February 6, 2024 • 45 mins
Ray Roberts reflects on Pete Carroll on being authentic and the importance of mental health. Today’s show: Ray’s work with Special Olympics and Education (00:51), transformation power of inclusion (02:48), Mindful Therapy Group (08:20), celebrating Authenticity from Pete Carroll (09:25), Richard Diana – knowing awareness (11:20), creating safe spaces (22:16), the Promises of Giants (24:07), figuring out who you are (26:50), and a quote from Marianne Williamson (34:40).
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Big Raised Garage Grind.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
I want to bring awareness and my voice to something
that's meaningful and purposeful more than just who's the best
football player, who's the best football team?
Speaker 1 (00:11):
The intersection between life, football and mental health.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
When you need help and you ask for help, you're
operating from a position of power. When you need help
and you don't ask for help, that's the weakness. Now
here's your host, Seahawk's legend, Ray Roberts.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
What is up, fam?
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Man?
Speaker 1 (00:31):
It has been a while, man.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
This is welcome the Big Raised Garage Grind mental health
addition brought to you by the Mindful Therapy Group. And
I'm your host, Big Ray Roberts. And like I was
saying just a few seconds ago, Mint, it has been
a minute since we have been on the mic and
recorded another episode. Just been really on the road at
the beginning of the year, basically like three weeks in
(00:53):
a row, was on the road doing work for specially
Miss North America with the Unified Champions Schools. Work did
I do in our cities around the country. I went
from everywhere from San Diego all the way to Connecticut
and back and all a couple of different places in between.
So I just haven't had the chance and the time
to sit down and knock out a podcast. I tried
(01:17):
to like throw out a couple of little messages here
and there to keep people aware and post it in
the groove with what we do and how we do
it and what we want to talk about. So, like
I said, I've been all over the country.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Man.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I've had a chance to with my work with Special Olympics,
to speak to some educators in San Diego, and I
spoke with five seven different schools in Connecticut. So I
was at a middle school on one day, and then
the next two days I spoke to six different high schools.
(01:53):
And mostly they're students who are involved in our unified
Champion Schools pro so students with and without electual disabilities
uh and developmental disabilities on the same teams and the
same clubs, sharing the same space and leadership and all that.
And and so I had an opportunity, uh to really
(02:14):
spread some messaging and do some really good work. Man.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
It's it's work that is really close to my heart. Uh.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
My my own life stories is my own life story
is connected.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
To it a little bit.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
And so I'm able to to go into these places
and speak to some kids and and really uh connect
with them in a way that they are that they
feel inspired or that they feel uh that they're doing
things the right way and headed in the right direction.
And my, my overall messaging and both of these in
(02:46):
all those situations was this idea around, uh, the transformational
power of inclusion. Our country is is fighting with this
whole idea around inclusion and the idea that people want
to carve out a space for themselves and find a
(03:06):
place where they belong to that they can be their
best selves. And so today I am going to try
an attempt to and it may feel like I'm rambling
on a little bit, and I apologize because I have
a lot on my mind, but I'm gonna try to
connect the work that I do with Special Olympics with
(03:29):
some of the things about Pete Carroll and his philosophy
around building culture and team and individuals and such. And
you know, we are in the aftermath, if you want
to call it that, but are the post Pete era
where Pete is stepping into an advisory role to support
(03:51):
Mike McDonald, who is our new head coach as of yesterday.
So exciting stuff happening here in Seattle around that. So,
what the work did I do at Special Olympics. We
have this model called Unified Champion Schools and the idea
(04:12):
of it is to use inclusion and to use sports
and leadership opportunities and friendship opportunities as a way to
drive inclusion. And so you say, well, what does inclusion
have to do with mental health? Well, it has a
lot to do with mental health, because when you decide
(04:35):
to include someone, you're saying, come fully as you are,
come fully as the person that you are, with all
of your strengths and your weaknesses, and your successes and
your failures and your peaks and your valleys. Bring all
of that to the table, and we have a place
(04:55):
for you to belong.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
That is what inclusion is.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
That is what that is the work that we try
to do in our schools all over the country, and
right now we're in our overall programming is in about
ten thousand schools around the country. And then the work
I do specifically for our city schools, we're probably in
about three thousand schools around the country and we're trying
to increase that number every single day.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
But the cool thing about.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
When you choose to include people, you're giving people life
and in return, you're receiving life. When you make a
space and you create intentional, purposeful, safe space for someone
to come in and be fully who they are, you
give them an opportunity to be successful at life. You
(05:48):
give them an opportunity to take on a sport and
play a sport, You give them opportunity to have a voice,
and all of that speaks to our mental health.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
And so.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
What I'd like to try to do is use that
as this backdrop of how some of the message that
Pete used in his press conference speaks to the same
thing and also speaks to this idea around mental health wellness.
(06:26):
Because when we're able to be ourselves, when we're able
to find our people and our place where we belong,
that's where people thrive. That is where people thrive. Like
I said, with the educators I was speaking to in
San Diego, Man, our teachers are working really hard to
(06:51):
create space for everyone to come to school and have
something to do, come to school and be able to
succeed and and have friends and all of that, and
sometimes they get caught up in adulgens of the work
and so then you forget what the outcomes are. And
so my messaging to them was that, man, through all
(07:15):
the times you're getting ghosted by parents or other administrators
or your principal, through all the times you're filling out
the paperwork and having to do to do all of that,
all the times you're trying to recruit students to be
part of the club, man, you can get worn down.
But if you keep your eye on the prize, if
you keep your eye on the prize, man, the outcomes
(07:37):
are tremendous because you were you were giving people a
place to thrive. You're giving them a place where they
can be accepted as they are, as who they are,
with what they can or cannot do, and they get
to be their authentic selves.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
And so.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
When you can show up as you are, who you
are and be accepted and celebrated, man, it's a place
to thrive. And before I want to play a clip
of a Pete Carroll speaking to this, but before we
get to that, let me do this live read real fast.
(08:21):
The Mindful Therapy Group has come along and has been
great partners with us and a title sponsor of the podcast.
I've had a lot of conversations with their leadership and ownership,
and it's just been a tremendous partnership for me and
a good connection for friendship. But the Mindful Therapy Group,
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(08:42):
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So thank you again for Mindful Therapy Group. So back
to this idea of finding your place to be authentically
(09:06):
who you are doing Pete's post exit, I guess you
want to call it press conference. He kind of uh
speaks to that a little bit.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
And so.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
I want to see if we can just play that
that clip right about now.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
If you cared for people deeply and you uh and
you loved them for who they were and tried to
find the extraordinary uniqueness that made them them and celebrate
that and not try to make them something that they're not,
and not not to try to expect them to be
something other than that, but try to see if we
can capture that that extraordinary uniqueness that they had and
(09:48):
celebrate that with them. Let's see what happens. Well, and
I see we killed it, and we came up here
and overall we've been successful for a long time. I
didn't think any way that this would happen like this.
I didn't have that vision. But I'm grateful for it
because what we have here, we have an extraordinary culture
and I'm really proud of that.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
And the really cool thing about this clip. And you know,
when Pete Carroll, I was reminded this morning just by
some some things I saw on social media. But when
Pete Carroll first came to Seattle, a lot of people
doubt it his his philosophy. A lot of people thought
it was all raw row, that it was just kind
of smoking mirrors, that it didn't have any depth to it.
(10:29):
And I can remember being, you know, on a radio
interview and really defending his approach and how and why
it would work here. And I want to tell just
a little a little story that kind of speaks to
the foundation of this methodology and this process of Pete.
(10:49):
And So in nineteen ninety two, I was playing with
the Seahawks and my rookie year, and I started the
season off. I was struggling a little bit. First six games,
I was struggling, just couldn't really find my footing, didn't
feel like I was prepared. Started doubting myself, questioning myself
if I had if I had one bad play, I
(11:11):
was gonna have six or seven bad plays in a
row after that, and then I'm gonna go home, beat
myself up, be mad at myself, all these different kinds
of things. And so the Seahawks, I don't know how
they found him, but they introduced me to this dude
named Richard Diana. And the interesting thing about Richard Diana
is that Pete also met Richard Diana in nineteen ninety
(11:33):
nine when he.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Worked with the Patriots.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
And I think this is where a lot of the
basis of Pete's methodology comes from. So Richard had developed
this process called knowing awareness, and in it he does
this evaluation. I sat with him for a full day.
He asked me a ton of questions. I answered a
ton of questions. He did this thing where he held
(11:57):
my arm out to the side and felt my pulse,
and he would ask me a question and push down
on my arm. Sometimes based on my answer, my arm
was weak, and sometimes based on my answer, I was stronger.
Whether I looked at my arm, looked the way, looked down,
looked up all these different kinds of things. And at
the end he wrote, like this eight ten page report
(12:17):
about how I function and how I think and all
these different kinds of things.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
And so there's two pieces to it.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
One is that you're either operating in your original state,
where if you are, you think about it as as
an engine. You're working on all cylinders. Everything is working.
You know, you got the right amount of all the
right amount of gas, like the spark plugs. Everything is
working the way it's supposed to work, and so the
car runs efficiently, as fast as quick. It does all
the things that the car is designed to do. When
(12:46):
you're working in your learned state, then you go to
a place where things aren't working on all cylinders. Maybe
you put in diesel gas when you're supposed to have,
you know, unletted gas. Maybe you're running on two ball tires,
or or you know, maybe the windshield is cracked and
you can't see out the front. So something has kind
of created a chink in the system. And for me,
(13:09):
as an example, when I'm operating in my original state.
I'm a dude that needs to gather information. If I
have all the information, if I have the appropriate amount
of information, not all the information, but if I have
enough of the information, it's easy for me to be
really spontaneous in the moment. So there were times during
my playing career, my rookie year, especially where I would
(13:32):
be in the huddle. I could hear the music in
the stadium, I could smell the food that was being
cooked in the stadium. I might be in the huddle
playing the air guitar or the air drums or dancing
or whatever joking, and a lot of coaches thought that
I wasn't ready, But that was the point when I
was the most ready. Because the fact that I could
be spontaneous in the moment, that I can that I
(13:53):
can see and feel and experience all those things in
a moment, meant that I was ready. It meant that
I had the information that I know I can ebb
and flow with whatever whatever's gonna come. When I was
in my learned state, man, it was really tough when
I was in my learned state. Howard Mudd, who was
an offensive line coach who went through all of this
with me so he could understand the different cues and
(14:15):
the different triggers. When I was in my learned state,
my body got really stiff. Every single thing I did
was either life or death. It was black or white.
I either did it or I didn't do it. It
was no in between. My footwork got terrible, My hand
placement was terrible, Like if someone knocked one hand down,
you might as well just throw me to the ground
because my whole body would just shut down. And So
(14:38):
in order to understand this, like we did a lot
of training and then a lot of conversation on how
do you get from your learned state back to your
original state? And to me, you can say, how do
you get from in peace language, how do you get
from this place of not knowing your authentic self to
getting to your authentic self? So if you if you
(15:01):
say your original state is the same as your authentic self,
then that is the same language that Pete is speaking.
Because a good example of that, and here's two examples.
One game, you guys know, I've told all the stories
about fighting games and getting kicked out of games, and
Howard Mud could see it building. He could see that
(15:21):
I was getting to this place where I was gonna
let the simplest thing get to me in a way
that I was going to punch somebody in the face,
get a penalty, get thrown out the game, whatever it was.
And he had this whistle that you can hear the
whistle over one hundred thousand people, and he would whistle
at me and then he would motion like he was
playing the guitar. And that was the cue to me
(15:41):
to hear the music. So that if I hear the music,
that was a cute to me, like, oh I can
smell the food, Oh I can do the air guitar.
Oh I can do the I can play the drums,
I can tell jokes. And that was my cue to
get to get me back to my original state.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
So there were.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
If you had enough cameras, you'd have found times on
the sideline where you're going like why is Howard Mudd
playing air guitar? And he was playing the air guitar
to get me back to my original state. If you
fast forward to at some point during this season, Gino,
there's a clip of Geno being really irritated and frustrated
with the officials, and he was walking towards the Seattle
(16:17):
Seahawks sideline. I think it was a home game, and
he was arguing with the officials, and then Pete stepped
out onto the field and got Gino's attention and then
just kind of rubbed his gut a little bit, and
it was that was a cue to Gino to reset himself,
to get himself back to that original state. I promise
you that was a technique that he learned, that Pete
(16:39):
learned through this work with Richard Diana, and so a
lot of a couple people around the country, other media
folks like saw it, took it and ran with it.
Oh man, this is what coaching is all about, and
all this other kind of stuff. But that was nothing
new to me. I had seen that since nineteen ninety two,
and I knew exactly where that coming from because I
(17:01):
had been the recipient of the same type of resetting
trigger to get me out of this original, this learned
state of mindset that that I would have been in
where everything is black or white, life or death and
back to this spontaneous UH, I have all the information thing.
And so one of one of the one of the
other things that I that I UH learned through this
(17:23):
process was it didn't matter whether it was a good play,
a bad play, or indifferent. On my way back to
the huddle, I'd say three things to myself. I would say, uh,
I'm prepared, I'm talented enough, now trust it.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
And then that would help me reset.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
So I would whatever the play was before I got
rid of it and I was back to this place.
And so you go like, man, well, that's a mindset thing,
and that's a motivation thing. Man, that's a mental health thing.
That is a mental health and wellness thing in the
moment in a game. It doesn't it doesn't like it's
not like your mental health all of a sudden disappears
during competition. It's also there because what will happen and
(18:00):
is Man, I would have really bad games. I would
go home and sit in the hot tub, and honestly, god,
I'd fall asleep drinking vodka or something in the hot
tub because I was just beating, like, I'm this first
round draft pick, tenth pick in the draft.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
I'm coming here.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Our team is terrible, We're not winning football games, and
sixty thousand people in the Kingdom are looking at me,
and so that will impact your mental health greatly. And
so I wanted to tell the story just so that
I could. I think this is the basis of where
a lot of Peat's methodology comes from, this idea of
(18:36):
knowing awareness and so this I still have my report
that Richard wrote up for me, and Richard passed away
a few years ago. I do remember telling Pete like, hey, man,
I think we have a mutual friend in common, and
I mentioned Richard Diana, and then we talked for the
next hour just about this whole knowing awareness thing and
it's a powerful, powerful tool that has worked out in
(18:58):
my life.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Said earlier that this idea.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Around the work that I do and with the young
people that are are trying to show up as who
they are and then also been wanting to be celebrated
for who they are, and how that speaks to mental health.
But how that is also tied to how Pete kind
of crafted his career and his coaching methodology around that
(19:28):
because he understands it. He understands that if you can
get a person, if you can celebrate a person for
who they are, for what they bring to the table,
if you can accept their flaws, I mean, think about uh,
trying to manage the legion of Boom, and we've talked
(19:49):
about them several times on this show. We talked to
kJ Wright about it, how the kJ find find and
hold on to who he was in the middle of
all of that. But you had Richard Sherman, Cam Chancellor,
Earl Thomas, Brandon Browner Thurman, like all these dudes that
(20:12):
are totally one thousand percent different, like not even opposite
of each other, but just totally different dudes, different skill sets,
different personalities, different ways of approaching the world, different ways
of communicating to the world, different ways of playing the game.
And somehow he was able to have every single one
(20:33):
of those dudes feel as if what it is that
they do and how they bring it and the way
they live and whatever their background is, he found a
way for them to find their people, and their people
were each other, and then they were able to show
up as authentically as they possibly could. And sometimes it
rubbed people the wrong way. Sometimes people's being accused of
(20:57):
of not having control and having too much of a
player coach and just letting people do and say what
they wanted. But they were missing the point, if that's
what they saw. They were missing the point that Pete
was creating a culture and a place for people to
show up in a safe place to exercise who they are,
to work out how they fit in the world, to
(21:18):
work out how they fit into a place, to find
to find their role the way they do it, and
then have that be celebrated in a way that they
as a group. As an individual, those dudes were all successful,
which then elevated the whole group to be successful, to
be one of the greatest defensive back groups and the
history of our league. So think about that, all of
(21:40):
the all of the the pushback that Pete was getting
when he first came here about all the raw ros stuff,
and he's not hard on the players, and and he
you know, he uh uh, he lets him do whatever
he wants to do. Pete always had uh this one rule,
which was protect the team. And so if you're able
to create boundaries and within those boundaries allow people to
(22:04):
be free within those boundaries, that is the epitome of freedom.
That is the most people think that freedom has been
able to do whatever you want, whenever you want, however
you want. But without boundaries, man, that is super destructive.
And so Pete created this boundary that allow that then,
and that allow these dudes to be their individual, authentic selves,
(22:25):
and then he celebrated that in a way that those
dudes could be that can show up as their best
selves and play some really good football. That's exactly the
same thing that we try to do UH with Special
Imbus Unified Champions Schools. We try to create safe spaces
within our schools and within our communities for our athletes
UH and everyone that's involved, whether you have intellectual and
(22:46):
developmental disabilities or not, if you're in our if you're
in our program, and you in your school and communities
work in our strategy. We are trying to do what
Pete Carroll did here for fourteen years, which is allowed
people a safe place, allow people the opportunity to work
out who they are and how they want to show
(23:07):
up in the world, and not be judged for it,
but to be celebrated for what they bring to the table,
to be to be able to be their authentic selves.
Like for for instance, for me playing in the NFL,
like a lot of people never they just saw this
bit six foot six, three hundred and fifteen twenty yet
sometimes thirty pounds dude, and they just thought rough, tough,
(23:31):
like scary, kind of a guy. But man, if you've
ever met me off the field, I'm the most approachable
dude in Hitshi of the world. Like I don't I'm
not up for fighting, I'm not up for any of
the kind of nonsense, any of that kind of stuff.
I try to meet and greet people and talk to everybody.
Don't sit down next to me if you don't want
to talk, because I Am going to create a conversation
somehow someway, because that's just kind of who I am.
(23:52):
But sometimes I wasn't allowed or I didn't feel allowed
or safe enough to be that part of me because
I had to always be who I thought people wanted
me to be. And anytime you're operating in that space,
that is an impact on your mental health. There's a
book that I read called The Promises of Giants, and
it's taught.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
It talks about.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Every one of us has a giant inside of us,
and the problem is sometimes based on where we are,
based on the circumstances, based on the environment that you're in,
we suppress the giant. And when you suppress the giant,
it's exhausting, and it's also creates stress and anxiety and
(24:35):
depression because you're not being allowed to be who you are,
So then that becomes a mental health thing. And in
this book he tells a story of this one lady
who lived in a tougher area of London, but she
worked in like a really high end, top end successful
(24:55):
business firm, and he was talking to her one day
and that she started talking her I guess dialect changed.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
And he looked at her and was like wow, like
what was that.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
And she goes, well, if I talk like the people
that talk from the area I'm from, if I talk
like that here in the office, I'm probably not going
to be respected. I'm going to lose opportunities and all
these different kind of things. So when I leave, when
I close the door behind me and I leave and
I'm on my way to work, every day, I make
sure that I change my dialect so I sound more
(25:27):
like the people in the office because I don't want
to I don't want to be disrespected, and I don't
want to be lose opportunities because they think less of me.
So for eight hours of day, this lady had to
pretend to be something other than herself. This lady had
to hide her authentic self, so there's no way that
this lady was doing her best work. There's no way
(25:48):
that this lady was excited about coming to work. There's
no way that this lady wasn't going home exhausted, stressed,
feeling full of anxiety because she's afraid if someone finds
out something's going to happen. All of that speaks to
mental health and wellness. So mental health and wellness isn't
just about responding to trauma. Mental health and wellness isn't
just about bad things that have that you've encountered and
(26:14):
uh and engaged in your life. All of those things
impact your mental health and wellness. I could imagine that
this lady was going home feeling a little bit overwhelmed,
feeling underappreciated, feeling unheard and unseen, all these different things
because she had to she had to be a shell
of herself when she got to work. All of those
(26:34):
types of things impact your mental health. And the thing
that's really cool is that Pete created a culture here
and and uh, I guess, I guess he built it
at USC which he which he talks about in in
his press conference. But he built a culture here where
people could come as they are understand what they're as
(27:00):
to do understand what the boundaries are and then truly
work it out to where they can be truly authentic
to who they are. And he speaks about this a
little bit when he talks about this idea of being
the essence of who you are to me, the.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
Essence of being as good as you can be is
you have to figure out who you are, and you
got to figure out that in a relentless effort to
try and get clear about what's important to you, whatcompromising
principles do you stand by, what makes you who you are,
so that if you don't go through that process, you
don't do the self discovery, then you don't have an
(27:44):
opportunity to be your best because you don't know who
you are yet. And so it's really hard for our
young guys because they're just figuring it out. But as
they come through our time there, the time they get
twenty five twenty six, we see the development. But for
anybody understand what kind of player you are? You understand
want to kind of coach you are? You saying what
kind of person you are, what kind of dad you're
all the way down the line. To maximize your authenticity
(28:06):
and be connected to that true essence of who you are.
That's that's what's crucial. Without that, you're gonna be sometimes
and you're gonna be sometimes. That's why you know, people
don't it's hard to be consistently successful because people don't
even know how they got there. A lot of times
it just happens kind of along the way, circumstances come
together and all you know. So that's that, that's the
to me, the essence of it. That's how I understand it.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Man.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
I just want to first of all, this idea of
Pete saying, if you don't know the essence of who
you are, then it's hard to be successful. And then
you you are successful, and you have no idea how
you got there, and so then there's inconsistency in that.
And it reminds me of the quote that if you
(28:51):
don't know where you're going, any path will get you there.
So it's the same. It's the same as what Pete
is saying right here. If you don't know who you are,
a path will get you there and you'll just you'll
be like a feather in the wind.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
You'll land wherever you land. But if you're in a.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Place which is very few places, especially in the workforce
or in our lives. Very few places give us a
chance to work out who we are. Very few places
are willing to give us the time that it needs
sometimes to work out who we are and find out
all those different things that Pete talked about, so that
we can be in a position to flourish, so that
(29:27):
whatever it is, whether it's in your friendships or on
the football field, or in relationships, or on your school
or your community. Man, if you know, if you know
who you are, if you know the things you're willing
to accept and the things you're willing not to accept,
if you're willing to set boundaries even if it makes
other people uncomfortable or maybe they don't like it. If
(29:48):
you know who you are, the essence of who you are, man,
your chances have been successful at whatever you do is
going to be great because you're going into that thing
knowing exactly who you are, how you fit in, and
how it's going to work out in that situation, and knowing.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Who you are.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Knowing the essence of who you are, knowing your authentic
self is mental health and wellness, because when you don't
know those things, when you're trying to figure those things out,
and you don't feel like you can can fully be
who you are and the way you want to be.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Man.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
It brings on the stress. It brings on the anxiety,
It brings on the panic, It brings on the worry,
It brings on the doubt, It brings on this idea
that you don't have purpose, all of those things. And
I will tell you firsthand that those are things that
I dealt with. When I left the NFL, I did
not know who I was outside of a football field.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
I thought I was.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Smartest dude in the room everywhere I went. I graduated
from University of Virginia. I was an academic All American.
At one point, I was a smart dude. I was
a dude that a lot of guys turned to for
help and guidance and things like that. In the locker room.
I was a team captain on every team I've ever
played on, all those different kinds of things. So within
that space, I knew exactly who I was. But the
minute I retired, Man, I had no idea. I had
(31:09):
no idea who Ray Roberts was. I had no idea
how to how to show up in the world as
a dad, as a husband, as a friend, as a
citizen in a community like I just didn't know how
to show up, and so I laid on the couch
a lot. I stayed in the bed a lot. I
covered my head with the pillow all the time. I
(31:31):
turned off all the lights and made the room as
dark as I could, so it was dark twenty four
to seven. Because at the core of it is this
identity that I thought that I thought was me had died,
and then I had to grieve that somehow. I had
to grieve that loss and then accept who I was
without it. And I didn't know who I was. I
(31:52):
didn't know who authentically who I was. I didn't know
who the essence of me was without football. And Pete
is saying that, man, this is what to him, that's
what the magic is. And to me, just to be
off topic a little bit, that's the difference to me
between a coach and a leader of men. Sometimes we
(32:15):
always want to say, hey, this coach is you know,
because the coach is a coach, he's the leader, or
because the quarterbacks is a quarterback, he's the leader. Or
because your your boss is a dude, that is the
dude the or the lady that hired you that they're
the leader, or that they the person who owns the
business is the leader. But that that's that's authority and
leadership and authority are two totally different things. And because
(32:38):
authority it is like you have to do it, because
they tell you to do it. They're writing the checks,
they're signing the checks. You report to them, you have
to do it. Doesn't mean that you're gonna that they're
gonna lead you anywhere, that you're willing to follow them.
It just means that you're responding to the authority. You
can have the lowest person on the pay grade, uh,
be the greatest leader in the room. That's the person
(32:58):
that people want to want to want to be. Those
are the people that people want to follow. Authority and
leadership and coaching three totally different things. When I when
when people say that, uh that a guy or or
or a lady is a leader of a man or women,
the first thing I look at is, well, how are
they developing the men of women? Because leadership isn't about
(33:21):
the leader, It's about the people you're leading. That's that's
what it's all about. And Pete to me, coaches are
concerned about coaching. What am I going to get out
of this person as a player? Are they going to
run fast, catch the football, tackle, throw the football, block
all those How can I get them to do that
the best? A leader of people, in this case, a
(33:45):
leader of men, is more concerned about the authenticity of
a person. Is more concerned about the essence of a
person how they show up in the world. Because if
they are showing up in the world in a way
that they feel good about themselves and if they feel
that who they are is been accepted, they're going to
(34:05):
show up at football at the football field and football
practice on game day much better uh than if they
didn't have those things. And a lot of a lot
of times, to me, that's where coaches miss. So you know,
I don't get caught up in the in the schemes
and things that people run because there's a thousand of
them and uh, and it changes all the time. But
(34:26):
culture doesn't change the essence of a person. The authentic
authenticity of a person don't change. And so when you
take time to to turn your attention to those types
of things, man, that really gets my attention. And it
also uh, this idea that that Pete talks about finding
the essence of a person and celebrating it, or the
(34:46):
authenticity of a person and celebrating it. It reminds me
of a of a poem UH that that I first
heard in the movie Coach Carter, where he has the
basketball team locked in in the UH in the gymnasium, gymnasium,
and they're having to do their work and one of
the kids that had been kicked off the team comes back,
(35:08):
comes back to the team and has a this epiphany
I guess it is. And he quoted this this poem,
and it's a little bit long, but I want to
say it all just so you can get the essence
of it all. But it is the title of the
poem is our deepest fear, And it says, our deepest
fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear
is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light,
(35:31):
not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves,
who am I to be? Brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually,
who are you not to be? You are a child
of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people
won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to
(35:53):
shine as children. We are all meant to shine as
children do We were born to make men of fest
the glory of God that is within us. It's not
just in some of us, it's in everyone. And this
is the line I think that speaks a lot to
what Pete says. And as we let our own light shine,
(36:14):
we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence
automatically liberates others. And so to me, that last part,
when we let our own light shine, First of all,
you have to be in an environment, in a culture
that is allowing you to let your light shine, not
(36:35):
in one that's dictating the light that you're shining.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
And that's the.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Difference with Pete. Pete didn't come here and say, hey,
here's this light, and I'm going to give it to
you and I want you to make that light shine.
Pete said, here you are, and here's you are the light,
and I want to celebrate and amplify and give more
wattage to your light and let that shine. And if
that shines you're gonna be successful. And then by me
(37:02):
letting you let your light shine, it's gonna liberate or
give other people the freedom to let their light shine.
And when you have enough people shining lights and encouraging
other people to shine lights and motivating other people empowering
other people to do the same one of.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
All, you're gonna have. No matter how.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Turbulent or how calm the culture is, you're gonna have
people that are are showing up and designed to be successful.
You're gonna have people that are showing up with a
mindset and a mental wellness that is gonna allow your team,
your corporation, your school, your community, your family, your relationships,
(37:48):
it's gonna allow them to be successful. And you can.
And that does not change. Like I said, the schemes change,
the age of the coach changes, whether it's an offensive coach,
a defensive coach, whatever it is. All that stuff kind
of comes and goes. There's been a ton of different
systems throughout the league. But the thing that drives success
(38:08):
is culture. And if you don't have a culture that
is accepting and not saying that you have to accept
bad things. But if you're not, if you don't have
a coachure that allows for people to be authentically who
they are and be the essence of who they are,
then you're gonna have one that struggles because the individual
(38:30):
is going to be struggling.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
The individual is going to.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Show up at work going like, man, like, this is
who I am, but man, I can't be that dude today.
I got to be this guy. And then maybe that's
then that's going to carry on to the field. And
then maybe they're not playing as well as they should play.
Maybe they don't understand the defense. Maybe they're they're skilled
hasn't been used the right way because they're showing up
as something less than who they are. And then that's
also going to show up off the field because now
(38:55):
you're going back home, you're going back to your community,
you're back in your relationships, and you have all this
out and stress and anxiety and maybe even some depression
on top of that. Because you're not allowed to be
who you are. You're not allowed to express yourself authentically.
You're not you're not allowed to let your light shine.
You're shining the light that someone gave you, and so
that's going to create mental health issues.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Mental health issues.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Aren't just you know, people going in you know, depression
because of of you know, some trauma that has happened
to them. Everything that we do has an impact on
our mental health. It's either moving the needle in a
positive way, it's moving the needle in a negative way.
That's why this mental health thing is so important for everyone.
Whether you're in the middle school or elementary schools that
(39:41):
I've that I were in that I was in in Connecticut,
or if you're the teachers and administrators and community leaders
that I spoke to in San Diego and everybody in
between ment the mental health. This idea around mental health
is so looked at as something soft or negative that
(40:02):
it baffles me. I just had a conversation with a
friend yesterday and they were saying that they had been
into therapy for you know, six months or something, and
they didn't feel like things were getting better, and man,
I'm just gonna give up all together and keep it moving.
I said, Well, what if you had a cold and
(40:24):
it was you had a cold for six months and
you're taking the medication and it's not quite getting better.
Are you gonna just stop taking the medication? What if
you broke your leg and it takes you know, a
year to heal, but after six months, it's not healing
like you wanted. Hell, are you going to take the
cast off and just cut your leg off? No, you're
gonna go like, Hey, what do I need to do
to get the healing that I need? Mental health is
(40:46):
the same approach. Mental health is health care. Mental health
and wellness is the same as healthcare. It's the same
as going to the gym. It's the same as trying
to lose weight. It's the same as trying to get
over whatever illness that you have. It is an issue
in our life that needs to be attended to and
(41:07):
provided the same attention as all these other things in
our lives. And I freaking celebrate Pete Carroll for for
taking this an't unorthodoxed approach to it that at first
people didn't quite understand. Like I said, when he first came,
I can remember being on the radio and and host
(41:29):
was joking about being this rod Rock guy and how
the rod Rock thing wasn't gonna work with the with
the with these grown men and professional athletes and things,
and I said, man, I think I think you're missing it.
I think you're missing the mark. I think dudes are
gonna want to love to play for this guy. I
remember saying those words exactly the week Pete Carroll got
hired and I was on one of the radio shows
here in Seattle, and I said, Pee, these players are
(41:52):
gonna want to play for this dude. And not only
have they wanted to play for him, Look at all
the guys that come back, and they're not coming back
just based on the success they had on the field.
They're coming back because of the success they had his people.
They're coming back because of the success they had with
Pete of finding out who they are and showing up
as authentically as they possibly could. They're coming back because
(42:15):
he didn't shut any of that down. He's coming They're
coming back because he found a way to celebrate a
Richard Sherman and a Russell Wilson. He found a way
to celebrate a cam Chancellor and a Marshawn Lynch, like,
just those four personalities along. Man, I don't if I
had four kids with a those different personalities, I think
(42:35):
I'd probably divorce them. It'd be tough to deal with.
It'd be hard. But Pete found a way to bring
all of them into the fold. To celebrate all the uniqueness.
That's what I love. He used the word uniqueness, all
the uniqueness of who they are. He found a way
for them to own that, understand it, and then he
celebrated that. And to me, that is a leader of men,
(42:58):
and that is to me, that is the essence of
what mental health and wellness is. It allows for those
individuals to show up as themselves, fully holy, with all
the peaks and valleys, all the flaws, all the weird
the weirdness if you want to call it, the craziness,
(43:20):
the calmness, whatever it is. The way you talk, the
way you to live, the way you play, all those
different kinds of things. He said, come as you are,
and then let's celebrate that and go win some football games.
So Pete yes a different dude to me, He's one
of one. There are people that have tried to maybe
(43:42):
do things similar. There's people that do it their way.
Belichick had a different way that he did it. Man,
I prefer Pete's way of doing it. They both were successful,
So you take your choice. But man, I am a
big fan of Pete Carrolls, will always be a big
fan of Pete Carrolls just because he's moving on to
something new. Doesn't mean that his philosophy and his approach
(44:02):
does not work. Maybe he was here fourteen years and
sometimes you just got to change for the sake of
changing to get new energy and new juice and all
that kind of stuff and get the edge back and
all that. But it doesn't mean that his approach to life,
which is also his approach to coaching, does not work,
because I see it work every single day when I'm
(44:24):
in and out of all the schools that I go
to all across the country. And I've been in schools
from Florida to Connecticut, to North Carolina to Arizona, to
New York City to Chicago to La Seattle, all the
places in between Tennessee. I've been to schools all over
(44:44):
our country. And this methodology very similar to what we're
trying to create in our Unified Champions Schools. Strategy works
because it allows people to show up fully as themselves
and be successful doing it. So I want to thank
you guys again for listening and remember our three things.
(45:05):
It's okay to not be okay, and if you are
experiencing a mental health crisis, reach out to your mental health.
I mean to your medical provider for guidance. And number three,
if you need help and you ask for help, you're
operating from a position of power, and again, thank you
for tuning in peace.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Lend them out.
You're listening to Big Raised Garage Grind.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
I want to bring awareness and my voice to something
that's meaningful and purposeful more than just who's the best
football player, who's the best football team?
Speaker 1 (00:11):
The intersection between life, football and mental health.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
When you need help and you ask for help, you're
operating from a position of power. When you need help
and you don't ask for help, that's the weakness. Now
here's your host, Seahawk's legend, Ray Roberts.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
What is up, fam?
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Man?
Speaker 1 (00:31):
It has been a while, man.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
This is welcome the Big Raised Garage Grind mental health
addition brought to you by the Mindful Therapy Group. And
I'm your host, Big Ray Roberts. And like I was
saying just a few seconds ago, Mint, it has been
a minute since we have been on the mic and
recorded another episode. Just been really on the road at
the beginning of the year, basically like three weeks in
(00:53):
a row, was on the road doing work for specially
Miss North America with the Unified Champions Schools. Work did
I do in our cities around the country. I went
from everywhere from San Diego all the way to Connecticut
and back and all a couple of different places in between.
So I just haven't had the chance and the time
to sit down and knock out a podcast. I tried
(01:17):
to like throw out a couple of little messages here
and there to keep people aware and post it in
the groove with what we do and how we do
it and what we want to talk about. So, like
I said, I've been all over the country.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Man.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I've had a chance to with my work with Special Olympics,
to speak to some educators in San Diego, and I
spoke with five seven different schools in Connecticut. So I
was at a middle school on one day, and then
the next two days I spoke to six different high schools.
(01:53):
And mostly they're students who are involved in our unified
Champion Schools pro so students with and without electual disabilities
uh and developmental disabilities on the same teams and the
same clubs, sharing the same space and leadership and all that.
And and so I had an opportunity, uh to really
(02:14):
spread some messaging and do some really good work. Man.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
It's it's work that is really close to my heart. Uh.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
My my own life stories is my own life story
is connected.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
To it a little bit.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
And so I'm able to to go into these places
and speak to some kids and and really uh connect
with them in a way that they are that they
feel inspired or that they feel uh that they're doing
things the right way and headed in the right direction.
And my, my overall messaging and both of these in
(02:46):
all those situations was this idea around, uh, the transformational
power of inclusion. Our country is is fighting with this
whole idea around inclusion and the idea that people want
to carve out a space for themselves and find a
(03:06):
place where they belong to that they can be their
best selves. And so today I am going to try
an attempt to and it may feel like I'm rambling
on a little bit, and I apologize because I have
a lot on my mind, but I'm gonna try to
connect the work that I do with Special Olympics with
(03:29):
some of the things about Pete Carroll and his philosophy
around building culture and team and individuals and such. And
you know, we are in the aftermath, if you want
to call it that, but are the post Pete era
where Pete is stepping into an advisory role to support
(03:51):
Mike McDonald, who is our new head coach as of yesterday.
So exciting stuff happening here in Seattle around that. So,
what the work did I do at Special Olympics. We
have this model called Unified Champion Schools and the idea
(04:12):
of it is to use inclusion and to use sports
and leadership opportunities and friendship opportunities as a way to
drive inclusion. And so you say, well, what does inclusion
have to do with mental health? Well, it has a
lot to do with mental health, because when you decide
(04:35):
to include someone, you're saying, come fully as you are,
come fully as the person that you are, with all
of your strengths and your weaknesses, and your successes and
your failures and your peaks and your valleys. Bring all
of that to the table, and we have a place
(04:55):
for you to belong.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
That is what inclusion is.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
That is what that is the work that we try
to do in our schools all over the country, and
right now we're in our overall programming is in about
ten thousand schools around the country. And then the work
I do specifically for our city schools, we're probably in
about three thousand schools around the country and we're trying
to increase that number every single day.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
But the cool thing about.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
When you choose to include people, you're giving people life
and in return, you're receiving life. When you make a
space and you create intentional, purposeful, safe space for someone
to come in and be fully who they are, you
give them an opportunity to be successful at life. You
(05:48):
give them an opportunity to take on a sport and
play a sport, You give them opportunity to have a voice,
and all of that speaks to our mental health.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
And so.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
What I'd like to try to do is use that
as this backdrop of how some of the message that
Pete used in his press conference speaks to the same
thing and also speaks to this idea around mental health wellness.
(06:26):
Because when we're able to be ourselves, when we're able
to find our people and our place where we belong,
that's where people thrive. That is where people thrive. Like
I said, with the educators I was speaking to in
San Diego, Man, our teachers are working really hard to
(06:51):
create space for everyone to come to school and have
something to do, come to school and be able to
succeed and and have friends and all of that, and
sometimes they get caught up in adulgens of the work
and so then you forget what the outcomes are. And
so my messaging to them was that, man, through all
(07:15):
the times you're getting ghosted by parents or other administrators
or your principal, through all the times you're filling out
the paperwork and having to do to do all of that,
all the times you're trying to recruit students to be
part of the club, man, you can get worn down.
But if you keep your eye on the prize, if
you keep your eye on the prize, man, the outcomes
(07:37):
are tremendous because you were you were giving people a
place to thrive. You're giving them a place where they
can be accepted as they are, as who they are,
with what they can or cannot do, and they get
to be their authentic selves.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
And so.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
When you can show up as you are, who you
are and be accepted and celebrated, man, it's a place
to thrive. And before I want to play a clip
of a Pete Carroll speaking to this, but before we
get to that, let me do this live read real fast.
(08:21):
The Mindful Therapy Group has come along and has been
great partners with us and a title sponsor of the podcast.
I've had a lot of conversations with their leadership and ownership,
and it's just been a tremendous partnership for me and
a good connection for friendship. But the Mindful Therapy Group,
based in the Pacific Northwest, is a diverse group of
(08:42):
qualified mental health providers offering both in person and virtual care,
whether it's talk therapy or medication management. You can book
your first visit within one week. Visit Mindful Theapygroup dot
com to start your journey to better mental health today.
So thank you again for Mindful Therapy Group. So back
to this idea of finding your place to be authentically
(09:06):
who you are doing Pete's post exit, I guess you
want to call it press conference. He kind of uh
speaks to that a little bit.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
And so.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
I want to see if we can just play that
that clip right about now.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
If you cared for people deeply and you uh and
you loved them for who they were and tried to
find the extraordinary uniqueness that made them them and celebrate
that and not try to make them something that they're not,
and not not to try to expect them to be
something other than that, but try to see if we
can capture that that extraordinary uniqueness that they had and
(09:48):
celebrate that with them. Let's see what happens. Well, and
I see we killed it, and we came up here
and overall we've been successful for a long time. I
didn't think any way that this would happen like this.
I didn't have that vision. But I'm grateful for it
because what we have here, we have an extraordinary culture
and I'm really proud of that.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
And the really cool thing about this clip. And you know,
when Pete Carroll, I was reminded this morning just by
some some things I saw on social media. But when
Pete Carroll first came to Seattle, a lot of people
doubt it his his philosophy. A lot of people thought
it was all raw row, that it was just kind
of smoking mirrors, that it didn't have any depth to it.
(10:29):
And I can remember being, you know, on a radio
interview and really defending his approach and how and why
it would work here. And I want to tell just
a little a little story that kind of speaks to
the foundation of this methodology and this process of Pete.
(10:49):
And So in nineteen ninety two, I was playing with
the Seahawks and my rookie year, and I started the
season off. I was struggling a little bit. First six games,
I was struggling, just couldn't really find my footing, didn't
feel like I was prepared. Started doubting myself, questioning myself
if I had if I had one bad play, I
(11:11):
was gonna have six or seven bad plays in a
row after that, and then I'm gonna go home, beat
myself up, be mad at myself, all these different kinds
of things. And so the Seahawks, I don't know how
they found him, but they introduced me to this dude
named Richard Diana. And the interesting thing about Richard Diana
is that Pete also met Richard Diana in nineteen ninety
(11:33):
nine when he.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Worked with the Patriots.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
And I think this is where a lot of the
basis of Pete's methodology comes from. So Richard had developed
this process called knowing awareness, and in it he does
this evaluation. I sat with him for a full day.
He asked me a ton of questions. I answered a
ton of questions. He did this thing where he held
(11:57):
my arm out to the side and felt my pulse,
and he would ask me a question and push down
on my arm. Sometimes based on my answer, my arm
was weak, and sometimes based on my answer, I was stronger.
Whether I looked at my arm, looked the way, looked down,
looked up all these different kinds of things. And at
the end he wrote, like this eight ten page report
(12:17):
about how I function and how I think and all
these different kinds of things.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
And so there's two pieces to it.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
One is that you're either operating in your original state,
where if you are, you think about it as as
an engine. You're working on all cylinders. Everything is working.
You know, you got the right amount of all the
right amount of gas, like the spark plugs. Everything is
working the way it's supposed to work, and so the
car runs efficiently, as fast as quick. It does all
the things that the car is designed to do. When
(12:46):
you're working in your learned state, then you go to
a place where things aren't working on all cylinders. Maybe
you put in diesel gas when you're supposed to have,
you know, unletted gas. Maybe you're running on two ball tires,
or or you know, maybe the windshield is cracked and
you can't see out the front. So something has kind
of created a chink in the system. And for me,
(13:09):
as an example, when I'm operating in my original state.
I'm a dude that needs to gather information. If I
have all the information, if I have the appropriate amount
of information, not all the information, but if I have
enough of the information, it's easy for me to be
really spontaneous in the moment. So there were times during
my playing career, my rookie year, especially where I would
(13:32):
be in the huddle. I could hear the music in
the stadium, I could smell the food that was being
cooked in the stadium. I might be in the huddle
playing the air guitar or the air drums or dancing
or whatever joking, and a lot of coaches thought that
I wasn't ready, But that was the point when I
was the most ready. Because the fact that I could
be spontaneous in the moment, that I can that I
(13:53):
can see and feel and experience all those things in
a moment, meant that I was ready. It meant that
I had the information that I know I can ebb
and flow with whatever whatever's gonna come. When I was
in my learned state, man, it was really tough when
I was in my learned state. Howard Mudd, who was
an offensive line coach who went through all of this
with me so he could understand the different cues and
(14:15):
the different triggers. When I was in my learned state,
my body got really stiff. Every single thing I did
was either life or death. It was black or white.
I either did it or I didn't do it. It
was no in between. My footwork got terrible, My hand
placement was terrible, Like if someone knocked one hand down,
you might as well just throw me to the ground
because my whole body would just shut down. And So
(14:38):
in order to understand this, like we did a lot
of training and then a lot of conversation on how
do you get from your learned state back to your
original state? And to me, you can say, how do
you get from in peace language, how do you get
from this place of not knowing your authentic self to
getting to your authentic self? So if you if you
(15:01):
say your original state is the same as your authentic self,
then that is the same language that Pete is speaking.
Because a good example of that, and here's two examples.
One game, you guys know, I've told all the stories
about fighting games and getting kicked out of games, and
Howard Mud could see it building. He could see that
(15:21):
I was getting to this place where I was gonna
let the simplest thing get to me in a way
that I was going to punch somebody in the face,
get a penalty, get thrown out the game, whatever it was.
And he had this whistle that you can hear the
whistle over one hundred thousand people, and he would whistle
at me and then he would motion like he was
playing the guitar. And that was the cue to me
(15:41):
to hear the music. So that if I hear the music,
that was a cute to me, like, oh I can
smell the food, Oh I can do the air guitar.
Oh I can do the I can play the drums,
I can tell jokes. And that was my cue to
get to get me back to my original state.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
So there were.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
If you had enough cameras, you'd have found times on
the sideline where you're going like why is Howard Mudd
playing air guitar? And he was playing the air guitar
to get me back to my original state. If you
fast forward to at some point during this season, Gino,
there's a clip of Geno being really irritated and frustrated
with the officials, and he was walking towards the Seattle
(16:17):
Seahawks sideline. I think it was a home game, and
he was arguing with the officials, and then Pete stepped
out onto the field and got Gino's attention and then
just kind of rubbed his gut a little bit, and
it was that was a cue to Gino to reset himself,
to get himself back to that original state. I promise
you that was a technique that he learned, that Pete
(16:39):
learned through this work with Richard Diana, and so a
lot of a couple people around the country, other media
folks like saw it, took it and ran with it.
Oh man, this is what coaching is all about, and
all this other kind of stuff. But that was nothing
new to me. I had seen that since nineteen ninety two,
and I knew exactly where that coming from because I
(17:01):
had been the recipient of the same type of resetting
trigger to get me out of this original, this learned
state of mindset that that I would have been in
where everything is black or white, life or death and
back to this spontaneous UH, I have all the information thing.
And so one of one of the one of the
other things that I that I UH learned through this
(17:23):
process was it didn't matter whether it was a good play,
a bad play, or indifferent. On my way back to
the huddle, I'd say three things to myself. I would say, uh,
I'm prepared, I'm talented enough, now trust it.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
And then that would help me reset.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
So I would whatever the play was before I got
rid of it and I was back to this place.
And so you go like, man, well, that's a mindset thing,
and that's a motivation thing. Man, that's a mental health thing.
That is a mental health and wellness thing in the
moment in a game. It doesn't it doesn't like it's
not like your mental health all of a sudden disappears
during competition. It's also there because what will happen and
(18:00):
is Man, I would have really bad games. I would
go home and sit in the hot tub, and honestly, god,
I'd fall asleep drinking vodka or something in the hot
tub because I was just beating, like, I'm this first
round draft pick, tenth pick in the draft.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
I'm coming here.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Our team is terrible, We're not winning football games, and
sixty thousand people in the Kingdom are looking at me,
and so that will impact your mental health greatly. And
so I wanted to tell the story just so that
I could. I think this is the basis of where
a lot of Peat's methodology comes from, this idea of
(18:36):
knowing awareness and so this I still have my report
that Richard wrote up for me, and Richard passed away
a few years ago. I do remember telling Pete like, hey, man,
I think we have a mutual friend in common, and
I mentioned Richard Diana, and then we talked for the
next hour just about this whole knowing awareness thing and
it's a powerful, powerful tool that has worked out in
(18:58):
my life.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Said earlier that this idea.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Around the work that I do and with the young
people that are are trying to show up as who
they are and then also been wanting to be celebrated
for who they are, and how that speaks to mental health.
But how that is also tied to how Pete kind
of crafted his career and his coaching methodology around that
(19:28):
because he understands it. He understands that if you can
get a person, if you can celebrate a person for
who they are, for what they bring to the table,
if you can accept their flaws, I mean, think about uh,
trying to manage the legion of Boom, and we've talked
(19:49):
about them several times on this show. We talked to
kJ Wright about it, how the kJ find find and
hold on to who he was in the middle of
all of that. But you had Richard Sherman, Cam Chancellor,
Earl Thomas, Brandon Browner Thurman, like all these dudes that
(20:12):
are totally one thousand percent different, like not even opposite
of each other, but just totally different dudes, different skill sets,
different personalities, different ways of approaching the world, different ways
of communicating to the world, different ways of playing the game.
And somehow he was able to have every single one
(20:33):
of those dudes feel as if what it is that
they do and how they bring it and the way
they live and whatever their background is, he found a
way for them to find their people, and their people
were each other, and then they were able to show
up as authentically as they possibly could. And sometimes it
rubbed people the wrong way. Sometimes people's being accused of
(20:57):
of not having control and having too much of a
player coach and just letting people do and say what
they wanted. But they were missing the point, if that's
what they saw. They were missing the point that Pete
was creating a culture and a place for people to
show up in a safe place to exercise who they are,
to work out how they fit in the world, to
(21:18):
work out how they fit into a place, to find
to find their role the way they do it, and
then have that be celebrated in a way that they
as a group. As an individual, those dudes were all successful,
which then elevated the whole group to be successful, to
be one of the greatest defensive back groups and the
history of our league. So think about that, all of
(21:40):
the all of the the pushback that Pete was getting
when he first came here about all the raw ros stuff,
and he's not hard on the players, and and he
you know, he uh uh, he lets him do whatever
he wants to do. Pete always had uh this one rule,
which was protect the team. And so if you're able
to create boundaries and within those boundaries allow people to
(22:04):
be free within those boundaries, that is the epitome of freedom.
That is the most people think that freedom has been
able to do whatever you want, whenever you want, however
you want. But without boundaries, man, that is super destructive.
And so Pete created this boundary that allow that then,
and that allow these dudes to be their individual, authentic selves,
(22:25):
and then he celebrated that in a way that those
dudes could be that can show up as their best
selves and play some really good football. That's exactly the
same thing that we try to do UH with Special
Imbus Unified Champions Schools. We try to create safe spaces
within our schools and within our communities for our athletes
UH and everyone that's involved, whether you have intellectual and
(22:46):
developmental disabilities or not, if you're in our if you're
in our program, and you in your school and communities
work in our strategy. We are trying to do what
Pete Carroll did here for fourteen years, which is allowed
people a safe place, allow people the opportunity to work
out who they are and how they want to show
(23:07):
up in the world, and not be judged for it,
but to be celebrated for what they bring to the table,
to be to be able to be their authentic selves.
Like for for instance, for me playing in the NFL,
like a lot of people never they just saw this
bit six foot six, three hundred and fifteen twenty yet
sometimes thirty pounds dude, and they just thought rough, tough,
(23:31):
like scary, kind of a guy. But man, if you've
ever met me off the field, I'm the most approachable
dude in Hitshi of the world. Like I don't I'm
not up for fighting, I'm not up for any of
the kind of nonsense, any of that kind of stuff.
I try to meet and greet people and talk to everybody.
Don't sit down next to me if you don't want
to talk, because I Am going to create a conversation
somehow someway, because that's just kind of who I am.
(23:52):
But sometimes I wasn't allowed or I didn't feel allowed
or safe enough to be that part of me because
I had to always be who I thought people wanted
me to be. And anytime you're operating in that space,
that is an impact on your mental health. There's a
book that I read called The Promises of Giants, and
it's taught.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
It talks about.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Every one of us has a giant inside of us,
and the problem is sometimes based on where we are,
based on the circumstances, based on the environment that you're in,
we suppress the giant. And when you suppress the giant,
it's exhausting, and it's also creates stress and anxiety and
(24:35):
depression because you're not being allowed to be who you are,
So then that becomes a mental health thing. And in
this book he tells a story of this one lady
who lived in a tougher area of London, but she
worked in like a really high end, top end successful
(24:55):
business firm, and he was talking to her one day
and that she started talking her I guess dialect changed.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
And he looked at her and was like wow, like
what was that.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
And she goes, well, if I talk like the people
that talk from the area I'm from, if I talk
like that here in the office, I'm probably not going
to be respected. I'm going to lose opportunities and all
these different kind of things. So when I leave, when
I close the door behind me and I leave and
I'm on my way to work, every day, I make
sure that I change my dialect so I sound more
(25:27):
like the people in the office because I don't want
to I don't want to be disrespected, and I don't
want to be lose opportunities because they think less of me.
So for eight hours of day, this lady had to
pretend to be something other than herself. This lady had
to hide her authentic self, so there's no way that
this lady was doing her best work. There's no way
(25:48):
that this lady was excited about coming to work. There's
no way that this lady wasn't going home exhausted, stressed,
feeling full of anxiety because she's afraid if someone finds
out something's going to happen. All of that speaks to
mental health and wellness. So mental health and wellness isn't
just about responding to trauma. Mental health and wellness isn't
just about bad things that have that you've encountered and
(26:14):
uh and engaged in your life. All of those things
impact your mental health and wellness. I could imagine that
this lady was going home feeling a little bit overwhelmed,
feeling underappreciated, feeling unheard and unseen, all these different things
because she had to she had to be a shell
of herself when she got to work. All of those
(26:34):
types of things impact your mental health. And the thing
that's really cool is that Pete created a culture here
and and uh, I guess, I guess he built it
at USC which he which he talks about in in
his press conference. But he built a culture here where
people could come as they are understand what they're as
(27:00):
to do understand what the boundaries are and then truly
work it out to where they can be truly authentic
to who they are. And he speaks about this a
little bit when he talks about this idea of being
the essence of who you are to me, the.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
Essence of being as good as you can be is
you have to figure out who you are, and you
got to figure out that in a relentless effort to
try and get clear about what's important to you, whatcompromising
principles do you stand by, what makes you who you are,
so that if you don't go through that process, you
don't do the self discovery, then you don't have an
(27:44):
opportunity to be your best because you don't know who
you are yet. And so it's really hard for our
young guys because they're just figuring it out. But as
they come through our time there, the time they get
twenty five twenty six, we see the development. But for
anybody understand what kind of player you are? You understand
want to kind of coach you are? You saying what
kind of person you are, what kind of dad you're
all the way down the line. To maximize your authenticity
(28:06):
and be connected to that true essence of who you are.
That's that's what's crucial. Without that, you're gonna be sometimes
and you're gonna be sometimes. That's why you know, people
don't it's hard to be consistently successful because people don't
even know how they got there. A lot of times
it just happens kind of along the way, circumstances come
together and all you know. So that's that, that's the
to me, the essence of it. That's how I understand it.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Man.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
I just want to first of all, this idea of
Pete saying, if you don't know the essence of who
you are, then it's hard to be successful. And then
you you are successful, and you have no idea how
you got there, and so then there's inconsistency in that.
And it reminds me of the quote that if you
(28:51):
don't know where you're going, any path will get you there.
So it's the same. It's the same as what Pete
is saying right here. If you don't know who you are,
a path will get you there and you'll just you'll
be like a feather in the wind.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
You'll land wherever you land. But if you're in a.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Place which is very few places, especially in the workforce
or in our lives. Very few places give us a
chance to work out who we are. Very few places
are willing to give us the time that it needs
sometimes to work out who we are and find out
all those different things that Pete talked about, so that
we can be in a position to flourish, so that
(29:27):
whatever it is, whether it's in your friendships or on
the football field, or in relationships, or on your school
or your community. Man, if you know, if you know
who you are, if you know the things you're willing
to accept and the things you're willing not to accept,
if you're willing to set boundaries even if it makes
other people uncomfortable or maybe they don't like it. If
(29:48):
you know who you are, the essence of who you are, man,
your chances have been successful at whatever you do is
going to be great because you're going into that thing
knowing exactly who you are, how you fit in, and
how it's going to work out in that situation, and knowing.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Who you are.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Knowing the essence of who you are, knowing your authentic
self is mental health and wellness, because when you don't
know those things, when you're trying to figure those things out,
and you don't feel like you can can fully be
who you are and the way you want to be.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Man.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
It brings on the stress. It brings on the anxiety,
It brings on the panic, It brings on the worry,
It brings on the doubt, It brings on this idea
that you don't have purpose, all of those things. And
I will tell you firsthand that those are things that
I dealt with. When I left the NFL, I did
not know who I was outside of a football field.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
I thought I was.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Smartest dude in the room everywhere I went. I graduated
from University of Virginia. I was an academic All American.
At one point, I was a smart dude. I was
a dude that a lot of guys turned to for
help and guidance and things like that. In the locker room.
I was a team captain on every team I've ever
played on, all those different kinds of things. So within
that space, I knew exactly who I was. But the
minute I retired, Man, I had no idea. I had
(31:09):
no idea who Ray Roberts was. I had no idea
how to how to show up in the world as
a dad, as a husband, as a friend, as a
citizen in a community like I just didn't know how
to show up, and so I laid on the couch
a lot. I stayed in the bed a lot. I
covered my head with the pillow all the time. I
(31:31):
turned off all the lights and made the room as
dark as I could, so it was dark twenty four
to seven. Because at the core of it is this
identity that I thought that I thought was me had died,
and then I had to grieve that somehow. I had
to grieve that loss and then accept who I was
without it. And I didn't know who I was. I
(31:52):
didn't know who authentically who I was. I didn't know
who the essence of me was without football. And Pete
is saying that, man, this is what to him, that's
what the magic is. And to me, just to be
off topic a little bit, that's the difference to me
between a coach and a leader of men. Sometimes we
(32:15):
always want to say, hey, this coach is you know,
because the coach is a coach, he's the leader, or
because the quarterbacks is a quarterback, he's the leader. Or
because your your boss is a dude, that is the
dude the or the lady that hired you that they're
the leader, or that they the person who owns the
business is the leader. But that that's that's authority and
leadership and authority are two totally different things. And because
(32:38):
authority it is like you have to do it, because
they tell you to do it. They're writing the checks,
they're signing the checks. You report to them, you have
to do it. Doesn't mean that you're gonna that they're
gonna lead you anywhere, that you're willing to follow them.
It just means that you're responding to the authority. You
can have the lowest person on the pay grade, uh,
be the greatest leader in the room. That's the person
(32:58):
that people want to want to want to be. Those
are the people that people want to follow. Authority and
leadership and coaching three totally different things. When I when
when people say that, uh that a guy or or
or a lady is a leader of a man or women,
the first thing I look at is, well, how are
they developing the men of women? Because leadership isn't about
(33:21):
the leader, It's about the people you're leading. That's that's
what it's all about. And Pete to me, coaches are
concerned about coaching. What am I going to get out
of this person as a player? Are they going to
run fast, catch the football, tackle, throw the football, block
all those How can I get them to do that
the best? A leader of people, in this case, a
(33:45):
leader of men, is more concerned about the authenticity of
a person. Is more concerned about the essence of a
person how they show up in the world. Because if
they are showing up in the world in a way
that they feel good about themselves and if they feel
that who they are is been accepted, they're going to
(34:05):
show up at football at the football field and football
practice on game day much better uh than if they
didn't have those things. And a lot of a lot
of times, to me, that's where coaches miss. So you know,
I don't get caught up in the in the schemes
and things that people run because there's a thousand of
them and uh, and it changes all the time. But
(34:26):
culture doesn't change the essence of a person. The authentic
authenticity of a person don't change. And so when you
take time to to turn your attention to those types
of things, man, that really gets my attention. And it
also uh, this idea that that Pete talks about finding
the essence of a person and celebrating it, or the
(34:46):
authenticity of a person and celebrating it. It reminds me
of a of a poem UH that that I first
heard in the movie Coach Carter, where he has the
basketball team locked in in the UH in the gymnasium, gymnasium,
and they're having to do their work and one of
the kids that had been kicked off the team comes back,
(35:08):
comes back to the team and has a this epiphany
I guess it is. And he quoted this this poem,
and it's a little bit long, but I want to
say it all just so you can get the essence
of it all. But it is the title of the
poem is our deepest fear, And it says, our deepest
fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear
is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light,
(35:31):
not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves,
who am I to be? Brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually,
who are you not to be? You are a child
of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people
won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to
(35:53):
shine as children. We are all meant to shine as
children do We were born to make men of fest
the glory of God that is within us. It's not
just in some of us, it's in everyone. And this
is the line I think that speaks a lot to
what Pete says. And as we let our own light shine,
(36:14):
we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence
automatically liberates others. And so to me, that last part,
when we let our own light shine, First of all,
you have to be in an environment, in a culture
that is allowing you to let your light shine, not
(36:35):
in one that's dictating the light that you're shining.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
And that's the.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Difference with Pete. Pete didn't come here and say, hey,
here's this light, and I'm going to give it to
you and I want you to make that light shine.
Pete said, here you are, and here's you are the light,
and I want to celebrate and amplify and give more
wattage to your light and let that shine. And if
that shines you're gonna be successful. And then by me
(37:02):
letting you let your light shine, it's gonna liberate or
give other people the freedom to let their light shine.
And when you have enough people shining lights and encouraging
other people to shine lights and motivating other people empowering
other people to do the same one of.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
All, you're gonna have. No matter how.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Turbulent or how calm the culture is, you're gonna have
people that are are showing up and designed to be successful.
You're gonna have people that are showing up with a
mindset and a mental wellness that is gonna allow your team,
your corporation, your school, your community, your family, your relationships,
(37:48):
it's gonna allow them to be successful. And you can.
And that does not change. Like I said, the schemes change,
the age of the coach changes, whether it's an offensive coach,
a defensive coach, whatever it is. All that stuff kind
of comes and goes. There's been a ton of different
systems throughout the league. But the thing that drives success
(38:08):
is culture. And if you don't have a culture that
is accepting and not saying that you have to accept
bad things. But if you're not, if you don't have
a coachure that allows for people to be authentically who
they are and be the essence of who they are,
then you're gonna have one that struggles because the individual
(38:30):
is going to be struggling.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
The individual is going to.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Show up at work going like, man, like, this is
who I am, but man, I can't be that dude today.
I got to be this guy. And then maybe that's
then that's going to carry on to the field. And
then maybe they're not playing as well as they should play.
Maybe they don't understand the defense. Maybe they're they're skilled
hasn't been used the right way because they're showing up
as something less than who they are. And then that's
also going to show up off the field because now
(38:55):
you're going back home, you're going back to your community,
you're back in your relationships, and you have all this
out and stress and anxiety and maybe even some depression
on top of that. Because you're not allowed to be
who you are. You're not allowed to express yourself authentically.
You're not you're not allowed to let your light shine.
You're shining the light that someone gave you, and so
that's going to create mental health issues.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Mental health issues.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Aren't just you know, people going in you know, depression
because of of you know, some trauma that has happened
to them. Everything that we do has an impact on
our mental health. It's either moving the needle in a
positive way, it's moving the needle in a negative way.
That's why this mental health thing is so important for everyone.
Whether you're in the middle school or elementary schools that
(39:41):
I've that I were in that I was in in Connecticut,
or if you're the teachers and administrators and community leaders
that I spoke to in San Diego and everybody in
between ment the mental health. This idea around mental health
is so looked at as something soft or negative that
(40:02):
it baffles me. I just had a conversation with a
friend yesterday and they were saying that they had been
into therapy for you know, six months or something, and
they didn't feel like things were getting better, and man,
I'm just gonna give up all together and keep it moving.
I said, Well, what if you had a cold and
(40:24):
it was you had a cold for six months and
you're taking the medication and it's not quite getting better.
Are you gonna just stop taking the medication? What if
you broke your leg and it takes you know, a
year to heal, but after six months, it's not healing
like you wanted. Hell, are you going to take the
cast off and just cut your leg off? No, you're
gonna go like, Hey, what do I need to do
to get the healing that I need? Mental health is
(40:46):
the same approach. Mental health is health care. Mental health
and wellness is the same as healthcare. It's the same
as going to the gym. It's the same as trying
to lose weight. It's the same as trying to get
over whatever illness that you have. It is an issue
in our life that needs to be attended to and
(41:07):
provided the same attention as all these other things in
our lives. And I freaking celebrate Pete Carroll for for
taking this an't unorthodoxed approach to it that at first
people didn't quite understand. Like I said, when he first came,
I can remember being on the radio and and host
(41:29):
was joking about being this rod Rock guy and how
the rod Rock thing wasn't gonna work with the with
the with these grown men and professional athletes and things,
and I said, man, I think I think you're missing it.
I think you're missing the mark. I think dudes are
gonna want to love to play for this guy. I
remember saying those words exactly the week Pete Carroll got
hired and I was on one of the radio shows
here in Seattle, and I said, Pee, these players are
(41:52):
gonna want to play for this dude. And not only
have they wanted to play for him, Look at all
the guys that come back, and they're not coming back
just based on the success they had on the field.
They're coming back because of the success they had his people.
They're coming back because of the success they had with
Pete of finding out who they are and showing up
as authentically as they possibly could. They're coming back because
(42:15):
he didn't shut any of that down. He's coming They're
coming back because he found a way to celebrate a
Richard Sherman and a Russell Wilson. He found a way
to celebrate a cam Chancellor and a Marshawn Lynch, like,
just those four personalities along. Man, I don't if I
had four kids with a those different personalities, I think
(42:35):
I'd probably divorce them. It'd be tough to deal with.
It'd be hard. But Pete found a way to bring
all of them into the fold. To celebrate all the uniqueness.
That's what I love. He used the word uniqueness, all
the uniqueness of who they are. He found a way
for them to own that, understand it, and then he
celebrated that. And to me, that is a leader of men,
(42:58):
and that is to me, that is the essence of
what mental health and wellness is. It allows for those
individuals to show up as themselves, fully holy, with all
the peaks and valleys, all the flaws, all the weird
the weirdness if you want to call it, the craziness,
(43:20):
the calmness, whatever it is. The way you talk, the
way you to live, the way you play, all those
different kinds of things. He said, come as you are,
and then let's celebrate that and go win some football games.
So Pete yes a different dude to me, He's one
of one. There are people that have tried to maybe
(43:42):
do things similar. There's people that do it their way.
Belichick had a different way that he did it. Man,
I prefer Pete's way of doing it. They both were successful,
So you take your choice. But man, I am a
big fan of Pete Carrolls, will always be a big
fan of Pete Carrolls just because he's moving on to
something new. Doesn't mean that his philosophy and his approach
(44:02):
does not work. Maybe he was here fourteen years and
sometimes you just got to change for the sake of
changing to get new energy and new juice and all
that kind of stuff and get the edge back and
all that. But it doesn't mean that his approach to life,
which is also his approach to coaching, does not work,
because I see it work every single day when I'm
(44:24):
in and out of all the schools that I go
to all across the country. And I've been in schools
from Florida to Connecticut, to North Carolina to Arizona, to
New York City to Chicago to La Seattle, all the
places in between Tennessee. I've been to schools all over
(44:44):
our country. And this methodology very similar to what we're
trying to create in our Unified Champions Schools. Strategy works
because it allows people to show up fully as themselves
and be successful doing it. So I want to thank
you guys again for listening and remember our three things.
(45:05):
It's okay to not be okay, and if you are
experiencing a mental health crisis, reach out to your mental health.
I mean to your medical provider for guidance. And number three,
if you need help and you ask for help, you're
operating from a position of power, and again, thank you
for tuning in peace.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Lend them out.
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