Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - What's Wrong With Youth Sports? | NFL Great, Greg Olsen

Episode Date: May 25, 2022

This week’s conversation is with Greg Olsen, a football broadcaster for FOX Sports and former tight end who played in the NFL for 14 seasons. During his time in the league, Greg was a three-time Pro Bowler, currently ranks fifth all-time among tight ends for receptions and receiving yards, and left the Carolina Panthers – where he spent a majority of his career – as the franchise’s all-time leading tight end in receptions receiving yards, and 100-yard receiving games. Now – alongside his career as a sportscaster – Greg co-launched a media company, Audiorama, with its flagship podcast, Youth Inc., where Greg discusses the changing world of youth sports in America.There is much more to Greg than meets the eye or what’s read on his NFL resumé.The majority of this conversation is about what sits underneath his success. It’s about leading, learning, parenting, and how sport can play an integral role in our kids’ upbringing - but we also dive into how he and his family dealt with crisis – and did it in a way that was extremely public. I think you’re going to resonate on multiple levels with Greg – especially if you’re committed to living authentically – with high standards – and deeply connected to your loved ones._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Don't get me wrong. No one wants to suffer. But part of the human condition of existence is suffering and the understanding that suffering doesn't make you weird. It makes you normal. Welcome. I'm Dr. Michael Gervais, and this is the Finding Mastery podcast where we learn from people who challenge the edges and the reaches of the human experience in business and sport and science and life in general. We pull back the curtain to explore how they have committed to mastering both their craft and their minds

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For two full months for free. Terms and conditions apply. Finding Mastery is brought to you by David Protein. I'm pretty intentional about what I eat, and the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods. And when I'm traveling or in between meals, on a demanding day certainly, I need something quick that will support the way that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David Protein Bars.

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and peanut butter. I know, Stuart, you're still listening here. So getting enough protein matters. And that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value, and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Now, this week's conversation is with Greg Olson, a football broadcaster for Fox Sports

and a former tight end who played in the NFL, the National Football League, for 14 seasons. During his time in the league, Greg was a three-time Pro Bowler, currently ranks fifth in all time among tight ends for receptions and receiving yards. It's a big deal. Now, along with his career as a sportscaster, Greg co-launched a media company, Audiorama, with his flagship podcast called Youth Inc., where Greg discusses the changing world, the complicated changing world of youth sports in America. There's much more to Greg than meets the eye or what's read on his NFL resume.

The majority of this conversation is about what sits underneath his success. It's about learning. It's about leading, parenting, and how sport can play an integral role in our kids' upbringing. But we also dive into the more intimate part where we talk about how his family dealt with a crisis. And they did that in an extremely public manner. And I think you're going to resonate on multiple levels with Greg, especially if you're committed to living authentically with really high standards at the same time, being deeply connected to your loved ones. And with that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with the legend, Greg Olson.

Greg, how are you? I'm doing great. It's so good to see you again. Ah, it's so good. I'm stoked to be here with you. I've been looking forward to this since our meeting the week of the Super Bowl. I know. How about it? You talked about me coming on your show after you were kind enough to be our debut episode of my show. Very cool. So listen, let's just start there. You've got an awesome new podcast called You Think, and I loved our conversation. So folks that are interested in parenting, coaching, you know, young people, you're on it. And so I want to encourage people to check that out.

Just let's start there. What have you learned so far from the guests on your podcast? You know, I think the biggest, the biggest takeaway theme that I think I pulled, not only, you know, starting with you being kind enough to be our kind of pilot episode to show kind of proof of concept of what we were envisioning when we set out to build you think, right. The vision of you think has come from a lifetime, of course, of sports, a lifetime of growing up in the sports world as a young child. And then of course, making a career out of it and now coming full circle as a father and now trying to help use the lessons that came along the way, both good and bad from my own experience, and now pass them down to my three

children. And as a by-product, the other people's children who are on my teams, who I'm responsible for coaching and whatnot. And we, we talked long about those struggles that I have, where I felt such a responsibility to do this the right way, not only for my children, but for others. And along the way, there was no playbook. There was no, what's the right path? What's the right decisions? And that was really the inspiration behind You Think as a show

and as a brand and as a concept. And I would say, we just launched our seventh episode today. Actually, today, as we speak, your good friend, Russell Wilson, it was his podcast. And we talked a lot about you and mindset and purpose and all of those characteristics that I know you and him speak often about. And the biggest lesson we've probably learned is just how powerful kid-driven parents supported, right? Like that's the way we've simplified a lot of these conversations. And it's a very common theme where if it's parent-driven and the kid's just in the backseat along for the ride, it's not going to work.

It's going to lead to division. It's going to lead to animosity. It's going to lead to conflict. And that is the exact opposite of what we all want the youth sports experience to be. Okay. So we, interesting, you know, we're both in the NFL at the same time and then we never met in person. So you came to the Seahawks when it was all remote and virtual.

So we never got to physically be in a room until, I mean, we're on the same team at the same time, but we never got to be in a room until we did a podcast together, which is like really bizarre. And so I just want to say first congrats on your body of work. Okay. Yeah. Like I was reading some of the stats. Um, I didn't need to read the stats to know this, but, uh, across the league, fifth and sixth in catches and yards received, like legit, like for tight ends across the league. I mean, so you've done some stuff in the league. Now that's just contextual for you are radically dedicated to the youth experience in sport. And I believe that that would start from your youth experience in sport. So can we just kind of start there with what was it like growing

up with a dad who was your coach, a mom who was in PE, a household of other, I think it was just boys, but did you have sisters? Nope. All boys. Yep. Yeah. So the testosterone, the physicality, you know, like bring us into that because I grew up with a sister. My family was sports supportive, but they were not engaged and involved. So help me understand what it was like growing up in that respect for you. Yeah. I mean, from the time I was born, I mean, you mentioned it. My father was a longtime high school football coach, 40 years until he retired. And my youngest brother came through his school. I mean, he took over the job at the local high school. We grew up in a town outside of New York City, northern New Jersey, just like a small suburban town, public high school.

He took that job in 1985. And me and my I was born in 1985. My older brother was born in 83. So, I mean, our entire life was through the football experience of my dad and his teams. You know, those were the players we idolized the senior quarterback and the senior running back. Those were the numbers we'd wear in pop Warner. You know, we weren't growing up wishing to be NFL football players. We weren't growing up wishing to be college, our life dream as young kids, as ball boys and water boys for my dad's team and in the locker room, changing the seniors cleats, you know, the removable cleats. That was like the highlight of our day. We're five, six years old. All we wanted to be was high school football players on Friday night for my dad's team. Like that's what we saw ourselves as. That's what we dreamed about at night. And aren't from the time I was five, six years old, we were playing football and we were playing

other sports and we were playing basketball and baseball and whatnot. But football just from an early time was what our family did. And it wasn't ever forced on us. It wasn't, hey, you have no choice. We loved it. Me and my older brother, we were closer in age. I have a younger brother who's 10 years younger than me. So me and my older brother kind of went through it together, only being a class apart. Our summer trips, people would talk about going on vacation and we're going to the

Jersey shore. Like we would go sleep on dorm room floors. And my dad would work Penn state's high school football camp as a, as a coach. And, you know, to make it, you know, make a couple extra bucks in the summer, you know, Rutgers, Rutgers, teams in the Northeast would hold their high school camps. We would go as young kids, sleep on the floor in the dorm, get up, and we'd be going out and competing against high school kids as elementary and middle school kids just tagging along and just trying to keep up. We were just always around it.

We loved it. We couldn't get enough of it. And that's where really the foundation and the love of sport and what it could do for us, both on the field, but also just in life just was from the time I can remember. Okay. So it is what you, it is the model that you hear from so many. It's like, listen, to become really skilled at something, you have to love it. And it doesn't mean that you can't peak. You could not love something and still be world-class, but it's more of a peak than it is a sustainable arc. And so I'm interested in that sustainability. I'm interested in sustaining

high performance and flourishing and, and true mastery. And I wonder if your dad didn't coach and let's say coach football even more particularly, and you loved landscaping as much as you loved this thing of football. Like, do you think that your parents would have supported that? Or was it also more like, I just wanted to be around dad. I want to be around my brother. I was big.

I imagine you were big as a kid too. And it just, this movement thing came really easy. And I liked feeling good at something. Yeah, I think it was really a perfect storm, right? I think being born into that environment, first and foremost, gave me and my brothers a significant advantage over our peers, right? At a young age, the access to information,

the access to practice, to camps, to competing against older kids, the access we had through my dad and his contacts was unrivaled at that time. No one ever left their town. We weren't going on seven on seven tournaments and flying across the country. Like kids do now you played in your town and chances are you played the five towns that touched your town. Like that was your league, right? So we had a distinct advantage being born into that environment. For sure. The thing that, the thing that was

unique about all three of us and, and, and then about my two brothers and myself, but then just specifically me, like no one ever had to tell me to go to practice until my last year in the NFL. Like I still, to this day, if it, if I can go help my younger brother coach his high school football, if he's like, hey, will you come up to practice and work with the wide receivers? I can't wait. I'll look forward to it for three days. Like I genuinely enjoyed the quest of like improvement, acquiring information. I'm like eternally like curious.

So when you say would I have been good if my dad was a landscaper, if he coached baseball or another sport, I have always poured everything that I've loved in my life. I've always poured my whole body into it. Now, sometimes that's a, we've talked about this. That's a very troubling existence at times, but when it came time to pursuing football, the access, the information that I was able to be born into, and an undying love and passion for competing and challenging myself and pushing the limits, that whole recipe gave me a really significant advantage over a lot of other people at a young age. You're reminding me of when I was 13, 14, 15. So I didn't fit in traditional stick and ball sports. I don't know if you and I've talked about this, but I didn't get it. I didn't get these adults who like, my dad wasn't coaching, you know?

So I didn't get these adults screaming, you know? And I didn't get these arbitrary rules. So I didn't go that route. I went to action sports and you're describing something that I found in myself, which was, we called it frothing. So like just this absolute, it's almost like the beer head is frothing over or the soda pop is frothing over. Like, I just got to get in the water. I just want to go surf. I just can't, whatever. It didn't matter. I was sleeping in the board bags that you put your surfboard in at the edge of the beach in like dirty environments, just so I could be the first one in the water in the morning before sunrise came up. And so it's that type of almost crazy commitment, obsessiveness that felt wonderful at an early age. And it doesn't get complicated until later. And so can you hit on, when you got older, and even during the young periods, there's a complication that comes from dad being dad, dad being mentor, dad being hard-ass coach. what were some of the complications there? And I'm not asking you to go

somewhere that is too overwhelming because I don't know if it was overwhelming, but what are the complications there for you? Yeah. And something else, because obviously that's a huge point and that's something we really dive into on You Think and me and you talked extensively about it on that first episode we did together together something you brought up on before that I should definitely touch on is you you brought up the idea of like how much did my involvement being to be around my brothers and to do what they did and to be around my dad and that was that was definitely a big part of it like to spend that time with your father doing something you both loved right it wasn't doing something your father loved and you just went along and did it, right? My dad loved to fish. I don't love to fish,

but I guess I'll go just because I want to spend time with my dad. We all genuinely loved football and everything that came with it. So to spend time doing it was a great way for us to all spend time together. We didn't go hunting and fishing. We didn't go on vacation. Like we didn't do a lot of that with our dad, like stuff with our dad was sports. And then we were home and as a family dinner, we're like, that was really all we did. Let's stay here because there's an unlock here. I think that's important is that can you think through and feel through how your dad influenced how you felt when you were doing your thing at a young age? Like that's the unlock because you loved it. Now, I don't think that a young kid necessarily loves football. There's something about it that it's environmental and it's physiological, but when you get physical

as well, but when you get those connected, that's where the unlock is. So what did your dad do to create an environment for you to go, God, this is amazing? Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of it was we had great access to it. We got to have a lot of really cool experiences as young kids that were in the world of sports, but then specifically football, right? How did your dad shape that? Right. So my dad easily could have, right? So he would go a lot to Penn State. They would have 2000 high school, nine through 12th graders every summer. Back then, when I was growing up, these football camps that colleges would host were a week long. They were

Monday through Friday. Nowadays, everything's like a one day showcase, a one day recruitment camp. Everything's a lot more segmental and specific and whatnot. But back then it was a week long camp and every school would have them. And he would mostly just work the ones in the Northeast for a couple bucks and make money in the summer. He could have easily said, you guys are staying home with mom. I'm going to go. I'm going to be up at 6 AM. I'm going to be in bed at 10 AM, 10 PM. I'm going to coach all day, multiple segments, a million kids. I don't have time for six and seven year old kids to be tagging along and have to keep you guys.

He very easily could have done that. We could have stayed home with my mom. She was a school teacher. So she was home in the summer. No problem. He never did anything that he didn't include us on. He didn't go coach college football when he could have taken multiple jobs because he didn't want to be away from us, right? Like he made it a point that whatever he did, we came. And if the colleges

said, you can't bring your kids, he wouldn't have done it. So like we learned early on that that was a huge priority for him was to have us tag along. So when he's going up there and work in these college camps at major division one universities, we're six, seven, eight years old, sleeping on the dorms, in the coaches, in the coaches offices, they'd give us flyers at the time, you couldn't like send a mass email, we'd go and post flyers on all the dorm rooms, if practice was changed or canceled, like, we felt a part of it. And then along the way, we would do the drills, and we'd catch passes, we'd just kind of mess around. And then as we got older, we actually were campers, right? So like we always had these really cool experiences and access to really interesting people in the world of football

that made it fun. It made it exciting. We weren't just the kids who come fall, went and played for their local pop Warner. And when the fall was over, we never saw a ball anymore. Like it was all around us. And it just so happened to be that we all really loved doing it. So it was like a really cool, interesting connection. If one of those two things wasn't the case, maybe we would have kept playing and maybe we would have gone through the motions, but maybe it wouldn't have had the same impact and the same kind of outcome that it ended up having. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentus. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers,

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Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code FINDINGMASTERY20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FINDINGMASTERY20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. So your dad's first principle was, I do this with my kids. I do this with my boys yep so that's a first principle that would shape how he would um take opportunities or not and then that first principle the the downstream from that is that you greg mattered to dad and your brothers mattered so there was a sense of um uh i don't there's not a better word maybe like just that from the inside out, like, wow, I matter to my hero, to my dad. And there was probably a sense of safety and community and

protection and I got your back and special access. So all of that probably felt really fun. But the most important is the first principle, which is I matter to my dad. Yeah. And I think, and to your point where that became challenging, which you brought up earlier was what were the hardships, right? We've talked about all the fun. Okay. So the hardships were your dad's opinion really matters. And I did not have a dad. I mean, he's we're extremely close. He lives like three miles from me. I see him almost every day. He comes to the kids, the grandkids practice. Like we are very, very close to this, to this minute. He was very hard on us, right? Like his opinion mattered and he was not the dad that everything's okay. Like there was an expectation that if you say

you want to do this, we wanted to do that. We were not there against our will, but if we were there, there was an expectation for how we were going to do a practice, how we were not there against our will, but if we were there, there was an expectation for how we were going to do a practice, how we were going to do a workout, how we were going to perform our attitude to our coach, our hustle, whatever the case may be, the standard was very high. And to a lot of people, they thought we were crazy and we probably were, but it was not for everybody. His level that he made his high school kids attached to and, and, and push towards was no different than what he asked us to do as young kids in the house. Like he was very serious about how we were going to represent ourselves and our family and go out and perform and our attitudes and all of those things. So at times when we

didn't play well, or we had bad games, or we had a bad attitude, and we lost our temper and slammed our bat, whatever it was, the ramifications were hard. He was hard on us. If we won second place in a trophy, that trophy was not making it home. There was no like, I'm really proud of you guys. You tried hard. No, like the expectation was to perform and perform at a high level. And we loved it. Like we embraced it. I think at the time I look back on it fondly. I think in the time it was probably hard as a young kid to like, you know, wrap your head around all of that, but like that, that ability to grind and push and deal with adversity and not feel sorry for yourself and no excuses, like no one's coming to

rescue you. Like we learned that really, really young. And I've carried that with me my whole life. So this is, we're flirting with very dangerous emotional wellness territory. But there's a fine line between things. So I want to, okay, let's just start with a really, um, provocative question. Do you love yourself as a man right now? Oh, absolutely. Do you, do you know you matter outside of what you do? Totally. Yeah. Um, do you feel powerful as a human to do good in the world?

Absolutely. Are you self-motivated from an inside out intrinsically driven is what I'm asking. Oh yeah. Yeah. Too much. So too much. So at times is your reward predominantly right now as a man, is it, um, is it to look good? Is it to do good or is it, um, to have the external luxuries of life? No, I get more satisfaction at this stage of my life and what I can do for other people, both within my family and outside of my family. I get more reward out of that. I'm not driven by materialistic things. I'm not my house, my car, my vacay. That stuff doesn't motivate me. Like I love the chase of the

accomplishment. I love when I love validation for validation. No, I've just always, I've just always enjoyed the chase. I've always enjoyed learning something new, studying something new. Like there'll be nights where I'll sit for an hour in bed and like fall into a wormhole on like the American revolution. And like, I'll like, you know what I mean? Like it's just the kind of mind that I have that I really enjoy. I'm inquisitive. I just really enjoy the chase, the pursuit and where the pursuit ends sometimes varies, right. Played 14 years in the NFL. I'm never going to be a historian,

but it's still a fun journey. It's still right. Like it doesn't mean I need to be the foremost expert on it, but like I'm a naturally curious person and I don't mind the chase. I don't mind the journey along the way. I'm not so much worried about the destination. Like even in my football career, that was never the end game for me was not to make a pro bowl. I wanted to make 10. You know what I mean? Like it was never enough. I always thought I could do more. You're hitting your, okay. So I can't wait to open up this, this dark side because this, this interesting, unique Petri dish of the Olson family, you know, and each family is their own

Petri dish because of the unique genetic predispositions, the family history that comes into, and then your unique experiences in life, having two brothers, for example. So it's this petri dish, this living laboratory, is that dad saw you, so you knew you mattered, but there was also an equally high standard of needing to accomplish or perform or excel. Now, if you don't have that first, the second one is very dangerous because now you don't matter beyond just the accomplishment. And there's high anxiety in that situation. If you rotate the other way and it's like you matter, but there's zero standards of excellence, well, that's entit's a there's a challenge in that as well now so so let's go into like what were the scary parts of being and i don't want i'm not

asking you to talk bad about dad you love dad i get it dad dad sees you and but with high standards as a young kid there's maybe there's times when you didn't have the emotional skills or the psychological skills to meet that standard expectation. So what were some of the scary experiences that you had as a young 12-year-old? Yeah. I mean, disappointment. And again, and I look back on it and everything is always so relative, right? To the moment. When I was a a high school junior my brother was a high school senior my younger brother is seven right so like you know wide range of he's the water boy my brother's the division one quarterback who's signed to go to notre dame i'm the junior five-star recruit everyone's recruiting my dad's the legendary coach the expectation is we should win every game and we

should win the state championship my dad had never won one at this school. He had won some at a previous school. So it was like kind of on our shoulders, like are the Olsen boys finally going to get their school over the hump and win a state championship? I think back on that now and like in the rankings of important things in my life over the last 37 years. It's not at the top, right? Like, but when I was 17, it was my whole life. It was the most intense. It was the most, it was at the top of the mountain to be, to win the high school state championship in New Jersey. Like, it sounds so ridiculous, but that's how we think in the moment. Right. And we lost. So like heartbreak and failure, like we had a lot of setbacks. Like we, we had a really, we had really good players. My brother and I were on the same

team and we were both good and like, but we didn't win every game. And like losing was not great in our house. Like losing was not tolerated. Losing was not like, it's okay. We tried hard. It just wasn't. And if my dad was sitting here right next to me today, I'd say the same thing. And he'd nod his head and go, yeah, it's just the way it was. The thing that I would say, if you asked my brothers, if you asked people that played for my dad, that would come back with their grandchildren to our night before Thanksgiving annual father, son beefsteak, and these like annual events, my dad built into the culture of his team everyone knew that no matter how hard he was no matter how hard the situation was no matter how hard he came down you like everything was rooted and he had this like unconditional love for not only his boys but the guys on his team so like there was this understanding that no matter how hard it was, like he loved you unconditionally and almost

loved you too much that he cared so much that it would like, it would make him crazy to not see you perform to the standards that he knew you could like, does that make sense? So like, at least it was rooted in that. And I think that's why all of us think back on it the way we do and the way his former players love him and call him on father's day and come like, here's this guy that for four years was hard as hell on them. And like, they're calling him at 55 years old for, for father's day to say, Hey coach, thinking about you. Like it's crazy.

So when you coach your kids now, what have you learned? What have you changed? And what are you doing that you're like, God, I don't know if I'm doing this right. I'm just doing it the way dad taught me. But how are you doing any of this differently? Because there's a very popular message, and I would love to unpack this with you, about failure and the importance of it and knowing how to work with it. And I've got some deep thoughts about that and I'm sure you do too. So how are you coaching now?

You know, I would say at times, and if I'm being completely honest, and again, we dove deep into this on my show, at times I believe in a lot of those core values to the way I was coached, right? I believe that those core foundations of accountability and being told the truth and not sugarcoated and not everything's okay. It's okay. You're only 10, you're only 10, you're 12, you're 30, whatever it is. Like there needs to be a bond and a love and a respect, not only with my kids, but even the other kids that I coach where they know that no matter what, and this is hard, this needs to be constantly reinforced, not only with what you say, but the way you engage with these young kids, the way you have time for them, the way you make time for them, for them to really put the barrier down and say, this guy genuinely cares about me. You talk about first principles. If this person genuinely cares about me, if that's the starting point, it's a lot easier to layer in these other

elements. If there's this animosity and there's this resentment, every time I come down on you for a mistake or a bad attitude, if you already resent me, it's just going to compound and get even worse. So I try to find the balance of those two things. Now, having said that, I have really tried hard to improve my patience, improve my messaging, improve the times I come down hard on them, and in times I put my arm around them and we talk through it. Like I've made myself much more aware of how impactful those moments are, not only from my upbringing, but just from my own kids and dealing with my own teams. And at times that's challenging for me. I'm the first to admit it, but I have gotten better. I do understand the ramifications. I do understand how at no point do I ever want any of this to ever come between me and my kids, me and my wife. To me, it's not worth it. So I've made strides in that area consciously because it is a different time. It is a different world nowadays. Kids have a lot more things going on around them. They're a little more fragile.

I understand that. It's not 1985 anymore. And I realized that things change and move on and it's our job as adults to adapt and change accordingly. One of your sons was born with congenital heart defect with a congenital heart defect. How did that? I'll tell you, I mean, I talk. Yeah. Go ahead. No, go ahead. No, please go ahead. I feel even insensitive the way that I interjected that because what I want to understand is like, how has that impacted you and your philosophy and the way you coach and love and the way that you think about the future. And so I don't want to be insensitive when I said it, but I know this is a massive game changer for you, but maybe for some folks that don't know that, uh, what it is, we could start there,

but also get into like, how did this impact you? Yeah. I mean, you talk about it a huge, huge, not only a moment, it's really been a nine year journey. Really quickly, my son, TJ, he's nine. He'll be 10 in this October. He was born with a congenital, a very serious complex congenital heart defect called hypoplastic left heart syndrome. In essence, in layman's terms, he didn't have a left ventricle. His entire left chamber of his heart was non-functional from the moment he was born. We knew he was going to be born with it. He was diagnosed, um, in utero. So at two days old, he underwent what would become three reconstructive open heart surgeries to make, they call them a single ventricle. He's going to have

one ventricle, one chamber of his heart that is going to do the entire cardiac process that you and I have multiple chambers to pump oxygenated and deoxygenated blood. His blood would all pool in one of those ventricles and they would create passive air flows with the lungs. And it was like a three-stage process, two days old, five months old, two years old. So he got reconstructed to a single ventricle. He lived like that for six years. So he was six years post his final surgery as a single ventricle, what they call single ventricle baby last summer or last spring. We're coming up on about a year last May. Um, we brought him in and he was dying. He was determined that he was in heart failure. His single ventricle Fontan was no longer working appropriately. He was not the heart function, the muscle tissue was deteriorating and he was in pretty much full scale heart failure.

We were put on the heart transplant list and June of last year, TJ, my son at eight years old, underwent a heart transplant. And, you know, the thing that I always, as I reflect back and you ask like what kind of a game changer that is, you know, the words that start coming back is like perspective, right? Love, perseverance, adversity. You know, I touched on earlier, like those lessons I learned as a tough kid that like, yeah, there's going to be bad days and no one's coming to rescue you. No one feels bad for you. Like, yeah, we love you as a family and we're here to help you. But like the outside world's moving on. Everyone, you know, they're going to give you your condolences. They feel bad in the moment.

They're moving on. And if you don't move on with them, you're going to get stuck in this bad moment. Like we learned those early on. And I think when we, and it really prepared us, my wife and I to go through this with TJ for, you know, in essence, nine years where, yeah, we had our bad days. We had our moments where I needed to be the rock. And then I had days where I needed her to be the rock. And we kind of would take turns picking each other up. And we learned a lot about each other. You know, you learn a lot about relationships and family and love when things are bad, right?

Everyone's great when things are good. That's easy to live. But like, how are, how is your marriage when things are bad? How is marriage when you're both on two hours of sleep in the ICU and you're a little irritated? Can you take a deep breath and be patient with one another? Are you going to jump down each other's throat because you're on edge? All of those lessons were really, really valuable for us. And I'll tell you, these last nine years have really changed our perspective and outlook on what's really important and what are things that we think are important. Many marriages, the divorce rate, when there's a child who's got needs beyond what a normal, when I say normal, meaning non-medical issue, what the hell is

normal, but they really struggle. Those relationships really, really struggle for obvious reasons, financial, emotional, structural, the whole thing. So let's assume maybe you have had some times when you've been on two hours of sleep and really irritated and you made a decision that was not favorable to kindness and love and compassion and you barked and you, whatever you did or snapped, how do you repair? I would hope if my wife was sitting here or my kids were sitting here or my parents or a friend or whoever, like by no means would anyone ever label me as like the most patient. He's never mad. He's always kind of like, they would never say that. But I, if I could ask them to pick one thing,

it's, I can be honest with myself. Like I can say when I'm wrong and that doesn't hurt my feelings. I'm not insecure about it. It doesn't crush my ego. Like I've been wrong a lot. And there's times where I am impatient and I lose my, but I can pretty quickly reflect back and be like, you are out of line. You need to make it work. So in those events, whether it's coming down too hard on my kids or snapping back at my wife when she didn't deserve it or whatever, whoever the person is, but especially those closest to you. I have a hard time moving forward

until I make sure I do my end of the repair. I'm gonna go and I'm gonna address it and I'm gonna acknowledge the areas where I fell short and maybe the motivations behind it. And it's not to make excuses or rationalize it. It's just to say, hey, here's where I was in the moment. Here's why I was short-tempered. Here's why I was impatient, whatever it was, and address it.

And you would hope in a relationship that's built on love and built on trust, the people closest to you that love you and whatnot, most of the time, they will kind of meet you halfway and kind of share that. So my wife and I had plenty of moments where we took out the chaos around us on each other. You typically take it out on those closest to you for whatever reason. You probably know better than I do. Why? But the one thing I would say is my wife is the strongest person of all time when she needs to be strong.

So in those moments, she never took it personal. If she came back at me, I never took it personal. We never let those arguments get in between that the two of us were what we really needed to this day to continue to do this game of life. And we were just very fortunate. You say it, divorce and whatnot. Our marriage was better as a result of this than it was beforehand. And I don't know if that's good or bad, but it is. And we're thankful for it in that regard.

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If you're looking for high-quality personal care products that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash findingmastery and use the code code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. I think there's probably a theme, which is that you guys, what we call, I don't know, you're probably very familiar with this phrase, but I it all the time there's a front-loading so before the crisis before the information of a medical deep medical challenge there's there's a front-loaded connection the relationship has weight to it and if that if that water in the bucket is not there ahead of time, then when the crisis hits, it's like, well, there's nothing here. Like, okay, fine. Let me

get a new bucket. And I'm being callous here, but it sounds like there was a deep connection. You saw her, she saw you, there was an investment in the same fashion that your dad saw you, but also had high standards. Maybe that's been passed on, but you know, I, I didn't, I, I just want to make sure that second surgery that took place. Can you, what, how did that go for your son? His heart transplant? Yeah. So his heart transplant.

So he was put on the heart transplant list last May. He had the cert, he had the transplant in June and that was a long journey. You know, that his, you know, that he didn't wake up for two days. You know, we, from, you know, the surgery was about 16, 17 hours. Um, it's really a fascinating process. You know, one doctor flies on a private, on a private plane of the hospital to whatever center that the donor, um, the donor body is to observe the organ. There's multiple organs being curated to go throughout the country, procured, I guess is the word, throughout the country to different centers. So there's like this third party entity that's like managing all this

organ procurement. And then you're waiting back in Charlotte in this case, and TJ's in the operating room with the other cardiothoracic surgeon who has him opened up on bypass, put to sleep under anesthesia, and then they're waiting. So like when that organ arrives, it comes down, it's escorted by a team. It goes right in. Like it's this well-orchestrated dance between like multiple health centers throughout the country. So that the anxiety of a parent getting like the blow by blow weight for 17 hours that day was excruciating. When he finally opened his eyes, you know, so say 48 hours later, give or take,

when he opened his eyes, it was like, whew, you know, like a deep breath. Like it's not over. The journey is just starting, but like his eyes opened. And when we call his name, he knows like he's with it. And that was like the first time we probably took a breath in a few days and said like, we're on our way. And it was just baby steps. And my wife and I, we spent a lot of time in the hospital with him over the last nine years. And like our, what we would always hold our hope was like, not every day is going to be good. All we asked is that we had more good days than bad days. If we had more good days than bad days, although it might be a very slow build, we're always going to be moving closer to that end goal, which is to bring them home and be back under one roof as a family. So

he's playing baseball. He's in school. As we speak, he's, he's really starting to come into his own and like having him at baseball practice last night. Like sometimes I got to remind myself, like, all right, the ball went between his legs last summer. I didn't know if he would ever be here. So like, for me, that's really hard. I'm like, come on, like feel the ball. But then I also am like, buddy, look at us. Like we would lay in the hospital at night talking about what are the three things we want to do when we get home. And it was like, I want to play. I want to walk the dog. He had like these three funny things, you know, and we're doing one of them. He wanted to play baseball again with his buddies. He's not going to be Derek Jeter. He's not going to be who cares. He's on the team. He's on the

field. He contributes and he's happy as hell to run around after the game with his buddies and be silly and be a nine-year-old boy. Like to me, that's a win. And that wasn't always a win for me. I'll be honest. But you talk about perspective and understanding circumstances, that would probably be a great example. Thank you for sharing. I think I had a hard time moving through the conversation because I got stuck at the hospital experience of me being a dad and like that part. And then when you came back, I kind of snapped back in when, when you're like, ball rolls between his legs. And it's kind of like, you know, like, you know, like, I'm like, Oh, my God, dude, my heart, my heart's swelling thinking about my responses. So let me go back. How did you manage? What were the first principles and best practices?

And how did you and your wife do that? Yeah, so the hospital was a challenge. The hospital over the years, we've had a lot of stays, some longer than others. You know, his first. We never brought him home until almost 40 days after he was born, which in reality is actually not too bad. He had surgery on day two. He was seven pounds. I mean, he was a little, little baby. The biggest struggles that we had in those early times, and this was something that kind of ended up really affecting my career in a positive was we really had to learn the concept. And it sounds very cliche of like being where your feet

were at the time he was born. We had a 16 month old son who was home, my oldest. And then TJ has a twin sister. So she was less than a month old and she was home. We had a 16 month old who was home and TJ was in the hospital for 40 some odd days. So like the idea of trying to be everything to everyone at the same time was just not realistic. And in the beginning, while you're playing while I'm playing, he was born in October, right? He was born in October, 2012, the day after we played Seattle Seahawawks in charlotte which is a weird

in charlotte we lost at the end on a we lost like 10-7 or something crazy we had the ball on the goal line and i remember i was there yeah yeah so he was born on a bye week because as i said my wife is an absolute stud so she we were able to determine that the babies would be delivered on a bi-week so that we could do what we had to do. And so, yeah, so that started the journey. And, and, and, you know, our thing always was like, if we, if it was time to be at the hospital, we needed grandparents and family members and neighbors that could help us. Again, not ideal. Nothing replaces mom and dad, especially at that age. But we really tried to accept the fact that it was outside of our control. When we needed to be at the hospital, we needed to be at the hospital. And then vice versa. What was even harder is when it was time to be the parents at home, knowing he was alone at the hospital. That was a big challenge when he was a baby, but it was a huge challenge last year when he was on the organ donor list. We really struggled with like, we wouldn't want to go take like, it would

be like, all right, one of our sets of parents, the grandparents were going to stay at the hospital with TJ. Now mind you, he's eight.. So he's up and alert and all that. And we're going to take the kids for ice cream, say something as simple as that. We would walk into ice cream places and just be overridden with guilt. Because we felt like people, of course, knew what was happening. The whole state and country knew what we were going through because we shared it to, you know, to share that message. And then like, all we could think about is like, are people seeing us in ice cream, laughing with their other two kids and be like, oh, can you imagine they have a son at the hospital? Like no one was saying it, but like in our minds, they were saying it,

you know? So like we had to really say, screw what other people think. If they think that that's on them, like it's time for us to be parents to our other children who are not in the hospital. So like flipping our cap back and forth to like servicing the needs of where we were at any given moment didn't come easy to us, but we got better as the years went on being where we were at that moment and being all there, which again, for me was never easy. Like it was hard for me to ever unplug and just be in one thing without worrying about every other thing. Like that was a huge challenge for us as parents. And, um, I'd say probably one of the bigger obstacles that we faced. Was the obstacle, the guilt and the fear of what they might be thinking?

I think so. I think if we're being honest with ourselves, like everyone, no one wants to be deemed as like, I think what we were internalizing and we would talk about it and we got to the point then we were like, screw them. Like, we don't have the energy to worry about what the townsfolk think. You know what I mean? Unlock, unlock those conversations just a little bit because did you address it with your wife? Like, Oh yeah, we would, we would openly talk about it because in the beginning it was like, all right, what do you want to do? Let's just, let's bring food in. We'll spend the night with, with Tate and Talbot or two other two kids. And TJ's good. He's got his doctors, He's got his grandparents or his aunts and uncles, whoever it was. And let's just stay in. We don't need to be out in public. Let's just really focus. And then as time went on and it was a long journey, we're like, no, we have a right on a Friday night to take our two kids for ice cream and dinner.

Yes, we have a kid up the street in the hospital. Yes, we have a kid recovering from a heart transplant. Yes. But we also have two other kids who right now need mom and dad because they've also been through a very trying time. They're trying to process why I haven't seen my brother in a month. There's a lot for them to process it. Every day at school, parent teachers are asking them. They're doing special events for TJ and sending them videos. And his brother and sister are young and trying to wrap their minds. So like they needed us too. And my wife and I would be like, you know what?

We've got to get over this. We can't feel guilty because we're parenting our two children who are not in the hospital. We can't feel that burden, but it took like really working through it after a while to get comfortable with not really caring if people wanted to pass judgment on how we decided to parent at a time that was very difficult. So how did you, did you do, was it like, fuck those people? Or was it like, you know what? We just can't, we can't get in that narrative. We have to be like, how did you do, what was the approach that you did that?

Because I think what you're talking about is remarkable, remarkably clear, the power of contorting oneself to not be unfavorable to others. And the compromise is ridiculous. And so I want to understand how you did that. Like the actual tone of it. Yeah. You know, I think it probably went through stages. I think in the beginning, the guilt one, right. For the first couple of weeks, it was fresh. It was raw. It was, but that has nothing to do with what they might be thinking. It was the, it was the emotions that Karen and I had. Yeah. It was, it was less about outside perception and more just about like, could we, how did we feel about going out for a quote unquote fun night when TJ's

recovering or waiting for a heart transplant? Like we felt guilty. Like we almost were like, we're not allowed to go enjoy things until he's all better. Cause it's not like, you know what I mean? Like we, that's how we almost had it internalized. It had nothing to do with other people's opinions. Then as time went on, it probably got into the stage where we felt like, okay, we've processed this. We're in a good place. We know the plan, his doctors like bang, bang, bang. Like we've the initial shock of the diagnosis has worn off to a degree. We need to start reentering a little bit of our normalcy. The kid's school's coming to

a close. It's summer. What are our kids going to sit around an empty house all day as we feel bad for ourselves? Like, no, like we need to pick our shit up and go and live as normal a life as the circumstances allow. So like that was stage two. And then that last piece when it was like, yeah, we want to take the kids out. It's Friday night. They don't have games. It's a beautiful day in the summer. Let's go for ice cream and take them for dinner.

TJ's got family members, his grandparents, whoever it is at the hospital. He's fine. He's being taken care of. And we're 10 minutes, God forbid they need us. Can we now venture out and have people see us and look at us and ask us how he's doing? Are we willing to talk about it in public face to face? Are we willing to share any, if someone stopped us and said, how's he doing? Like, are we good? Like, how are we going to handle that? So like, it was probably a gradual process. And then the last process was like, listen, we chose to share this.

We chose to make our story, our son's story public because we felt we had an obligation and a platform that we could do a lot of good. Like a lot of good could come out of what was in essence bad for us. And we felt like it was very fulfilling for us. It really filled the void of anger and pity and self-doubt. It gave us hope. It gave us a mission. It gave us something that we really could wrap our heads around, which is why we do the foundation and why we do a lot of what we do.

And I think that last stage allowed us to just take a deep breath and be like, you know what? We need to live our life. 99.9% of this community is going to be incredibly supportive as they have this entire time. People need to see us out there. They need to see us with our head held high because that's the image. Like that's not so much that it's the image we have to portray. Like that's who we are.

Like we are those people and we can't change because the situation we're in has changed. Thank you. You are famous. Many people know you. And all of us have a community that people know us. So whether it's a million people or 10 people, what you just described, I think we can all see ourselves in. And what most people don't do is they don't, they, they, they over-rotate on keeping it really private as opposed to like, no, no, no, we're going to live authentically. And so, you know, we have this insight and it's not ours. It's just so it's just keeps showing up from pain to purpose. And I've got to, I've got to, I'd stand on just

about any table to say that pain is the way through change, like to, to, to embrace and understand your suffering so that you can see the suffering of others, that that is, that is one of the most radical transformative acts that you can do is to be honest with your own suffering. And it sounds to me as though you had purpose before, but it wasn't like this. It was more self-achievement based or maybe team achievement based. And now it's like, well, hold on. 1% of all families are affected by, you know, heart defect and hold on.

We're right in the thick of it. We don't know the answer, but we've got some actual tools, you know, some psychological, some principles that we're working from, and we definitely want to help move this mission forward. So dude, like, thank you for sharing all that. I didn't, I watched you like on the other side when we were in the Seahawk, we're in the same conference and watching you on the other side of the field, it was purely like that big bastard caught another ball and took off for another 15, like, damn it, you know? And so, and then, but to hear what you were actually working through when you're

being nominated for, you know, a pro bowl, the sensitivity and the struggle and the appreciation I have for your, your understanding of suffering. Thank you. Thank you. Well, I appreciate that. I appreciate it. And the reason people always ask me, they're like, why did you share TJ story? Like, why have you shared the entire journey? And the answer to me is super clear. Like the answer is when we hear from folks

on the internet, social media, they come to any of our, you know, they come to our 5k or they come to a charity event, whatever it is. And when people say like, we were in a very similar situation to you, and we thought we were the only people we didn't, we thought we were alone. We thought we were the only people in the world having bad days, getting a bad diagnosis, felt like they were in a dark place, whatever it is. And then we came across your story on a tweet, on a Instagram or whatever it was. And for the first time in the entire journey, we didn't feel like we were the only people in the world going through it. And it just gave us such hope that we also could find a way to get through it. And I'm like, that's why we share it.

So there's a quote you have that I just want to read because I think it's worth taking the time right now. It says, from the day TJ was born, we have always been willing to share our struggles. I just think it's important for people to not only hear from you when you're on top of the world, but the reality and humanity of it is that a lot of people do have tough times. And I think sometimes people think that they're the only ones to go through tough times. So to share TJ's story, that has connected us to so many other stories of hope and heartache throughout our country. And that's why we do it. It's awesome. That's it. I think we live in a world where positive affirmation and positive feedback

and look at the vacation I took and look how amazing my life is and look how amazing my wife's, my marriages and my kids hit a home run. Well, guess what? That's bullshit because most people, yes, we all want great times. Don't get me wrong. No one wants to suffer. But part of the human condition of existence is suffering and the understanding that suffering doesn't make you weird. It makes you normal, right? Like it's part of the existence. It's part of what we need to do. this idea that admitting struggle, showing failure, showing defeat, showing tough times is some sort of like, you get like shunned or like, what do you mean? No, you only can post pictures that are of your best times. You only, it's like, no, like that's not real. So we just, that quote, like that to me sums up the entire process for us. There's been times where things have been hard, and I think it's fair and right for us to show people that it's okay to have tough times as long as you don't let it kill you. You can't let it kill you.

No, right. Okay. So you say those words, and I'm going to create maybe a place for you to take it a little further. You don't have to, but the opportunity is there. What is your suffering? We all have suffering. What is yours? I would say the thing that I wake up with and carry the most is I feel, and you and I have talked about this, like I feel first and foremost, step one is like, am I doing right? And am I adequate as a father and as a husband, like to the immediate people around me, number one, am I servicing and am I providing everything that they need to have

not only the best life now in this moment, but the best life going forward. That burden, to me, is never achieved. Because my entire life has been based around this perpetual state of more. Like, yeah, you had a great year last year. It's gotta be better. Yeah, but I enjoyed that. Like that to me was not a burden. That I enjoyed. But now taking that same approach to being a dad

and being a husband and being a youth coach and being responsible for other people's kids and responsible for a foundation and families whose lives depend on our ability to fundraise and sell out a golf outing. And like all of those things now that I've chosen to take up and chosen to enter into that mean a lot to me. Okay. Well, now that they mean a lot to me, I only know one way and that's being really good at it. That doesn't mean I'm always good at everything, but I am damn sure gonna push until I am, right?

So like to me, that's two different things. Like the pursuit of being great and having to be great to be happy to me are two different things. I have to pursue everything to its best. If I don't have the biggest foundation in the world, it's not going to crush me. But if I'm not the best parent and not the best dad and not the best, that is hard for me to wrap my head around. So like I'm in this constant state of like,

what's next? Okay. That was good. What's next? I just don't do good like treading water. That's beautiful. And the reason I, the simplicity in this is clear is that it's a double-edged sword. What helped you be great as an athlete and as in other roles of your life is also the same thing that does not allow you to be fully content here with exactly what is. Content. That's a great word. Yeah. I recognize it. I really recognize it. Content summarizes it. That's the best way to classify it. Absolutely. Yeah. And because it's scary to be content for that model. It's like, what are you talking about?

No, there's more. I could do more. We could do better. You know, and remember, we talked about another word that reminds me on, on when, when I had you on my show and we talked about indifference, right. And you said, there's no greater insult to, I'll never forget you saying this. You said, there's no greater insult to, I'll never forget you saying this. You said there's no greater insult to another person than being indifferent. So like to me, indifference, being content, you know, satisfied to a degree, but not quite as, that's not quite as like a strong way to phrase it. Like that's just not my style. Like I just, I can't wrap my head around. It's good enough. I just, I can't do it. And I want to. And we talk about like the stuff with the kids and coaching youth sports. It's like, great. We want our, we want every game last

week, but this Monday morning, when I wake up, I'm like, all right, this week, we've got to get better at this, this, this. And everyone's like, well, you won the tournament. I'm like, yeah, but we didn't play great. Like we won, but we can be better. So let's go get better. I love that mission of the chase. You know, I think that that is part of the drug. That's part of what got you good in so many ways. And then I want to add some context here. So I'm not going to say the same thing because we're agreeing, but the context is that there's a difference between your best and the best. And it's a dilemma that I ask people to go through. And I have a point of view. I want to share it with you right now. But I also understand when I share a point of view, it might influence yours or somebody else's, which I don't necessarily

love. I love the self-discovery process. But here's the deal is like, what are you really working towards? World-class standards of high performance for a nine-year-old, you know, like nine years old across the world, what are they doing? And let's, let's margin up as close to, or break those boundaries or is, or is the relentless uncommon commitment to be one's personal best right now, whatever that might be. And then, and then it starts to get, um, a little fuzzy cause it's not always being one's best, but there's margin. It's almost like a pebble in the pond and the initial kind of drop is like the best. And then as it ripples out, you know, your degree's away from that initial impact. And what we teach Olympic athletes often is we're not

trying to have a PR or a personal best every day. We're actually trying to be in striking range around 87 to 93% because, you know, like that's pretty phenomenal. There's going to be days when you're down in the 75s because you're learning something or you're tired or there's something happening. But if we can keep in that striking range, so I'm far more interested in one's relative high performance. And that gets very scary because relative high performance for your child is, well, you know, it's good TJ.

It's a ball rolls between his legs. It's, is that relative high performance relative to other, whatever age group you, did you say, did you say nine? Yeah, he's nine. Yep. Yeah. Whatever nine year olds are, it's not even comparable because of the unique set of circumstances. So, so can you just, where are you on that right now? In an honest frame, are you, are you committed to

your kids being the best or your kids being their best? I can, I can sit here and confidently say, you know me, I, I tell it how it is, Whether it makes me look good or bad, I hit it straightforward. The one thing that I'm very confident in and clear on is my emphasis is on their best. And all three of my kids have different levels of expectation and standard. They all three play very different levels of sports. They all have different expectations in school based on the subject, based on the grade, whatever it is. I'm a big believer in relative excellence. So relative to the own unique individual, their circumstances, their interest level, their skill level, their size, their demeanor, everything about the

individual directly correlates to what should be the expectation, what should be the standard. My thing that I always share with my kids, both my own and the kids on my team is, I don't choose your standard. You choose, you show me your standard. Every day, I am evaluating a standard. Like you said, some days are better than others, but I have a general idea of what kids should and shouldn't be able to do, both my own kids and the kids on my teams. you are expected to operate at your standard as much as humanly possible. And when you don't, when you fall short of your standard, your attitude, you came into practice in a bad place, you're not giving best effort. You're talking back to the coach. You're not listening. You're not paying attention when whatever it is, if you fall short of your standard, I'll never, I will never allow you to get away with it. I will correct you an infinite amount of times until you get back to your standard. I will never say, TJ, you need to do it.

You look at your brother. You can see how far he hits the ball. You need to hit the ball that far. I don't do that. I don't do it on my teams. I don't do it with my kids. I don't believe in it. The best example I could give is my kids come home from school. They do all this like presidential fitness stuff and PE, which I could give or take, but they do it. So whatever. And they get in the car and they say, we ran the mile today. Say it was the mile. I say, what did you run? I ran seven minutes. My next question out of my mouth is what did you run last time? I don't ask what did the, what did your friend Sally run? What did Johnny run? What, what did you run last time? If you tell me you ran seven 30, great job. That's awesome.

If you told me you ran six 30, my next question is going to be, why do you think you went backwards? Were you tired? I don't know. Whatever. Was it hot, cold? Did you try your best? Did you walk? Whatever the situation is like. So like, to me, that's the best example. Like, I believe in that once you show me your mark, I'm never going to let you do anything, anything less than that. And I, and I have my conversation with my older son who plays a little more on a competitive side. You know, he wants to like, it's just a little bit of a different approach. And I said, the hardest thing about being good is it's a burden because you're always expected to be good. So don't show me you're good. If you don't really want me to hold you to that standard, because once you show it, that's the expectation every single day.

I'm not saying you can't make mistakes, but that's what you're capable of. And that's what you're trying to beat. You're not trying to beat the kid down the street. Okay. So I'm laughing because you've got a philosophy that feels really familiar to me. And I'm laughing because it is nuanced. You can screw this up easily if you don't get some of those first principles in place, right? Like, I see you, son. You matter to me. And you talk as much about social and school and yard work and family contributions than you do about putting the ball and the bat together at velocity. You can screw this up easily. And so you're right on a razor's edge. Either your sons are going to absolutely have the relationship you have with your dad and love you and the whole thing, and they're going to do great in life and be aware. Or they're going to be like,

this is too much. But I think that my sense for you is that you're aware of that. You are not. I'm totally aware of it. I'm totally aware of it. But again, my communication with my three kids is very different. If you heard how I communicated at certain times with each kid, you'd be like, that's not the same person. If you saw me communicate with my daughter after her soccer game and you saw me communicate with my son after he got done battling for five innings in the championship of a baseball game, be a very different conversation. And my message to them is that's not based on me. That's based on you. I love it. You are showing what you want to be. You are showing what's important to you. You are showing what situations you want to be in. I don't need you to play baseball. I don't need you to do ballet. I don't care what you do, but if you say you want to do it,

we're going to do it. So for example, I don't stress, I do stress, but it doesn't bother me if my kids quote unquote, I know you don't like the word fail, but just for the lack of better. No, no, no. Wait, wait, wait, hold on. I actually, I, I love mistake-making. I love the word, the word fail. I feel like we talked about it last time. Like you thought there's a bet. You like failures. You just don't like necessarily classifying them as failures. I think failure is when you're unwilling to go for it. Yeah. Fair. I don't think it's not getting the thing. I just think the deep failures, like, I don't know. I I'm not going to, I'm not going to try. I'm not going to

give it a go. I'm too afraid. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So fair. So whatever the appropriate term for that. So like, for example, a couple of weeks ago, right. My kid's playing in a baseball game, good team. They're playing. He always pitches against the best team. And I say to him, I said, listen, you're either going to learn to love that or resent that. But the only way to do it is to do it. Like not everybody wants to stand on that Mount against the best team and have to battle and throw and they're Fallon and they get a hit. They, I mean, there's a lot going on in 10 year old baseball now, and you are all eyes are on you. I said, you don't have to do it, but if that's something you want to build, the best thing for you to do is to battle through that. And I'm not saying you need to strike every kid out

because guess what? You're not. You're going to give up a home run. It's going to happen. All I ask out of you, as the chaos around you gets heavier, you get quieter. You get more relaxed. You don't show emotion. The other fans could be yelling at you. The other kids on the bench could be banging on the things because you got bases loaded and three balls. You need to learn to operate. Those are the things that I look at. The throwing harder, the hitting the ball harder, running faster. Like to me, that stuff will happen. I'm more worried about like the core principles of your behavior, your attitude, your ability to fight, your ability to compose yourself when things are hard. Like that's the stuff to me that is really important.

And those are the lessons I think come from those experiences with young kids. But I would never put my other kid on the mound in the championship game right now. It, and it's not because he can't do it. He's just not ready for it yet. And I'm so cool with that. Like doesn't ruin the experience at all for me. Like I know what he's capable of. I want to put him in situations that are appropriate so he can succeed. Same thing with my daughter, but they're all very, it's very different circumstances. They all have very different strengths. That's all. That's cool. So I love, I love the sensitive, the nuances in, you need to write a book more than a podcast. You've got some nuances here. And there's, I hope there's a project for us

some point down the road, like, because this is just do it. I've completely lost track of time. I don't know what time. At some point, I got to get my kids. I don't even know what time it is. What time is it? Oh, it's almost three o'clock. We got to wrap this. I'm going to be getting a call from my kids. Dad, where are you? I'm coming. I'm talking about you, son. I'm coming, buddy. I love you. So psychologically, you have created an environment for your kids to have high agency. You're helping to hold the standard of improvement. And this wasn't long ago that I, for a very large enterprise company, they, they said, Mike, what is a, what's a great coach? Like we want, we want to understand what great coaching looks like. So I created this model for them, um, from amateur coaching all the way to masterful coaching and up in the masterful coaching reference points matter. And so you have lots of reference points and another variable, there's a handful of variables that people can get better at is knowing, um, seeing the person and building the relationship

far before, you know, the hard times. And so listen, let's wrap it with a really simple question. What scared you the most when you were playing? What was the thing you struggled with when you were playing? I guess my biggest, my opportunities, my talent, my, I just hope. And I, and I feel very confident as I look back on my career that I was able to do this, but like, I think there's nothing worse than wasted potential. Like I think people who don't become their best versions of themselves to me, that's really unfortunate. So I think people who don't become their best versions of themselves, to me, that's really unfortunate. So I think like my biggest fear was I wanted to make sure when I was done, there was no, well, you could have worked a little harder there

and maybe made another Pro Bowl. You could have been a better teammate and helped get to the Super Bowl. You could have done this. I wish I would have. I didn't want any of that. I wanted to make sure that I got every single ounce out of the squeeze. And the fear of one day looking back and thinking

you could have done more scared me. So I made every single decision in my life that that was never going to be the case because I controlled that. That was never going to be the case because I controlled that. That was not up to anybody but me. And I can look back now. Was I perfect? Could I have done things? Of course. But generally speaking, I feel like for someone in my situation with my abilities and my skill sets, I don't know if in my circumstances and my team, all that, I don't think anyone could have had a better career than I had if they were just put in my exact world at that exact moment. I

don't think they could have achieved more than I did. And I think that's the ultimate test of whether you achieve your potential or not. I'm rooting for you, your wife, your family, you know, youth Inc is a podcast that folks can go to and, um, check that out everywhere. Podcasts are being played the Greg Olson foundation. If you've got $10, a hundred dollars, a thousand, a hundred thousand, whatever it might be like, that would be an awesome place to support. Um, and then do you have other places that we can drive folks, uh, to be part of your mission as well? Yeah. I mean, they can follow us on social, um, you know, on Twitter and Instagram, Greg Olson,

88. And, um, you know, we're constantly sharing our youth sports extravaganzas. We're going to Georgia this weekend for a tournament, which will be cool. And, uh, so we'll chronicle a lot of that with the kids and a lot of our foundation events. And, you know, we share our clips from new things. So a lot of our stuff we share on social and just try to give people a little insight into, uh, what we're all about. Appreciate you, Greg. Uh, you're the best. My, I can't thank you enough,

man. I, our conversations could go on for 10 hours. I learned something every time I talked to you. Ditto brother. All right. Appreciate you. Let's do more. All right, man. Talk to you soon. I'm gonna go get my kid from school before, um, before he resents me. All right, bud. Take care. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of finding mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter we send out

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