July 30, 2024 • 28 mins
This week I am psyched to bring you my interview with John Register where we explore how to Transform Adversity to Advantage.
John Register is a force of nature. An esteemed keynote speaker renowned for his expertise in helping companies embrace change. His compelling personal journey spans from all-American honors to a combat veteran, an amputee, and then a Paralympic Games Silver Medalist. After his illustrious sports career, John founded the United States Olympic Committee’s Paralympic Military Sports Program, which helped wounded veterans use sports as a tool for their rehabilitation. His unique vision and insights led him to serve as the Acting CEO of the Amputee Coalition.
He couples his wealth of professional experience with dynamic presentations and insightful perspectives, empowering individuals and organizations to navigate and thrive in the face of change by showing leaders how to transform adversity into an advantage; he has become a sought-after speaker for high-stakes events and conferences and was named a 2024 Top 50 Global Leaders Speaker by Real-Leaders Magazine.
I hope you find the episode helpful!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Hello everyone, welcome back. To the show, great.
To be with you and today I am super psyched to share my
interview with John Register. John's a two time Paralympian,
Paralympic Games silver medalist, Persian Gulf War
veteran, and Ted X motivational speaker.
He was born and raised in Oak Park, IL, and overcame numerous
(00:23):
challenges, including losing hisleft leg after a misstep over a
hurdle during his training for the 1996 Olympic Games.
He transformed into a source of inspiration, becoming a renowned
motivational speaker known for his message of perseverance and
resilience. Although he would.
Actually debate that last. Sentence and say that he is a
renowned inspirational speaker. We'll learn about that in the
(00:46):
conversation today. He is a four time All American
graduate of the University of Arkansas and he served six years
in the US Army, including activeduty with the US Army World
Class Athlete Program. He has won numerous awards,
including nine gold medals in the Armed Services Competition
and two World Military Championships.
(01:06):
After his injury, he began swimming for recovery,
eventually making the US Paralympic Team in 1996 and
winning a silver medal in the long jump at the 2000 Paralympic
Games in Sydney, Australia. John offers.
Practical strategies for. Overcoming obstacles and his
unique perspective as an athletewith a disability and his
(01:27):
experience with major corporations such as Southwest
Airlines, Coca-Cola and NASA make him, I think, precisely
what people need to hear in today's world.
He's the. Author of the best selling book,
10 stories to Impact Any Leader and lives in Colorado Springs,
which is where I caught up with him for this interview.
When we broadcast this interview, he will be in Tunisia
(01:50):
in Africa, hopefully listening in and checking out what we got
to share on the podcast. But I know you're going to
really enjoy this. This is just all about
overcoming obstacles and gettingthe mindset that you need in
order to have the mind site to see a path forwards in difficult
times. All right, no further
conversation for me. Let's dive into my conversation
(02:12):
with with John Register. John, thanks so much for joining
me. I really appreciate it.
So glad to be here. Thanks for having me on.
You know, obviously we're seeingeach other's video here, but for
people just listening on the podcast, you are in Colorado
Springs, one of my favorite places, the Olympic Committee
Training Center is there I. Believe it's, it's beautiful out
(02:34):
here. I'm right in front of the United
States Olympic and Paralympic Museum.
There's a all the festivities are happening.
It's just, it's just great. It's a great time to be in
Colorado Springs, which we call Olympic City USA.
Amazing. And tell us about your
background, like you obviously have a huge history in a number
of different areas and massive inspiration.
(02:54):
I don't want to steal your Thunder, but give us the origin
story of of your brilliance. I don't know if I'm brilliant.
I, I try to manage the brilliance that's already in the
room. So that's you.
That's what your. Podcast.
You know, the I was a world class athlete, ran track and
field for Arkansas, three time track and field, all American.
(03:16):
Went to two Olympic trials, oncein the high hurdles and the long
jump in 1988 and 1992, qualifiedfor the Olympic trials for the
400 meter hurdles and went to those trials in New Orleans.
I was also in the military afterI graduated from Arkansas and
(03:36):
served on the Army's world classathlete program.
And then I also was stationed inGermany, served in Operation
Desert Shield, Desert Storm. And when I was training for my
third Olympic Games trials, I went across a hurdle in the 400
meter hurdles practice run and Idislocated my left knee upon
landing. And seven days later, through
(03:59):
complications in the surgeries, I became an amputee.
I liked to have my left leg amputated.
And so you think about that, right?
The devastation of your Olympic dreams are gone.
I was on my way to officer candidate school.
That's gone. Who are you now?
What's your identity? How do you show up in a space
like that? And it was really my wife who
(04:22):
said, you know what, we're goingto get through this time
together. This is just our new normal.
And look at that mindset, this kind of new normal mindset that
I began to think about how do I retool, repurpose, reposition
myself in life. And so I ended my time in the in
the military. I got out, started working for
the military and the Army's world class athlete program.
(04:43):
But the same time I started swimming for physical therapy,
got so fast in the water that I somehow messed up, looked up and
and made the Paralympic swim team.
So the Paralympic Games are for those with athletes, those
athletes with physical disabilities and visual
impairment. They are not the Special
Olympics, which are for cognitive disabilities.
These are the parallel games to the Olympics.
(05:05):
So you have the Olympic Games, you have the Paralympic Games.
It's notorious. It's it's you know, you win
gold, silver, bronze, and you burn, burn by placing.
So I swam with those games and Isaw athletes running on the
track with artificial limbs. I said, why am I in the pool?
I should be on the track. So I had a leg made for running
and three years later I wound upwound up winning the silver
(05:26):
medal in the long jump in Sydney, Australia.
And that was just like incredible.
I was the like the 20 years of work and losing a leg and when
you would come back and you win a silver at at those games.
So I learned a lot of lessons from that.
But what I did was I took the military experience combat
veteran, I took the athletic prowess at the University of
(05:50):
Arkansas having won, you know, Arkansas had won not not me it
personally, but I had won four of them.
But John McDonnell was the winningest coach.
He is the winningest coach in NCAA sport history, any sport.
He has 42 national championships.
So I took that champions mindsetas well.
And then the family dynamic mindset and then the faith
(06:12):
mindset and began to really honea, a business around it.
As I started, you know, with inspired communication
International. I was brought on by the United
States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, started working for
them for about 15 years. And during that time I created,
(06:33):
founded what became known as theParalympic Military Sport
program. Now this program worked with
wounded, ill and injured servicemembers to use sports as a tool
for the rehabilitation. And then we'll also, we're
trying to build out a youth program to develop a, a
dependable developed pipeline oftalents that we could always
have, you know, our athletes win.
So that's kind of my big story. I now away from the Olympic
(06:55):
Committee and I run that business full time.
That's my fifth year doing it. And we really helped business
professionals amputate what holds them back, their
limitations and then amplify or elevate their performance.
So what's what's, how to get them to their success in in
life. So that's what we do now
globally. So we're really excited about
(07:17):
who we have on the team and squad and we go out and just
have fun. Isn't it so amazing that I, you
know, I'm sure that in that first week post, you know,
tripping over the hurdle, being injured, complications and then
landing in a place so obviously you would never have imagined
that you have to so rapidly reset to a new normal?
You have no choice. Your mindset must shift.
(07:39):
Fortunately, your wife to walk you through that or help, you
know, walk with you through that.
And then you are here now years later in a place where thriving
business and making a positive difference.
It's interesting. We have, you know, very little
chance of envisioning that at the moment.
But but here you are and it's it's you've landed in an
(08:00):
incredible place that always blows me away when I hear
stories like this. I think, you know, it's the
incremental steps that we take. If I look at it, and I think
it's even when I was working with the Olympic Committee and
building that military support program out walking into a
bedside of a person who, you know, six days earlier was in a
(08:22):
firefight. They lost probably a couple
people and they are survived. They've survived and they're in
that hospital with their their battle buddies trying to get
back to theater, right? And they're missing an arm and
missing a leg, missing, burned over their body.
Sometimes it's too great of a step to see a Paralympic athlete
(08:45):
come in to have that conversation because that's not
the conversation that's needed in the moment.
What's needed in the moment are the incremental steps we have to
take every single day. Can we give ourselves space and
grace to grow? Because it is a dynamic change.
And anytime I hear, which kind of just irks me, that we we need
(09:07):
to get back to where it used to be as somebody who's not
honoring that we've never gone back to the way it used to be,
even though it might, we might have glorified some of those
days that we have before. But what have we learned from
the time, our past experiences that puts us into this present
state? I call that the reckoning
moment. When we hurdle the reckoning
(09:30):
moment, we realize we don't get back what we desire to have back
after some type of change or trauma has impacted our life.
And I think that's really the the first steps to helping, you
know, whether it's an injury or whether it's the transition from
high school to college, whether it's a transition from the from
(09:51):
military to the civilian workforce, whether it's a
transition as we see professional athletes trying to
make the transition, going from where who they are as an
identity on the football field, the basketball court, the
baseball field, you know, women's soccer into another time
of life. It's very hard.
It's and we, you know, that's the third hardest part of my
(10:14):
model is to really honor where we are in specific moments in
time, not trying to desire, havea desire to go back to the way
it used to be. And we hear it from, you know,
that's why people got so jaded with the term the new normal is
because I just, you know, they would say, I just want to go
back to the way it used to be. I just want, I want things to go
(10:34):
back to normal. That's not happening.
Or I guess this is just our new normal.
Well, you know, so now you have no progress to move forward.
You're you're, you're stuck. There's no hope for your future.
But new when you, when you we really define it is is no prior
point of reference. So what?
(10:55):
We can't use old systems. We can't use old thoughts.
We can't use old ideas to put into a new bucket to get a
different output if we're tryingto do the same thing over and
over again. We often say it's the definition
of insanity. Yeah.
So we we have to be able to makethat break and make that shift.
I love that idea that new is youjust have no frame of reference
(11:16):
for where we're at. It's, it's, that's an amazing
idea, which is super cool given your concept of amputate to
elevate and letting go of thingssuch that you can move forwards.
That's fascinating to me. And you have a model that that
you have for that. But let's hear about amputate to
elevate. So thank you the, the, so when
(11:38):
we're talking about amputate, right?
So and, and letting things release and letting things go,
it is, it could be the mindset that's around that, right?
It's the I'm releasing or amputating this mindset that I
have in order to be free to havea new vision.
(11:58):
So in the new normal, right, we have normal means.
No, we have new is no prior point of reference, but normal
is the everyday typical occurrence of a thought or an
action. So we do have to have rituals
that lead us to a rhythm that elevate us to a rise that create
the desired results we're looking for.
So after we finish up with the reckoning moment, now we have
(12:18):
transferred into the revision. The revision gives us an
opportunity to see what might bepossible for us, what might
elevate us. How do we go from that reckoning
moment now, begin to cast this new vision and we graduate or we
elevate past or hurdle past the revision by making a commitment
(12:42):
to the vision that we have. And that's hard.
It's the second hardest part of the model.
The, the model gets harder and harder as you keep going, going
through it because we have otherpeople that believe for us what
we can or cannot do, which is often based on what they believe
they could or could not do if they were in our situation.
Secondarily, we have society. Society is imprinted upon us,
(13:04):
normalizing things around for usthat hold us back.
Think about when I talk about disability, employment,
disability awareness. I do, I do a lot of work on
disability rights advocacy. I'm heading to, you know, Africa
coming up pretty soon and to talk about disability rights on
a global scale. Most of the time what we do when
(13:26):
we're having conversations around people with disabilities
is our reference point is every Halloween we see people that are
disfigured. We see people who are burned
over their bodies, have mental health conditions like the
Joker, you know, Hannibal Lecter, we have Freddy Krueger,
all these kind of scary folks that we surround adjacent,
(13:50):
right? And then or Captain Hook right
up to Captain Hook because he's an amputee.
So Captain Hook, he's above the wrist amputee.
And I see all these people and Iidentified them with being scary
or that's wrong. So now when it comes time for us
to have a true conversation around mental health in our
(14:11):
country, we can't do it because we've been conditioned so much
so by society dictate to us thatwe should fear that.
So we have a school shooting that happens or we have
something, something else goes on.
We are quick to blame mental health as a culprit instead of
having to identify that space asour own.
(14:31):
No, you know what? What caused that right?
So we, whatever narrative that we break and we, we, we, we
choose to go So once and then the final, the final piece of
that is that once I once I look at this from that, from that
(14:52):
standpoint of of those two right, the the the other people
or society, I'm the one that nowhas to made the commitment to
it. I've had the world's best hurdle
coaches. None of them ever ran over a
hurdle. For me, I have to take the step
to run the hurdle, attack the hurdles that are in my life.
And then that puts us into the hardest part of the bottle,
(15:14):
which is the renewal, which begins with the rebirth.
And so we talked a little bit earlier about the new normal
mindset. So this is where new actually
comes in, because now you made acommitment to the vision.
So give you the example, when the doctor amputated my leg, I
don't get my leg back. When we make a commitment to the
(15:38):
vision, we do not get back. With prior, everything is new.
There is no prior point of reference anymore.
It's just like me having to learn how to walk on an
artificial leg. I have AI can think about how I
used to walk up two legs, but that doesn't work any longer to
warm blooded legs right to, to aprosthetic now.
So it's, it's a it's different. Running is different.
(16:00):
I have to, I can't even though Ihave a reference point to
something else that that reference point no longer works
for me. So when we commit to a new
vision, you, you have a new strategy you want to put in as a
business. You have, you've just
reallocated resources. You have a new clients that
you're going after. You can't use the old mindset to
(16:20):
put in this new bucket. It's detrimental because you're
going to say, you're going to have that person that's been
there 20 years saying, wow, we got to change.
We've been doing this for 20 years, right?
And so they're stuck. And I would say that that person
is not in the, in the renewal. They're in, they're in the, the,
(16:41):
the reckoning moment. I would challenge that, right?
So they haven't made a commitment.
If you think you can get back what you had, you're in the,
you're in the reckoning, you're not the, the renewal.
So I have to get myself space and grace to grow inside of the,
the rebirth. I have to give myself space and
grace to grow. I didn't know how to put on an
artificial leg. I don't know how to move a
(17:02):
wheelchair around the hospital. The all those things were brand
new. So all the, all that way to the,
the Paralympic silver medal thattook seven years.
Can we give ourselves space and grace to grow when we're in a
new, new spot? Or are we just saying, yeah,
pandemic's over, we just got to get back, Let's all get back to
the workforce? Some people have been
(17:22):
traumatized. You know, we have an honor that
space of folks lost loved ones during this time.
Can you just honor that? They lost six people in their
family. Maybe nothing, maybe they didn't
touch you. But can you empathize with
someone that did? And now they're, you know,
they've had that loss. You're asking to come back into
(17:44):
an office where when you sent them home, moving across the
country, now you ask them to come back in trauma.
We, we started working differently.
Can we get people space and grace to grow before our
automatically, you know, this thing because we're in a new era
right now. We, we have never lived in a
time like this. And it's not just America.
It's it's the world is resettingwhere the world's going.
(18:06):
So and then that equals our resolve.
I'm resolute in who I am. You know, I've done the work now
that I'm bragging, not I'm bragging about it.
I've done the work so I can be resolute.
And that equals my freedom. That equals my, my, that equals
my reward. And the reward is not a
destination, the rewards. A reward is the next step.
It's the the elevation. It is the the plateau by which
(18:28):
we grow. I love the idea of resolution
being freedom. That's your freedom.
Like you're resolved to move forward.
You are resolved to grow. You are benefiting from having
given yourself the grace and space to grow.
So that then gives you the opportunity to have the ability
(18:48):
to move forwards in your life, the freedom to move forwards,
the freedom to explore, to expand, to discover, to to
experiment, to learn, to get better.
Marie, if you could dig into that a little bit more for me
just because I'm fascinated about about that as our like the
transition and the actual reward, which is this complete
freedom to enjoy your life. Right.
(19:11):
And and it takes, it takes a lotto get there, but the
transition, it could happen quick, but it's all about the
mindset, right? That's why I say the the new
normal mindset. And the mindset is Doctor Dan
Siegel. That's right.
Yeah, Doctor Dan Siegel. He has a he has a whole
(19:33):
companies, it's called he doesn't use it in the same way
I'm using it, but I love what hesays and I say mindset to mind
sight. So he has mind sight.
He's calling mind sight. I look at mind sight as the, the
mind thinking beyond where, where it should be.
Like I, I want to think five years down the road, 10 years
(19:54):
down the road, what's, what do Iwant things to look like?
I resist saying, what could I have changed to be better today?
Because I can't, I can't fix that.
What I can do is I can look 10 years down the road and say, OK,
I want to be there. What do I need to fix now to
make it so? And so as we're talking about
the resolve and resolution and giving ourselves space and grace
(20:17):
to grow, we can begin to forecast that into our one year,
three-year, five year plans in order to come back to say, how
can I move this entire organization through this
process in order for all of us to be on the same page with our
goals, our mission, our vision, our values to move this entity
(20:37):
Ford so that we are servicing the clientele that we said that,
that we are open for business for at the at the maximum
capacity and everybody's on the right bus and in the right seat
for moving the organization. If we want to elevate ourselves,
we've talked about letting go. We've talked about space and
(21:00):
grace to grow. I like to grace and space to
grow, which is determined. I just absolutely love
commitment to the vision leadingto resolution and freedom.
All of that is really just enabling us to move forwards,
enabling us to elevate our lives, to elevate the lives of
others. As you reflect upon this
experience, this life, this work, and consider things for
(21:23):
yourself and for others, where, where is your mind going these
days? Like where's your, where's your
thinking at when it comes to what's next?
Not just for you, but for all ofus?
Because this is an uncertain time.
There's scary. I think a lot of people are
afraid. I think that you're absolutely
correct that we have gone through a collective trauma, all
of us together, regardless of where what your experience has
(21:44):
been, it's been a significantly challenging time.
And so I'm curious about our ability to elevate moving
forwards and what you're thinking about in terms of that.
And so any and all thoughts thatyou have about where you're
moving and where you're thinkingis going, I would be super
curious about. There was a woman, her name is
(22:05):
Pat Enriquez and I was taking the veterans entrepreneurship
class. So what's the most important
thing in your business? She's built out multi billion
dollar, multi billion dollar business.
You know, so she's like, we're, we're bowing down to her right,
'cause he's, he's done all thesecontracts, airport contracts.
So, and so we're talking about contact lists, We're talking
(22:28):
about, you know, keeping our eyeon the PNL statements.
We're, we're talking about all kinds of things.
And she says the only thing thatyou really need to focus on is
how you're going to wrap up the business, how you're going to
shut it down, what are you goingto do to keep it living longer
than you if you choose to do that.
And I said, Dang, that is such aprofound question or answer,
(22:53):
right? Or the way she looks at it, kind
of like Stephen Covey thinking with the end in mind and
applying it towards the businessset.
Because what that says is that you are successful.
Your vision is already success. And now you're just trying to
figure out, are you going to bequeath it to your children?
Are you going to put on the stock market?
Are you going to, how are you going to wrap it up?
(23:14):
And it rested with me for like 6months.
And the reason it did so was because I wanted to know what it
was for the end of my life, my legacy.
And I wanted to hear my God say,well done, good and faithful
servant, you've been faithful ora few things enter to enjoy my
rest, right? So when that became crystal
(23:37):
clear to me, it made everything else easier because I call
myself an inspirational speaker,not a motivational speaker.
Why? Because inspiration comes from
the Latin word and Spiro, which means to breathe into right?
So I want to breathe life into others.
And if I had my creator's breathing life into me, I must
(24:00):
breathe life into others. And I feel, as you know, my,
our, our vision statement is to inspire worlds, not to inspire
the world, but to inspire worldsbecause we can all do this in
our sphere of influence. And if each one of us breathes
into someone else in our sphere of influence, then we all can
inspire the world, right. So that's kind of the, the, the,
(24:23):
the, all the, the, the far out there vision.
But we do that in our company. We do that through inspirational
speeches or we do it through fireside chats.
We're talking to CEO, talking tosales teams, you know, to, to
get other people to see of how we can service one another
better. And I think that's really, you
know, as I'm thinking about yourquestion and, and how I'm
(24:45):
thinking about things now we have it's, it's, it's, it's
tense, right? Is to look at how can we shift
the narrative? How can we change the
conversation of how we think about it?
Even when we say uncertainty, The question I asked then for
executive and CEO is what have we ever had certainty?
When did you know exactly what was going to happen tomorrow?
(25:08):
Yeah. As if we did, we would have we
would have predicted the pandemic, even though people
were in predicting the pandemic,we had the administration that
we're predicting that was going to something was going to
happen. Just a matter of when.
We didn't know exactly when, right.
So we have to operate on our day-to-day.
But with this, with the same concept of, of thinking about
how do we shift the way that we're sharing the information?
(25:32):
We've always had it this way, always, always done it this way.
Now let's, let's think about the, the, the elevation of that
and, and where we can actually take it.
So that's how I think about things now.
It's, it's, it's getting to as many people to share these ideas
because what happens it, it opens up the way we, they think
(25:53):
in their sphere of influence. Because I'm, I'm not in their
sphere of influence except for that one meeting or conference
or, or, you know, executive coaching session, whatever we're
in is that's my, that's my sphere of influence with them.
But they have their own and theycan take that and and continue
to run and open up those apertures for everyone else.
(26:16):
Johnny, we could probably keep talking for ages, but I know
that you are sensitive to your time and I'm at the end of the
time that we that we had together.
But I'm deeply grateful for you sharing your insights.
I love the concept of MPA to elevate.
I've been working really hard onletting go of certain things
that I can grow in other areas. So this is resonating a ton for
(26:37):
me. If people want to find out more
about your work, learn about you, and connect with you
online, where can they do that? Thank you for that.
There are two basic places. One is we have the website
whichisjohnregister.com and so that kind of starts everything.
All the social media channels there.
I'm most active on social media on LinkedIn and Instagram.
(27:00):
Those are my most 2. The other place that we're
having conversation, we're we'rebuilding a global community is
on our Jr. 90 day leadership sprints.
And you can find that also on the website as well.
I mean, yeah. So it's it's really fascinating
to see, you know, as I travel the globe, being able to connect
(27:21):
the dots of other like minded individuals and I truly do it
like a mastermind, but I don't do a mastermind for myself.
I actually have other people in the group lead the mastermind
and I stay out of it so they canhave their own conversation
inside of it. Right.
So I have a lady from Denmark who actually leading one of the
the masterminds inside of insideof our group.
So that's that's how we continueto inspire worlds.
(27:45):
That's awesome, John. Thank you for your time, buddy.
I really appreciate it. It's great to connect, great to
chat. Good luck with everything at
Colorado Springs. I know it's a great time for the
Olympic and Paralympic communities and deeply grateful
for you joining us for this amazing conversation.
All right everyone, hope you enjoyed that.
Thanks so much for tuning in. If you want more info, check out
(28:08):
John at John register.com. Loads of resources there,
programs you can take part in and you can check.
Out his book as. Well, thank you so much for
listening in. It's great to be with you.
Really appreciate it. If you enjoyed this episode,
share it on your socials and ping me on my socials at Doctor
Greg Wells. All right, that's it for this
week. Have a great one, everyone.
Talk to you soon.
Hello everyone, welcome back. To the show, great.
To be with you and today I am super psyched to share my
interview with John Register. John's a two time Paralympian,
Paralympic Games silver medalist, Persian Gulf War
veteran, and Ted X motivational speaker.
He was born and raised in Oak Park, IL, and overcame numerous
(00:23):
challenges, including losing hisleft leg after a misstep over a
hurdle during his training for the 1996 Olympic Games.
He transformed into a source of inspiration, becoming a renowned
motivational speaker known for his message of perseverance and
resilience. Although he would.
Actually debate that last. Sentence and say that he is a
renowned inspirational speaker. We'll learn about that in the
(00:46):
conversation today. He is a four time All American
graduate of the University of Arkansas and he served six years
in the US Army, including activeduty with the US Army World
Class Athlete Program. He has won numerous awards,
including nine gold medals in the Armed Services Competition
and two World Military Championships.
(01:06):
After his injury, he began swimming for recovery,
eventually making the US Paralympic Team in 1996 and
winning a silver medal in the long jump at the 2000 Paralympic
Games in Sydney, Australia. John offers.
Practical strategies for. Overcoming obstacles and his
unique perspective as an athletewith a disability and his
(01:27):
experience with major corporations such as Southwest
Airlines, Coca-Cola and NASA make him, I think, precisely
what people need to hear in today's world.
He's the. Author of the best selling book,
10 stories to Impact Any Leader and lives in Colorado Springs,
which is where I caught up with him for this interview.
When we broadcast this interview, he will be in Tunisia
(01:50):
in Africa, hopefully listening in and checking out what we got
to share on the podcast. But I know you're going to
really enjoy this. This is just all about
overcoming obstacles and gettingthe mindset that you need in
order to have the mind site to see a path forwards in difficult
times. All right, no further
conversation for me. Let's dive into my conversation
(02:12):
with with John Register. John, thanks so much for joining
me. I really appreciate it.
So glad to be here. Thanks for having me on.
You know, obviously we're seeingeach other's video here, but for
people just listening on the podcast, you are in Colorado
Springs, one of my favorite places, the Olympic Committee
Training Center is there I. Believe it's, it's beautiful out
(02:34):
here. I'm right in front of the United
States Olympic and Paralympic Museum.
There's a all the festivities are happening.
It's just, it's just great. It's a great time to be in
Colorado Springs, which we call Olympic City USA.
Amazing. And tell us about your
background, like you obviously have a huge history in a number
of different areas and massive inspiration.
(02:54):
I don't want to steal your Thunder, but give us the origin
story of of your brilliance. I don't know if I'm brilliant.
I, I try to manage the brilliance that's already in the
room. So that's you.
That's what your. Podcast.
You know, the I was a world class athlete, ran track and
field for Arkansas, three time track and field, all American.
(03:16):
Went to two Olympic trials, oncein the high hurdles and the long
jump in 1988 and 1992, qualifiedfor the Olympic trials for the
400 meter hurdles and went to those trials in New Orleans.
I was also in the military afterI graduated from Arkansas and
(03:36):
served on the Army's world classathlete program.
And then I also was stationed inGermany, served in Operation
Desert Shield, Desert Storm. And when I was training for my
third Olympic Games trials, I went across a hurdle in the 400
meter hurdles practice run and Idislocated my left knee upon
landing. And seven days later, through
(03:59):
complications in the surgeries, I became an amputee.
I liked to have my left leg amputated.
And so you think about that, right?
The devastation of your Olympic dreams are gone.
I was on my way to officer candidate school.
That's gone. Who are you now?
What's your identity? How do you show up in a space
like that? And it was really my wife who
(04:22):
said, you know what, we're goingto get through this time
together. This is just our new normal.
And look at that mindset, this kind of new normal mindset that
I began to think about how do I retool, repurpose, reposition
myself in life. And so I ended my time in the in
the military. I got out, started working for
the military and the Army's world class athlete program.
(04:43):
But the same time I started swimming for physical therapy,
got so fast in the water that I somehow messed up, looked up and
and made the Paralympic swim team.
So the Paralympic Games are for those with athletes, those
athletes with physical disabilities and visual
impairment. They are not the Special
Olympics, which are for cognitive disabilities.
These are the parallel games to the Olympics.
(05:05):
So you have the Olympic Games, you have the Paralympic Games.
It's notorious. It's it's you know, you win
gold, silver, bronze, and you burn, burn by placing.
So I swam with those games and Isaw athletes running on the
track with artificial limbs. I said, why am I in the pool?
I should be on the track. So I had a leg made for running
and three years later I wound upwound up winning the silver
(05:26):
medal in the long jump in Sydney, Australia.
And that was just like incredible.
I was the like the 20 years of work and losing a leg and when
you would come back and you win a silver at at those games.
So I learned a lot of lessons from that.
But what I did was I took the military experience combat
veteran, I took the athletic prowess at the University of
(05:50):
Arkansas having won, you know, Arkansas had won not not me it
personally, but I had won four of them.
But John McDonnell was the winningest coach.
He is the winningest coach in NCAA sport history, any sport.
He has 42 national championships.
So I took that champions mindsetas well.
And then the family dynamic mindset and then the faith
(06:12):
mindset and began to really honea, a business around it.
As I started, you know, with inspired communication
International. I was brought on by the United
States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, started working for
them for about 15 years. And during that time I created,
(06:33):
founded what became known as theParalympic Military Sport
program. Now this program worked with
wounded, ill and injured servicemembers to use sports as a tool
for the rehabilitation. And then we'll also, we're
trying to build out a youth program to develop a, a
dependable developed pipeline oftalents that we could always
have, you know, our athletes win.
So that's kind of my big story. I now away from the Olympic
(06:55):
Committee and I run that business full time.
That's my fifth year doing it. And we really helped business
professionals amputate what holds them back, their
limitations and then amplify or elevate their performance.
So what's what's, how to get them to their success in in
life. So that's what we do now
globally. So we're really excited about
(07:17):
who we have on the team and squad and we go out and just
have fun. Isn't it so amazing that I, you
know, I'm sure that in that first week post, you know,
tripping over the hurdle, being injured, complications and then
landing in a place so obviously you would never have imagined
that you have to so rapidly reset to a new normal?
You have no choice. Your mindset must shift.
(07:39):
Fortunately, your wife to walk you through that or help, you
know, walk with you through that.
And then you are here now years later in a place where thriving
business and making a positive difference.
It's interesting. We have, you know, very little
chance of envisioning that at the moment.
But but here you are and it's it's you've landed in an
(08:00):
incredible place that always blows me away when I hear
stories like this. I think, you know, it's the
incremental steps that we take. If I look at it, and I think
it's even when I was working with the Olympic Committee and
building that military support program out walking into a
bedside of a person who, you know, six days earlier was in a
(08:22):
firefight. They lost probably a couple
people and they are survived. They've survived and they're in
that hospital with their their battle buddies trying to get
back to theater, right? And they're missing an arm and
missing a leg, missing, burned over their body.
Sometimes it's too great of a step to see a Paralympic athlete
(08:45):
come in to have that conversation because that's not
the conversation that's needed in the moment.
What's needed in the moment are the incremental steps we have to
take every single day. Can we give ourselves space and
grace to grow? Because it is a dynamic change.
And anytime I hear, which kind of just irks me, that we we need
(09:07):
to get back to where it used to be as somebody who's not
honoring that we've never gone back to the way it used to be,
even though it might, we might have glorified some of those
days that we have before. But what have we learned from
the time, our past experiences that puts us into this present
state? I call that the reckoning
moment. When we hurdle the reckoning
(09:30):
moment, we realize we don't get back what we desire to have back
after some type of change or trauma has impacted our life.
And I think that's really the the first steps to helping, you
know, whether it's an injury or whether it's the transition from
high school to college, whether it's a transition from the from
(09:51):
military to the civilian workforce, whether it's a
transition as we see professional athletes trying to
make the transition, going from where who they are as an
identity on the football field, the basketball court, the
baseball field, you know, women's soccer into another time
of life. It's very hard.
It's and we, you know, that's the third hardest part of my
(10:14):
model is to really honor where we are in specific moments in
time, not trying to desire, havea desire to go back to the way
it used to be. And we hear it from, you know,
that's why people got so jaded with the term the new normal is
because I just, you know, they would say, I just want to go
back to the way it used to be. I just want, I want things to go
(10:34):
back to normal. That's not happening.
Or I guess this is just our new normal.
Well, you know, so now you have no progress to move forward.
You're you're, you're stuck. There's no hope for your future.
But new when you, when you we really define it is is no prior
point of reference. So what?
(10:55):
We can't use old systems. We can't use old thoughts.
We can't use old ideas to put into a new bucket to get a
different output if we're tryingto do the same thing over and
over again. We often say it's the definition
of insanity. Yeah.
So we we have to be able to makethat break and make that shift.
I love that idea that new is youjust have no frame of reference
(11:16):
for where we're at. It's, it's, that's an amazing
idea, which is super cool given your concept of amputate to
elevate and letting go of thingssuch that you can move forwards.
That's fascinating to me. And you have a model that that
you have for that. But let's hear about amputate to
elevate. So thank you the, the, so when
(11:38):
we're talking about amputate, right?
So and, and letting things release and letting things go,
it is, it could be the mindset that's around that, right?
It's the I'm releasing or amputating this mindset that I
have in order to be free to havea new vision.
(11:58):
So in the new normal, right, we have normal means.
No, we have new is no prior point of reference, but normal
is the everyday typical occurrence of a thought or an
action. So we do have to have rituals
that lead us to a rhythm that elevate us to a rise that create
the desired results we're looking for.
So after we finish up with the reckoning moment, now we have
(12:18):
transferred into the revision. The revision gives us an
opportunity to see what might bepossible for us, what might
elevate us. How do we go from that reckoning
moment now, begin to cast this new vision and we graduate or we
elevate past or hurdle past the revision by making a commitment
(12:42):
to the vision that we have. And that's hard.
It's the second hardest part of the model.
The, the model gets harder and harder as you keep going, going
through it because we have otherpeople that believe for us what
we can or cannot do, which is often based on what they believe
they could or could not do if they were in our situation.
Secondarily, we have society. Society is imprinted upon us,
(13:04):
normalizing things around for usthat hold us back.
Think about when I talk about disability, employment,
disability awareness. I do, I do a lot of work on
disability rights advocacy. I'm heading to, you know, Africa
coming up pretty soon and to talk about disability rights on
a global scale. Most of the time what we do when
(13:26):
we're having conversations around people with disabilities
is our reference point is every Halloween we see people that are
disfigured. We see people who are burned
over their bodies, have mental health conditions like the
Joker, you know, Hannibal Lecter, we have Freddy Krueger,
all these kind of scary folks that we surround adjacent,
(13:50):
right? And then or Captain Hook right
up to Captain Hook because he's an amputee.
So Captain Hook, he's above the wrist amputee.
And I see all these people and Iidentified them with being scary
or that's wrong. So now when it comes time for us
to have a true conversation around mental health in our
(14:11):
country, we can't do it because we've been conditioned so much
so by society dictate to us thatwe should fear that.
So we have a school shooting that happens or we have
something, something else goes on.
We are quick to blame mental health as a culprit instead of
having to identify that space asour own.
(14:31):
No, you know what? What caused that right?
So we, whatever narrative that we break and we, we, we, we
choose to go So once and then the final, the final piece of
that is that once I once I look at this from that, from that
(14:52):
standpoint of of those two right, the the the other people
or society, I'm the one that nowhas to made the commitment to
it. I've had the world's best hurdle
coaches. None of them ever ran over a
hurdle. For me, I have to take the step
to run the hurdle, attack the hurdles that are in my life.
And then that puts us into the hardest part of the bottle,
(15:14):
which is the renewal, which begins with the rebirth.
And so we talked a little bit earlier about the new normal
mindset. So this is where new actually
comes in, because now you made acommitment to the vision.
So give you the example, when the doctor amputated my leg, I
don't get my leg back. When we make a commitment to the
(15:38):
vision, we do not get back. With prior, everything is new.
There is no prior point of reference anymore.
It's just like me having to learn how to walk on an
artificial leg. I have AI can think about how I
used to walk up two legs, but that doesn't work any longer to
warm blooded legs right to, to aprosthetic now.
So it's, it's a it's different. Running is different.
(16:00):
I have to, I can't even though Ihave a reference point to
something else that that reference point no longer works
for me. So when we commit to a new
vision, you, you have a new strategy you want to put in as a
business. You have, you've just
reallocated resources. You have a new clients that
you're going after. You can't use the old mindset to
(16:20):
put in this new bucket. It's detrimental because you're
going to say, you're going to have that person that's been
there 20 years saying, wow, we got to change.
We've been doing this for 20 years, right?
And so they're stuck. And I would say that that person
is not in the, in the renewal. They're in, they're in the, the,
(16:41):
the reckoning moment. I would challenge that, right?
So they haven't made a commitment.
If you think you can get back what you had, you're in the,
you're in the reckoning, you're not the, the renewal.
So I have to get myself space and grace to grow inside of the,
the rebirth. I have to give myself space and
grace to grow. I didn't know how to put on an
artificial leg. I don't know how to move a
(17:02):
wheelchair around the hospital. The all those things were brand
new. So all the, all that way to the,
the Paralympic silver medal thattook seven years.
Can we give ourselves space and grace to grow when we're in a
new, new spot? Or are we just saying, yeah,
pandemic's over, we just got to get back, Let's all get back to
the workforce? Some people have been
(17:22):
traumatized. You know, we have an honor that
space of folks lost loved ones during this time.
Can you just honor that? They lost six people in their
family. Maybe nothing, maybe they didn't
touch you. But can you empathize with
someone that did? And now they're, you know,
they've had that loss. You're asking to come back into
(17:44):
an office where when you sent them home, moving across the
country, now you ask them to come back in trauma.
We, we started working differently.
Can we get people space and grace to grow before our
automatically, you know, this thing because we're in a new era
right now. We, we have never lived in a
time like this. And it's not just America.
It's it's the world is resettingwhere the world's going.
(18:06):
So and then that equals our resolve.
I'm resolute in who I am. You know, I've done the work now
that I'm bragging, not I'm bragging about it.
I've done the work so I can be resolute.
And that equals my freedom. That equals my, my, that equals
my reward. And the reward is not a
destination, the rewards. A reward is the next step.
It's the the elevation. It is the the plateau by which
(18:28):
we grow. I love the idea of resolution
being freedom. That's your freedom.
Like you're resolved to move forward.
You are resolved to grow. You are benefiting from having
given yourself the grace and space to grow.
So that then gives you the opportunity to have the ability
(18:48):
to move forwards in your life, the freedom to move forwards,
the freedom to explore, to expand, to discover, to to
experiment, to learn, to get better.
Marie, if you could dig into that a little bit more for me
just because I'm fascinated about about that as our like the
transition and the actual reward, which is this complete
freedom to enjoy your life. Right.
(19:11):
And and it takes, it takes a lotto get there, but the
transition, it could happen quick, but it's all about the
mindset, right? That's why I say the the new
normal mindset. And the mindset is Doctor Dan
Siegel. That's right.
Yeah, Doctor Dan Siegel. He has a he has a whole
(19:33):
companies, it's called he doesn't use it in the same way
I'm using it, but I love what hesays and I say mindset to mind
sight. So he has mind sight.
He's calling mind sight. I look at mind sight as the, the
mind thinking beyond where, where it should be.
Like I, I want to think five years down the road, 10 years
(19:54):
down the road, what's, what do Iwant things to look like?
I resist saying, what could I have changed to be better today?
Because I can't, I can't fix that.
What I can do is I can look 10 years down the road and say, OK,
I want to be there. What do I need to fix now to
make it so? And so as we're talking about
the resolve and resolution and giving ourselves space and grace
(20:17):
to grow, we can begin to forecast that into our one year,
three-year, five year plans in order to come back to say, how
can I move this entire organization through this
process in order for all of us to be on the same page with our
goals, our mission, our vision, our values to move this entity
(20:37):
Ford so that we are servicing the clientele that we said that,
that we are open for business for at the at the maximum
capacity and everybody's on the right bus and in the right seat
for moving the organization. If we want to elevate ourselves,
we've talked about letting go. We've talked about space and
(21:00):
grace to grow. I like to grace and space to
grow, which is determined. I just absolutely love
commitment to the vision leadingto resolution and freedom.
All of that is really just enabling us to move forwards,
enabling us to elevate our lives, to elevate the lives of
others. As you reflect upon this
experience, this life, this work, and consider things for
(21:23):
yourself and for others, where, where is your mind going these
days? Like where's your, where's your
thinking at when it comes to what's next?
Not just for you, but for all ofus?
Because this is an uncertain time.
There's scary. I think a lot of people are
afraid. I think that you're absolutely
correct that we have gone through a collective trauma, all
of us together, regardless of where what your experience has
(21:44):
been, it's been a significantly challenging time.
And so I'm curious about our ability to elevate moving
forwards and what you're thinking about in terms of that.
And so any and all thoughts thatyou have about where you're
moving and where you're thinkingis going, I would be super
curious about. There was a woman, her name is
(22:05):
Pat Enriquez and I was taking the veterans entrepreneurship
class. So what's the most important
thing in your business? She's built out multi billion
dollar, multi billion dollar business.
You know, so she's like, we're, we're bowing down to her right,
'cause he's, he's done all thesecontracts, airport contracts.
So, and so we're talking about contact lists, We're talking
(22:28):
about, you know, keeping our eyeon the PNL statements.
We're, we're talking about all kinds of things.
And she says the only thing thatyou really need to focus on is
how you're going to wrap up the business, how you're going to
shut it down, what are you goingto do to keep it living longer
than you if you choose to do that.
And I said, Dang, that is such aprofound question or answer,
(22:53):
right? Or the way she looks at it, kind
of like Stephen Covey thinking with the end in mind and
applying it towards the businessset.
Because what that says is that you are successful.
Your vision is already success. And now you're just trying to
figure out, are you going to bequeath it to your children?
Are you going to put on the stock market?
Are you going to, how are you going to wrap it up?
(23:14):
And it rested with me for like 6months.
And the reason it did so was because I wanted to know what it
was for the end of my life, my legacy.
And I wanted to hear my God say,well done, good and faithful
servant, you've been faithful ora few things enter to enjoy my
rest, right? So when that became crystal
(23:37):
clear to me, it made everything else easier because I call
myself an inspirational speaker,not a motivational speaker.
Why? Because inspiration comes from
the Latin word and Spiro, which means to breathe into right?
So I want to breathe life into others.
And if I had my creator's breathing life into me, I must
(24:00):
breathe life into others. And I feel, as you know, my,
our, our vision statement is to inspire worlds, not to inspire
the world, but to inspire worldsbecause we can all do this in
our sphere of influence. And if each one of us breathes
into someone else in our sphere of influence, then we all can
inspire the world, right. So that's kind of the, the, the,
(24:23):
the, all the, the, the far out there vision.
But we do that in our company. We do that through inspirational
speeches or we do it through fireside chats.
We're talking to CEO, talking tosales teams, you know, to, to
get other people to see of how we can service one another
better. And I think that's really, you
know, as I'm thinking about yourquestion and, and how I'm
(24:45):
thinking about things now we have it's, it's, it's, it's
tense, right? Is to look at how can we shift
the narrative? How can we change the
conversation of how we think about it?
Even when we say uncertainty, The question I asked then for
executive and CEO is what have we ever had certainty?
When did you know exactly what was going to happen tomorrow?
(25:08):
Yeah. As if we did, we would have we
would have predicted the pandemic, even though people
were in predicting the pandemic,we had the administration that
we're predicting that was going to something was going to
happen. Just a matter of when.
We didn't know exactly when, right.
So we have to operate on our day-to-day.
But with this, with the same concept of, of thinking about
how do we shift the way that we're sharing the information?
(25:32):
We've always had it this way, always, always done it this way.
Now let's, let's think about the, the, the elevation of that
and, and where we can actually take it.
So that's how I think about things now.
It's, it's, it's getting to as many people to share these ideas
because what happens it, it opens up the way we, they think
(25:53):
in their sphere of influence. Because I'm, I'm not in their
sphere of influence except for that one meeting or conference
or, or, you know, executive coaching session, whatever we're
in is that's my, that's my sphere of influence with them.
But they have their own and theycan take that and and continue
to run and open up those apertures for everyone else.
(26:16):
Johnny, we could probably keep talking for ages, but I know
that you are sensitive to your time and I'm at the end of the
time that we that we had together.
But I'm deeply grateful for you sharing your insights.
I love the concept of MPA to elevate.
I've been working really hard onletting go of certain things
that I can grow in other areas. So this is resonating a ton for
(26:37):
me. If people want to find out more
about your work, learn about you, and connect with you
online, where can they do that? Thank you for that.
There are two basic places. One is we have the website
whichisjohnregister.com and so that kind of starts everything.
All the social media channels there.
I'm most active on social media on LinkedIn and Instagram.
(27:00):
Those are my most 2. The other place that we're
having conversation, we're we'rebuilding a global community is
on our Jr. 90 day leadership sprints.
And you can find that also on the website as well.
I mean, yeah. So it's it's really fascinating
to see, you know, as I travel the globe, being able to connect
(27:21):
the dots of other like minded individuals and I truly do it
like a mastermind, but I don't do a mastermind for myself.
I actually have other people in the group lead the mastermind
and I stay out of it so they canhave their own conversation
inside of it. Right.
So I have a lady from Denmark who actually leading one of the
the masterminds inside of insideof our group.
So that's that's how we continueto inspire worlds.
(27:45):
That's awesome, John. Thank you for your time, buddy.
I really appreciate it. It's great to connect, great to
chat. Good luck with everything at
Colorado Springs. I know it's a great time for the
Olympic and Paralympic communities and deeply grateful
for you joining us for this amazing conversation.
All right everyone, hope you enjoyed that.
Thanks so much for tuning in. If you want more info, check out
(28:08):
John at John register.com. Loads of resources there,
programs you can take part in and you can check.
Out his book as. Well, thank you so much for
listening in. It's great to be with you.
Really appreciate it. If you enjoyed this episode,
share it on your socials and ping me on my socials at Doctor
Greg Wells. All right, that's it for this
week. Have a great one, everyone.
Talk to you soon.
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