know you've studied resiliency as a young man in your 20s.
00:22:22
Speaker
What are your thoughts on resiliency and your generations?
00:22:27
Speaker
How do you teach your kids coming up here in the next little bit to be more resilient?
00:22:33
Speaker
What do you think?
00:22:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:36
Speaker
I think...
00:22:37
Speaker
I mean average generation is just a little bit different and then you talked about like how generations talk to generation coming up now of that emotion is a bad thing or something to be ignored or just not talk about.
00:22:51
Speaker
When that happens you start identifying with the emotion and staying able to see what that emotion is.
00:22:57
Speaker
So I think
00:22:59
Speaker
Us being able to just sit with how we're feeling and being able to talk about it, but also realize that it's not who we are.
00:23:05
Speaker
And be able to have those honest discussions with our friends, with our family, with teammates, is how we can sit in the hard stuff and realize how to get over it and be resilient.
00:23:19
Speaker
We have to admit that sometimes we're just not good enough, but what am I going to do tomorrow to get better?
00:23:24
Speaker
And you don't get better unless you lose.
00:23:28
Speaker
I was reading a book about raising emotionally resilient kids, and one of the things that the author pointed out is that we've labeled emotions as bad when really an emotion that a kid is feeling sometimes is perfectly appropriate for what they're going through.
00:23:44
Speaker
So someone is crushed after getting broken up with.
00:23:48
Speaker
That's actually a healthy response.
00:23:52
Speaker
So it's okay to tell a kid, for example, after they lose a game, they're crushed by a game.
00:23:57
Speaker
That actually means everything's working really well.
00:24:01
Speaker
You should be crushed by it.
00:24:02
Speaker
You care.
00:24:03
Speaker
We care, yeah.
00:24:04
Speaker
And so sometimes we jump in because we're worried and we want to take away that feeling.
00:24:10
Speaker
And it's actually an indicator.
00:24:12
Speaker
Like, how do you know a smoke alarm is working?
00:24:15
Speaker
If smoke comes and the alarm goes off,
00:24:18
Speaker
That's good, right?
00:24:19
Speaker
That's what you want to happen.
00:24:21
Speaker
It's almost like we want to silence alarms sometimes.
00:24:24
Speaker
And that telling a kid, I'm glad you feel that way, that you're devastated after a loss because...
00:24:31
Speaker
That shows that you care, and the fact that you're reacting this way, that means things are working.
00:24:36
Speaker
Like, things are healthy.
00:24:37
Speaker
Nothing's wrong with you.
00:24:39
Speaker
It actually is a good sign that you're feeling those emotions.
Emotional Acknowledgment in Resilience
00:24:42
Speaker
We actually had a mental health professional come to our school.
00:24:45
Speaker
We had some issues with ideations, suicidal ideations.
00:24:49
Speaker
We had 14 in less than a month.
00:24:52
Speaker
It was...
00:24:54
Speaker
kind of an epidemic for us and we were trying to figure out a lot of stuff why what's going on and one of the things that you just said she said she said kids don't know how to sit in their emotions that they don't understand that it's okay to have the emotion
00:25:08
Speaker
what are you going to do about it or why did that emotion come to you and let's talk about it just a little bit or you could figure it out too you can feel that and I think that's huge I don't think kids I don't really want to sit in my emotions sometimes but sometimes being able to say why am I so upset about this really does help and that's a skill it's a learned skill that we have to start helping our kids know how to do I totally agree because I think
00:25:32
Speaker
Especially the generation coming up, my generation, we're addicted to control and addicted to certainty.
00:25:40
Speaker
That we want to have control over our emotions.
00:25:44
Speaker
And one thing I've really learned over the last couple months is that, you know, we don't really have a lot of control over our emotions, but we have control over how we act and according to those emotions.
00:25:56
Speaker
And so to be able to just realize, you know what, this emotion is what I'm having right now, but it's not who I am and I can choose how I'm going to react to this is really important.
00:26:04
Speaker
Yeah, I love that.
00:26:06
Speaker
Allie, in the realm of resiliency, we did an event 10 years ago probably, you and I and Shad, we did an especially for female athletes where we tried to talk about
00:26:17
Speaker
some things that the same subjects but they are in some cases a little bit different for female athletes.
00:26:23
Speaker
I remember you talking about coaching female athletes versus male athletes and how they respond to being coached especially if I remember right from a male coach.
00:26:35
Speaker
Would you mind talking a little bit about women are just obviously more resilient in most cases than men but when you're coaching a girl
00:26:43
Speaker
How do we need to address this?
00:26:45
Speaker
Is there a different way to address resiliency with girls or to talk to girls or in a game?
00:26:52
Speaker
I think what's best to understand about women is women are pleasers through and through.
00:26:57
Speaker
And so even the most competitive, I'm very competitive, but I'm also a pleaser.
00:27:02
Speaker
So if I know you care, then the competitive spirit can come out.
00:27:07
Speaker
more positively and if I don't know if you care then I'm going to spend all my time trying to please you first and I think that's with your daughters, with your spouse, it's like women will go through a brick wall if they know you care but if they're constantly trying to prove themselves and trying to please the important people in their life then you might never see that competitive nature because they don't feel safe.
00:27:34
Speaker
And when we talk about resiliency along with the emotion and more the generation older, it's this acceptance of failure.
00:27:41
Speaker
We do this drill all the time.
00:27:42
Speaker
It's called Beat the Pro.
00:27:43
Speaker
And you have to first do a favorite move of a pro.
00:27:48
Speaker
The boys can go out.
00:27:49
Speaker
They watch more basketball in general so they actually know who pros are to try to be like.
00:27:53
Speaker
And girls are like, I have no idea.
00:27:56
Speaker
But just try something, a move, and boys will do things, and they'll be creative, and they'll compete with each other in the sense of just like who can be more like the pro.
00:28:04
Speaker
And the girls don't want to make a mistake quite robotic.
00:28:09
Speaker
And it's like just loosen up and allow yourself to be free, and it's allowing them to fail.
00:28:15
Speaker
And I think it's really important to be more of the verbiage
00:28:20
Speaker
What did you do to fail today in order to grow?
00:28:23
Speaker
And allowing them to fail without feeling embarrassed.
00:28:27
Speaker
And again, it all comes back to pleasing and starts with them knowing that you care.
00:28:32
Speaker
And I don't think boys are that different.
00:28:33
Speaker
I think boys are super competitive by nature, but a lot aren't, especially the next generation, because everything's so visible with social media and everything that everybody's a little bit more protective of emotion and failure.
00:28:47
Speaker
AND I HAVE A FRIEND THAT ALWAYS ASKED THEIR KIDS AT THE DINNER TABLE, WHAT YOU DO TO FAIL TODAY IN ORDER TO BE BETTER.
00:28:53
Speaker
AND THEY JUST BRING IT OUT RIGHT THERE.
00:28:55
Speaker
I LOVE THAT.
00:28:56
Speaker
AND I THINK IT'S REALLY HEALTHY BECAUSE IT CAN BRING UP EMOTION AS WELL AS THEY TRIED SOMETHING
00:29:03
Speaker
And we learn when we fail.
00:29:05
Speaker
And so that's kind of an approach with women that I think is misunderstood or missed in general to really get the most out of your female athletes.
00:29:15
Speaker
It's just, it's the care factor.
00:29:18
Speaker
They have to know you care because if I get on a female athlete for making, doing something wrong in a basketball game, rather than hearing the criticism that I may have given, she's going to be
00:29:31
Speaker
affected at the fact that she thinks I'm disappointed in her.
00:29:34
Speaker
For sure.
00:29:34
Speaker
Here's a perfect example.
00:29:35
Speaker
Lady I played for at DU, her name's Elaine Elliott.
00:29:38
Speaker
She's just like, she's hard-nosed, she is a tough coach.
00:29:43
Speaker
I could totally foul somebody, and she would get on that ref saying, you didn't see it, she didn't touch her.
00:29:49
Speaker
As soon as I come over, she's like, keep your hands off her.
00:29:50
Speaker
Like, it wasn't going at me.
00:29:53
Speaker
She had my back, and then she corrected me, and then she could expect more out of me because I'm like, she cares.
00:29:59
Speaker
She's got my back, and then she can expect me to do more.
00:30:03
Speaker
When you do the game, quit fouling.
00:30:04
Speaker
She could be as direct as she wanted, but she just didn't humiliate me in front of everybody.
00:30:09
Speaker
She had my back.
00:30:11
Speaker
She had no right telling the ref that.
00:30:13
Speaker
It was a clear foul, but that's a way to show that I got you.
00:30:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:19
Speaker
Maybe that's a good segue since you were talking about refs and yelling at refs to our third principle, compete without contempt.
00:30:26
Speaker
And I know we have a couple people that have some thoughts on compete without contempt, Cameron.
00:30:30
Speaker
You and I were speaking before we started recording.
00:30:32
Speaker
So our principle of competing without contempt, we emphasize every time we speak heavy emphasis on this idea that competition is good.
00:30:40
Speaker
And I believe that one of the things that maybe current generation or current age kids versus 20, 30 years ago is this idea that
00:30:48
Speaker
If you compete, if you're a competitive person that
00:30:51
Speaker
you're selfish, you know, that you want everything that you want to, if you want to make a lot of money or if you want to be, something's wrong with you and that everybody should, as long as you try, you should get a first place ribbon.
00:31:01
Speaker
And when the real answer is Giannis Antetokounmpo recently, when they got knocked out of the playoffs, you guys see when he got asked, would you consider this year a failure?
00:31:09
Speaker
And he got, put his hands in his head and looked at the guy, the reporter and said, you asked me the same thing last year.
00:31:14
Speaker
We lost, but we only fail if we don't learn from this, right?
00:31:18
Speaker
We're not going to win it every year if
00:31:20
Speaker
If we don't learn from this experience, then yes, it was a failure.
00:31:24
Speaker
But we want you to compete.
00:31:26
Speaker
But contempt, that turns us into cheaters.
00:31:29
Speaker
That turns us into maybe fault blamers.
00:31:32
Speaker
We'll maybe start cutting corners and doing things that we shouldn't do.
00:31:36
Speaker
Cameron, you told me a story about some rugby players that I thought was fascinating.
00:31:42
Speaker
I hadn't heard that before.
00:31:43
Speaker
Share that with us.
00:31:44
Speaker
And that tied really well into compete without contempt.
00:31:46
Speaker
Yeah, so contempt by definition is basically seeing somebody as lesser or lower, right?
00:31:51
Speaker
And so you can have this awesome mutual respect for somebody that you're fiercely competing against.
00:31:57
Speaker
One of the best examples of that.
00:31:58
Speaker
And I think one of the reasons we're nervous to have good sportsmanship is because we're worried that it will look weak, will look soft.
00:32:05
Speaker
And culturally, that's frowned upon, right?
00:32:07
Speaker
And so what I think is awesome is there's actually a lot of traditions in rugby.
00:32:12
Speaker
And I don't, I mean, let's be honest.
00:32:14
Speaker
Rugby players are like,
00:32:16
Speaker
the baddest dudes on the planet.
00:32:18
Speaker
They make every other athlete look pretty soft.
00:32:21
Speaker
And these guys will literally step on each other's faces, destroy each other, bend each other's nose and ears for two hours.
00:32:28
Speaker
And then at the end, they'll hug, I'll go to a pub together and just drink.
00:32:32
Speaker
And they'll buy each other drinks and they'll tell war stories.
00:32:34
Speaker
And remember that one time you broke my shoulder today?
00:32:36
Speaker
And they high five and they hug and they say, let's do it again next week.
00:32:39
Speaker
And it's actually a really common tradition.
00:32:41
Speaker
And so I started thinking as I was reading about all these clubs that do this on a regular basis,
00:32:46
Speaker
if it's good enough for them to where they can compete, I mean to the death, and then still hug and have a mutual respect as a peer and say, hey, that was an incredible game.
00:32:57
Speaker
Let's go share a beer and hug each other and tell some stories about it.
00:33:02
Speaker
I think the junior in high school who plays for the local team can probably be a pretty good sport too.
00:33:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:10
Speaker
I'm pretty sure he's not above that.
00:33:11
Speaker
I'm pretty sure that if these rugby players can be that way, so can these high school players that somehow have this misguided belief of what sportsmanship is as being soft or weak.
00:33:23
Speaker
It's kind of funny.
00:33:25
Speaker
Brandon and I, we were... Is it beer or root beer?
00:33:28
Speaker
It's a root beer.
00:33:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:29
Speaker
Yeah, they go to the local pub and get some root beer.
00:33:32
Speaker
You know, like, Sprites for everybody.
00:33:35
Speaker
Go to fizz.
00:33:36
Speaker
Yeah, pass a swig around, pump some syrup.
00:33:42
Speaker
This is like the perfect real-life example of how dumb it is sometimes.
00:33:45
Speaker
Like, when we grew up, we went to a high school that was a really successful program, and our rival was a really successful program, too.
00:33:53
Speaker
And we hated each other because we were supposed to.
00:33:57
Speaker
We'd see each other at spring break or parties and like the bloods in the crypts, we'd like circle each other and stare each other down and like kind of threaten, fight each other and talk a bunch of trash.
00:34:08
Speaker
And then our last game, our senior year ended and all of a sudden football's over.
00:34:14
Speaker
And so we'd see them at the same parties.
00:34:17
Speaker
Because football was over, we'd kind of start to talk to them and kind of start to get to know them and kind of realize they're a lot like us.
00:34:24
Speaker
And fast forward, a bunch of us were all college roommates together and like best man at each other's weddings and like best friends, right?
00:34:32
Speaker
Stupid.
00:34:33
Speaker
We hated these people because they wore green and we wore blue.
00:34:36
Speaker
But they're actually probably the same guy you are.
00:34:39
Speaker
But for some reason, you know, because we were competing, they were lesser than us and we were cooler and they were weaker and we were better and they were inferior.
00:34:47
Speaker
It's just not true.
00:34:48
Speaker
They're just great people too.
Competition, Respect, and Integrity
00:34:50
Speaker
They just happen to wear a different color jersey.
00:34:51
Speaker
So I think keeping that mindset changes a lot when you can fiercely compete and still also mutually respect the guy that you're going against.
00:34:59
Speaker
And probably, you know, off this field or court would probably be best buddies if we just knew each other.
00:35:05
Speaker
There's a quote that Shad referred to in a presentation, and I've since said it almost every game as a coach before we walk out of the locker room.
00:35:13
Speaker
I've shared this quote with the boys I coach, high school football team, by C.H.
00:35:18
Speaker
Chesterton.
00:35:19
Speaker
G.K.
00:35:20
Speaker
Chesterton.
00:35:21
Speaker
He said, we fight not because we hate what's in front of us, we fight because we love what's behind us.
00:35:29
Speaker
There's nothing wrong with wanting to beat a team 70 to nothing.
00:35:32
Speaker
Get after it.
00:35:33
Speaker
Blow them out.
00:35:34
Speaker
I mean, go get it done.
00:35:36
Speaker
But we don't have to embarrass them in the process.
00:35:38
Speaker
We don't have to tell them how bad we beat them after.
00:35:40
Speaker
We don't have to try to humiliate somebody.
00:35:43
Speaker
You can help somebody up.
00:35:44
Speaker
It doesn't mean you're soft.
00:35:45
Speaker
You don't have to stand over a guy.
00:35:46
Speaker
You don't have to cheat to win.
00:35:48
Speaker
Those same characteristics picked up in sports, by the way, parents, this whole idea that there's no mercy when you're playing somebody,
00:35:56
Speaker
When competing with contempt turns into, that might be summarized as tax fraud someday when you're older.
00:36:03
Speaker
Okay, doing business dealings that aren't honest and saying it's just business, right?
00:36:07
Speaker
When it was dishonest business.
00:36:08
Speaker
But it was just, if you're not cheating, you're not trying.
00:36:10
Speaker
That's...
00:36:11
Speaker
You know, you're not going to be a good guy.
00:36:12
Speaker
You're not going to be a good guy.
00:36:14
Speaker
You're not going to be a good guy.
00:36:15
Speaker
You're not going to be a good guy.
00:36:16
Speaker
You're not going to be a good guy.
00:36:17
Speaker
Garbage.
00:36:17
Speaker
If you're cheating, you're cheating.
00:36:18
Speaker
You do everything you can do within the rules to win and don't apologize for that.
00:36:20
Speaker
You've told the story before of our football coach in high school.
00:36:22
Speaker
He wanted us to hit guys so hard.
00:36:23
Speaker
He would say this.
00:36:24
Speaker
It's a little bit of a descriptive way of describing this.
00:36:34
Speaker
And you say, I'll see you on the next play.
00:36:36
Speaker
Right.
00:36:36
Speaker
Talk about demoralizing, blow a kid up, help them up and say, see you next play.
00:36:41
Speaker
They're like, oh man, this can be a long day.
00:36:43
Speaker
It's okay.
00:36:44
Speaker
Way better.
00:36:45
Speaker
We need, we need people that compete.
00:36:47
Speaker
Life's competitive.
00:36:48
Speaker
If we tell our kids that, you know, everything's going to be, it's going to be fair.
00:36:52
Speaker
It's not true.
00:36:53
Speaker
We're doing them a disservice.
00:36:54
Speaker
It is going to be competitive, but you don't cheat in the process.
00:36:57
Speaker
You do it with some integrity and with some honor and
00:37:00
Speaker
I know you have a phrase at your door.
00:37:02
Speaker
Every time I come over to your house, I see it.
00:37:03
Speaker
I haven't told you that.
00:37:04
Speaker
He has a phrase at the door, return with honor.
00:37:06
Speaker
He wants his kids to leave the house and return with honor.
00:37:10
Speaker
Cheating is you're returning without honor.
00:37:13
Speaker
We need to make sure that we are teaching kids how to compete.
00:37:17
Speaker
As parents, it's okay to compete.
00:37:18
Speaker
But as soon as we start telling our kids that they're better than somebody just because they're a better human being because they run faster, they jump higher,
00:37:26
Speaker
that's going to lead to problems.
00:37:28
Speaker
Like you said, Cameron, someday those same guys that you wanted to hate on are going to be your best friends and they're going to probably be your neighbors and you're going to realize they were really cool people.
00:37:40
Speaker
And then both of you were pretty average athletes.
00:37:44
Speaker
I think too that contempt comes from the pressure parents put on kids to perform would be great because I think you're out trying to prove something.
00:37:52
Speaker
As soon as you have confidence in your own ability, you start to compete and realize...
00:37:56
Speaker
There's something I can offer to make this person or team better and there's something I can learn from these people that are as good or better.
00:38:03
Speaker
You start surrounding yourself with people that are better, you start training with your opponents if they're better, but if you're insecure about your own abilities, that's when you have contempt because you're trying to prove you belong and or someone's putting you in a position that you feel like you have to compromise your values and everything.
00:38:21
Speaker
in order to win.
00:38:22
Speaker
And so that has to be removed.
00:38:24
Speaker
You've got to find a way to believe in your own abilities so you can compete and know you have something to bring to the table, but something to learn always.
00:38:32
Speaker
And if you see him as inferior, you're sure as heck not going to want to learn from him.
00:38:35
Speaker
Right.
00:38:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:36
Speaker
We did a podcast with Eric Weddle.
00:38:38
Speaker
He's going to be in the Hall of Fame here shortly, but...
00:38:41
Speaker
You know, one of the all-time greatest safeties to ever play football.
00:38:44
Speaker
And this was before he went and won the Super Bowl.
00:38:48
Speaker
Was it two Super Bowls ago, two years ago?
00:38:50
Speaker
But Chad and I did an interview with Eric, and he told a story, and it fits with this, where he said when he first got to the NFL, he would ask other safeties on his team for help.
00:39:00
Speaker
And he said these guys would look at him like he was crazy.
00:39:02
Speaker
I'm not helping you.
00:39:02
Speaker
You're here to get my job, right?
00:39:04
Speaker
It's a business.
00:39:05
Speaker
You're the rookie.
00:39:06
Speaker
They drafted you to take my job.
00:39:07
Speaker
Probably.
00:39:07
Speaker
Am I going to help you?
00:39:09
Speaker
You figure this stuff out on your own.
00:39:10
Speaker
And so he did and he figured out.
00:39:12
Speaker
But then as he got older, he said he took pride in telling the younger safeties, even guys on other teams after games.
00:39:19
Speaker
Hey, try this.
00:39:20
Speaker
or try this, or if they drafted somebody to be on the team and they were doing drills that he would go over and tell, Hey, I like to do this.
00:39:26
Speaker
It helps me take a better angle or whatever.
00:39:28
Speaker
He would teach this and then he followed this up with, it was just awesome because he said, as soon as I gave them my sort of bag of tricks, I now had to learn a new one.
00:39:37
Speaker
So that could drive him to have to get better because he knew I just gave them something that took me years to understand.
00:39:45
Speaker
Now I gotta figure out something else if I'm gonna keep my job.
00:39:47
Speaker
And so that would drive him the next day to get up early and get back at it.
00:39:50
Speaker
As soon as he started to feel like he was going through the motions, he knew, this guy knows all my secrets, so I gotta go find new ones.
00:39:57
Speaker
And that's that idea of compete
00:39:59
Speaker
But it's okay without contempt, but nothing wrong with competing.
00:40:03
Speaker
This guy is one of the most competitive dudes I've ever played with and seen play.
00:40:09
Speaker
Brandon, I think that's probably why those guys you just mentioned took on your personality as a coach.
00:40:15
Speaker
But is it bad to teach kids to be fierce?
00:40:19
Speaker
I'm just sitting there thinking there are times that I would like to have back.
00:40:24
Speaker
when I probably had more contempt than I did in competition.
00:40:28
Speaker
But I, you know, maybe not.
00:40:31
Speaker
If there were many times where I would go three quarters and they would just be at me and drilling me and trying to do everything they could possibly do to break me emotionally or to rattle me or to get me to respond and
00:40:47
Speaker
And I think more often than not, I didn't respond.
00:40:51
Speaker
But I look back at some of the times where probably, honestly, in the times where we did succeed and we had some wild success in some moments and I would lose my composure and maybe say something back to an opposing player or somebody in moments when,
00:41:11
Speaker
it was a really needed that really that make me feel any better to that maybe bigger than him in the moment but I I really believe that when I said compete fiercely I don't wanna do it any other way I just
00:41:32
Speaker
I don't find joy in it.
00:41:34
Speaker
And maybe that's weird to say that.
00:41:36
Speaker
But if I'm going to compete at something, start a business, or whatever we're going to do, then who are we competing against?
00:41:48
Speaker
How do we win?
00:41:49
Speaker
Is there a possibility of winning today and
00:41:52
Speaker
And I think we have to be really careful of defining what winning is.
00:41:57
Speaker
And I've gotten better at determining what that is for me as I've gotten older.
00:42:02
Speaker
But it really is a joyful thing to get up in the morning and know what I'm aiming to accomplish today and be competitive in that approach and then go get after it.
00:42:14
Speaker
I was raised as a little kid from the very beginning that
00:42:18
Speaker
that if your mind can conceive it and your heart can believe it, then you can achieve it.
00:42:25
Speaker
But the hardest principle in that phrase is to, how do I get my heart to really believe it?
00:42:32
Speaker
And the competition part of that is a critical aspect.
00:42:36
Speaker
The other thing I wanted to say is, being a parent is the greatest lifelong teaching university that I've ever
00:42:47
Speaker
participate again.
00:42:48
Speaker
And we make mistakes.
00:42:50
Speaker
And I've said this several times here recently, if we parent in fear, we fail.
00:42:58
Speaker
But if we parent in faith, usually we succeed in our efforts because we're coming from a different place.
00:43:06
Speaker
It is not about us.
00:43:08
Speaker
and being an outward thinking person versus an inward thinking person if you're competing that way like Ali said then you're trying to figure out how do I contribute how do we be a great teammate and how can I make this a better circumstance for everybody and as a parent
00:43:27
Speaker
Gosh, my hat's off to every mom and dad right now and what that looks like as a parent.
00:43:31
Speaker
We say we're parenting them differently.
00:43:33
Speaker
It is not easy to be a parent today.
00:43:39
Speaker
We compete with knowing what winning looks like and we do it with faith rather than fear.
00:43:46
Speaker
I don't think
00:43:48
Speaker
If we live our lives or we compete in faith versus fear, we're going to do it very often in contempt.
00:43:53
Speaker
I think we'll do that with our eyes up, understanding who we are and what we're doing.
00:43:58
Speaker
That principle has had a significant impact on my life.
00:44:01
Speaker
When we really think about why we're doing this, Shad wrote a blog years ago that went viral.
00:44:09
Speaker
It's been downloaded and shared millions and millions of times that simply said why I don't pay for dance anymore.
00:44:17
Speaker
And then it got rewritten and plagiarized and why I don't pay for softball and volleyball and a bunch of people took credit for it.
00:44:23
Speaker
But Shad wrote it, why I don't pay for dancing anymore.
00:44:26
Speaker
Shad explained the whole purpose of that because in my mind, that really was this idea of parents really if we step back, why am I really doing this?
00:44:35
Speaker
I thought of this, Brandon, when you said we have to define what winning is.
00:44:41
Speaker
You cannot win the trophy and you can win.
00:44:44
Speaker
in the development, the lessons you learn.
00:44:46
Speaker
Your kid could win the trophy and have lost.
00:44:49
Speaker
He didn't learn the lessons or she didn't really learn the lessons that are going to make her resilient enough to handle the real life problems that are coming after people file out of the bleachers and real life hits her in the face.
00:45:00
Speaker
Chad, why do you not pay for dancing anymore?
00:45:01
Speaker
We have three daughters.
00:45:02
Speaker
They've all done dance.
00:45:03
Speaker
Explain that.
00:45:05
Speaker
Yeah, well, it was prompted by someone coming to our house for dinner and they said, how much do you spend
00:45:12
Speaker
a month for dance.
00:45:14
Speaker
And we told them.
00:45:15
Speaker
By the way, I have three daughters as well.
00:45:17
Speaker
It's a heck of a lot of money.
00:45:19
Speaker
Picture like a beautiful second home in the Hamptons.
00:45:25
Speaker
So when I told them how much we paid, they basically told me I was crazy, right?
00:45:31
Speaker
Like, why in the world would you do that?
00:45:33
Speaker
I reflected on that.
00:45:34
Speaker
Like, I really thought it is kind of crazy how much we're paying for dance, right?
00:45:38
Speaker
But I was picking up my daughters from the dance studio and I had about a half an hour there in the parking lot.
00:45:43
Speaker
I started to think, why do I pay for dance?
00:45:47
Speaker
What I realized and why I wrote that is I'm not paying for dance.
00:45:51
Speaker
Honestly, I grew up in a family of four boys and no girls.
00:45:56
Speaker
I know there's boys that dance, that wasn't what my family did.
00:46:00
Speaker
Dance was zero part of my life.
00:46:03
Speaker
I could not care less about dance.
00:46:07
Speaker
So why did I invest so much in it?
00:46:08
Speaker
It was the things you were talking about, Dustin.
00:46:11
Speaker
I wanted my girls to have the lessons that came from dance, the making of friendships, the dealing with the part they got instead of the part they wanted and trying really, really hard at it.
00:46:22
Speaker
The staying off of their phone and being on a stage instead of in front of a screen.
00:46:28
Speaker
The times when they were too tired to go to dance, but they had to go.
00:46:31
Speaker
Like, you have to go.
00:46:33
Speaker
And
00:46:34
Speaker
And those, for me, those things, what I wrote in that blog was that's what I was paying for.
00:46:42
Speaker
And I really believe to this day, now that they've, that was 10 years ago or so, it was a great investment, right?
00:46:48
Speaker
Like those things that they learned from sports, from dance.
00:46:54
Speaker
I have a daughter now that does tennis and doesn't dance.
00:46:57
Speaker
Like, but I see the same thing.
00:46:58
Speaker
I don't care what it is that we're all paying for here.
00:47:01
Speaker
We aren't.
00:47:03
Speaker
The parents that have problems are the ones that are paying
00:47:06
Speaker
to be able to post about their kid on Instagram to bring positive attention back to them as a parent.
00:47:13
Speaker
Like that's what some parents are paying for, even though they're not saying it.
00:47:16
Speaker
And those are the ones that are screaming and yelling and making excuses and competing in the wrong way and teaching their kid to hate that kid that got the part that they wanted and talking bad about the kids on their own team.
00:47:28
Speaker
Those things come when we're doing it for the wrong things.
00:47:32
Speaker
Because sports bring incredible lessons.
00:47:36
Speaker
And if we'll just pay for the lessons and sit back and let it happen and help our kids learn to respond, we love that equation, Dustin, we use it often, that Ohio State football used for a long time.
00:47:48
Speaker
E plus R equals O. Event plus response equals outcome.
00:47:52
Speaker
If we don't have control of outcome, we don't have control of the...
00:47:56
Speaker
event all the time, but our kids always have control of the responses.
00:48:00
Speaker
The great thing that sports brings into their life is the opportunity to have many events that they have to learn to respond to.
00:48:07
Speaker
And if that's what we're paying for, then it's going to be an incredible investment, whether they ride the bench the whole time and fight to get in a lineup that they never get in.
00:48:17
Speaker
Like, if they respond the right way, they're going to take things with them from sports that are going to be so valuable for the rest of their life.
00:48:23
Speaker
But if we're all outcome Instagram focused, then that's what I think produces these parents that respond in the wrong way, that are so worried about their kid getting called out on strikes by a bad caller.
00:48:36
Speaker
It's all about that outcome when, for me, sports is all about...
00:48:42
Speaker
responding to the events and having all those opportunities to
Social Media's Impact on Youth Development
00:48:45
Speaker
do it.
00:48:45
Speaker
I love what it's provided for my kids, all the disappointments, all the joys, all the hard practices, everything that they've had to work through.
00:48:53
Speaker
I love it.
00:48:54
Speaker
I would pay more for it than what I've paid.
00:48:58
Speaker
I'm starting up a dance program.
00:49:00
Speaker
Would you like to have your daughters come and be willing to pay more?
00:49:05
Speaker
I have an idea.
00:49:08
Speaker
Twice the life lesson or twice the tuition.
00:49:12
Speaker
Our last principle, and that was again another good segue when you brought in social media.
00:49:18
Speaker
Our last principle, by the way, is seek to bless, not impress.
00:49:21
Speaker
We'll kind of summarize that quickly.
00:49:24
Speaker
There's a book we refer to regularly and especially for athletes called iGen.
00:49:29
Speaker
It's a book that I've talked to Division I athletic directors about, coaches saying all your coaches I think should at least read the first half of that book.
00:49:37
Speaker
I think all parents should read it.
00:49:38
Speaker
It's referring to what we have now, I'm full in line 100% with this.
00:49:44
Speaker
It's not Gen Z, it's Gen X or whatever they are.
00:49:47
Speaker
What are they now?
00:49:47
Speaker
Gen Z, is it now?
00:49:49
Speaker
They're Gen-I.
00:49:49
Speaker
It's iGen.
00:49:51
Speaker
This book refers to kids born around or after 2007.
00:49:53
Speaker
And 2007 was the invention of the iPhone.
00:49:59
Speaker
And studies have shown, if you read this book, I'll summarize it quickly, studies have shown that generation to generation, there are certain questions that they'll ask 18-year-olds and they have tracked the answers and just habits and things.
00:50:11
Speaker
And there's these ebbs and flows to it.
00:50:14
Speaker
I think it's a very important thing to think about.
00:50:15
Speaker
It changes a little bit.
00:50:16
Speaker
2007, things started getting really off the charts.
00:50:20
Speaker
Why was that?
00:50:21
Speaker
Things like 18-year-olds moving out of the house.
00:50:25
Speaker
How often do teenagers go out on the weekends versus stay at home?
00:50:28
Speaker
16-year-olds, how many of them will get their driver's licenses when they turn 16 versus not?
00:50:42
Speaker
are off the chart when it comes to a handful of things one being they don't go out as much they don't get their driver's licenses as much they don't move out of the house as much they're more tolerant and accepting of other people uh... they're also more depressed more anxious and this doctor believes and i agree with it i don't know how you scientifically prove this but she believes
00:51:02
Speaker
It makes sense to me that kids have half as many conversations with human beings now than they would have had before 2007 when they couldn't text or message or snap.
00:51:14
Speaker
Because before 2007, things like Instagram and Twitter and
00:51:18
Speaker
TikTok and Snapchat and all these things didn't exist.
00:51:21
Speaker
If I wanted to communicate when we were growing up, maybe not you, but when we were growing up, if I wanted to communicate with these guys, which I did all the time, I had to call their house.
00:51:31
Speaker
I had to put a quarter in a machine and call and see if they were there.
00:51:34
Speaker
I couldn't just text them.
00:51:35
Speaker
I had to have a conversation with the dad of the girl I wanted to ask out on a date.
00:51:40
Speaker
I had to talk to him.
00:51:41
Speaker
I couldn't just text her or snap her.
00:51:43
Speaker
So they've had half as many conversations with other human beings.
00:51:46
Speaker
Because of that, this doctor believes that their brains are three years less developed when they graduate high school than somebody 20 years ago.
00:51:55
Speaker
So when you're talking to an eight, that's why, and I wanted to just ask you three in particular with education, with coaching.
00:52:00
Speaker
I can say from coaching kids from 15 years ago or so before 2007 and coaching kids now, when an 18-year-old graduates high school, you're talking to a 15-year-old socially.
00:52:12
Speaker
So imagine an 18 year old, or excuse me, imagine a 15 year old now being asked to go live away from home.
00:52:18
Speaker
live out of the country, go to a different school out of state, that there may be some anxiety.
00:52:24
Speaker
There may be some extra fear.
00:52:26
Speaker
It'd be hard for an 18-year-old.
00:52:27
Speaker
But when you're a 15-year-old socially, because you've had half as many interactions with other human beings as maybe we as adults, as parents don't see that, we say, toughen up.
00:52:36
Speaker
You're being soft.
00:52:37
Speaker
Why are you crying?
00:52:37
Speaker
Why is it so hard?
00:52:38
Speaker
Toughen up.
00:52:38
Speaker
I did this.
00:52:39
Speaker
They're different.
00:52:40
Speaker
And we, Brandon, to your point about parents trying, we weren't given a game plan on how to manage kids with this new situation.
00:52:46
Speaker
social media
Fostering Human Connection and Personal Growth
00:52:47
Speaker
world.
00:52:47
Speaker
They didn't say when my daughter turns 20 this year, oh, by the way, most of her life is going to be with all of this stuff.
00:52:53
Speaker
This is how you handle it.
00:52:54
Speaker
We don't know.
00:52:55
Speaker
We're figuring it out.
00:52:56
Speaker
By the way, I've asked kids this recently.
00:52:58
Speaker
I asked this at your school.
00:53:00
Speaker
I asked kids at your school, you'll remember the response.
00:53:03
Speaker
How many of you will let your kids have social media when they turn 12 or 13 or something?
00:53:08
Speaker
Raise your hand.
00:53:09
Speaker
Do you remember?
00:53:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:10
Speaker
I think all but one person, one or two, said they would not let their kids have social media.
00:53:15
Speaker
Knowing what you know now, would you let your kids have access to social media like your parents let you?
00:53:20
Speaker
And they all said no.
00:53:21
Speaker
To me, it reminds me of 40, 50 years ago when we would see people smoking and...
00:53:27
Speaker
We grew and now we look at that and say that was crazy.
00:53:30
Speaker
But back then they didn't know.
00:53:31
Speaker
We didn't know that all this stuff is as damaging it as it is.
00:53:33
Speaker
Well now we know.
00:53:50
Speaker
From speaking to thousands of these kids, I guess I kind of look right in the camera right now.
00:53:54
Speaker
Parents, we know that's not healthy for them.
00:53:56
Speaker
We know they shouldn't be on it as much as they are.
00:53:59
Speaker
We know it's affecting them.
00:54:00
Speaker
So get off of it.
00:54:01
Speaker
Don't give it to them.
00:54:03
Speaker
Manage it.
00:54:03
Speaker
Have the fight if you have to have the fight.
00:54:05
Speaker
But if you give your son Twitter, here's an example.
00:54:07
Speaker
You give your son Twitter, he will find pornography.
00:54:10
Speaker
You give him Instagram, he will find it.
00:54:12
Speaker
So if you want to keep your kid off pornography, I'm telling you, if you don't monitor what he's doing with Twitter, he will find pornography.
00:54:19
Speaker
It will find him.
00:54:20
Speaker
It will find him.
00:54:21
Speaker
Exactly.
00:54:21
Speaker
So we can say, yeah, but he'll be different.
00:54:25
Speaker
He won't be able to.
00:54:26
Speaker
My son's 16.
00:54:27
Speaker
He doesn't have Instagram.
00:54:28
Speaker
He doesn't have Twitter.
00:54:29
Speaker
He doesn't have TikTok.
00:54:29
Speaker
He's doing just fine.
00:54:31
Speaker
He's still able to communicate with people.
00:54:33
Speaker
He's still playing sports.
00:54:34
Speaker
He's surviving without that.
00:54:37
Speaker
It's something that we can we can no longer sit back and say well I didn't know this was dangerous.
00:54:42
Speaker
We know it is now.
00:54:43
Speaker
So that excuse has to be we know it's just are we willing to do something about it.
00:54:48
Speaker
We just going to keep you know saying somebody needs to do this.
00:54:51
Speaker
We say keep your eyes up and do the work eyes up see something we're aware of it awareness.
00:54:56
Speaker
Now we got to do the work seek to bless not impress.
00:54:59
Speaker
We live in a selfie world.
00:55:02
Speaker
We, you alluded to it, Shad, our son or daughter hits a home run, we can't get to Instagram fast enough to post it.
00:55:08
Speaker
What happens when little Johnny doesn't play baseball anymore, he doesn't get the scholarship and no longer gets those compliments at church or gets those compliments because
00:55:18
Speaker
you know, in the community, what happens when he sees dad disappointed in his son because he didn't get the scholarship or he didn't get Allstate, and that's been his identity for 18 years.
00:55:26
Speaker
I'm supposed to be Johnny, the baseball player, who goes on to be Mr. College baseball player, Allstate.
00:55:33
Speaker
Now he's not.
00:55:34
Speaker
What happened?
00:55:35
Speaker
My guess is I know the last game I played baseball game in college, I wept like a baby after the game when I knew I wasn't going to be playing anymore.
00:55:42
Speaker
I'm sure when you realized it was over and you weren't playing anymore and the dream would come to an end, all of us.
00:55:47
Speaker
But imagine if our whole life had been broadcast to thousands and thousands of people.
00:55:52
Speaker
That mistake we made, that one game that only 500 people that were in the arena saw is now seen by 500,000 people.
00:55:59
Speaker
And it goes viral and everybody's seen.
00:56:01
Speaker
Imagine the pressure that's on that.
00:56:03
Speaker
Remember, 15-year-old, not 18-year-old, 15-year-old socially.
00:56:07
Speaker
And then if they come home and they don't see it, if we don't put our arm around and say, hey, you lost or you made that mistake, but look at all the things you learned.
00:56:15
Speaker
If we say it's all about the winning and the losing, we're disappointed because we can't post about them.
00:56:20
Speaker
We can't be complimented this weekend because son had struck out four times, so I can't post because I never see the post about the kid that struck out four times.
00:56:27
Speaker
I've never seen dad post that.
00:56:29
Speaker
I want to just say how proud I am of my son for going 0 for 20 today from the foul line.
00:56:35
Speaker
I never see that, right?
00:56:37
Speaker
And so when we seek to bless, not impress, one of the things we can do, I believe, teach our kids and us as just adults as well, maybe be a little slower to tell everybody how great our life is and to take the picture.
00:56:51
Speaker
to perceive that we're living this great life.
00:56:54
Speaker
And if we are going to use social media, I'm not saying don't use it.
00:56:58
Speaker
We have to be careful with it.
00:56:59
Speaker
But let's use it to find good things and to maybe highlight other people.
00:57:04
Speaker
If you have a game-winning touchdown pass in a game, instead of showing it as soon as you get home, thank your line, thank your coach, thank the cheerleaders, thank the people that came to the game, recognize them.
00:57:15
Speaker
But we do this sport light, we call it, especially for athletes.
00:57:19
Speaker
is brighter than ever on kids you were in a higher you and Ali probably had the brightest sport light of the table here because you guys play professional sports high-level college sports like a brighter on you because the level you went to and it turned off and you know most people now if you walk around don't remember the games that you played or the games that you play we're just now kind of doing our thing kids now the sport light as I mentioned because of social media and the Internet
00:57:47
Speaker
It's seen by thousands and thousands of more people.
00:57:49
Speaker
It's extra bright.
00:57:50
Speaker
So the highlights are magnified, but also the low lights are magnified.
00:57:54
Speaker
The embarrassment is higher.
00:57:56
Speaker
And if we don't, our idea, Shad, maybe I'll let you kind of finish this.
00:58:02
Speaker
Seek to bless, not impress.
00:58:03
Speaker
Why is that something we need to be careful, or we need to encourage our kids and we as adults to be more focused on?
00:58:10
Speaker
Well, we love the word seek.
00:58:12
Speaker
I mean, every word in that phrase is important, but...
00:58:16
Speaker
When we think of someone seeking to bless, not just casually letting it happen.
00:58:25
Speaker
I spoke to a group of dancers at this big dance camp a couple of weeks ago.
00:58:30
Speaker
And I said, you know, it's one thing to be looked up to.
00:58:33
Speaker
It's another thing to be a leader.
00:58:36
Speaker
And I think that because you're good at something, there's a lot of people.
00:58:42
Speaker
I remember when Brandon was in his heyday, right?
00:58:45
Speaker
And so many kids, I mean, looked up to Brandon, right?
00:58:51
Speaker
And that's awesome.
00:58:52
Speaker
That's the sport light.
00:58:54
Speaker
But
00:58:54
Speaker
It's another level to take that attention and then to lead people in good directions with it.
00:59:02
Speaker
And we try to teach athletes to not just try to impress people, not just have the goal be, you're awesome, you're so good at this sport, or even with our good kind acts, they could do that if they're posting about their kind acts all over social media.
00:59:19
Speaker
It's like, when we get into that I'm gonna impress people mode,
00:59:23
Speaker
I think we get into a mode where we're always going to be disappointed.
00:59:27
Speaker
Because the truth of the matter is, I remember Bronco Mendenhall, I remember your coach one time telling a story where they started out 4-5-0, were in the top 10 in the country, and he would go into grocery stores and people would bring their kids up to him and want him to sign autographs and introduce their kids, take pictures with them.
00:59:46
Speaker
He couldn't even go shopping, right?
00:59:48
Speaker
But then they went and lost a game that people felt like they shouldn't have lost.
00:59:52
Speaker
And he went to the grocery store and someone walked up to him.
00:59:58
Speaker
An old gentleman walked up, I guess gentleman's probably not a good phrase, but walked up to him and said, you're a disgrace to the university and you should be ashamed.
01:00:11
Speaker
his wife is there, right?
01:00:13
Speaker
This was a U fan probably.
01:00:16
Speaker
And, but think about that, like, I know that he was a more purpose-driven man than to have outcomes be everything, but what we learn in sports in our life is when we try to impress people, even when we win sometimes, there's going to be people who are not very impressed, right?
01:00:32
Speaker
Or people on the team, you get the winning shot or the winning hit or whatever it might be, and they think, oh,
01:00:39
Speaker
They're a ball hog.
01:00:40
Speaker
They're like, we can never please everyone.
01:00:43
Speaker
So it's an endless disappointing pursuit to try to impress people anyway, because usually the negative stands out to us 10 times more than the positive.
01:00:53
Speaker
But I love the idea of just seeking to bless, seeking to lift people.
01:00:57
Speaker
Wherever you go, just let whoever's brought into your path that day be better because they were brought into your path.
01:01:04
Speaker
And when we start living our life that way and we become independent of people's opinions or what they think of us, it actually is empowering and it becomes less depressing to live in this world.
01:01:18
Speaker
I think social media has made that so much worse because...
01:01:22
Speaker
Because when we try to impress people, there's a measure there on how much we impressed them.
01:01:27
Speaker
We put something online, even a simple picture, and it's like, wow, man, so-and-so puts a picture online.
01:01:34
Speaker
They get all these comments, all these likes, look what I just did.
01:01:38
Speaker
It's not very impressive.
01:01:39
Speaker
I'm not a very impressive person.
01:01:41
Speaker
That could be sad if we surrender our self-worth to other people's opinions.
01:01:47
Speaker
That's going to be super damaging to our self-esteem.
01:01:51
Speaker
And I think that's what social media has done.
01:01:53
Speaker
So if we just take that first part and just wake up every day and try to make people better because they came in contact with you.
01:02:00
Speaker
Like scientifically, not just the right thing to do, but scientifically, that will make you a happier person.
01:02:08
Speaker
better person if you live your life trying to lift rather than trying to be lifted up trying to be recognized it's just a healthier way to live in a happier with Brandon your son it will finish on this your son spent a couple weeks away from social media the word exact word you said to me an hour ago was
01:02:28
Speaker
He was a different kid.
01:02:30
Speaker
Came back a different kid.
01:02:32
Speaker
Why?
01:02:32
Speaker
Why do you think that?
01:02:33
Speaker
Tell us that quick story.
01:02:35
Speaker
I asked him at the end.
01:02:37
Speaker
He went to Samoa to go on a humanitarian experience trip.
01:02:42
Speaker
And...
01:02:44
Speaker
no cell phones no access to media to televisions or everybody that he helped or served he couldn't go on and tell everybody that he helped and served them 16 there were I'm sorry 23 16 to 21 year olds together half young men half young women and the reason he went was because he had realized for himself that he needed to do something for somebody else
01:03:12
Speaker
He had spent so much time worrying about himself and that, you know, to his credit, the maturity of understanding that that's what's caused me my pain.
01:03:20
Speaker
That's what's caused me so much challenges.
01:03:24
Speaker
I've been so worried about me that I can't get out of my own way.
01:03:28
Speaker
And to be able to put that away from me and go focus on other people, I said, what changed you?
01:03:37
Speaker
And he said, people.
01:03:40
Speaker
That was his answer.
01:03:40
Speaker
People.
01:03:41
Speaker
People.
01:03:43
Speaker
He says, I was awarded the best laugh.
01:03:47
Speaker
That's what he said.
01:03:48
Speaker
And he's got a great laugh.
01:03:50
Speaker
I think my family might be the only ones that have heard that laugh in the last handful of years.
01:03:54
Speaker
And I say that, but really, he would admit to that.
01:03:59
Speaker
And he said, I got awarded the best laugh.
01:04:01
Speaker
How in the world?
01:04:03
Speaker
people are going to know you laugh and you've got a great laugh unless you're with people and engaging and doing things.
01:04:08
Speaker
And so it's interesting watching him come home because he doesn't want to just go back to the same person he was.
01:04:17
Speaker
He wants to have roommates now and he wants to go to work and he wants to experience being with people.
01:04:24
Speaker
And I'm so grateful for that and I'm hopeful for his sake that
01:04:28
Speaker
He'll keep doing that.
01:04:30
Speaker
And he would never have gotten there.
01:04:32
Speaker
He would have never arrived in that moment had they said, you're going to have to leave your cell phone here.
01:04:39
Speaker
We'll give it back to you in Fiji on your way back.
01:04:42
Speaker
But it's not leaving Fiji, or it's not leaving this bag until we get back to Fiji when you have to call your dad on the phone.
01:04:48
Speaker
It was 2 a.m.
01:04:49
Speaker
in the morning.
01:04:50
Speaker
I'm laying there sound asleep, and my phone rings.
01:04:55
Speaker
And it's him.
01:04:56
Speaker
And I'm like, oh my gosh, he must be in Fiji.
01:05:00
Speaker
I pick it up and I said hello the best I could.
01:05:03
Speaker
He was so animated.
01:05:06
Speaker
so excited i'm like who in the world am i talking to on the phone right now and i thought the thought occurred to me match his enthusiasm that was what i thought at 2 a.m in the morning as a dad see if you can match his enthusiasm that's awesome and i'm like oh it's so great i'm so happy for you what you know so happy to hear your voice and
01:05:30
Speaker
he would have never gotten there with with out removing himself from the dungeon that has been created for him inadvertently, unwanting, but it's been a big part of his life and there's a lot of us that are living in an isolated
01:05:51
Speaker
where we don't know how to get out of it.
01:05:55
Speaker
And really, in most instances of those that I speak with, they just want to serve.
01:06:04
Speaker
I just want to do something that's meaningful, and I want to have an impact for good, and I want to serve people.
01:06:10
Speaker
So seek to bless and not impress is really at the core of true happiness.
01:06:17
Speaker
I think he found it for 16 days.
01:06:19
Speaker
I hope he doesn't lose it.
01:06:20
Speaker
Well, being an athlete will give our sons and daughters more of an opportunity because of the sport like they're going to be people are going to know who they are, they're going to be watched.
01:06:29
Speaker
And as parents, I think if we just get out of the way a little bit more, understand that our kids are going to struggle and that's OK.
Conclusion and Call to Action
01:06:36
Speaker
Teach them to win the hour, teach them to be resilient, to compete without contempt, to seek to bless, not impress, to keep their eyes up and do the work that sports will be something that can help them as it's helped us for the rest of their life.
01:06:49
Speaker
Appreciate you joining us on the Sportlight podcast and joining us for this roundtable.
01:06:54
Speaker
We hope you'll keep listening to the podcast episodes.
01:06:57
Speaker
Hope you'll follow us on social media.
01:06:59
Speaker
Come to our events.
01:07:00
Speaker
Look into our book, The Sportlight.
01:07:01
Speaker
You can buy that at e4a.org.
01:07:04
Speaker
And appreciate all of you guys joining us for this.
01:07:07
Speaker
Eyes up.
01:07:07
Speaker
Do the work.
01:07:08
Speaker
This has been the Sport Life Podcast from Especially for Athletes, sponsored by Coca-Cola.
01:07:14
Speaker
You can learn more about Especially for Athletes by visiting the website at especiallyforathletes.org.
01:07:19
Speaker
You can also learn more about the book, The Sport Life, by Shad Martin and Dustin Smith at especiallyforathletes.org.