Stay Tranquilo - From NFL Star to Neuroscience: The Incredible Journey of Julius Thomas

Episode Date: July 8, 2025

Join us in this inspiring athlete documentary as we delve into the life of Julius Thomas, the NFL's most interesting tight end, and his journey of career reinvention and personal growth. From the highs of sports success to the lows of mental health struggles, Thomas's story is a testament to the power of mental resilience and the importance of athlete mindset. In this sports documentary, we explore the behind-the-scenes of Thomas's athletic journey, including his struggles with career transition and his path to overcoming challenges. Get ready for a motivation-boosting tale of success stories and personal growth, as we examine the life after sports of one of the most fascinating figures in the NFL.#nfl #nfljourney #athlete #neurosciene #cte Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When things come easy for you, you never get the opportunity to become resilient. But when things start hard, you become resilient and then you never expect easy. And that became something that's like a core concept to my life. It's like I never really had this expectation for easy. I just, I almost say it's like a blessing from God that everything started hard. So now when hard shows up in my life, I'm like, okay, bet, this is normal. My journey has been so weird because I didn't even. even play football in high school. And I went to college on a basketball scholarship and I played

11 months of football before I got drafted to the NFL. And I don't know, man. I just have so many pinch me moments, right? Like being able to say that I've played in the NCAA tournament, I've been an NFL pro bowler, played in the Super Bowl, and I've got to work in a hospital and wear a white coat. Thanks for taking the time. We're here with Julius Thomas today. We're here in Nashville for the pro athlete community pack event got the cowboy hat i was gonna pack my cowboy hat but it didn't fit in the bag i had the hoodie already i'm like damn it's gonna have the statement i might end up buying another one just just because because you're in national gotta have it right i was the same way i'm like where am i going to put this hat and i was like you know

the first night it felt uncomfortable yeah when i put it on and then i was like you know what i got to get into the culture i'm in national i got to catch a vibe yeah yeah and now i'm like all right i'm gonna wear it all the way until i get on a plane because it's just not going to work in Miami. 100%. But I'm like, you know what? I'm going to go to the effort. I'm going to carry this thing in my hand.

Yeah, yeah. And I'm going to get it home. And now I'm going to have a cowboy hat to add to the collection. 100%. There's something about a cowboy hat, though. I remember we were in New Orleans and I ended up buying a cowboy high just for the cause. Yep. And I'm like, damn, I like this look.

But then you go back to Miami and you're like, I kind of don't like this look. Yeah. It's like it only works in a certain place. Somebody's going to call somebody on me and they're going to send me to a place and be like, hey, we've got to ask you some questions. Are you good? Are you good? You're walking around a cowboy hat.

It's your sweating and running down your neck. Yeah, next thing you know, you got the overalls on. And then it's like, all right, he's gone full country. Yep, yep. Maybe I want to send you up to Ocala or something. Write some horses out there. Yeah. But appreciate you taking the time today.

Obviously, we're happy to be here with PAC, you know, all the amazing work that PAC does, you know, for people like you, people like us, and just being a connector. I think that's huge. This is our second pack event that we've gone to and just the level of people that we've been able to meet. I was telling Jalani on the previous reporting that there's a different energy when you're out here. And I think you come back like motivated.

You meet all these people that are just on the same wavelength and they're just thinking about things the same way. So I think it's powerful to have people like yourself involved. I think it's a testament into what they've built. but the belief that you guys have in them as well, I think is huge. So I'm excited just to see what Pat continues to do. And obviously for today's conversation. But we're going to get into a little bit of everything, right?

Let's do it. Talk some psychology, neuroscience. Obviously, you're a line of work now, but also want to be able to tell your story with your career in the NFL and just that journey allowing you to become the person that you are today. Right? Because none of that happens without, you know, the current and the past.

Yeah. You need both, right? So walk me through it, right? You go into the NFL, right? You have this great career in the NFL, but take me to the before, right? Like, when did football even get into your life? When did that whole world get introduced to you? And then as obviously your time goes on in your life, obviously you had a lot of success in the NFL.

But tell me, it's like, where did football begin? Man, that's a great question. First off, I want to say, thank you for doing this. I think it's been really refreshing to see how podcasting has given athletes this opportunity to share their stories in a way that's authentic that we didn't do when I first got into sports. Like everything in sports like closed. Like the only interviews you did was like with the team in the locker room. And you just never got to fully be yourself in there.

Right. It's like the whole media training thing. It's like say what the team wants you to say. and if not get fined. Yep. So, like, these opportunities are really dope because we get to show a side of us that we don't always get to share.

And, you know, my journey has been so weird because I didn't even play football in high school. And I went to college on a basketball scholarship and I played 11 months of football before I got drafted to the NFL. And I don't know, man. I just have so many pinched me moments, right? Like, being able to say that I've played in the NCAA,

tournament. I've been an NFL pro bowl or played in the Super Bowl and I've got to work in a hospital and wear a white coat, right? Like, how do you, how do you hit those, right? And this has been such an amazing experience for me. And, you know, my journey with football began as a kid, my dad was a college football player. My dad and my grandpa, they had season tickets for the Oakland Raiders back in the day. And they would take me to the games. And I just remember, like, some of my earliest memories. Like being there walking around networks, associate coliseum, and spending time with my family, like all my family's from the Bay area. So like, ooh, just see so many people at the games and then you're throwing the

football, little rubber football around the parking line, like tailgating. But then I ended just kind of moving away from football and moving more focused on basketball. I mean, my childhood was like really, I feel like I was the last generation of like the American kid. Like I was probably the last generation where you just like hopped on your bike. Like I don't know where you from? I'm from Miami. Yeah, but it has been like that whole concept is like a nowadays it doesn't exist. No, like you don't see kids. When I see one, I'm like, wait a, is that actually a kid on a bike? You're like, wait, where's a supervision? Do I need to call somebody and let them know this kid by himself? Yeah, yeah. And so like I had just like that American upbringing.

You know, I'm from California. So like, you know, hop on your skateboard, your scooter, you know, find people playing at the park, play basketball, football, baseball, baseball, you know, like all the sports. I was never great as a kid. I think it's another unique thing about my journey is I feel like a lot of people in the pros, they were like a great in high school and they were great in college and they were great in college and they'd be a pro, but man, I was, I wasn't that good of an athlete. Like when I first started playing basketball in college, I was on the freshman team at the end

of the bench. And I like to say it now, like I was built on benches. and like what makes me who I am today and what made me interested in the mental and made me want to teach it now and make me want to learn it what allowed me to reach the success that I've had was just being built on the bench.

Yeah, that's a crazy concept to hear. You know? I never heard anyone say it that way, you know, because obviously you had a very successful career, right? And yet the way you think about it is kind of like almost this like opposite approach, right? But it's it's the truth at the end of the day. And it's what made you who you are.

And we were having this conversation, right? Like the pain and the challenges is really where the strength comes from. If everything's given to your whole life, you're never really going to have that level of appreciation. You're never going to really understand what it means to succeed because it was like, here it is. Whereas if you never had it, and you had to work your ass off to get it,

then you're going to appreciate it that much more. Yep. So for you, I'm sure, like, you know, you look back at your career and you're like, yeah, I wasn't good. You know, I was the bench guy. But that made my career that much more meaningful to me. Bro, in the resilience, right? Like, when things come easy for you,

you never get the opportunity to become resilient. But when things start hard, you become resilient, and then you never expect easy. and that became something that's like a core concept to my life. It's like I never really had this expectation for easy. I just, I almost say it's like a blessing from God that everything started hard. So now when hard shows up in my life, I'm like, okay, bad, this is normal. Of course.

Like, okay, I started something new. Of course I'm going to fail right away. Of course it's going to feel like nothing's working. I'm not gaining traction. And when you're built on the bench, you're used to it, right? So when I was sitting on a bench as a freshman in high school and basketball, and then I talk about this concept of making a decision. And you can make a decision that I like to call like a power statement that doesn't have to be logical. And like sometimes I see people and like when I'm helping and training people, I'm like, wait, you're trying to make logical dreams and logical visions for your life.

You don't have to do anything logically. make a power statement and a choice of like I'm going there. And you're like there's no way that could happen. But then you just start working backwards and start hitting those steps to get there. And so that's what I did man in basketball. I went through high school, went from being a freshman at the end of the bench. That time I got to my junior year, I was one of the better players. And like California, went to a mid-major, played division one basketball there, got a scholarship, got to college, found out I was the shortest.

post player in all the NCAA basketball. So I'm like, damn, here I am again. Right. On the bench. And it's looking like it's illogical. And I'm six foot five going up against guys 610, 6.9, 6.11. Right. Had to find a way to be successful.

I went my entire college basketball career and didn't start until my senior year. Like just slowly grinding up that bench. But it's building me, right? And then I had this crazy idea. Like, I'm going to regret if I never try to play football. Like, maybe I could play football. And then, like, if you tell your boys and you're a basketball player, like, six, five, two or 20 pounds, like, I'm going to go play football. Like, they laugh at you.

Right? Like, I'm in the locker room. They're like, bro, how many beers last night? Like, we still nursing. What are you on right now? And so I went out to play football. And I remember, like, going to see the coach. And, like, I popped up in his office.

It was like during, like, winter break with. And all the rest of the students are there, but basketball's there because we were practicing and playing. And I'm like, hey, I want to come out for the football team. And he's looking at him. He's like, you're like a senior in basketball. Like, you sure you want to do this? Yeah.

I'm like, yeah, I feel like something inside of me. I don't know about you. I think you ever got that feeling of something inside of you. It's just like won't stop popping up in your head. Right. And you can't stop thinking about it. And I'm like, man, that's my spirit talking to me. And so he was like, hey, if you're serious, pull up to our first spring meeting.

before spring ball start. And so we were in conference tournament, like it was like 10 days after we just finished basketball season, spring ball was starting. And so I pulled up to the spring meeting and all the football players, like, we knew them, right? I go to college.

Of course. Yeah. JT, you really sure? You really about to try to do this? But you're going to be trashed, you know? Yeah. And I'm always trashed. Who's this basketball guy coming in

and thinking he could just walk onto the football? Yeah, like we're friends because we all went to college together but like, bro, you're going to suck. And I mean, I did suck. And I sucked for a couple months. But I remember going out to practice. practice that first day and I hadn't put the pads on since eighth grade. And so I'm like, you know, strapping up the shoulder pads, getting ready for practice.

And I thought I was going to play receiver because that's what I told him. I was like, I'm going to play receiver. First practice starts the tight end coach was like, JT, you with us. And I'm like, nah, no, no, no, no, no, which is all. That's a whole other transition, right? Like, there's a transition going from hoop to football. But then hoop to tight in is a whole other skill set. Oh, yeah.

But the coach came up to me at the time. He's like, I think you have some, you create some matchup problems. Like, just try it. And then at this point, I was like, I'm about to quit because I didn't sign up. I put in my hand in the dirt. And so, like, the first two weeks was probably the hardest time I ever had in sports up until that point. Because I was actually terrible. I didn't understand the words.

Like, I would have to tell coaches, like, it's worse than not just knowing the technique. I don't know the words you're saying. True. So I had to learn a language. And I had to learn movements. and so much complexity and a new thing. I went from being a captain on the basketball team. I knew what everybody was doing

to feeling like inadequate and less than because I didn't know anything. And the first two weeks were a big struggle until I got my first catch in practice. And then that was the light bulb moment for the whole team because I'll never forget to play, 61 Y Dragon. And it was like the end of practice.

And I think they were just like, man, why is he here? Like, you've been here for two weeks. Like, I'm calling my dad after practice. I'm like, dad, I don't know, man. Like, I might have made the right decision. Maybe I should just go play overseas. Maybe I should just go to law school or whatever.

And I was like, I'm going to just keep sticking it out, but I'm not sure. And that first time they threw me the ball, he was like, into practice. Like, we're going to throw the ball. Like, literally get in the huddle. We're going to third the ball. And I was like, shit, cool. Finally. I've been doing all this other stuff, like, I'm here to catch the ball.

And so, like, I come off the ball and, like, wide dragging, like, self-explanatory. Right. Why I drag? Like, go five yards, hit a left. That was, like, the only route that I knew. And then I just remember, like, seeing the ball in the air and I caught it. And, like, sometimes at football, everything slows down. And I think one of the reasons it slows down is because football's kind of dangerous.

And your mind is processing a lot. And I just remember, like, catching the ball and, like, seeing the first line back. backer and I just started running and just passed them. And then the outside backer ran past them. Then the corner, then the safety. And I'm just running and then like 30 yards later. I'm like standing in the end zone. And I think everybody was like, I think the whole field is quiet.

And everybody was like, what the fuck just happened? Did the basketball dude just score? And then I remember just sitting there and being like, how did I get here? Like, am I in the end zone right now? It's like transported over there. Like my first catch. Like football is like this is dope. That's surreal.

And then I think that's when people realize like, okay, he has some potential. That's what I realized. I had some potential. And I think sometimes when you see people that are transitioning or people that are trying something new in life, really they just need that first win. Right. Yeah. You just don't know when it's coming, right?

And you got to wait. That's so true. And you got to persist in the heart. Remember I told you I had got comfortable sitting. sitting in hard. So I was made it long enough to wait for that first win. And then from there, it was like, all right, how can I create a process that's going to allow me to go from being a skinny basketball player to be an NFL player in 10 months.

That's exactly what you were telling yourself at that moment. I had to create a process, right? Because it doesn't matter if I scored that one practice touchdown, I was not good enough. I needed to get a lot better. I need to understand the game. I need to understand the movements. and I didn't have much time. And so I'm such a big believer in helping people understand how important

creating an elite process is for helping you to get to what your vision is. And I had to do that for myself, and it worked. I ended up being an all-conference tight end. I averaged like 17 yards of catch. Not a lot of catches, not a lot of plays, but I put enough on tape for the Denver Broncos to pick me up in the fourth round of the NFL. draft that makes you're incredible. Incredible.

And in that process when you're talking to the Broncos and other teams, was there a sense of like, hey, you've only been playing football for, you know, so many months? Like, should we take a risk on you? Like, how did that process look like where, you know, you're not like your typical, I guess, prospect coming out of college that's been playing for four years or so? You're fresh off maybe a couple months of football and they're saying, hey, we want to take a fly on you. Yeah, no, it was interesting because not only was I only playing football for 10 months,

I played football D1A. Portland State wasn't Division I. So no one else in my school was like just even in the process of going to the league. And I didn't really understand how weird that was until I started going to like the senior games in the combine. But when I left college, I didn't have an invite to East West Shrine game, senior bowl, nothing like my agent was like hey I'll pay for your training and he's like I'm going to try to get you in one of these senior games and then like a week and a half before the east west shrine wall in Orlando he calls him he's like hey I got you in where your school send your pads I'm like sure yeah I'm going to ask

him so I show up at the east west shrine game and they're like who's this dude Portland state all the other guys they had a bunch of teammates like oh if you went to s C Nevada if you went to Washington right like you had had boys there and I was there by myself, Dola, like, what am I doing here? And I had a great East West Shrine practice week in game and then you started to get on more radars like, okay, maybe this kid actually has something. Yeah. But then I wasn't invited to the Combine.

And so I was like, all right, I'm just training for Pro Day a week before Combine. My agent calls me like, hey, I got you on Combine. You're going to get ready to go to Indianapolis. I'm like, oh shit, just got real. Yeah. So I'm going into the combine and I'm like working through the mental and I'm like, okay, how do you need to frame this moment and what should you be focused on and prepared for so that this becomes a success?

Right. And so one of the things I did is I let go of all the things I knew I was going to be bad at. Okay. I was going to bench press a lot of times. I still don't know football. So I got to try to make them believe in something else. Yeah. And so I'm sitting in these combine interviews and coaches didn't.

even know what to make of it. They didn't know what to ask me. They're like, well, you don't know football. So like, I can't like draw up all these plays and ask you, what do you do when the Mike linebacker comes here and this changes. And I'm like, so I would have coaches being like, well, drawl up all your basketball plays. And I was like, all right, bet. If we have this, at this play, here's where the point guard is going to dribble over to. The three is going to come up to this side of the court. The four is going to step out to the back screen. And then I think some coaches were like, okay, well, he's not dumb. Right. Because he knows. They wanted to At least if you were capable of understanding a concept.

Yeah. And so they'd show me some plays from like my clips. They're like, hey, you know, this is a good play. Tell me what you were thinking in this play. And I'm like, well, you know, the corner was pressed. So I'm just trying to get off the line clean. And I had a really unique tape because I wasn't really playing that much tied in. I was really playing like X receiver.

It's like all my catches were fades and posts and slants. And so coaches were just like. That's insane. Some coaches were just like, there's no way we're going to take you. Right. Like they didn't even use the time. They just were like, all right, man, I don't really have that to say to you. Some coaches were kind of intrigued.

So it was very interesting, but I knew I had to find a way to get somebody to believe in me. Not everybody. You need one team to fall in love with you. And then I had a really good combine because I only focused on the things that I could control. Only focused on things that I needed to do really well in. and I did well there and like that's just a blessing of God and how he shows up in your life. Absolutely. And all those things happened like right before and each of them happened well.

And that's how I was able to get drafted as the Broncos in the fourth row. That's actually an insane story. It's insane. And the thing that sticks out to me personally is the belief that you actually even had on yourself to say that like I'm not just playing football because I'm going to play football. I'm playing football because I'm going to go to the NFL. Yeah. Like to just even, it's almost like trick your mind into it essentially. It's like I haven't picked up a pat.

I haven't put on pads, picked up a football. I just played basketball for three years. I don't know any football plays. And yet it wasn't even the thought about, yeah, I'm going to play football and prove these guys I can play football. Right. It was, I'm going to play football. I'm going to make the NFL in 10 months.

Yep. Like that to me is, it's impressive. Like to even have that thought, right? Because you get, you know, there's levels to the way people could think, right? You could think, like, okay, I can make it here, right? And you just kind of like settle here or I can make it here. But you were like, there's only one option. It's here.

That's what I'm coming out here to do. I have this bad habit. And my bad habit is if that person can do it, I can do it. And I don't care about nothing else. Just if they were able to do it, why can't I do it? And so Antonio Gates, I was like, he did it. But I didn't know that he played football in high school. I found that out later.

I'm like, oh, shit. So you're thinking that he did it. And he's like, wait a minute, no, I had the facts wrong. I'm like, all right. It's good that you thought that because it was a sense of motivation. Yeah, yeah. So I just, man, and that's what I had in my mind. Wow.

I talk about having an illogical belief. Yeah, which I want to get into that a little bit more. Yeah. So it's crazy, man. I'll even tell you a funny story. So the first day of spring ball practice, there was a reporter from the Portland Tribune or whatever, the Portland newspaper is.

Right. And he's like, this is a crazy story. And so I don't know about you, but if you ever had a moment in your life, when somebody tries you, like, not on purpose, like, I'm not talking about like a microaggression, but like tries you, but like not intentionally. Right. And so there's like this reporter waiting at the edge of like the turf to go out to football practice.

And he's like, JT, we need to grab you. He's like, you know, it's a crazy story. You've got the most wins in school history on our basketball team. Like you had like highest field goal percentage in school history. Like this is a crazy story. He puts the mic in my face and he says, do you actually think you're going to get to play? Right?

Like boom. Yeah. Like, why are you even asking that question? Bro, it's day one. Yeah. I'm taking the craziest bet on something I can do. Yeah. And like somebody's waiting right there to crush you right.

Because in my head, I'm going to the league. Yeah. And he's asked me, do you think you're even going to get the play? Like, here's my. what I was thinking. Like you were saying levels and here's what he's thinking. And in that moment I was like

all right I'm going to say the PC thing. Like hey I'm just here to like get better and give myself the best thing. But in your head you're like you're thinking about this completely wrong way. I'm like fuck what you fucking mean? Like do I think I'm going to get to play

but I'm here to go to the league? And that was something I'll never forget that story. That was like a crazy moment. Where do you think you got that confidence from like where where do you know not everyone is going to be able to say that you know or even think that way because you know there's a sense of a fear or doubt that exists in a lot of people right and that's

usually what holds people back from doing the things that maybe that that they want to right you know whether that's leaving your job to start you know start something of your own or go pursue a completely different career right like people don't make those leaps of faith because they have it's it's a sense of fear and doubt for sure and you know life is real too right you can't just just pick up your bags and make decisions in an instant, but to your point, you can make plans of action, right? And, you know, maybe, maybe we're kind of answering the question here, but through a plan, I'm assuming you're able to build confidence, but like, how did you build that, right? You're only at that point 20 years old, right? And you're already thinking about these plans

and processes and having this Uber level of confidence. Where does that all come from? You know, it's a great question. And I'm going to tell you this concept that I think a lot, and I teach a lot. Courage is greater than confidence. So this is something that really frustrates me about the mental performance space. People come to me and say, J.T., I need help or help my child.

They don't have enough confidence. And I tell them, confidence is not a first order concept. Confidence is a built thing that happens. You can't be confident when you're going to go take on the biggest risk you've. ever taken. You can't be confident when you're going to try something new. What you have to be is courageous. And so for me, I've never relied on confidence. It's never been something that I needed

before I took action. It's a great way to put it. I just lean on courage, right? And so the first is I have faith and that faith gives me a courage to step into things that are maybe unlikely. The other thing is I'm built on the bench. And so I've already learned how to take a goal, break it down into little pieces and then do the things that are required to get there so I kind of felt comfortable that this is a possibility

once you start to look at things that way and then the other thing I do is I'm okay getting laughed at and I'm okay falling flat on my face because I know that with consistent reps you'll have to get much better how better you get to be determined

but that was just really, that's always been my approach. And that was what was my approach when I switched from basketball to football. That was my approach when I switched from football to clinical psychology. And that was my approach starting a business. And like, it's never going to change because if that person can do it, why can't you do it? Yeah. Oh, that's true. And it's funny, right?

You're talking about this concept of the courage and confidence. And, yeah, you hear a lot of people, hey, man, you got to be more confident. Hey, man, you got to be more confident, right? And the person that's receiving that is like, how the hell do I be more confident? Exactly. You know? It's like, okay, yeah, maybe I don't feel confident, but like, what do you want to do? It's like, I can't be more confident because I don't know how to be more confident.

That's where the problem arises from. Yep. And then to your point, it comes from faith and courage, right? You have that faith, right? Which is going to allow you to believe and have that backing that no matter what happens, everything is going to be okay, right? and knowing that like if I fall I'm going to get right back up and if I fall

I'm going to get right back up I have I have this statue right here right now and it actually is the concept of courage that gave me confidence in a tough part of my life you know and it's for God has a plan to prosper you and not to harm you a plan for hope in a future right straight up and that

carried me up like when you needed it the most it was like dude it doesn't matter like God has the plan like the plan is set you just got to trust it and just do whatever you got to do. You're going to fall, you get right back up. You get kicked down. You're going to get right back up. And through all that, you're going to get stronger and build more confidence in that process because it's like, shit, at this point, you've kicked me down 10 times.

Like, what the hell is going to phase me at this point? Exactly. Courage is what you need to keep getting back up when you fall. And that's a form of resilience. Yeah. Confidence is built over time. So I actually started to think about this psychologically. And I want to break it down into constructs, right? What is confidence? Because I kept getting hung up on people talking about needing confidence, wanting confidence. Confidence can't be there first. It comes over time. And so what confidence really is to me is it's action, risk, and feedback. You cannot become confident without taking action with the risk that you might lose or might win. And then you take action and you win.

And then you get feedback from your environment. And then you're like, oh, wait, that worked. Oh, I'm getting better. And then confidence builds. You take action and you lose. That doesn't make you more confident. So you've got to be willing to take action and you've got to be willing to lose, get back up and take action again.

And then once the feedback becomes successful, winning, growth, confidence starts to grow. And so so many people are waiting for confidence to take action. Right. How can you be waiting for the thing that comes later before you make the first step? Right, right, right. And so that's why I started telling people like, no, what you really need is courage, because courage doesn't need any proof. Courage doesn't need the last rep to have been a win. Right. And that's how you develop confidence over time. Yeah, I love that. How do you, like, what's your process in building these concepts out, right? You know, because there's very surface levels to how people perceive certain things, right? But you seem to really digest everything and really kind of figure out the ends and outs of specific concepts.

Like, what's, how do you go about that? You know, I think when I was younger, I didn't do it with much thought. Like, I was just like, I got to do. Like, just take action. It's like a natural reaction for you. Like, what are you going to sit here and do? Take action, right? I had the feeling that maybe I could be a good football player.

I wasn't confident that I was going to go be a good football player. So I had to take action on the feeling. So it was just that simple. But when I went back to grad school, it took a person that was really like interested in how the world worked. And it turned me into a scholar. And I had to start thinking about concepts. Because when you go back to graduate school, you're writing about concepts. You're learning concepts.

Like all of psychology is just theory construct concept. And then once I started to have this way of seeing the world and learning, then I was able to have a greater language and a greater ability to break things down into the components of systems and theories. Because I was doing it all day. And so then I can start to see events or hear things people are saying. And then I can start to tell you like, okay, it's action plus risk, when whatever feedback you get, okay, that's actually what confidence is.

Right. Because we just have, like, we use words, and we use words the way we were taught the words. I don't think we ever think about, like, okay, what actually is confidence? Like, if you want to define something, you can't use the word to define the word. Right.

So then what is the components of that? And you start to think about components a lot in psychology. So I started trying to apply it in practical ways to, Yeah, that's interesting. It reminds me of this concept that I just one day kind of created in my mind, you know, on pen paper, just writing down. And it was like kind of like this mix of, you know, finding motivation and how does that motivation bring results in your life, right? And I came up with this concept where it was basically, you know, purpose leads to passion. Passion leads to progress and progress leads to results, right? At the core of everything, you need to have your. your why attached to you, right? Because that's when you, when things are not going right and you need to find that motivation, you're going to go back to the why. It's like, why am I even trying to do what I'm trying to do?

And if you don't have that back bone behind you, then everything's just going to fall apart because there's no purpose behind what you're doing, right? That purpose then leads to that passion, right? When you're passionate about the why of why you're doing something, you're going to do it with the full enthusiasm that you need to do it with. And with that, there's going to be progress, right? because things are not going to just go from here to here, right? It's not a linear.

It's up and down, back and forth, you know. But as long as there's progress along the way, you're getting that much closer to the result that you want at the end of the day. And to me, it reminds me of that, like what you do, like how you just kind of like break these segments out into it. And then when you look at that, it's like it's almost like this game plan, right? Like it's the game plan to whatever it is that you want to build out. You defined a process.

Oh, here's this process that leads to results. Passion, purpose, what comes that way? Don't tell me. Passion, purpose, progress, results, right? So if you have a purpose, you have a really strong reason for taking action, right? I feel that I have some connection to a why to take action. And then that starts to give you that passion, right? Like you're going to do it even if it sucks.

Even if it's falling flat on its face because you're passionate about it. But then if you keep doing something, you're going to start to get progress because we all grow for repetition. It's like one of the things I tell my son all the time. I'm like, fall in love with reps. Stop falling in love with the, are you good yet? Just fall in love with the reps and watch the results come. And so that's how you go from purpose to passion to progress to results. And so I agree.

you took the time to break it down into a process to think through it and it makes sense and it's logical and that's how results come yeah it's interesting that's what it reminded me of so i want to get into a little bit about you as this now neuro-science tell me about yeah obviously you do stuff with cTE psychology you got your master's i believe you're about to finish your doctorate as well right But tell me how from being this NFL athlete, very successful career, to now getting into neuroscience. Yeah. That's actually a great question. We'll go back to purpose, passion, progress results, right?

Because I like that framework, and that framework is what happened to me. So I had the greatest gift and the most pain at the same time. And there's people that have been through way more pain. So I don't mean the greatest possible pain a person can go through, but greatest gift in pain that came together for me and my life. And that was when I hit all my goals. At 26 years old, 25 years old, somewhere 25, 26, I proved that I could be one of the top players in my position in the league.

I signed a contract where if I've never felt like working again I don't have to I had the houses that I wanted I had the cars that I wanted and it was the emptiest I've ever felt and I was like wait this is broken my whole life everyone told me like go for your dreams go achieve these things hit these goals right that's our culture they're very goal-driven culture but what do you do when you have all that and you still notice there's emptiness in there that would that trip me out yeah I was like wait this isn't it's like I just did all this what

Yes, like this is supposed to make me feel good. Like that $100,000 car, right? That's supposed to make me feel something like I got an A, but it wasn't doing it for me. And I started to really get so much insight. That went like, I feel like my whole life was like outturnal focus, externally focus. Right. Go achieve. Like, go prove.

And then I think once I got all that stuff, then the awareness of what was missing here showed up. And that went to my consciousness. And I was like, wait, what is its feeling? I got to find I got to learn what this is and describing. I was like, oh, this is, there's no thing you can have, no contract, no job, no money. It takes away suffering. Yeah.

And then I became very focused on suffering inside myself, what to do with it. But once you see it, you can't unsee it. And so I started to see it in teammates. And so I'd be in a locker, I'm like, I've, brother, suffering. Oh, whoa, that's a wild behavior for that. It wasn't even needed. Oh, they're suffering. And so for two years, I kept on saying, like, somebody should help that guy.

Yeah. Somebody should help that guy. And then one day it was like, interesting. Donned on me. Yeah. Maybe you're supposed to be that guy. Yeah. You keep saying that.

It's like somebody. Somebody, somebody's like, wait, it should be me. Correct, right? But what do you do with that when you're starting tied in in the NFL? Right. So I'm like, we'll go into spirituality here because that's a chord of my life. And I just kind of felt like I trusted God to go from basketball to football. When I was broke, I was 21 years old, I had nothing.

Now, the true test is, will you follow that calling? Will you follow that purpose if it causes you to give up all these things? It's one thing to follow it when you don't have nothing, and all the things are in that direction. But can you walk away from all the things if that calling and that purpose goes that way? And I was like, ooh, that's a real one. That is. Like spiritual battle. For sure.

And I was like, you know what? I've always trusted. It's always worked out for me. I'm a trust again. And that was my last year in the NFL. I got out. I said, I know I'm supposed to help people. Like, I knew that was what my calling.

I no longer cared about putting awards on my own wall. I wanted to help other people put awards on theirs. But I didn't want them to make the same mistake I made, which was go balls to the wall, do everything you can to hit your goals, and then end up empty. And I was like, but how am I going to help them? and fix that. Like, I can teach people how to go get and win. I don't know what to do about that. Yeah. And so I was like, well, where can I go to master that? And I was like, ah, psychology.

So, wow. I went back to school, got into the doctoral program. I had to do a year of undergrad first, which is super humbling. Like, imagine being 30 years old, retired and you're like in classes, like 19 to 18 year old. And they're like, what is that dude doing here? Then I got to a doctoral program. while I was there, met my mentor, Dr. Jamie Tartar, sleep neuroscientist, stress, behavioral neuroscience, and she got me into neuroscience because she would just chop it up with me like, hey, when you play football, were you worried about your brain? And I was like, no, not at all. Why? And she was like, you know, you guys hit each other alive. I'm like, I was worried about my knees, my ankles. And so she started teaching me about the brain. And then informally, I just started studying neuroscience,

and I end up teaching neuroscience while I was going to school to study clinical health psych and it really became a good marriage to help me see human behavior, the mind and the brain, because in psychology, we don't really study the brain. But in neuroscience, you do. Got it. Okay. Because psychology is more like the behavior. Yeah, mind and behavior.

Got it. Got it. That's interesting. And I think, again, it was like that voice that told you, go play football. Now here you are post football career. Hey, go stop playing football and go focus on helping these people out. It's interesting. And I'm curious, right?

You talked about that emptiness that you felt inside after that point in your life after, you know, you got the contract. You got the cars. You got the house. You got this external worlds that, you know, from the outside, it looks great, right? But you have this emptiness. do you believe that if you didn't focus on those things that you wouldn't have it and you wouldn't be in the position that you are today? Right? Because you talk about kind of like that reverse effect. Whereas you're now had that emptiness and now it's like I got to actually sacrifice what got me this so I can go help. Right. Whereas what happens if you found that self-discovery younger didn't pursue a career in football and said, I'm just going to go help people.

what's like what's obviously now you're going to look back at it now and say like everything happened the way it's supposed to but reality is like in that moment you're you're like where did I mess up you know and that's um that's a real thought right because it's somewhere along the journey I became more goal focused than aware of who I was and what was most important to me internally. Do I have much of a regret about it? No. Yeah. Because sometimes you're being positioned, right? And this is the really trippy part, is how much more capable and how much more ability am I going to have to help people now that I became a household-ish name as an NFL player? Right. How many doors is that going to open? How many opportunities is that going to create for me to now

take this message to people. 100%. If I just had this message and I just had this passion to help people, maybe I could have got there. Maybe I could have been able to do it. But the way I've gotten there has created credibility. And it gives people just like a people saying they'll give you the opportunity to share. And so I kind of see like, I don't know, I always heard this expression like, you know,

God's perfect in the rearview mirror. Like in the moment you're looking through the wind shows, you're like, oh what's cool. But when you look in the rearview mirror, you're like, wow. Yeah. Wow. Like, all that stuff happened that way because it happened that way. Yeah.

I think that that's probably pretty core to my life. And I also think that I got, I learned so much from being on those benches. Yeah. I learned so much from having those successes. I learned so much from being coached by some of the greatest coaches on earth from age 14 to age 30, I learned from getting to be around Hall of Famers and some of the greatest to ever play. That was its own education and its own training. Exactly. Yeah, it's these puzzle pieces that have been put together over the course of your lifetime now that has, you know,

created this image of who you are today. And it'll just continue to expand based off of the journey that you continue to go down. And it gives me the ability to resonate with, other people that have followed that path. So in my company, when I work with high performers, it would be more challenging to work with high performers. But now I get it. Like when they're talking about it, like I can feel it. It's not like, hey, here's these good strategies.

And don't get me wrong, like there are great people that can help people regardless of whether you've shared their experience or not. Right. But there's a, but we got to have a level of understanding and connection. Yeah. So now I'm uniquely positioned to be able to help.

help that group of people. Right. Which is not, and this is actually interesting. You can tell me what you think about this. Yeah. Most people don't look at their favorite athletes, their favorite musicians, those CEO people that run those big companies and go, man, those people are suffering and they need help. Most people, they don't think that they got anything going on.

They think the opposite. And they don't have compassion for them. Yes. And so I can pull up and be like, so true. There's a lot of good things that come with being a publicly traded CEO. And it's hard. Yeah. And I can relate to your heart and I'll jump in that, in that suffering with you and we'll get through it together.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's also like the stigma. You know, it's where, oh my God, you know, this guy is super successful. He's got everything figured out, right? Which a lot of times it's maybe the furthest thing from the truth. Right. That's what you told my story.

Mm-hmm. The year I made the most money ever in my life and since was the year I was the least happy. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. I look back at, you know, some of the things that, you know, my life, right? And I remember, I always remember this memory very vividly. And it's me driving in like this beat up car that I had. Right. AC didn't work. The suspension. Like anytime I would

hit the railroad, I felt like the car was just going to come to pieces. But I'm there blasting my music, delivering the 10 T-shirts that my friends and family ordered. And it was like me, like on this high like, hell yeah. Like, I'm doing my thing. you know, people are going to rent my stuff, getting ready for, you know, a tailgate that I created these custom shirts for a tailgate, you know, and just like me seeing like my vision in a very small capacity coming to life, but like so enthusiastic and happy with like no materials, like, you know, no material life, no, like barely any money, like driving this crappy car. And I've caught myself like as like I've evolved over the years where it's like, sometimes I feel

that same thing. I'm achieving all these amazing things, but like, why do I not, well, I'm not feeling whole, you know? And I think it takes like this level of awareness to even understand that, right? Because you can just go by your days and then, you know, sometimes it'll just, 10 years will go by. And then you're like, wait, what just happened? You know? That's how a midlife crisis gets created. That's what happens.

Right. That's true. Wait, how does this person get into their 40s and realize like, wait, what? Why am I married to this person? Why do I live in this city? What do I do this job? They got so far away from who they are. And so these same experiences, they happen to so many people.

And that's why I've been like, that's why I love working with like your typical working professional, right? And like helping them to understand the importance of understanding their vision for their life, their personal values and the goals they have. But making those all aligned. If your vision, your values, and your goals aren't aligned, You're going to get eight years down the road, and you're going to be like, why am I here? Yeah.

How did I get here? And I hate it here, and I need to change. Yeah. And that's really hard to see people go through that, right? Like, you look at a person that's going through a midlife crisis, and you're like, bro, they're suffering. Like, I can't not see suffering. And so that's exactly the importance. And that's why it's a core component of what I teach is be aligned with your visions and your values

and make your goals align with those. And you will have fulfillment, right? A lot of people have success, but they don't have fulfillment. They have success, but they don't have life satisfaction. What's the point? I actually did a research study. It was very interesting. Right when I got out of football, it was called a contact sports brain study we did at Nova

South Eastern, and we wanted to study emotion. And so I don't know how much you know about research, but we had this control group, and we had our experimental group. And our experimental group were contact sports athletes, and our control. control group was just like regular South Florida exercising health like not healthy but exercising people and so we compared them in a bunch of stuff like cognition emotion and then some like blood-based inflammatory markers I was really interested in emotion and so when you compared the current and former football players to the

control just regular health like exercising population in South Florida the The regular exercises, they had greater life satisfaction than the current and former NFL players. Damn. Like, what? Wow. It wasn't just me. Yeah.

This group, former and current, there's physical evidence. There's a rough emotionality there. They thought we thought we were going to see a difference in cognition. Yeah. Contact sports athletes. They're not functioning as well cognitively. Nope.

Functioning just as well cognitively. But these people had greater emotional challenges, less life satisfaction in comparison to like just regular people in South Florida. Interesting. And is that through direct attribution from like the physical contact of the sport? Or do you think more of like the lifestyle of? It probably is less related to, you know, the physical things that were happening and more related to the experience and the challenges. The social things that come with being an athlete. but that most people wouldn't have thought that.

They would have thought, oh, the pros are happier. They're more satisfied with their life. They're loving this experience, and there's things about it that they love for sure, but that I found very interesting. That is very interesting. You brought up an interesting word to, you know, suffering. What's your, you know, I think there's maybe two sides to this answer, right? But, you know, maybe the spiritual response and then maybe more scientific response.

But what do you believe is the root of suffering? Earth is a hard place to be. There was a psychiatrist, and I remember sitting on this call one time, and she said something I'll never forget. She said, biology is cruel. Earth is not here to be nice to you. Earth has been very hard on humans for a long time. Pick up a history book.

Tragedy, starvation, wars. This is not like the kind, fuzzy place. Your cells, they're not trying to be nice to you. They're just program. They're doing different things. based on how your DNA was created without you, even have any say in it. And so there's always going to be hard

in the human experience. And then humans make more hard for each other, whether it's a family member, X, or you name it, right? Me included. Like, I've increased someone suffering through my own actions, right? Like, not the things I'm most proud of, but, hey, I've done it. I'll do it in the future because we don't often

even intend to do it. And so suffering is part of the human experience. And all the philosophers wrote about it. We don't talk about it because that doesn't fit like the, hey, let's just focus on the exciting things and all the fun things that we do in life now. But suffering is, is innate into the human process. Yeah. Yeah.

No, it's true. Do you ever study like Buddhism and that whole, the philosophies are more of their specific traditions? Eastern philosophies, Western philosophies, Buddhism, Taoism, a really big fan of Taoism. Like Da Dao Ching was a phenomenal book. Just a lot of little parables and verses on things that were occurring and were making sense to Lao Su who lived four or five thousand years ago and you read it today. And you're like, oh, yep, you've been experience, still the same. So yeah, I've very much like study spirituality. philosophy, lots of different religions.

Like, I'm curious, like, just as a dude. No, me too. I've gotten very, I guess, interested in just, you know, spirituality as a whole. And with the concept of connecting it to human behavior, right? That to me is extremely interesting because, like, okay, well, I'm not feeling, right? What's the rationale? Like, what's the why? I got to find the why.

And I understand that there's connection between the, you know, the spirit. spiritual realm and like our physical realm and how did the two kind of intertwined together to create this experience. And we'll even, we'll even take you to some, some neuroscience. When was the human experience supposed to be feeling well? Never. It's never. We've come up to this concept of if I'm feeling, if I'm not feeling great, something's wrong. We were never designed to feel constant and chronic happiness. Right. We're never.

We were supposed to feel all the emotions. We're supposed to feel, and there's biological differences in how often a person feels happy. Like just the way you were born, you're going to feel sad more often than that person. You're going to feel anxious more often than that person. You're going to feel angry more often than that person. I'm going to be happy more often just at a genetic level. Yeah. So we've got these big emotions that we feel and what we just have this obsession.

obsession with feeling joy and happiness. And so this is what I do when I do therapy with people that have like been in a chronic negative mood state for a long time. I go there's six emotions. You know six emotions? It's a test. Do I know? Yeah.

Oh, man. Pressure. Joy, sadness, happiness, sadness, anger. Frustration? Nope. No? Anger. Fear.

Fear. Fear is considered an emotion, man. Oh, that's, that's... I would feel like that's more like a reaction, but it's an emotion in itself. Okay. One of the, you know, one in three Americans is going to receive an anxiety, diagnoses?

One in three. 33% of people. So that tells you how big of a component. Fear is, yeah. No, I know fear is strong, but I didn't, I guess, label it as an emotion in itself. I thought it was more of like a response. But, yeah.

Wow. And the other two are surprised and disgust. And that's a whole complicated thing. I went down that rabbit hole because I was like, oh, let me argue him. And you get down there, you're like, okay, I agree. It's just no point in like arguing. Those are the six primary ones, like primary colors.

But what's interesting is happiness is only one of the six. So if they happened all evenly, how often are you ever really supposed to get happy? Damn, that's so true. Right, because you look at the rest of the emotions. They got it. They're not. They ain't positive ones. Yep. There's only one positive one.

Surprise, I guess, kind of sometimes, but probably not that often. So you're talking about all the other emotions are negative, and so those are going to come. And so I like to talk a lot about what's your plan for negative emotions. How are you going to cope? Right. What do the stories you're going to tell yourself about what you should do and what's happening now that you're sitting in negative? And how comfortable can you get it in? Right.

Like act acceptance and commitment therapies like my face. every psychological modality. Yeah. And it's all about can you increase your tolerance of sitting in negative emotions without needing them to change. Exactly. So it's not about changing these emotions. It's about accepting and dealing, maybe not dealing, but accepting the response to those

emotions essentially. It's something that it's really a physiological experience, right? If I tell you when you're sad, how do you feel? and you'll describe like, yeah, I'm not motivated, you know, like I'm not really interested in doing anything. Yeah. So, like, the people I work with have chronic depression, and I tell them, hey, you're hard, is you're going to feel like this much more often than a person that's never been depressed.

Like, this experience that you don't like is going to be more pervasive in your life than it is for people that don't have it. Yeah. Now, we can reduce it. Like, I can turn the knob down a little bit through some things, but we can't. Like, there's no cure. There's no, exactly. It ain't going away.

Yeah. So when you say like accept, right, like let's say, you know, this person's going through maybe some serious depression and they're struggling to find this joy in their life, right? What does it mean to accept this negative feeling that you have inside of you? What does that mean? Yeah, it means. So we'll just take a mindfulness definition, right? Like lots of different mindfulness definitions.

but essentially breaks down to being in the present moment how it is without needing it to change. So I don't know if you're like a tit, not Han guy. And he's like, can you invite negative emotions to have a seat, have tea at your table? It's funny. There's a concept of like when, you know, like being in a meditative state, right?

And it's like actually sitting down and being in that experience, inviting, you know, these negative emotions to be there. Instead of them arising and you being, like no get away no open you know open the door let them in and sit with them hard right because what are you doing you have really bad anxiety and it opened the door to sit with you right before your test right right right right right open the door to come hang out right before you get in the car whatever right before you go on a date and I always like to tell my patience I'm like is that

the first time anxiety showed up and I'm like no it's been here my whole life I'm like so you think that for the rest of your life, anxiety's going to stop pulling up. I ain't going to just, hey, all right, later. I'm out. Well, sorry, I bothers you for 35 years. Right, right, right. Now that you're 36, like, I'm done showing up.

Like, no, I think this is coming in. So to accept it means to sit in it. It doesn't mean you're going to love it. How long can you tolerate it without needing it to change? Because that's what avoidance does. Like, you start becoming avoidant of emotions. But what that leads to is unhealthy coping. That's when you,

drinking, drugs, gambling, whatever you do to cope. So like, that's what I say, have a plan. Depression, anxiety, anger, it did not just start showing up in your life. It's been with you. It's your challenge to deal with. It's your unasked for a thing. You should have a plan. And what do you do when it pulls up?

And so that's the therapeutic process to me is, can you help a person make sense of their experience as it is? and can you help them have strategies to cope with it in a way? It doesn't remove it, but it removes its control over them. Yeah. And meditation, journaling, book reading, right? Like those, I guess, would be some of the habits. Walking, playing the guitar,

going to hang out with your kids, going to hang out with your nephew, your nieces, right? There's so many things. And being present in that moment. It's not like hanging out and pulling out the phone or being on the phone, you know, doing this or allowing your mind to escape. to work thoughts, right? It's like being there in that space specifically. Because most people, they can't tell you what brings you joy. What brings you positive feelings? So I like spend

a lot of time with people going, okay, what brings you positive feelings? And then I ask them, what brings you negative feelings? They give me their list. And I go, well, how often are you doing the things that bring you positive feelings? And they look at me and they're like, oh, shit, do more of that. Yeah. Do less of that. Yeah. Because they never even brought that sense of a awareness to themselves to be able to understand that. It's funny because there's a, you know, like the concept of the power of now, right? It's like really being in the moment. Something that always stuck with me that I still do to this day is like when you're washing

the dishes or you're washing your hands, pay attention to the feeling of the water hitting your hands, the sensations of the water, you know, running, pay attention to, you know, what the sounds are around you in that specific moment. And it's a way of practicing like that intention of living in that. moment because it's very easy as you're doing like a mindless activity right washing hands you're like this your mind's got wherever it wants to be in that moment but if you intentionally choose to not allow the mind to be wandering in that moment and being very intentional about what's actually happening in that moment listening to the sound of the water feeling the soap in between your hands

listening to the birds chirping right like now you've created a super hyper level of awareness and it was just in that one moment, but you got it for 10, 15 seconds, right? Which is huge. And then now that's how you kind of stack up and you're practicing a lot more moments that you're able to be present in. How many moments can you be present in your experience? Paying attention to your senses forces you into the present moment. And that's just, those are grounding techniques, right?

Like, oh, what's a grounding technique? Yeah. Engaging with your senses in this moment and act, there's six core processes that can help a person have the psychological flexibility that they need to navigate life's hard. Life's suffering. One's present moment awareness. Two is acceptance. Three is unhooking from negative thoughts.

Four is being able to zoom out and get a third person perspective. Five, it's committed action to your values and six is just knowing your values. If you can do those six, as often as you can, watch what happens for your life. Yeah. dude this is a damn good conversation yeah you know i love you see in the topic like this damn good conversation so i kind of before here before we wrap up like tell tell me a little bit about you know what you're doing now with your business obviously we've i think touched on kind of the foundation of it all you know why you're so passionate about what it is that you're doing but

tell us a little bit about you know the line of work now that you're getting into yeah no absolutely purpose passion progress results right and So in my third year of my doctoral program, I was working in the hospital. And I thought it was cool. It's like, wow, I had to wear this white coat around. And I get to go see and check up on all my patients. And I would do a lot of education because, like, I'd have a person and just, like, got their leg cut off. Yeah.

Because they had diabetes. Or I'd have a person that just had a stroke. And I remember one time this guy is like a black dude. We're like regional, more regional rehabilitation. Hospital in Hollywood, Florida, right? So we're getting like the true South Florida community. And I remember one time he was like, bro, like, you're like the only like other black dude like in the hospital.

Like I brought my, my clippers. Can you like shave my hair? Because like I'm looking ragged in here. And so I'm like in this hospital room, right? Like just cutting this dude's hair with some clippers. And he was a gardener. And he couldn't understand how he had a stroke at like 50 years old. So I was educating him.

on the risk factors that can cause a stroke. And he was like, man, I wish I would have known this sooner. And then I just kept hearing this pattern in all these hospital rooms I'm going into and people are saying, oh, I wish I'd have known this sooner. And then one day I was just sitting in front of my, like, in my desk and then looking at the phone and looking at my charts. And I thought, man, like, how long am I going to spend, like waiting for people to be in the worst circumstances ever to call me by hand, you'd help.

I'm like, doctors would make shitty athletes. What if your favorite football team, the defense was just standing around waiting for a touchdown on the score before they ran over there. Like, we need to stop these things from happening. What is it, preventative medicine? Preventative health. I'm studying clinical health and looking at these numbers ballooning for mental and physical health disorders.

It's out of control, right? The worst we've ever seen. Like, what are we going to do about it? And so I went to tell all my advisors and I went to tell everybody, hey, we should do something. And everybody looked at me and they were like, hey, we're clinicians. We don't prevent.

We treat. And I was like, well, that's BS. Like, I want to prevent. And they're like, hey, there's no real industry around it. And I was like, yeah, I kind of see people that are like, go talk about health and stuff. And so I was like, all right, I'm going to start a business. And so I started my company optimal performance.

And what I held teams and high performers and individuals do is understand the things that you need to do mentally to maximize your mental performance. plus your well-being. Not and, not when I get around to my well-being. Maximize your performance plus your well-being. Your performance is actually built on the foundation of your health. And that's what you learn as an athlete. You can't go think you're going to have your best season ever.

If you show up out of shape, unhealthy, get your health right. Then your performance actually has the opportunity to be its best. But for people that aren't in sports, we're not teaching people that and forgiving them the tools and the things that they need to do that. So I just started finding companies and leaders to partner with, and they bring me in, and they're like, J.T., I don't know how to support the mental well-being of my team. I'm like, thanks for being humble and having enough foresight

to find somebody that has that skill set to partner with you. And so I've got to do some amazing work, Bacardi North America, Southern Glazers, I run mental performance for the San Antonio Spurs, all the other amazing leaders and organizations that have let me come in to speak or do workshops, and that's what I love to do, is like, go out and educate, right? So I don't have to keep thinking that.

I wish I'd have known sooner. Okay, here's your sooner. Let's put in programs. Let's help. Like, who are the interested leaders that want to do things for their team? Who are the interested individuals that want to learn this stuff for themselves? And my recent, like, focus now that schools wrap it up is, how do I take this knowledge that was sitting in academia and only high school?

performance settings and how do I just give it directly to people. And I'm trying to figure that out for my business now, how I can give people these tools. But that's why I started auto performance. That's what I'm trying to do. And this is my way of going from purpose to passion to progress to results. Yeah. Oh, that's, it's beautiful. And you can tell, you could tell, obviously, one, the wealth of knowledge that you have and very, you know, what's the word? I'm very articulate in the way that you kind of explain it, right? Yeah. Because it could be,

it could feel complicated and overwhelming to a lot of people, but you do a very good job of like, hey, this is what it is. This is what you need to do. And this is how you're going to do it, right? Which that's what people need, right? You see so much information out there now too.

It's like, it's over stimulating and you're getting all this. Oh, you got to do this. You got to do this. I'm like, I don't know where to go. What's the actual thing? Yeah. Like, what do I need to do? Whereas it's like, hey, this is what the problem is.

This is the solution. And this is the plan for that solution. That's practical. Exactly. Make this practical. Exactly. And I think that I'll be honest. I have some biases because sometimes social media, it's its own entity, its own business, right?

And so people get confused because there are so many voices. But the voices have different trainings and different experiences. And often it's. way more than it's really necessary. Yeah. Like when you actually study healthy lifestyles, preventative health, the things that a person needs to do to be healthy and behaviorally do the things that are going to allow them to reduce their risk of chronic conditions and live a long life are actually simple.

Yeah. It's just hard to be that consistent. And there's just, there's five healthy lifestyle domains. And this is like CDC, NIH, World Health Organization. They all agree. There's five healthy lifestyle things that people should do, but only 7% of people in the United States do it. 7%. 93% of people don't do the five basic healthy lifestyle things every day.

And if we could get that, we would probably reduce. There's some like the American College of Lifestyle Medicine says, if we could get everyone to do this, we would reduce chronic illness and disease by 80%. And what is it? It's exercise. It's movement. 30 to 60 minutes of moderate exercise, five to six days a week, seven to nine hours of sleep. Not crazy nutrition, but like try not to eat junk, process foods, yeah.

Get your four to five servings of fruits and vegetables. Cut down like the super sugary drinks. Right. And then what are you doing to manage your stress? This is the number one greatest opportunity for people because people don't know that low grade, not high grade, not trauma, low grade chronic stress is the greatest risk factor for all people in America. Because it destabilizes your systems and your body and the way the cells replicate and interact

with each other. So we're the worst at stress management because no one's talking about it. We don't focus on it. And the last is like not abusing substances. Right. Like using them as prescribed drinking in moderation. Right. If we can hit that five, we'd be in a very.

good place. Yeah, and so I actually created a program called Striving for 100 that teaches people how to how to do that. Okay. But it's hard because you can do it every day. Yeah, it's a consistency. It's like just you're not, hey, you did it for a week. Congratulations. But guess what? The next week you got to keep it up. Yeah. You know, there's no vacation from this. Yeah, you can take a couple days off. Like, it doesn't have to be crazy. But like the systems in your body rely on those behaviors to function their best. So when you go into a hospital, when you're looking at people and their families in there, and they're sad and this person's in the hospital and they're like how this happened.

It's like a system in your body is just no longer working. Because you weren't aware how you were unintentionally abusing that system. Now it's broken. And now we're going to try some things to keep that system going. For some people it works for some people it doesn't. And I've had some tough end of life conversations, man.

I tell you that's a perspective that it's a, life changer to do some end-of-life hospice work that you don't you never forget the looks in people's eyes and the stories they tell when like they know that the countdown is right is here that's tough yeah i got one last question for you and we'll and we'll wrap it up but what's the most rewarding part about what you're doing now today oh man that's a good one um i would say that the most rewarding thing is knowing that I'm giving my all, right? Like that pursuit, I'm really trying to do everything I can to try to help people have solutions for the problems that they're having now or they might have into the future. And like the conversations that I get, like with somebody that comes

up to me after one of my talks or comes up to me a year after I taught or came to a visit visit them and their teams and they're like, man, you don't understand how in that moment, how much I needed that. Like, I was going home, frustrated. Me and my wife were going to get a divorce. Like, she just knew something was off in me. I just, I didn't even know what to do to address it out. It's the, it's a gratitude.

That's what it is. It's the gratitude that people have when they let me know that a seven-year journey to get a doctor like all the time I spend trying to like take complex things and make them practical and teach them to people when they say how it changed their life. Yeah. That's because you made the point earlier like you didn't have to do this. Yeah. Yeah. Like you're doing this strictly out of the calling that you felt destined to do.

And I think that speaks volumes, you know, about what you're doing and just the, you know, the passion behind what you're doing. Went to school. Yeah. It's crazy. It's awesome. do you like for me it was like the decision and are you going to switch your careers like are you going to go do what you're being called to do right even if it means like you're going to make less than what you're doing right don't let me like put myself in somebody else's shoes

because i'm 100% blessed and like super grateful and like financial strain and stuff like that's not my like suffering anymore right still hard to walk away from stuff yeah 100% hard It's hard to step back into hard when you created ease for yourself. And an identity. Oh, my goodness. You create an identity, you know, to create a separate identity through what you believe is your calling. And it's not just easy to just. Oh, my goodness.

I went into that graduate program. I was, my identity was at risk. And this is why I think some people don't make big changes. Because I was exposing myself to falling flat on my face. Yeah. I went from thinking like, oh, yeah, you know, you're pretty. high performance, high level, but to go do something I had no experience in and to try to go do the most rigorous thing you can do, I spent two years thinking, like, how am I going to deal

with the embarrassment if I fail? Like two years, not like two months. Yeah. Two years going, what if, that if I fall flat on my face and like I have to call my friends and tell my family, like, hey, I got two Cs and they kick me out. Like, most people don't know. And like, when you try to get a doctorate, one. One. C is your warning the next C you're out. And I'm like, I don't know. I was never that kind of student. I took some C's.

I was like, oh, see, yeah, I'll take that. Yeah, yeah. So it's, it was, it was, it's been a long, I mean, seven years. This is as long as I play football. Yeah. To try to get here to this point, but it'll all be worth it to be able to spend the rest of my life helping people. For sure.

That's, that's my calling. Yeah. That's awesome. Well, thank you so much. My God, appreciate you. A hell of a conversation. Yeah, it's dope. Every time I finish one of these, I feel like we got to do another one because I feel like we didn't even, we could have gotten into so much more.

But appreciate you again for everything you're doing, everything that you're doing with PAC and the involvement that you have and just for taking the time to do this. I don't know. And PAC is awesome. What we're doing to try to help people prepare for the transition to build that bridge into next, but not have to do it alone, to have support. this community I say it all the time this is the community that I feel so connected to and I feel like this is

some of the most important work I do and I can't wait until we really change the narrative that former players they just go kick ass after the game not that it's easy but we figure it out and we do it together

so man thank you for what you're doing thank you for giving us an opportunity in a platform to share with, you know, your followers and the people to, you know, watch what you do and, you know, we'll just keep doing everything we can on our end to help the players in this hard next step for themselves.

Absolutely. It's a team effort at the end of the day. That's what makes us all work. So, cool. I appreciate it. All right, man. Yes, sir.