September 14, 2022 • 46 mins
Welcome to Unbreakable! A mental health podcast hosted by Fox NFL Insider Jay Glazer. On today's episode Best Selling Author and Keynote Speaker Jon Gordon joins Jay for a powerful discussion on suicide, battling your own demons, replacing negative thoughts with positive ones, why its important to never give up and much more. Plus, Jon shares his unbreakable moment along with why he's the David Hasselhoff of Korea.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Unbreakable with Jay Glazer, a mental health podcast
helping you out of the gray and into the blue.
Now here's Jay Glazer. Welcome and gang to another edition
of Unbreakable, a mental health podcast with Jay Glazer. Don't
you know what? I'm Jay Glazer, and you know it
(00:23):
was important for me to have on people throughout all
worlds to walk this walk together with the whole point
of Unbreakable is I'm a guy. If you don't know
me yet, I'm a guy who's lived in something that
I call the gray for my entire life. Yes, I'm
the football guy. Yes I've been the fighting guy. Yes
i'm someone of the ballers guy. But I'm also a
guy that's lived in the gray for my entire life
(00:44):
of depression, anxiety, a d D. Let's throw in from bipolar.
Why not, let's go for it all right, And I've
now tried to make it my mission to figure out
how to live life in the blue. I've never been
able to really have this journey of self love before,
where I just didn't know what what being able to
love myself and the inside out meant. So it really
(01:05):
motivated me to go out and do all these great
things to try and get some love from the outside
in instead of inside out, and hope somehow, some way
that love seats into the inside and they can meet
in the middle. But it as a result of this,
I'm on this journey to learn how to love myself
in the inside out, to learn how not to live
(01:27):
in the gray and wake up in the gray and
let the gray beat me every day. And and the
gray is something I will not let beat me. It's
every single morning of my life. I wake up and
it sucks. I'm not gonna lie to people. It sucks
every day. It's hard for me to get out of bed.
But every morning I make that decision to get out
of you at a bed and be relentless. And one
of the things I'm trying to be relentless about now
(01:50):
is my own journey of self love and journey to
the blue. So I lean on others. I lean on
good friends. And one of those good friends are joining
me right now. That John Gordon, who you may know
him from. I've known him from The Energy Bus at First,
which is my favorite book. But he's a he's a
best selling author. I worked with fortune companies, different sports teams,
(02:11):
just talked to the Rams Clemson. He's had twenty six books,
thirteen have been best sellers, five of them are children's books. Again,
the Energy Bus sold over three million copies. So I
want to bring John in here because he's a guy
who is, you know, battled his own demons. He's somebody
who's taught a lot of people how to get past
their own demons. But also John recently was affected, um
(02:36):
by unfortunately what's happening a lot in today's society, by
a suicide. And I wanted to just come straight out
of this John, because I received the text from you
recently where you were, man, you were just in a
tough place because of the ultimate decision that somebody made.
Welcome John, and uh, I appreciate havingue great to be
with you. I'm so thankful that we're friends, and I
(02:58):
love you. I think I'm very coble. Is amazing, And yes,
I texted you because I know this journey you're on,
I know the work that you're doing to impact so
many lives. I know that people have not committed suicide
because of you, because of of your book, because of
this work that you're doing right here right now. But
for me, I had someone just recently. It was on
(03:21):
social media. It was in the New York Post. Nita
po Hokey. She was a news anchor in in the
Wisconsin area near Green Bay, and she played it basketball
at USF. Great basketball player, athletic, family, coaching family. She
recently committed suicide and her her last tweet was a
(03:44):
retweet of mine and knowing that was her last tweet
to share something I wrote and in in that tweet,
I said, we're not positive because life is easy. We're
positive because life is hard. And this is about being real.
This is not about fake positivity. This is about real positivity.
(04:05):
So it's like giving yourself grace, encourage yourself, encourage others,
believe the best is yet to come. That was basically
the essence of the tweet. And to think that she
would read that, share that, but then end of her life,
it's so confusing to me, and it's so upsetting. And
I'm not easily I'm not easily knocked down. Yeah, I'm
not easily rocked. You know, I've dealt with the death
(04:27):
of my mom, my, my father passed away. I remember
my grandfather died of a massive heart attack when I
was thirteen. I've been through death and challenges, but this
really rocked me and I felt this in a in
a deep way, and I know now more than ever,
I am convicted to make sure that we save more lives,
(04:49):
Like we have to do everything we can to save
more lives. And it's not just with words, but it's listening,
it's understanding, it's meeting people where they are. It's doing
this Unbreakable podcast that you're doing, which I love that
you're doing this. You're gonna impact so many people and
it's just creating a community where people feel heard, where
they don't feel alone, and we're gonna talk about this today.
(05:09):
I understand what people need to do to overcome this.
I know it more than ever. And yeah, I just
feel so bad, Like like I wish I would have
known she was going through that, I would have reached
out to her. I would have talked to her. I've
done this. But that's where suicide isn't fair, right, because
it leaves behind that. I'm sorry, I say it's stark
you know, and an m VP are emerging vets and
(05:29):
players charity. I told guys day one, like, hey, you know,
life is about our choices and our decisions and that
first choice has to be life or death. And look,
when you have this level of gree for she had
I have. Yeah, it's it's an everyday battle, but I
made the decision early. I'm not gonna take my own
life because of what it would leave behind. I don't
(05:51):
want to do that to anybody else. So that's right
for anybody out there, this pain that you leave behind,
I guarantee you, guarantee you if you do it, and
or in whatever afterlife you believe in afterwards, and you're
sitting up there and you're seeing this kind of pain
that just resonates with everybody. You're not gonna be up
there going yes, look at all them crying. You're gonna
(06:13):
have to go no, No, what did I do? I
don't want to do this. And I guarantee you. She's
up there seeing the effect it's out on you and
everybody else saying, oh, I wish I could have a
give back. I wish I could have a give back
to anybody who's you know, who's who's attempted. And you know,
(06:33):
you see this, this level of grief, this is what
you'd left behind. This is your chance to have a
give back, and just you gotta choose life. We have
to choose life. You never know what lies around next Tuesday,
and your life could change next Tuesday. I met a
woman that committed suicide or tried to I should say attempted,
And she jumped off a bridge. And the minute she
(06:54):
jumped off the bridge, she regretted it. She thought to herself,
what have I done? And we hear this and over
again from people who jump off, say the Golden Gate Bridge.
How did you meet her? A friend of a friend.
But she survived, She survived, and so she survives. But
right away she basically said she fell she fell off
(07:16):
like she didn't admit that that happened. Other people knew
what happened. In law enforcement, friend of a friend got
a chance to talk to her. She regretted it. The
minute she jumps she regretted it. So now, Jay, she
lives every day so grateful for life, so grateful that
(07:36):
she has lived. And I think everyone needs to hear this.
If you're thinking about this, you will regret it and
you will go know what have I done? This woman
got a second chance, and every day she thinks life
is so precious. As a result of that, your problems
go away. But ours are heightened, their double triple quadrupled.
The grief you leave behind, it's not fair to us.
(07:56):
So I just want you to think about that, if
you could do anything living that pain for the rest
of us. But John, why do you think because you're
around him, you're you're working mental health care, why do
you think this suicide affected you more than than others? Well,
because it was really personal, because I was her last tweet,
because she had been tweeting a bunch of my things,
(08:20):
because she played at USF. I had spoken to USF.
Because she had such an amazing life. She was an anchor,
she was beloved by her community. She was young, she
had just got engaged. She was getting married like in
four or five months. None of them makes sense. And
I don't think suicide makes sense, right, It doesn't make sense.
But I know people struggle. I know people are in
(08:42):
the gray. I know people want to give up. I
know they get discouraged. I know that they get hopeless
and they feel hopeless. And I don't want to braid anyone.
I don't want to judge anyone for how they feel.
And that's what we're saying. Just keep living, knowing that
tomorrow can be better. But when I'm gonna talk about Jay,
what I'm excited that we're gonna talk about. We're gonna
talk about to help people who are in that grant,
how to how to not do it. But I think
(09:03):
this is a great way to start in terms of
knowing that it is painful for those who who you
who you leave behind. And I am now dedicating, like
everything I do in my life too, making sure that
this doesn't happen again, Like who else can I save?
Who else can I help? Can I do more? Can
I Can I reach more people? Oh? That was nice?
(09:24):
Can can we reach more people? Can we make more
of an impact? And that's what we're gonna do. Yeah,
you know, for for me, you know, I wrote this
in my book and Breakable, that I need to be
of service that helps me with my mental health issues.
And at first it was you know, I had a
children's charity in Touchdown Dreams. Then m v P where
there's twenty two vets a day that kill themselves. Man,
(09:45):
that's just it's not okay that the number is not okay.
So I was like, man, I'm gonna do whatever I
can to help over that month number. And if it's
just one man trying to make it them that there's
one man trying to make it Dept. But there's a
lot more than just me, right, that's why we're here.
But now with this, we're able to to reach so
many others, not just the veteran community, but all of
(10:05):
us out there. And as we've seen how there's so
many people just suffering in silence. You never ever ever everything,
Like you said, she's married, she's retweeted one of your
positives posts. You never see it coming. So folks, just
anybody out there who's struggling, reach out to a friend
and tell him you're struggling, reach out and tell him
how bad it is. Right, nobody is gonna scoff for you.
(10:27):
Everybody that I've opened up to about my depression anxiety,
it has gotten us closer together. No, his company, woofs
his Tony suck it up. Not only has it gotten
closer together, it's given them a landing spot where they
could talk about issues. And it's a scary world nowadays. Like, man,
it's easy to think your life sucks. Social media makes
(10:47):
us think our lives suck, and we're so freaking left out.
So yeah, and then you know problem to with suicide,
John and I tell this to our events a lot
of times. It's almost the power of suggestion when somebody
was it. You see so many the the outpouring of
love the person who does it, and I get really
nervous that others who are struggling to go, Wait, my
(11:09):
life sucks. I don't have this kind of love. You
know what, I'm gonna commit suicide too. I I get
the kind of love. Whenever there's a big suicide, I'd
start talking about it openly. Don't let the power suggestion
leak in. Jay. The way of virus spreads, this also
can spread in a contagious way. So you're very you're
very correct in that people can say, okay, if they
(11:30):
can do it, I can do it too, or should
I do it? And they started thinking about it, And
I think this is so This is so personal for
me too, because you know, I suffered from depression years ago.
I really struggled with it. I was miserable, negative, unhappy, hopeless.
There were so many moments I wanted to give up
as well. My wife almost left me. I was so negative.
(11:52):
People are surprised to hear that when you know I
wrote the energy of us. And I'm known from my
work on positive leadership, positive team market. I have positive
universe city right, everything is positive, and yet I am
naturally naturally negative. I grew up in Long Island, New York,
in a Jewish Italian family, a lot, a lot of food,
a lot of guilt. Yeah, my dad was a New
York City police officer, right undercover in arcaducts. And so
(12:14):
you get up in the morning, he good morning, Dad,
He'd say, what's so good about it? You know my
dad was it was not very positive. So I learned,
you know, look at the world in a negative way.
My dad said, basically, like the world is out to
get you, and you have to take on this world.
That's the kind of mindset I grew up with. So
I have to learn how to be positive. But man,
I struggled with it for many years, and for many years.
(12:36):
I was losing the battle in my mind for years.
And it's funny because my son struggles with with positivity too,
and he's a lot like me. So I get it,
and I have to often remind myself, Oh, you weren't
always like this, John, You were actually more like your son,
who's struggling, and you have to remind him of what
you were like to know that we can all overcome.
(12:58):
So give us some of you know, if there's so
much that I've learned from you, and so much you
could teach us, give us. You know you're you know
what the floor is your? How about that the floor
is mine? Well, I think it starts with asking people
this question, do your negative thoughts come from you? And
if you ask this of athletes, they'll often say, yeah,
(13:19):
they're in my head. But the next question is this,
If you believe your negative thoughts come from you, who
would ever choose to have a negative thought. You would
never choose a negative thought. This blows people's mind like
you wouldn't choose a thought that says the future is hopeless.
I don't have what it takes. I'm not gonna play
well today, I'm not going to overcome this injury, I'm
not gonna make it out of this health diagnosis, my
(13:41):
relationship where my marriage is not going to improve. You
would never really choose that thought initially right. You would
choose hope and belief and optimism. You would choose to
believe that the future is gonna be right. So the
thoughts are always coming in, Like when you're dreaming having
a nightmare, are you choosing those thoughts? No, you're having
a nightmare, you're dreaming. Thoughts are happening. So I've talked
(14:02):
to neuroscientists. No one has ever found a thought inside
of a brain. No one thoughts exist. I am convinceding
consciousness right in a spiritual place, and the brain is
the hardware. It's where activation happens. So thoughts are always
coming in, and we're downloading those thoughts from the internet
cloud of consciousness to our hardware to our brain. Right now,
we're making sense of this by our brain firing synapsis
(14:26):
right as we're as we're talking. And so when those
negative thoughts come in, they'll often come in the form
of of of doubt, of distortions, lies that will tell
you things about yourself and your future that just aren't true. Discouragement.
We don't give up because it's hard. We give up
because we get distracted and and and discouraged. And then
(14:46):
those distractions are a big part of of our mental
health issues as well. We're always distracting. We're being distracted
with the media, social media comparison, what other people have
and what we don't. And then that fifth D that
I talked about, Jake, because there's doubt, distortion, discouragement, distraction,
and division. J The word anxious literally means divided at
(15:07):
its Greek root word, and so think about that. When
you're anxious, you actually feel divided. You feel separate, and
those negative thoughts divide us separate, like we're separate from
Explain that to me, So you're talking to the A D.
D Guy over here, Yeah, separate When when you have
negative thoughts or we all have negative thoughts, we feel separate,
We feel weak, We don't feel connected to ourselves, like
(15:29):
disconnected from ourselves, from ourselves, we feel disconnected from others,
and we feel disconnected from the oneness that we truly are,
like the connection to others, the oneness of like in
different spiritual traditions, everything pretty much believes that there's a
oneness to to everything that we're we are one, one humanity,
(15:51):
one spirit, one you know, one soul. We're we're connected
in a deeper and more powerful way. Every addiction program
believes in a higher power. Why is that because on
our own we feel separate, we feel weak, we don't
feel strong we don't feel powerful. But when you connected
that higher power, whichever your religious tradition is, that higher
(16:11):
power gives you strength, It gives you power. You feel
connected to something greater than yourself. And so fear divides,
negative thoughts divide, They separate us. So once you understand that,
and you're not choosing the thoughts. I was meeting with
a six year old young man and he was suicidal.
He was in the e R two days before I
(16:33):
met with him, and I said to him, do your
negative thoughts come from you? We had this discussion. I said,
you have a lot of thoughts on your head and
he said, yes, so many. I said they we can
have it on you. He said, oh yeah, yeah big time.
So they're accusing you of things, saying you're not enough. Yeah,
you're not smart enough, you're not strong enough, you're not
powerful enough, you're not this enough, whatever it is, you're
(16:54):
not enough. And he said, oh yeah. And we talked
and once he understood j that is, negative thoughts were
not coming from him. Initially he was just believing them.
They were just coming in. It's like a radio station.
The airwaves are always being filled with with with different
radio stations with different frequencies, which different thoughts with different programming. Well,
(17:14):
let me ask you this once I know it, because
that's Look, that's definitely a problem for me, and I
try and describe it to people, to my football people,
in these football terms. When I wake up in the morning,
I feel like the whole world hates me and wants
bad things to happen to me, and my sky is
falling Instead, imagine if every single game you went out
there and you expected every fan, even your fans, wanted
(17:35):
the worst for you, and you just We're never gonna
make a first down. It's just how it is, because
because that's what this ship tells you. Right. So how
do I now, knowing John, what you just taught me,
like the negative thoughts are not mine? Right? How do
I use that information now to change the way I think? Well,
(17:56):
this is why it's life changing, because this freedom in
that you're no longer beating yourself up for the thoughts
that you're in your head. This kid had guilt and
shame other people I've talked to. I talked to two
other depressed teenagers over the summer, depressed, shameful, feeling guilty,
beating themselves up. Once you understand this. There's freedom and knowing. Okay,
(18:18):
I didn't choose the initial thought, but I can respond
in a more positive way. I don't have to believe
the lies that they tell. I now could take every
thought captive and I can replace that negative thought with
a positive thought. I can actually rewire my brain. I
can take control of of the thoughts that are coming in.
For instance, we're not coming in. But what now I'm
(18:38):
if I'm saying, all right, everybody wants the worse for it? Right,
So what what happen is? Is that really true? Does
everyone really want the worse for you? And you would say, no,
that's not really true. So you examine is this truth? No,
it's not true. That's a lie. Feeling I feel it,
but I know it's not true. Right, you know what's feeling.
So here's what here's you do it. And I had
to do this for myself. This is how I rewired
(19:00):
my brain. This is how I changed everything on my journey.
Instead of doubt, Jay, you trust instead of the distortion
the lies. But you're gonna start doing a speaking truth
to the lives. Here's a practical exercise everyone could do
that is life changing. On the left, side of a
piece of paper, you write down your negative thoughts, your patterns.
You have yours, J I have mine, Everyone has theirs.
(19:22):
You can talk to the greatest of the great ones
in sports, they all have negative thoughts that come in.
Write them down the left side of a piece of paper.
On the right side, write down the words of truth
and encouragement that you will speak and that you will
say to those lies. And every time those negative thoughts
come in, Jay, you would actually start speaking those truths. So,
(19:43):
for instance, with me, when I first started speaking, I
didn't feel worthy, Like who am I to be out
there on stage sharing this message? And I didn't feel worth.
I would walk around. I remember San Diego given a
big talk to a company like, wow, I'm here doing
this talk to this company they hired me. I'm in
my thirties, Like I just got going the energy bus
I think just came out and I'm walking going. Man,
(20:04):
I don't feel worthy. So I kept saying this, you
were worthy. You were worthy, not in you, but you're
worthy in the difference you're gonna make. You're worthy in
the impact you're gonna have. You're worthy in that someone's
life can be touched day by something I share, and
I focused on that instead of the negative. So every
time the negative thoughts would come in, I would actually
(20:25):
say things I was thankful for. For instance, so I'm
walking every morning, and what I would start doing is,
instead of feeling the negative thoughts and the gray, which
I often did, instead of listening to those thoughts, I
would then say, I'm thankful that I can walk, I'm
thankful that I'm healthy, I'm thankful that I have this life.
I'm thankful that I'm married. And I'm even thankful for
my kids, even though they're driving me crazy right now,
(20:46):
you know. And I would say I'm thankful well when
you were. When you appreciate, you elevate. You elevate your mood,
your performance, the people around you, and you tune into it. Again.
Your brain is energy. You tune into a higher frequent don't.
I don't want to lose that. I want to say
this again. When you appreciate, you elevate. Yep, you elevate
(21:08):
your mood, your performance. And here's the other thing, Jay,
you can't be stress and thankful at the same time.
So the minute you're feeling grateful and and feeling blessed,
you can't feel stressed. So I know when people in
the gray, it's hard to be grateful, it's hard to
even think about those things. But what I'm asking for,
can you do it for a minute? Can you do
it for two minutes? Can you do it for ten minutes?
(21:28):
Can you just begin the process of identifying even a
few things? For me, it was the smallest thing. I'm
thankful for the ground that I can walk on. So
you're gonna practice this though, How long did it take
until you started to shift that mindset? So here's what
that me needs. You know, I'm a sports background. I
need a layout, this, this, this, this will leads to this.
(21:48):
It's like anything. It doesn't happen overnight. But by doing
it each day, feeding the positive, weeding the negative, replacing
those negative thoughts with positive thoughts. And also again the
third day was discouragement instead of discouragement setting and we encourage,
So every day you're encouraging yourself each day. And Jay,
the word encourage means to put courage into So when
(22:09):
you're encouraging someone, you put encourage into them. Will you
encourage yourself? You put encourage into yourself. That's why this
self talk is so important best advice everard Everyone needs
to hear this. Dr James Gill's only person on the
planet to complete six double iron Man triathlons. That's a
double iron Man, which means you do an iron Man,
which yes, and Jay last time he did fifty nine
(22:33):
years old six and at fifty nine, I can't even
swim the length of a pool. So he was asked
how he did. He said this, I've learned to talk
to myself and said, a listen to myself. He said,
if I listened, I wrote the fear, the negativity, the doubt,
all the reasons why I can't finish this race again,
the thoughts coming in. But he would talk to himself
and share words of encouragement. You got this, you can
(22:54):
do this, he would. He would memorize and recite scripture.
That's what he did. But you can pick any words
that fit and work for you, that encourage you, and
pick those words and it's incredible when you do that.
So what I did over the years with the gratitude,
the appreciation, the walk, and then I would also say
a bunch of affirmations, you know, even things like I
trust that great things are happening today. I expect all
(23:16):
the great things that are coming my way. I was
reprogramming my mind from the negative and being depressed. My
wife wanted me to literally go see a doctor. She's like,
you need help. I'm like, let me just try to
this on my own. Let me just see if I
can do this. How long until you started to see
she noticed a difference within literally within about thirty days,
within a month, you know the difference. And then and
(23:39):
then within a few months, and then within a year
you know, a big you know, even a bigger difference,
in a greater difference. And now where I used to
wake up depressed and down and anxious and worried, my
state is pretty much is very positive and hopeful and optimistic.
There are days, though, I do wake up and I'm
in the grave, Like I have those days where all
(24:00):
of a sudden it comes back and it's like and
it's like, where did that come from? Like this is
old John, not new John. When when COVID hit, I
was resorting back to my old fears of getting going
and getting started beginning my business, and my wife reminded me, like,
who are you, Like, where's the where's the guy who
wrote the energy bus? And I was like, you're right,
(24:20):
You're right, And very quickly, very quickly, I started just
practicing hope. And I said, this day, I am focusing
on love during this time. I'm not gonna focus on fear.
I'm gonna make sure I love people, encourage people, and
get out there and help whoever needs to be helped.
And I'm not gonna worry about myself. I'm not gonna
focus on fear. And I said, I refused to participate
(24:41):
in the pandemic, is what I said. Now, maybe it's
why I got COVID three times, but I said, I said,
I said, I'm gonna go impact people and help people
during this time. And I gotta tell you I turned
around really quickly by focusing on that again. What overcomes fear,
what casts out here? It is love. And the thing
is people who feel depressed, we feel isolated, we feel separate,
(25:02):
we feel alone. That's the thing. We feel alone. Jay,
here's the other part of this teaching that's incredible. High
state of mind. Low state of mind. When you have
a lot of thoughts, a lot of clutter, that creates
a low state of mind. Think about high state of mind.
You're in the zone you have less thought you have, right,
(25:22):
let's clutter. Two circles, one with a thousand dots, another
circle with three dots. Which mind will perform at a
higher level, the one with just three or the one
with a thousand thoughts? Three? Right? Right? Higher state of
mind less thought less clutter. Okay, The thing is to
understand how do we get to a high state of mind.
But you have to understand the ebb and flow of thoughts.
(25:44):
When you're in a low state, you feel like you're
in a roller coaster that is going down. This roller
coaster is crashing, and you don't know that the roller
coaster goes back up. This is your first time ever
on a roller coaster, so you don't know it goes
back up, So you think you're gonna crash. If you're
in a roller coaster that thinks it's gonna crash, what
do you want to do? You want to jump off
besides screen. When we're in a low state, Jay, we
(26:05):
want to escape and jump off the roller coaster. We
feel disconnected, we feel lost. That's why people drink, it's
why people do drugs, it's why they play video games.
They're finding ways to escape that low state of mind
that they feel and they want to jump up, or
they think some's broken, something's wrong with me again. The
(26:26):
thoughts are coming and they're blaming themselves. They're trying everything
to figure it out. A baseball batter who goes over four,
O for three, over four again is now thinking, revved
up thought, creating more clutter, which is low is your
state of mind. That's what happens to people who have
anxiety fear. It's a downward spiral and they want to
escape and jump off, and some jump off in the
(26:49):
most dramatical ways and the most tragic of ways, as
we just talked about. So what I want people to
do is stay on the roller coaster, stay on, don't
jump off, just stay on. And the many you realize
I'm not can Eschepe. There's an eban flow to my thoughts.
There's nothing wrong with me, nothing is broken. You watch,
the more you do this, you'll actually start to ride
that roller coaster right back up, and you'll get to
(27:11):
a higher state of mind instead of the low state
that we're talking about. Does that make sense? And the
fear creates the low state, but love creates the highest state.
When you are in a state of love and focusing
on love, you will have a higher state of mind.
Why Because love creates connection, Connection creates clarity, Clarity creates confidence.
Confidence creates courage. And that's why a player who's loving
(27:34):
what he's doing in the moment and loving competing and
loving the opportunity. That's why someone who is loving life
and just loving their friends and loving their family, that's
why they're the happiest people, because they're focused on love
and they feel connected instead of divided. Does that? Does
that make sense? Let me ask your little advice here
to give me and others who think like me. So,
I'm great with gratitude. I'm great with kind of I've
(27:57):
learned how to um we're studied gratitude and trying to
make that my prevailing thought. One of the things I've
always struggled with. I think others who stuffed her from
the personal anxiety I had other people tell me this
also is when it comes to positive affirmations. Almost feel
this pressure when I have positive affirmation. And Brandy Coutorius
(28:18):
tell me all the time in the fight game, man,
I want you to lay out the whole fight and
do it. And I'm always just say to myself, man,
I feel like I'm gonna jinx myself. I feel like
if I put out these positive affirmations, like this is
gonna happen for me, well, she just jinks myself, which right,
But but at the same time, I know the universe
is not against us, right, so it doesn't make sense.
(28:40):
But yes, that's how I feel that, and I know
others do too. Okay, I'm gonna put out this positive affirmation.
I am gonna get this job, I am gonna do this,
I am going to start this podcast, I am gonna
do whatever. I'm an improved here. And then I'm like, oh,
I just jinxed myself by saying it. How do you
help somebody like me who has that? Or jay someone
(29:02):
like me? Because when I started doing these things that
I would do in the morning years ago, and I
would take these walks of gratitude, Initially I'm like, what,
You're not grateful, you know? And on these walks, negative
thoughts would come in. As I'm trying to practice latitude.
All these thoughts would come in about this person wronged
you here, and this person did this, and I was
going back to the negative. So it does take time,
(29:23):
and it feels really awkward. And freaking weird At first
when you're doing this, you're like, it feels like now
I'm not a big like stand in front of the
mirror and say, gosh darted, people like right, but I
am big on What is it that you want to create?
What is it that you want to build? What is
the desire of your heart? What is your purpose? What
is your passion is? What? What is it that you love?
(29:44):
What is it do you want to do? And and
start to think about that. Fear and faith have one
thing in common besides the letter F. They both believe
in the future that hasn't happened yet. Jay, So that's
what you're talking about, So that won't I want to
once you say that one again. Fear and faith both
believe in the future that hasn't happened yet. So fear
(30:05):
believes in the negative future. Faith believes in the positive future.
But if neither has happened yet, why wouldn't you choose
to believe in the positive future. Why wouldn't we choose
to believe the best? These are ahead of us, not
behind us. So what you're telling me is you're saying,
I don't want to jiggle myself. I'm saying, no, have
faith but not fear. Okay, you're still living in that
fear moment, Like how you're presenting it to me? Yeah,
(30:26):
like I can swallow this? Why not? And I guess what?
It may not work out and and if it doesn't,
that's adversity I have to come over. In Adversity is
a gift for me. That's all the ship I've overcome. Exactly,
You've already overcome some much unbreakable is all the things
I've overcome, things that have not broken me, and that's
got me where I am. You know, adversity is a gift.
(30:49):
Now in my book, I have this thing about you know,
you never do know what lies around next Tuesday, And
for you, I think it's fascinating. And I think most
of your fans don't know this. I didn't know it
until you know, not too long ago. That tell people
a story. So your energy bus has sold three million copies,
but tell people the journey of how long it took
(31:11):
for it to click after you wrote it, and wear
it clicked and just that ty because again you're like,
here's the guy who writes his book, and I'll tell
you the story didn't really didn't take off at all
and then took a different route to make your best
selling author. Yeah, I had to live the principles I
wrote about in the book. And the story is about
(31:32):
a guy named George who's miserable and negative and his
team at works in disarray, and his problems at home.
His wife's about to leave him. So George was based
on me. When people read the book, they don't know that.
But Georgie was leased on me and my own journey.
I didn't know that. Un told of going from negative
to positive, and so he had to learn to be
a more positive person enjoy. The bus driver teaches him
(31:53):
these ten rules for the right of his life. So
I write this book. It comes to me on a
walk one day and I'm taking of these gratitude walks
that I'm talking about. Boom it comes. I write it
in three and a half weeks of just divine Inspiration's fast,
easy read, folks. It's like, how many pages is it?
A hundred something hut and not a big book? Not
(32:14):
easy gets rejected by over thirty publishers. So over thirty
I'm told to give up. It's not gonna happen. But
I can't give up because I have this vision and
mission to encourage people. Holds like thirty publishers and so
now sold three million copies. Not one of them looked
and said, wow, this is gold right. And I had
a similar thing on the way up to in sportscast.
(32:36):
It took me eleven years to get a full time job.
And I'm like, how could people not see I'm getting
more scoops than anybody and no one's hiring me. How
is this happening? They didn't get it because this is
a book that's about business but also about personal life too.
It combined the two and it was the first of
its kind that really did that in a fable format.
Usually it was just straight up business fables, but the
(32:56):
characters were three, you know, two dimensional, and my journey
In my books the characters take on form and you
get to know them and appreciate them and want to
root for them. Plus it's business lessons or life lessons.
So I read. So I read this book. Ge'ts rejected,
and I can't give up. So I keep hoping, keep
dreaming time. But I am fearful, and I am stressed,
and I have a family and I have two kids,
(33:18):
and I had sold my restaurant to focus on this,
and my wife did not want to sell the restaurant
that we so and by the way, I second mortgage
my home and put twenty tho credit cards to put
into this restaurant in the first place to get it going.
No one. I wanted to be a writer and speaker,
not knowing if the restaurant would work, and the restaurant
almost didn't make it, so I almost lost everything. So
(33:38):
that was a really scary time as well. So I
learned though. But that's when I learned faith was actually
done the restaurant business, because you know, doing everything I
could to try and make it work and being so
fearful and stressed during that time, but knowing this was
my goal to write and speak. At some point, I
kept going, kept hoping, kept putting it out there, and
every day I would I would start those walks because
that was after my wife almost you know, left me.
(34:00):
So I would do those walks and I would like,
I would say, I, um, I received all the people
that want to come in the restaurant today, and then
we'd be packed. It was like amazing. It was like
this thing that just kept happening, and I learned faith
I learned just to be positive. I learned that it's
amazing at what could happen if you just put yourself
out there every day. So John Wiley and Sons agreed
to publish the book. Shannon Vargain had only been on
(34:21):
the job for like three months. Publishing house. Yeah, out
of out of New York, New Jersey. Wiley. You know,
Wiley Publishing. They do a ton of books. And she
read the book and wanted to do it. Her boss said,
if it doesn't go well, it could be your career.
She had a best set. She had a best friend
with her husband named George. Come on, yeah, best friend
(34:43):
it was it was faith, faith, And so she says,
I want to do this book. So they called me up.
They agree to do it. They said, we can't give
you a big advance. I said, I don't care. I
just want the book to get out there. The book
comes out that one bookstore in the United States would
carry the book, not one, But it becomes a huge
bestseller in South Korea. Not in North Korea, but South Korea.
(35:08):
I'm glad that you want differentiate of that because North
Korea you don't have a problem. To this day, couldn't
couldn't explain how or why, but becomes a huge in
South Wait wait wait, wait, wait so it How do
you catch wind that it's selling like crazy in South Korea?
And why don't sell like crazy in South Korea? Because
my publisher basically has a foreign rights division and they
(35:29):
were selling all their books too at a big conference
in in Asia and Singapore, and for some reason, they
became this bidding war over the energy bus, and these
two publishers kept bidding, and the foreign rights deal was
the largest foreign rights deal that Wiley has ever done.
To this day. No one could explain it how or why.
You couldn't sell in America. Nobody buy it, you know,
(35:51):
they were going crazy for it. In Asia. My publisher
was called me the David Hasselhoff of Korea to mess with. Okay.
So so finally I said, okay, I gotta get this
book out here in the US, and I go on
a twenty city tour, paid for myself, and publish it
would even pay for it, and I went from city
(36:12):
to city sharing the message in the book, and we
would literally call up radio stations, TV stations. This is
before social media and hey, John Gordon's coming to town.
He's internationally known, internationally acclaimed author, which is true which
is two bestseller and career. And so I would go
from city to city and we had five people, ten people, ja.
The biggest crowd we had were a hundred people in
(36:34):
De Moines, Iowa. They thought Jeff Gordon was coming. That's
why they showed up. True story. True Story. I got
called so many times that day get back. I don't
know what their future holds, but I say, okay. And
that tour was so hard. I mean, I'm going from
city to city, not a lot of people. I got
(36:54):
sick in the middle of the tour, but I'm having
to live these principles. I don't know if the book's
gonna make it, but I'm on a wing and a prayer,
just going out there and sharing the message. I come
back and I'm like, Okay, I just gotta do this
work and make a difference, you know, one person at
a time. My mission was to encourage and inspire as
many people as possible, one person at a time. That's
why we're doing this podcast, right, Can we just reach
(37:15):
that one person? That's why I now want to impact
that one person who's struggling, you know, dealing with suicide.
Let's help that one person. Jay. The first person that
reads this book is Mike Smith, who's a defensive coordinator
with the Jaguars. The first football person he reads it.
I come back Froose Tours. Yes, but he's with the
Jaguars at the time. Jack del Rio is the head coach.
(37:37):
He gives the Jack Jack reads the book. I get
a call from Jack del Rio wanting to meet with me.
I go meet with him. He says, I'm gonna use
your book this year with the team. He goes, would
you come speak to the team? I said, are you
kidding me? I'd love to. I can't believe I'm meeting
with Jack del Rio. You're living down there in that
area too, Yeah he was. He was coaching the jackson Jaguars.
I was living in Jackson Jacksonville. Yeah, I was live
(38:00):
in Jacksonville. So I go down me with him. I said,
I'll come speak to the team if you get get
everyone a copy of the book. He said, you got it.
Gives everyone a copy of the book, and that began
my journey of of doing this work in sports. Because
of that, and then Mike Smith brought it to the
Falcons work with the University of Texas football and then
from there the rest of history. But no, but that's
how you got the sports, But how did it then
(38:21):
take off in America? Where you've sold three copies? So
that tour I literally can trace, and this is the
key about Humble Beginnings. I can trace so many of
the speaking events that came from that tour because even
though one person came to one of my events in Austin,
she was a principal, and then brought me to her school,
and then another person brought me to their business to
speak to their business. And then as the book got
(38:42):
out there and made the news about Jack Dorio using
the book, and then companies called and said, hey, will
you come speak to our company? And then I have
a weekly newsletter and I started sharing that out there
and people started reading it. Then school districts started to
ask me to come speak, and that's how it happened.
So it just didn't become a bestseller, did it the
best seller for five years too? For five years? So
(39:02):
I went hold on back and up. I want everybody
to hear that because this is a lot of the
problems that we do have mental health wise, where people's
dreams aren't haven't come true, and they're grinding, grinding, folks.
It took him five years to get his book to
to make a debt. It took me eleven eleven to
get a full time job. I was making nine thousand,
(39:23):
seven d and fifty dollars a year living in New
York City. So that overnight success that so many people
think we have, it's full of ship. There is no
overnight success. And overnight success for me lasted eleven years
just to get my first real paycheck that was consistent.
And for you, five years of you just grinding, grinding.
(39:44):
So if you want your dreams to come true, take
it for the two of us. You gotta out work
the world, and you gotta do things most people aren't
willing to do. And that's working out work in the world,
but not a little, but by a lot, to do
something like John did and Jay. So many people compare
themselves to others. And remember this, when you compare, you despair.
So when you compare yourself to others, that will lead
(40:05):
to you feeling despair. And so the key is don't
compare yourself to anyone else. This is your journey. You
win the journey. Each day. Don't live your life via
social media. I love this. It's like someone said the
other day, Carry Flowers Jr. Said, they don't have a
better life than you. They just have a better filter
and a better editor. So what you see on social media,
(40:26):
it just looks better. But you know what, they're living
their life. You gotta live your life and follow your journey,
follow your path and your purpose. Before I let you go,
I want all my guests to trying with their unbreakable moment.
And your unbreakable moment could be the moment you knew
you can finally exhale, that you made it, something you overcame,
(40:46):
something to try to break you that didn't like mine.
Two were um when I finally did get that call
after eleven years. Hey man, we finally got your full
time shop. You compare your bills like I went from
broke to unbreakable. I mean, living in New Ork City
making ninety seven bucks a year. But I you know,
I said from that first day I walked into the
giant locker room, the cup of team, I'll be the
(41:07):
last dude standing in the here. Man. If these casts
worked forty hours a week, I'll work them. I work
a hundred hours a week. I will be fucking different
than all I'll be the last dude standing. And it
wasn't the money of the full time job, but it
validated me. And when I came in there and said
I'm gonna be different and I'll be the last man standing,
validated it for me. And it was more valuable than
(41:28):
any dollar amount could have been for me. And my
other moment was getting Spy eight because that put me
on the map, got the biggest scoop in NFL history,
and man, that really put me a different level. And
it came in a really hard time in my life.
What's your unbreakable moment? Can I share it too? Go
ahead it it really it may not be positive, but
(41:49):
it turned out to be positive. It's when my son
struggled during the quarantine and during COVID where so many
people were struggling, and he was in college and it
really affected him just being isolated and stop doing his schoolwork.
And we brought him home and he was going through
a really tough time. And it was during that time
that I truly learned how to be a better father.
(42:12):
I literally realized I needed to give him love, I
need to listen and not challenge. I needed just to
support and stop pushing, and it was about just him
being happy and healthy and helping him get through that
that dark time. Jay. It took everything I had as
a parent to try to pull the darkness out of him,
to be there with him, to support him. It was
during COVID, so I usually do about a hundred events
a year, but now I'm home all the time, so
(42:34):
we spent a lot of time together. My wife was
you know, she she was like, I'm gonna let you
do this thing. I'm like, yeah, I need to. And
it was really me and him in so many ways,
and I gotta say it made me a better human being.
I would love to say it was some kind of
successful triumph of speaking or the book, but it was
really knowing that I was there for my son and
(42:54):
being there as a dad, but also learning what really
mental what mental health challenges are really like. And really
I had my own but not as bad, but learning
what he was going through, what younger people are going through,
it really taught me so much compassion and love and
just to be supportive and really to be there with
people and it's okay to not be okay. So for me.
(43:17):
That was that was number one listening. All our problems
where the same. Yeah, talk about you. You just said,
well I'm not as bet No, no, no. All our
problems where the same. So, yeah, we need compassion and
empathy for everybody. You have no idea how painful something
may feel for somebody else. All our problems where the same.
And I would say that the unbreakable moment in terms
(43:39):
of a highlight, was really just recently because I've been
speaking for a long time, but only now by sharing
this message of high state of mind, low state of mind,
helping people really understand how their negative thoughts affect and
how they can overcome, how they can actually bring their
best to every situation and and really love life more
and enjoy life more. So that's what I shared with
the RAMS, for instance. And there I was with the RAMS,
(44:02):
and also with Clemson and other teams like that, Texas
and Oh You and Florida State Miami. I did a
lot of talks this summer. But doing that this summer,
I realized, Okay, I was put on earth for this
moment and this message. Everything in my life, all the
books ever, has brought me to this moment to do
this work. It's gonna be my next book that I
write about, and I'm gonna I'm gonna dedicate it to Nina.
(44:25):
You know, I'm I'm gonna, Yeah, I'm gonna dedicate it
to her. I have to. I know I'm supposed to.
So I'm gonna dedicate to her. And I know that
everything and brought me to this moment. And then Sean,
you know, our good friend, Sean mcnigh. After the talk,
he said, John, like you came in five years ago
and talked to us, and four years ago, he goes,
but there's something different now, he said, You've grown so much.
(44:46):
And to me, even at fifty one doing this work,
to know that I've gotten better at fifty one from
forty seven, that I've improved that much, to me, that's
what it's all about. So for me, that was a highlight.
Like you never arrived. The door of greatness, right is
always open. You gotta keep moving through it. Never think
even ride, keep working, keep improving, keep getting better, and
(45:08):
keep pushing the envelope to improve and pursue that excellence
to create the lights that you want. John, I love you, man,
I appreciate you for joining us. This has been great again.
I've learned from you and here we are like you
never you can learn from everybody. That's like in martial arts.
Like I tell people, I'm not just gonna learn from
a black belt. I'll learn from a white belt, doesn't
matter me. I'm gonna learn from anybody. But you are
(45:28):
kind of a black belt here and so I appreciate
you joining us. Your matches message is incredible. Appreciate your
friendship more than you could ever know, ma'am, and um
for everybody at home again, and make sure you were
you review this, leave a positive review you like it.
Make sure you go follow John on social media. Make
sure you buy the Energy Book if you haven't yet,
(45:50):
buy the Energy Book, and then get the rest of
them because they're quick, even for a guy like me
with a d D. Where I, you know, get through
a page and a half of something then boom, it's
like squirrel, right I and I've gotten through so many
of them, as you know. But your authenticity for me
makes you for me, you know, an all time Hall
of famer. So I love you, dude, and I appreciate
you for joining us. Love you brother, You're the best.
(46:11):
Thank you man, John Gordon. There John Gordon, I appreciate
you walking the walk together with us
This is Unbreakable with Jay Glazer, a mental health podcast
helping you out of the gray and into the blue.
Now here's Jay Glazer. Welcome and gang to another edition
of Unbreakable, a mental health podcast with Jay Glazer. Don't
you know what? I'm Jay Glazer, and you know it
(00:23):
was important for me to have on people throughout all
worlds to walk this walk together with the whole point
of Unbreakable is I'm a guy. If you don't know
me yet, I'm a guy who's lived in something that
I call the gray for my entire life. Yes, I'm
the football guy. Yes I've been the fighting guy. Yes
i'm someone of the ballers guy. But I'm also a
guy that's lived in the gray for my entire life
(00:44):
of depression, anxiety, a d D. Let's throw in from bipolar.
Why not, let's go for it all right, And I've
now tried to make it my mission to figure out
how to live life in the blue. I've never been
able to really have this journey of self love before,
where I just didn't know what what being able to
love myself and the inside out meant. So it really
(01:05):
motivated me to go out and do all these great
things to try and get some love from the outside
in instead of inside out, and hope somehow, some way
that love seats into the inside and they can meet
in the middle. But it as a result of this,
I'm on this journey to learn how to love myself
in the inside out, to learn how not to live
(01:27):
in the gray and wake up in the gray and
let the gray beat me every day. And and the
gray is something I will not let beat me. It's
every single morning of my life. I wake up and
it sucks. I'm not gonna lie to people. It sucks
every day. It's hard for me to get out of bed.
But every morning I make that decision to get out
of you at a bed and be relentless. And one
of the things I'm trying to be relentless about now
(01:50):
is my own journey of self love and journey to
the blue. So I lean on others. I lean on
good friends. And one of those good friends are joining
me right now. That John Gordon, who you may know
him from. I've known him from The Energy Bus at First,
which is my favorite book. But he's a he's a
best selling author. I worked with fortune companies, different sports teams,
(02:11):
just talked to the Rams Clemson. He's had twenty six books,
thirteen have been best sellers, five of them are children's books. Again,
the Energy Bus sold over three million copies. So I
want to bring John in here because he's a guy
who is, you know, battled his own demons. He's somebody
who's taught a lot of people how to get past
their own demons. But also John recently was affected, um
(02:36):
by unfortunately what's happening a lot in today's society, by
a suicide. And I wanted to just come straight out
of this John, because I received the text from you
recently where you were, man, you were just in a
tough place because of the ultimate decision that somebody made.
Welcome John, and uh, I appreciate havingue great to be
with you. I'm so thankful that we're friends, and I
(02:58):
love you. I think I'm very coble. Is amazing, And yes,
I texted you because I know this journey you're on,
I know the work that you're doing to impact so
many lives. I know that people have not committed suicide
because of you, because of of your book, because of
this work that you're doing right here right now. But
for me, I had someone just recently. It was on
(03:21):
social media. It was in the New York Post. Nita
po Hokey. She was a news anchor in in the
Wisconsin area near Green Bay, and she played it basketball
at USF. Great basketball player, athletic, family, coaching family. She
recently committed suicide and her her last tweet was a
(03:44):
retweet of mine and knowing that was her last tweet
to share something I wrote and in in that tweet,
I said, we're not positive because life is easy. We're
positive because life is hard. And this is about being real.
This is not about fake positivity. This is about real positivity.
(04:05):
So it's like giving yourself grace, encourage yourself, encourage others,
believe the best is yet to come. That was basically
the essence of the tweet. And to think that she
would read that, share that, but then end of her life,
it's so confusing to me, and it's so upsetting. And
I'm not easily I'm not easily knocked down. Yeah, I'm
not easily rocked. You know, I've dealt with the death
(04:27):
of my mom, my, my father passed away. I remember
my grandfather died of a massive heart attack when I
was thirteen. I've been through death and challenges, but this
really rocked me and I felt this in a in
a deep way, and I know now more than ever,
I am convicted to make sure that we save more lives,
(04:49):
Like we have to do everything we can to save
more lives. And it's not just with words, but it's listening,
it's understanding, it's meeting people where they are. It's doing
this Unbreakable podcast that you're doing, which I love that
you're doing this. You're gonna impact so many people and
it's just creating a community where people feel heard, where
they don't feel alone, and we're gonna talk about this today.
(05:09):
I understand what people need to do to overcome this.
I know it more than ever. And yeah, I just
feel so bad, Like like I wish I would have
known she was going through that, I would have reached
out to her. I would have talked to her. I've
done this. But that's where suicide isn't fair, right, because
it leaves behind that. I'm sorry, I say it's stark
you know, and an m VP are emerging vets and
(05:29):
players charity. I told guys day one, like, hey, you know,
life is about our choices and our decisions and that
first choice has to be life or death. And look,
when you have this level of gree for she had
I have. Yeah, it's it's an everyday battle, but I
made the decision early. I'm not gonna take my own
life because of what it would leave behind. I don't
(05:51):
want to do that to anybody else. So that's right
for anybody out there, this pain that you leave behind,
I guarantee you, guarantee you if you do it, and
or in whatever afterlife you believe in afterwards, and you're
sitting up there and you're seeing this kind of pain
that just resonates with everybody. You're not gonna be up
there going yes, look at all them crying. You're gonna
(06:13):
have to go no, No, what did I do? I
don't want to do this. And I guarantee you. She's
up there seeing the effect it's out on you and
everybody else saying, oh, I wish I could have a
give back. I wish I could have a give back
to anybody who's you know, who's who's attempted. And you know,
(06:33):
you see this, this level of grief, this is what
you'd left behind. This is your chance to have a
give back, and just you gotta choose life. We have
to choose life. You never know what lies around next Tuesday,
and your life could change next Tuesday. I met a
woman that committed suicide or tried to I should say attempted,
And she jumped off a bridge. And the minute she
(06:54):
jumped off the bridge, she regretted it. She thought to herself,
what have I done? And we hear this and over
again from people who jump off, say the Golden Gate Bridge.
How did you meet her? A friend of a friend.
But she survived, She survived, and so she survives. But
right away she basically said she fell she fell off
(07:16):
like she didn't admit that that happened. Other people knew
what happened. In law enforcement, friend of a friend got
a chance to talk to her. She regretted it. The
minute she jumps she regretted it. So now, Jay, she
lives every day so grateful for life, so grateful that
(07:36):
she has lived. And I think everyone needs to hear this.
If you're thinking about this, you will regret it and
you will go know what have I done? This woman
got a second chance, and every day she thinks life
is so precious. As a result of that, your problems
go away. But ours are heightened, their double triple quadrupled.
The grief you leave behind, it's not fair to us.
(07:56):
So I just want you to think about that, if
you could do anything living that pain for the rest
of us. But John, why do you think because you're
around him, you're you're working mental health care, why do
you think this suicide affected you more than than others? Well,
because it was really personal, because I was her last tweet,
because she had been tweeting a bunch of my things,
(08:20):
because she played at USF. I had spoken to USF.
Because she had such an amazing life. She was an anchor,
she was beloved by her community. She was young, she
had just got engaged. She was getting married like in
four or five months. None of them makes sense. And
I don't think suicide makes sense, right, It doesn't make sense.
But I know people struggle. I know people are in
(08:42):
the gray. I know people want to give up. I
know they get discouraged. I know that they get hopeless
and they feel hopeless. And I don't want to braid anyone.
I don't want to judge anyone for how they feel.
And that's what we're saying. Just keep living, knowing that
tomorrow can be better. But when I'm gonna talk about Jay,
what I'm excited that we're gonna talk about. We're gonna
talk about to help people who are in that grant,
how to how to not do it. But I think
(09:03):
this is a great way to start in terms of
knowing that it is painful for those who who you
who you leave behind. And I am now dedicating, like
everything I do in my life too, making sure that
this doesn't happen again, Like who else can I save?
Who else can I help? Can I do more? Can
I Can I reach more people? Oh? That was nice?
(09:24):
Can can we reach more people? Can we make more
of an impact? And that's what we're gonna do. Yeah,
you know, for for me, you know, I wrote this
in my book and Breakable, that I need to be
of service that helps me with my mental health issues.
And at first it was you know, I had a
children's charity in Touchdown Dreams. Then m v P where
there's twenty two vets a day that kill themselves. Man,
(09:45):
that's just it's not okay that the number is not okay.
So I was like, man, I'm gonna do whatever I
can to help over that month number. And if it's
just one man trying to make it them that there's
one man trying to make it Dept. But there's a
lot more than just me, right, that's why we're here.
But now with this, we're able to to reach so
many others, not just the veteran community, but all of
(10:05):
us out there. And as we've seen how there's so
many people just suffering in silence. You never ever ever everything,
Like you said, she's married, she's retweeted one of your
positives posts. You never see it coming. So folks, just
anybody out there who's struggling, reach out to a friend
and tell him you're struggling, reach out and tell him
how bad it is. Right, nobody is gonna scoff for you.
(10:27):
Everybody that I've opened up to about my depression anxiety,
it has gotten us closer together. No, his company, woofs
his Tony suck it up. Not only has it gotten
closer together, it's given them a landing spot where they
could talk about issues. And it's a scary world nowadays. Like, man,
it's easy to think your life sucks. Social media makes
(10:47):
us think our lives suck, and we're so freaking left out.
So yeah, and then you know problem to with suicide,
John and I tell this to our events a lot
of times. It's almost the power of suggestion when somebody
was it. You see so many the the outpouring of
love the person who does it, and I get really
nervous that others who are struggling to go, Wait, my
(11:09):
life sucks. I don't have this kind of love. You
know what, I'm gonna commit suicide too. I I get
the kind of love. Whenever there's a big suicide, I'd
start talking about it openly. Don't let the power suggestion
leak in. Jay. The way of virus spreads, this also
can spread in a contagious way. So you're very you're
very correct in that people can say, okay, if they
(11:30):
can do it, I can do it too, or should
I do it? And they started thinking about it, And
I think this is so This is so personal for
me too, because you know, I suffered from depression years ago.
I really struggled with it. I was miserable, negative, unhappy, hopeless.
There were so many moments I wanted to give up
as well. My wife almost left me. I was so negative.
(11:52):
People are surprised to hear that when you know I
wrote the energy of us. And I'm known from my
work on positive leadership, positive team market. I have positive
universe city right, everything is positive, and yet I am
naturally naturally negative. I grew up in Long Island, New York,
in a Jewish Italian family, a lot, a lot of food,
a lot of guilt. Yeah, my dad was a New
York City police officer, right undercover in arcaducts. And so
(12:14):
you get up in the morning, he good morning, Dad,
He'd say, what's so good about it? You know my
dad was it was not very positive. So I learned,
you know, look at the world in a negative way.
My dad said, basically, like the world is out to
get you, and you have to take on this world.
That's the kind of mindset I grew up with. So
I have to learn how to be positive. But man,
I struggled with it for many years, and for many years.
(12:36):
I was losing the battle in my mind for years.
And it's funny because my son struggles with with positivity too,
and he's a lot like me. So I get it,
and I have to often remind myself, Oh, you weren't
always like this, John, You were actually more like your son,
who's struggling, and you have to remind him of what
you were like to know that we can all overcome.
(12:58):
So give us some of you know, if there's so
much that I've learned from you, and so much you
could teach us, give us. You know you're you know
what the floor is your? How about that the floor
is mine? Well, I think it starts with asking people
this question, do your negative thoughts come from you? And
if you ask this of athletes, they'll often say, yeah,
(13:19):
they're in my head. But the next question is this,
If you believe your negative thoughts come from you, who
would ever choose to have a negative thought. You would
never choose a negative thought. This blows people's mind like
you wouldn't choose a thought that says the future is hopeless.
I don't have what it takes. I'm not gonna play
well today, I'm not going to overcome this injury, I'm
not gonna make it out of this health diagnosis, my
(13:41):
relationship where my marriage is not going to improve. You
would never really choose that thought initially right. You would
choose hope and belief and optimism. You would choose to
believe that the future is gonna be right. So the
thoughts are always coming in, Like when you're dreaming having
a nightmare, are you choosing those thoughts? No, you're having
a nightmare, you're dreaming. Thoughts are happening. So I've talked
(14:02):
to neuroscientists. No one has ever found a thought inside
of a brain. No one thoughts exist. I am convinceding
consciousness right in a spiritual place, and the brain is
the hardware. It's where activation happens. So thoughts are always
coming in, and we're downloading those thoughts from the internet
cloud of consciousness to our hardware to our brain. Right now,
we're making sense of this by our brain firing synapsis
(14:26):
right as we're as we're talking. And so when those
negative thoughts come in, they'll often come in the form
of of of doubt, of distortions, lies that will tell
you things about yourself and your future that just aren't true. Discouragement.
We don't give up because it's hard. We give up
because we get distracted and and and discouraged. And then
(14:46):
those distractions are a big part of of our mental
health issues as well. We're always distracting. We're being distracted
with the media, social media comparison, what other people have
and what we don't. And then that fifth D that
I talked about, Jake, because there's doubt, distortion, discouragement, distraction,
and division. J The word anxious literally means divided at
(15:07):
its Greek root word, and so think about that. When
you're anxious, you actually feel divided. You feel separate, and
those negative thoughts divide us separate, like we're separate from
Explain that to me, So you're talking to the A D.
D Guy over here, Yeah, separate When when you have
negative thoughts or we all have negative thoughts, we feel separate,
We feel weak, We don't feel connected to ourselves, like
(15:29):
disconnected from ourselves, from ourselves, we feel disconnected from others,
and we feel disconnected from the oneness that we truly are,
like the connection to others, the oneness of like in
different spiritual traditions, everything pretty much believes that there's a
oneness to to everything that we're we are one, one humanity,
(15:51):
one spirit, one you know, one soul. We're we're connected
in a deeper and more powerful way. Every addiction program
believes in a higher power. Why is that because on
our own we feel separate, we feel weak, we don't
feel strong we don't feel powerful. But when you connected
that higher power, whichever your religious tradition is, that higher
(16:11):
power gives you strength, It gives you power. You feel
connected to something greater than yourself. And so fear divides,
negative thoughts divide, They separate us. So once you understand that,
and you're not choosing the thoughts. I was meeting with
a six year old young man and he was suicidal.
He was in the e R two days before I
(16:33):
met with him, and I said to him, do your
negative thoughts come from you? We had this discussion. I said,
you have a lot of thoughts on your head and
he said, yes, so many. I said they we can
have it on you. He said, oh yeah, yeah big time.
So they're accusing you of things, saying you're not enough. Yeah,
you're not smart enough, you're not strong enough, you're not
powerful enough, you're not this enough, whatever it is, you're
(16:54):
not enough. And he said, oh yeah. And we talked
and once he understood j that is, negative thoughts were
not coming from him. Initially he was just believing them.
They were just coming in. It's like a radio station.
The airwaves are always being filled with with with different
radio stations with different frequencies, which different thoughts with different programming. Well,
(17:14):
let me ask you this once I know it, because
that's Look, that's definitely a problem for me, and I
try and describe it to people, to my football people,
in these football terms. When I wake up in the morning,
I feel like the whole world hates me and wants
bad things to happen to me, and my sky is
falling Instead, imagine if every single game you went out
there and you expected every fan, even your fans, wanted
(17:35):
the worst for you, and you just We're never gonna
make a first down. It's just how it is, because
because that's what this ship tells you. Right. So how
do I now, knowing John, what you just taught me,
like the negative thoughts are not mine? Right? How do
I use that information now to change the way I think? Well,
(17:56):
this is why it's life changing, because this freedom in
that you're no longer beating yourself up for the thoughts
that you're in your head. This kid had guilt and
shame other people I've talked to. I talked to two
other depressed teenagers over the summer, depressed, shameful, feeling guilty,
beating themselves up. Once you understand this. There's freedom and knowing. Okay,
(18:18):
I didn't choose the initial thought, but I can respond
in a more positive way. I don't have to believe
the lies that they tell. I now could take every
thought captive and I can replace that negative thought with
a positive thought. I can actually rewire my brain. I
can take control of of the thoughts that are coming in.
For instance, we're not coming in. But what now I'm
(18:38):
if I'm saying, all right, everybody wants the worse for it? Right,
So what what happen is? Is that really true? Does
everyone really want the worse for you? And you would say, no,
that's not really true. So you examine is this truth? No,
it's not true. That's a lie. Feeling I feel it,
but I know it's not true. Right, you know what's feeling.
So here's what here's you do it. And I had
to do this for myself. This is how I rewired
(19:00):
my brain. This is how I changed everything on my journey.
Instead of doubt, Jay, you trust instead of the distortion
the lies. But you're gonna start doing a speaking truth
to the lives. Here's a practical exercise everyone could do
that is life changing. On the left, side of a
piece of paper, you write down your negative thoughts, your patterns.
You have yours, J I have mine, Everyone has theirs.
(19:22):
You can talk to the greatest of the great ones
in sports, they all have negative thoughts that come in.
Write them down the left side of a piece of paper.
On the right side, write down the words of truth
and encouragement that you will speak and that you will
say to those lies. And every time those negative thoughts
come in, Jay, you would actually start speaking those truths. So,
(19:43):
for instance, with me, when I first started speaking, I
didn't feel worthy, Like who am I to be out
there on stage sharing this message? And I didn't feel worth.
I would walk around. I remember San Diego given a
big talk to a company like, wow, I'm here doing
this talk to this company they hired me. I'm in
my thirties, Like I just got going the energy bus
I think just came out and I'm walking going. Man,
(20:04):
I don't feel worthy. So I kept saying this, you
were worthy. You were worthy, not in you, but you're
worthy in the difference you're gonna make. You're worthy in
the impact you're gonna have. You're worthy in that someone's
life can be touched day by something I share, and
I focused on that instead of the negative. So every
time the negative thoughts would come in, I would actually
(20:25):
say things I was thankful for. For instance, so I'm
walking every morning, and what I would start doing is,
instead of feeling the negative thoughts and the gray, which
I often did, instead of listening to those thoughts, I
would then say, I'm thankful that I can walk, I'm
thankful that I'm healthy, I'm thankful that I have this life.
I'm thankful that I'm married. And I'm even thankful for
my kids, even though they're driving me crazy right now,
(20:46):
you know. And I would say I'm thankful well when
you were. When you appreciate, you elevate. You elevate your mood,
your performance, the people around you, and you tune into it. Again.
Your brain is energy. You tune into a higher frequent don't.
I don't want to lose that. I want to say
this again. When you appreciate, you elevate. Yep, you elevate
(21:08):
your mood, your performance. And here's the other thing, Jay,
you can't be stress and thankful at the same time.
So the minute you're feeling grateful and and feeling blessed,
you can't feel stressed. So I know when people in
the gray, it's hard to be grateful, it's hard to
even think about those things. But what I'm asking for,
can you do it for a minute? Can you do
it for two minutes? Can you do it for ten minutes?
(21:28):
Can you just begin the process of identifying even a
few things? For me, it was the smallest thing. I'm
thankful for the ground that I can walk on. So
you're gonna practice this though, How long did it take
until you started to shift that mindset? So here's what
that me needs. You know, I'm a sports background. I
need a layout, this, this, this, this will leads to this.
(21:48):
It's like anything. It doesn't happen overnight. But by doing
it each day, feeding the positive, weeding the negative, replacing
those negative thoughts with positive thoughts. And also again the
third day was discouragement instead of discouragement setting and we encourage,
So every day you're encouraging yourself each day. And Jay,
the word encourage means to put courage into So when
(22:09):
you're encouraging someone, you put encourage into them. Will you
encourage yourself? You put encourage into yourself. That's why this
self talk is so important best advice everard Everyone needs
to hear this. Dr James Gill's only person on the
planet to complete six double iron Man triathlons. That's a
double iron Man, which means you do an iron Man,
which yes, and Jay last time he did fifty nine
(22:33):
years old six and at fifty nine, I can't even
swim the length of a pool. So he was asked
how he did. He said this, I've learned to talk
to myself and said, a listen to myself. He said,
if I listened, I wrote the fear, the negativity, the doubt,
all the reasons why I can't finish this race again,
the thoughts coming in. But he would talk to himself
and share words of encouragement. You got this, you can
(22:54):
do this, he would. He would memorize and recite scripture.
That's what he did. But you can pick any words
that fit and work for you, that encourage you, and
pick those words and it's incredible when you do that.
So what I did over the years with the gratitude,
the appreciation, the walk, and then I would also say
a bunch of affirmations, you know, even things like I
trust that great things are happening today. I expect all
(23:16):
the great things that are coming my way. I was
reprogramming my mind from the negative and being depressed. My
wife wanted me to literally go see a doctor. She's like,
you need help. I'm like, let me just try to
this on my own. Let me just see if I
can do this. How long until you started to see
she noticed a difference within literally within about thirty days,
within a month, you know the difference. And then and
(23:39):
then within a few months, and then within a year
you know, a big you know, even a bigger difference,
in a greater difference. And now where I used to
wake up depressed and down and anxious and worried, my
state is pretty much is very positive and hopeful and optimistic.
There are days, though, I do wake up and I'm
in the grave, Like I have those days where all
(24:00):
of a sudden it comes back and it's like and
it's like, where did that come from? Like this is
old John, not new John. When when COVID hit, I
was resorting back to my old fears of getting going
and getting started beginning my business, and my wife reminded me, like,
who are you, Like, where's the where's the guy who
wrote the energy bus? And I was like, you're right,
(24:20):
You're right, And very quickly, very quickly, I started just
practicing hope. And I said, this day, I am focusing
on love during this time. I'm not gonna focus on fear.
I'm gonna make sure I love people, encourage people, and
get out there and help whoever needs to be helped.
And I'm not gonna worry about myself. I'm not gonna
focus on fear. And I said, I refused to participate
(24:41):
in the pandemic, is what I said. Now, maybe it's
why I got COVID three times, but I said, I said,
I said, I'm gonna go impact people and help people
during this time. And I gotta tell you I turned
around really quickly by focusing on that again. What overcomes fear,
what casts out here? It is love. And the thing
is people who feel depressed, we feel isolated, we feel separate,
(25:02):
we feel alone. That's the thing. We feel alone. Jay,
here's the other part of this teaching that's incredible. High
state of mind. Low state of mind. When you have
a lot of thoughts, a lot of clutter, that creates
a low state of mind. Think about high state of mind.
You're in the zone you have less thought you have, right,
(25:22):
let's clutter. Two circles, one with a thousand dots, another
circle with three dots. Which mind will perform at a
higher level, the one with just three or the one
with a thousand thoughts? Three? Right? Right? Higher state of
mind less thought less clutter. Okay, The thing is to
understand how do we get to a high state of mind.
But you have to understand the ebb and flow of thoughts.
(25:44):
When you're in a low state, you feel like you're
in a roller coaster that is going down. This roller
coaster is crashing, and you don't know that the roller
coaster goes back up. This is your first time ever
on a roller coaster, so you don't know it goes
back up, So you think you're gonna crash. If you're
in a roller coaster that thinks it's gonna crash, what
do you want to do? You want to jump off
besides screen. When we're in a low state, Jay, we
(26:05):
want to escape and jump off the roller coaster. We
feel disconnected, we feel lost. That's why people drink, it's
why people do drugs, it's why they play video games.
They're finding ways to escape that low state of mind
that they feel and they want to jump up, or
they think some's broken, something's wrong with me again. The
(26:26):
thoughts are coming and they're blaming themselves. They're trying everything
to figure it out. A baseball batter who goes over four,
O for three, over four again is now thinking, revved
up thought, creating more clutter, which is low is your
state of mind. That's what happens to people who have
anxiety fear. It's a downward spiral and they want to
escape and jump off, and some jump off in the
(26:49):
most dramatical ways and the most tragic of ways, as
we just talked about. So what I want people to
do is stay on the roller coaster, stay on, don't
jump off, just stay on. And the many you realize
I'm not can Eschepe. There's an eban flow to my thoughts.
There's nothing wrong with me, nothing is broken. You watch,
the more you do this, you'll actually start to ride
that roller coaster right back up, and you'll get to
(27:11):
a higher state of mind instead of the low state
that we're talking about. Does that make sense? And the
fear creates the low state, but love creates the highest state.
When you are in a state of love and focusing
on love, you will have a higher state of mind.
Why Because love creates connection, Connection creates clarity, Clarity creates confidence.
Confidence creates courage. And that's why a player who's loving
(27:34):
what he's doing in the moment and loving competing and
loving the opportunity. That's why someone who is loving life
and just loving their friends and loving their family, that's
why they're the happiest people, because they're focused on love
and they feel connected instead of divided. Does that? Does
that make sense? Let me ask your little advice here
to give me and others who think like me. So,
I'm great with gratitude. I'm great with kind of I've
(27:57):
learned how to um we're studied gratitude and trying to
make that my prevailing thought. One of the things I've
always struggled with. I think others who stuffed her from
the personal anxiety I had other people tell me this
also is when it comes to positive affirmations. Almost feel
this pressure when I have positive affirmation. And Brandy Coutorius
(28:18):
tell me all the time in the fight game, man,
I want you to lay out the whole fight and
do it. And I'm always just say to myself, man,
I feel like I'm gonna jinx myself. I feel like
if I put out these positive affirmations, like this is
gonna happen for me, well, she just jinks myself, which right,
But but at the same time, I know the universe
is not against us, right, so it doesn't make sense.
(28:40):
But yes, that's how I feel that, and I know
others do too. Okay, I'm gonna put out this positive affirmation.
I am gonna get this job, I am gonna do this,
I am going to start this podcast, I am gonna
do whatever. I'm an improved here. And then I'm like, oh,
I just jinxed myself by saying it. How do you
help somebody like me who has that? Or jay someone
(29:02):
like me? Because when I started doing these things that
I would do in the morning years ago, and I
would take these walks of gratitude, Initially I'm like, what,
You're not grateful, you know? And on these walks, negative
thoughts would come in. As I'm trying to practice latitude.
All these thoughts would come in about this person wronged
you here, and this person did this, and I was
going back to the negative. So it does take time,
(29:23):
and it feels really awkward. And freaking weird At first
when you're doing this, you're like, it feels like now
I'm not a big like stand in front of the
mirror and say, gosh darted, people like right, but I
am big on What is it that you want to create?
What is it that you want to build? What is
the desire of your heart? What is your purpose? What
is your passion is? What? What is it that you love?
(29:44):
What is it do you want to do? And and
start to think about that. Fear and faith have one
thing in common besides the letter F. They both believe
in the future that hasn't happened yet. Jay, So that's
what you're talking about, So that won't I want to
once you say that one again. Fear and faith both
believe in the future that hasn't happened yet. So fear
(30:05):
believes in the negative future. Faith believes in the positive future.
But if neither has happened yet, why wouldn't you choose
to believe in the positive future. Why wouldn't we choose
to believe the best? These are ahead of us, not
behind us. So what you're telling me is you're saying,
I don't want to jiggle myself. I'm saying, no, have
faith but not fear. Okay, you're still living in that
fear moment, Like how you're presenting it to me? Yeah,
(30:26):
like I can swallow this? Why not? And I guess what?
It may not work out and and if it doesn't,
that's adversity I have to come over. In Adversity is
a gift for me. That's all the ship I've overcome. Exactly,
You've already overcome some much unbreakable is all the things
I've overcome, things that have not broken me, and that's
got me where I am. You know, adversity is a gift.
(30:49):
Now in my book, I have this thing about you know,
you never do know what lies around next Tuesday, And
for you, I think it's fascinating. And I think most
of your fans don't know this. I didn't know it
until you know, not too long ago. That tell people
a story. So your energy bus has sold three million copies,
but tell people the journey of how long it took
(31:11):
for it to click after you wrote it, and wear
it clicked and just that ty because again you're like,
here's the guy who writes his book, and I'll tell
you the story didn't really didn't take off at all
and then took a different route to make your best
selling author. Yeah, I had to live the principles I
wrote about in the book. And the story is about
(31:32):
a guy named George who's miserable and negative and his
team at works in disarray, and his problems at home.
His wife's about to leave him. So George was based
on me. When people read the book, they don't know that.
But Georgie was leased on me and my own journey.
I didn't know that. Un told of going from negative
to positive, and so he had to learn to be
a more positive person enjoy. The bus driver teaches him
(31:53):
these ten rules for the right of his life. So
I write this book. It comes to me on a
walk one day and I'm taking of these gratitude walks
that I'm talking about. Boom it comes. I write it
in three and a half weeks of just divine Inspiration's fast,
easy read, folks. It's like, how many pages is it?
A hundred something hut and not a big book? Not
(32:14):
easy gets rejected by over thirty publishers. So over thirty
I'm told to give up. It's not gonna happen. But
I can't give up because I have this vision and
mission to encourage people. Holds like thirty publishers and so
now sold three million copies. Not one of them looked
and said, wow, this is gold right. And I had
a similar thing on the way up to in sportscast.
(32:36):
It took me eleven years to get a full time job.
And I'm like, how could people not see I'm getting
more scoops than anybody and no one's hiring me. How
is this happening? They didn't get it because this is
a book that's about business but also about personal life too.
It combined the two and it was the first of
its kind that really did that in a fable format.
Usually it was just straight up business fables, but the
(32:56):
characters were three, you know, two dimensional, and my journey
In my books the characters take on form and you
get to know them and appreciate them and want to
root for them. Plus it's business lessons or life lessons.
So I read. So I read this book. Ge'ts rejected,
and I can't give up. So I keep hoping, keep
dreaming time. But I am fearful, and I am stressed,
and I have a family and I have two kids,
(33:18):
and I had sold my restaurant to focus on this,
and my wife did not want to sell the restaurant
that we so and by the way, I second mortgage
my home and put twenty tho credit cards to put
into this restaurant in the first place to get it going.
No one. I wanted to be a writer and speaker,
not knowing if the restaurant would work, and the restaurant
almost didn't make it, so I almost lost everything. So
(33:38):
that was a really scary time as well. So I
learned though. But that's when I learned faith was actually
done the restaurant business, because you know, doing everything I
could to try and make it work and being so
fearful and stressed during that time, but knowing this was
my goal to write and speak. At some point, I
kept going, kept hoping, kept putting it out there, and
every day I would I would start those walks because
that was after my wife almost you know, left me.
(34:00):
So I would do those walks and I would like,
I would say, I, um, I received all the people
that want to come in the restaurant today, and then
we'd be packed. It was like amazing. It was like
this thing that just kept happening, and I learned faith
I learned just to be positive. I learned that it's
amazing at what could happen if you just put yourself
out there every day. So John Wiley and Sons agreed
to publish the book. Shannon Vargain had only been on
(34:21):
the job for like three months. Publishing house. Yeah, out
of out of New York, New Jersey. Wiley. You know,
Wiley Publishing. They do a ton of books. And she
read the book and wanted to do it. Her boss said,
if it doesn't go well, it could be your career.
She had a best set. She had a best friend
with her husband named George. Come on, yeah, best friend
(34:43):
it was it was faith, faith, And so she says,
I want to do this book. So they called me up.
They agree to do it. They said, we can't give
you a big advance. I said, I don't care. I
just want the book to get out there. The book
comes out that one bookstore in the United States would
carry the book, not one, But it becomes a huge
bestseller in South Korea. Not in North Korea, but South Korea.
(35:08):
I'm glad that you want differentiate of that because North
Korea you don't have a problem. To this day, couldn't
couldn't explain how or why, but becomes a huge in
South Wait wait wait, wait, wait so it How do
you catch wind that it's selling like crazy in South Korea?
And why don't sell like crazy in South Korea? Because
my publisher basically has a foreign rights division and they
(35:29):
were selling all their books too at a big conference
in in Asia and Singapore, and for some reason, they
became this bidding war over the energy bus, and these
two publishers kept bidding, and the foreign rights deal was
the largest foreign rights deal that Wiley has ever done.
To this day. No one could explain it how or why.
You couldn't sell in America. Nobody buy it, you know,
(35:51):
they were going crazy for it. In Asia. My publisher
was called me the David Hasselhoff of Korea to mess with. Okay.
So so finally I said, okay, I gotta get this
book out here in the US, and I go on
a twenty city tour, paid for myself, and publish it
would even pay for it, and I went from city
(36:12):
to city sharing the message in the book, and we
would literally call up radio stations, TV stations. This is
before social media and hey, John Gordon's coming to town.
He's internationally known, internationally acclaimed author, which is true which
is two bestseller and career. And so I would go
from city to city and we had five people, ten people, ja.
The biggest crowd we had were a hundred people in
(36:34):
De Moines, Iowa. They thought Jeff Gordon was coming. That's
why they showed up. True story. True Story. I got
called so many times that day get back. I don't
know what their future holds, but I say, okay. And
that tour was so hard. I mean, I'm going from
city to city, not a lot of people. I got
(36:54):
sick in the middle of the tour, but I'm having
to live these principles. I don't know if the book's
gonna make it, but I'm on a wing and a prayer,
just going out there and sharing the message. I come
back and I'm like, Okay, I just gotta do this
work and make a difference, you know, one person at
a time. My mission was to encourage and inspire as
many people as possible, one person at a time. That's
why we're doing this podcast, right, Can we just reach
(37:15):
that one person? That's why I now want to impact
that one person who's struggling, you know, dealing with suicide.
Let's help that one person. Jay. The first person that
reads this book is Mike Smith, who's a defensive coordinator
with the Jaguars. The first football person he reads it.
I come back Froose Tours. Yes, but he's with the
Jaguars at the time. Jack del Rio is the head coach.
(37:37):
He gives the Jack Jack reads the book. I get
a call from Jack del Rio wanting to meet with me.
I go meet with him. He says, I'm gonna use
your book this year with the team. He goes, would
you come speak to the team? I said, are you
kidding me? I'd love to. I can't believe I'm meeting
with Jack del Rio. You're living down there in that
area too, Yeah he was. He was coaching the jackson Jaguars.
I was living in Jackson Jacksonville. Yeah, I was live
(38:00):
in Jacksonville. So I go down me with him. I said,
I'll come speak to the team if you get get
everyone a copy of the book. He said, you got it.
Gives everyone a copy of the book, and that began
my journey of of doing this work in sports. Because
of that, and then Mike Smith brought it to the
Falcons work with the University of Texas football and then
from there the rest of history. But no, but that's
how you got the sports, But how did it then
(38:21):
take off in America? Where you've sold three copies? So
that tour I literally can trace, and this is the
key about Humble Beginnings. I can trace so many of
the speaking events that came from that tour because even
though one person came to one of my events in Austin,
she was a principal, and then brought me to her school,
and then another person brought me to their business to
speak to their business. And then as the book got
(38:42):
out there and made the news about Jack Dorio using
the book, and then companies called and said, hey, will
you come speak to our company? And then I have
a weekly newsletter and I started sharing that out there
and people started reading it. Then school districts started to
ask me to come speak, and that's how it happened.
So it just didn't become a bestseller, did it the
best seller for five years too? For five years? So
(39:02):
I went hold on back and up. I want everybody
to hear that because this is a lot of the
problems that we do have mental health wise, where people's
dreams aren't haven't come true, and they're grinding, grinding, folks.
It took him five years to get his book to
to make a debt. It took me eleven eleven to
get a full time job. I was making nine thousand,
(39:23):
seven d and fifty dollars a year living in New
York City. So that overnight success that so many people
think we have, it's full of ship. There is no
overnight success. And overnight success for me lasted eleven years
just to get my first real paycheck that was consistent.
And for you, five years of you just grinding, grinding.
(39:44):
So if you want your dreams to come true, take
it for the two of us. You gotta out work
the world, and you gotta do things most people aren't
willing to do. And that's working out work in the world,
but not a little, but by a lot, to do
something like John did and Jay. So many people compare
themselves to others. And remember this, when you compare, you despair.
So when you compare yourself to others, that will lead
(40:05):
to you feeling despair. And so the key is don't
compare yourself to anyone else. This is your journey. You
win the journey. Each day. Don't live your life via
social media. I love this. It's like someone said the
other day, Carry Flowers Jr. Said, they don't have a
better life than you. They just have a better filter
and a better editor. So what you see on social media,
(40:26):
it just looks better. But you know what, they're living
their life. You gotta live your life and follow your journey,
follow your path and your purpose. Before I let you go,
I want all my guests to trying with their unbreakable moment.
And your unbreakable moment could be the moment you knew
you can finally exhale, that you made it, something you overcame,
(40:46):
something to try to break you that didn't like mine.
Two were um when I finally did get that call
after eleven years. Hey man, we finally got your full
time shop. You compare your bills like I went from
broke to unbreakable. I mean, living in New Ork City
making ninety seven bucks a year. But I you know,
I said from that first day I walked into the
giant locker room, the cup of team, I'll be the
(41:07):
last dude standing in the here. Man. If these casts
worked forty hours a week, I'll work them. I work
a hundred hours a week. I will be fucking different
than all I'll be the last dude standing. And it
wasn't the money of the full time job, but it
validated me. And when I came in there and said
I'm gonna be different and I'll be the last man standing,
validated it for me. And it was more valuable than
(41:28):
any dollar amount could have been for me. And my
other moment was getting Spy eight because that put me
on the map, got the biggest scoop in NFL history,
and man, that really put me a different level. And
it came in a really hard time in my life.
What's your unbreakable moment? Can I share it too? Go
ahead it it really it may not be positive, but
(41:49):
it turned out to be positive. It's when my son
struggled during the quarantine and during COVID where so many
people were struggling, and he was in college and it
really affected him just being isolated and stop doing his schoolwork.
And we brought him home and he was going through
a really tough time. And it was during that time
that I truly learned how to be a better father.
(42:12):
I literally realized I needed to give him love, I
need to listen and not challenge. I needed just to
support and stop pushing, and it was about just him
being happy and healthy and helping him get through that
that dark time. Jay. It took everything I had as
a parent to try to pull the darkness out of him,
to be there with him, to support him. It was
during COVID, so I usually do about a hundred events
a year, but now I'm home all the time, so
(42:34):
we spent a lot of time together. My wife was
you know, she she was like, I'm gonna let you
do this thing. I'm like, yeah, I need to. And
it was really me and him in so many ways,
and I gotta say it made me a better human being.
I would love to say it was some kind of
successful triumph of speaking or the book, but it was
really knowing that I was there for my son and
(42:54):
being there as a dad, but also learning what really
mental what mental health challenges are really like. And really
I had my own but not as bad, but learning
what he was going through, what younger people are going through,
it really taught me so much compassion and love and
just to be supportive and really to be there with
people and it's okay to not be okay. So for me.
(43:17):
That was that was number one listening. All our problems
where the same. Yeah, talk about you. You just said,
well I'm not as bet No, no, no. All our
problems where the same. So, yeah, we need compassion and
empathy for everybody. You have no idea how painful something
may feel for somebody else. All our problems where the same.
And I would say that the unbreakable moment in terms
(43:39):
of a highlight, was really just recently because I've been
speaking for a long time, but only now by sharing
this message of high state of mind, low state of mind,
helping people really understand how their negative thoughts affect and
how they can overcome, how they can actually bring their
best to every situation and and really love life more
and enjoy life more. So that's what I shared with
the RAMS, for instance. And there I was with the RAMS,
(44:02):
and also with Clemson and other teams like that, Texas
and Oh You and Florida State Miami. I did a
lot of talks this summer. But doing that this summer,
I realized, Okay, I was put on earth for this
moment and this message. Everything in my life, all the
books ever, has brought me to this moment to do
this work. It's gonna be my next book that I
write about, and I'm gonna I'm gonna dedicate it to Nina.
(44:25):
You know, I'm I'm gonna, Yeah, I'm gonna dedicate it
to her. I have to. I know I'm supposed to.
So I'm gonna dedicate to her. And I know that
everything and brought me to this moment. And then Sean,
you know, our good friend, Sean mcnigh. After the talk,
he said, John, like you came in five years ago
and talked to us, and four years ago, he goes,
but there's something different now, he said, You've grown so much.
(44:46):
And to me, even at fifty one doing this work,
to know that I've gotten better at fifty one from
forty seven, that I've improved that much, to me, that's
what it's all about. So for me, that was a highlight.
Like you never arrived. The door of greatness, right is
always open. You gotta keep moving through it. Never think
even ride, keep working, keep improving, keep getting better, and
(45:08):
keep pushing the envelope to improve and pursue that excellence
to create the lights that you want. John, I love you, man,
I appreciate you for joining us. This has been great again.
I've learned from you and here we are like you
never you can learn from everybody. That's like in martial arts.
Like I tell people, I'm not just gonna learn from
a black belt. I'll learn from a white belt, doesn't
matter me. I'm gonna learn from anybody. But you are
(45:28):
kind of a black belt here and so I appreciate
you joining us. Your matches message is incredible. Appreciate your
friendship more than you could ever know, ma'am, and um
for everybody at home again, and make sure you were
you review this, leave a positive review you like it.
Make sure you go follow John on social media. Make
sure you buy the Energy Book if you haven't yet,
(45:50):
buy the Energy Book, and then get the rest of
them because they're quick, even for a guy like me
with a d D. Where I, you know, get through
a page and a half of something then boom, it's
like squirrel, right I and I've gotten through so many
of them, as you know. But your authenticity for me
makes you for me, you know, an all time Hall
of famer. So I love you, dude, and I appreciate
you for joining us. Love you brother, You're the best.
(46:11):
Thank you man, John Gordon. There John Gordon, I appreciate
you walking the walk together with us
Fox Sports Radio News
Host
Jonas Knox
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