How to Become Unbreakable | Devon Still on Impact Theory

you have to use fear to push you to new heights but when you reach the heights when you face those fairies in their life you have to be able to turn off that fear of felling so you know where I'm going to keep working there may be failure later on down the road but I already felt what it felt like so it can't be that much worse so I have to keep pushing myself everybody welcome to impact theory you're here my friends because you believe that human potential is nearly limitless but you know that having potential is not the same as actually doing something with it so our goal with this show and company is to introduce you to the people and ideas that will help you actually execute on your dreams all right today's guest is one of the most accomplished and resilient human beings I have ever come across despite snapping his leg literally in half his freshman year in high school he fought back becoming one of the best high school football players in the country ultimately being offered a scholarship to play by more than 50 of the most prestigious college programs then despite blowing out his knee his freshman year in college breaking his leg again in his sophomore year blowing out his back tearing his rotator cuff and even breaking his toe many of them potentially career-ending injuries he was still able to fight his way back to playing at an elite level being named an all-american and the 2011 Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year and shortly thereafter he was also drafted 53rd overall in the 2012 NFL Draft finally this poor guys dreams had come true but then in his second year in the NFL he dislocated his elbow fought his way back from that but then blew his back out again just two games later after season-ending back surgery he was almost killed from post-operative blood clots in his lungs but as gnarly as all of that was it was nothing compared to the fight he would find himself in just a couple of months later when his four year old daughter was diagnosed with stage 4 neuroblastoma a rare form of pediatric cancer but even that was not going to break this man or his daughter he put his NFL career on hold and said about teaching her everything he knew about how to fight and it worked despite being given only a 50% chance of living she's now been cancer-free for years now retired this true the anti fragile man has dedicated himself to helping others as a speaker high performance coach in the backbone of the still strong foundation the foundation has already raised millions of dollars to aid other families in the fight against pediatric cancer so please help me in welcoming the man who even the FBI has turned to for leadership training former NFL star and future author of still in the game Devon Still show pleasure to be here I was absolutely freaked out by your story it is almost hysterical how many times you've been injured and told oh you're probably not gonna play again and then you just come back come back come back how did you develop that mindset like what was it that you went through that toughen you up I think it would just have to be my upbringing um having that injury early on in my high school career really helped out a lot because they tested my will you know I set out when I was young to want to be NFL player or be a professional athlete and sometimes when you you say you want to be something like to test just how much you want to be and for me that happened when I was 14 and I broke my leg on basketball practice yeah there's breaking your leg and then you said that your leg was hanging on by a tendon right just got to be pretty scary for anybody let alone at that age so how did you and this is something I always find really fascinating about people that succeed at a high level and variably at some point their life somebody in like authority the person you're supposed to listen to is gonna say yeah this you may not be able to come back from this what was it that gave you the belief in yourself to say I'm gonna ignore that and I'm gonna push you this all right cuz I saw other people do it before you know I'm not the first person who suffered a big injury during sports and they were able to overcome that and still become that professional athlete and I felt as though I wasn't any different and the worst thing I can do was actually try and if it didn't happen that I will be okay with it but I couldn't settle with knowing that I never tried to see if I can overcome did you see other people either before college in college or in the NFL that were broken by what they went through like whatever injury that they sustained just not be able to overcome it that happens a lot you know I wasn't the most talented person growing up in football I actually was pretty terrible when I first started but what stops people from making it to the highest level is that they don't overcome those injuries they let the people come into their life and tell them you know what I don't think you're able to overcome this injury and they don't even try whereas it's people who have the resolve to keep fighting and keep working towards a goal or the people who usually get their goals you there was actually an amazing quote that you said and it was I'm gonna paraphrase it but it was like if you fail don't worry that doesn't make you a failure it just means that what you were going after you didn't want badly enough smart another that was pretty interesting how do how do you find things you want that badly like how do you not fall prey to that where it's just like well I I'm gonna give up I think people have to realize that they have to accept failure but don't accept defeat I think whenever you're trying to do something great whenever you're trying to be successful you're going to face failures you know but it's those lessons in the photos that really take you to greatness if you look at sports you know when we go through practice we fell all the time in practice but they're controlled failures so that when it's really game time when we step out on the field when it really matters we're able to execute because we felt so much in practice that we knew what we had to do in a game in order to succeed and how do you think about failure what do you conceptualize it in a certain way that it's like a learning lesson or how do you keep it from damaging your ego it hurts don't get it no no doubt about it failure definitely hurts um but the way that you're able to overcome those failures just say you know what I felt because of this reason I'm gonna take these lessons I'm not gonna focus on me failing but I'm gonna take the lessons in the first so that when I move on and I try to do something new that I already have the equipment or the lessons in order to succeed the next time around so one thing that I always I like to ask guests regardless of what I know about their kids obviously I know a lot about Leah and the story of her going through the cancer and one of the things that I found so interesting was that you couldn't fight the battle for her she had to fight it herself but you had made the decision that you were going to teach her how to fight so one how did you think about the what you call the playbook like how did you come up with a playbook and what were the lessons and what's it like teaching those to a kid so I came up with the playbook because going into my third year the NFL I sat down with the reporter and he had asked me a lot of questions but the one question that stuck out to me was he had asked me you've been the top dog your whole career playing sports what is it like to have to fight for your spot now in the NFL and it kind of rubbed me the wrong way because I felt like he didn't understand what I went through in order to get to this point so I started to go down a list of all the things that I went through in my life and when I told him he had his look of shock on his face like man I can't believe you were able to accomplish all this after going through all that how were you able to do it and that was the first time anybody had ever asked me that question and I didn't have a good answer at that time I just told him I don't know I just did fast-forward a couple of months later Liat got diagnosed with cancer and I was crushed you know I thought when I heard the word cancer I associated with death and I thought my daughter was gonna die but I decided to do some soul-searching to find out what that I had in me that allowed me to overcome all the obstacles that I faced in order to make it to the NFL and it was really football you know I've been playing football since I was 13 and it had been conditioning me my whole life without me knowing on how to overcome adversity how to overcome obstacles so I came up with a playbook that I was gonna use to teach my daughter how to overcome the battle with cancer because the beautiful thing about the brain is that were able to condition it to think whatever we wanted to think and do whatever we wanted to do and I wanted to condition my daughter to think like a athlete so she can approach this battle with cancer like a game so how does an athlete stink well first I feel like you have to have a vision you you have to set big goals for yourself I tell people all the time we here you know set attainable goals that you can go after but I honestly believe that you have to set big goals in life and I compared it to the Olympics with the high jump you know when you watch the high jump when they're warming up these these pee they set the bar pretty low for themselves right and if you see these jumpers jumping over the bar they're barely getting over the bar which is it's crazy to me cuz when I watched I'm like you know this guy's not gonna go far you can't even clear the low bar but as the event goes on and they start to raise the bar higher and higher that same jumpers clearing the bar with no problem and that made me realize that you know when you set the bar low for yourself no matter how much potential you have you only do enough to clear the bar but if you set the bar high for yourself in life you're gonna do everything you can to get over that bar and sometimes you're gonna hit the bar that's life but if you set the bar high for yourself you're still jumping higher than you would have if you set the bar low so I wanted to set a big goal for my daughter which was to beat cancer within a year so what we did when we set that big going out was if I remember right they had told you was gonna take two years so you literally cut that in half they if it was successful it would took two years we didn't even know if she was going to be able to beat this disease but I knew if we broke that that 2-year down in half and we will work harder what we did when we set that big goal is we broke it down into smaller goals you know so every time that she went in for chemo for five days she would have a 21 day break in between but we would celebrate after we got out of the hospital know Friday's like we just won the Superbowl because I felt like it was important for her to realize you know these are small steps that you're winning but they're steps towards the bigger goal so if you keep fighting you keep building up these small victories we're going to get the big victory in a long run yeah that's it that's really important there's a lot of studies that back that up and one of the things that I found most fascinating to your point about having really big goals is that the person who says I want to lose five pounds right they their rate of failure is astronomical and it's like 10 times worse than somebody who says I'm gonna go from morbidly obese to having six-pack abs right and you would think how is that possible but it's because people get excited it's something that gets you amped up which gives you that energy to keep pushing going back to your earlier quote about if you fail don't worry doesn't make you a failure you just weren't excited enough about our thing that you were chasing now how did you in all of this other than it's been well-documented how playful you were with Leah through the whole process dancing celebrating like you guys have won the Super Bowl how did you keep her focused and excited on what you guys were trying to accomplish I think when you're trying to lead a movement you have to get the person to believe in it just as much as you do Russ it doesn't work you know so what I did with Lee is I made sure that she pictured herself being a cancer survivor before she actually was you know the interesting thing is I went to San Quentin prison a couple of weeks ago where I visited with some of the inmates and one of the inmates had asked me you know how do you hold on to hope and during dark times because he had been locked up since he was 18 and he got 54 years to life and I was telling him that if you ever wanted to leave the prison you first had to let your mind leave it first like you may be trapped here physically but once you get your mind out of it you'll start to act a certain way you start to do the things you need to do in order to get out of here so what I did was Lee is I made sure that she saw that she was a cancer survivor I made her wear the shirts I told her stories about people who beat the disease and I said you know they're no different than you if you take this same approach if you start to act like you're a cancer survivor now that you do the things that you know cancer survivors does you'll be able to fight through the pain that you had to fight through in order to get to your going when I was able to get her to see how important it was to start acting like it before she actually was then it was easy that that's incredible it's doubly incredible given that she was four years old as you're going through this process so I know we haven't gotten through all the things in your playbook but really fast tell us this story and where does it fit into the playbook of the crayons which you're a better man than I dude that's like honestly I don't know that I could do that but it was so impressive that was I was a tough moment but I think it was a pivotal moment for Leah's battle with cancer and it's actually mushy she got rolled into the the room after having a seven and a half I was surgery to remove her tumor when they wrote her in there I didn't even know was my daughter like she was really swollen she was lethargic she wasn't she couldn't she couldn't talk it's scary but they had told us that it was important for her to be able to move as days go on and I remember it's probably a day after her surgery or two days after her surgery and at the end of her bed there was a table with a coloring book and crayons and she had just started opening her eyes and talking and she had asked me if I could pass her the crayons so that she can colored you know I jumped right up and told her yeah I'll get the crayons for you but when I went to reach for the curia on something stopped me she was like you can't do this you're taking away from her moment like this is the beginning of her fight with cancer and she has to realize that she's strong enough to overcome whatever she's going through so I sat back on the the couch in the hospital room and I told her you know I could get these crayons for you but you have to get them yourself you have to prove to yourself that you're capable of overcoming the pain that you're going through right now and she gave me this crazy look like she was just she was mad at me like you didn't know I just went through a seven-hour surgery but I didn't care because I knew this was her moment so she started to sit up in the bed and she reached out for the decree on it she failed and she fell back onto her pillow and you can see just a look of disappointment in her face you know and at that moment I kept questioning myself is this the right time to push her like just get the crayons for we'll try it another day we'll try it tomorrow but as you know tomorrow is the worst word in a book in the world because tomorrow can never come in I always go to the next day so I said no we're gonna do this right now and I told her come on you can do this just try it again just try harder than you did the first time and I promise you're gonna get it so she sits up and she starts reaching for the crayons again and we're probably at the 2-3 minute mark now her just trying to reach for the crayon and she finally just jumps for grabs it and falls back onto her pillow and the look on her face of just excitement and overcoming and knowing that she was strong enough I I think was just the mentality that she took through the rest of her fighting on that you know I may be in pain right but I'm strong enough to overcome this mm-hmm I love that so I I don't know how many plays the PlayBook has I know four of them which are I think really amazing so one we've already talked about which is setting the goals and then number two at least as you described it in one of the talks that I watched was purpose how do you find your purpose how do you make sure that it's something intense enough that's going to see you through the difficulties and the failures oh I think we when you go out and you set a purpose for something it has to be bigger than yourself it can't always be about money or the monetary things because I've been able to reach those things and it didn't bring me the happiness or the satisfaction and I thought no I was driving down the street a couple of weeks ago and I was in San Francisco in San Francisco there's a lot of mountains right and I saw this really big mountain from its base but I couldn't see the top of the mountain because you know it was covered with fog and to me it really represented life you know a lot of the times we we set goes for itself we climb we want to climb these big mountains but if we can't see what's at the top of the mountains were reluctant to go after it you know a lot of times we're stuck standing at the base waiting for it that weather to pass so that we can see how far we have to climb and see what it exactly is at the top of the mountain but I think people who have a bigger purpose they climb that mountain regards that they can see the top because they realize that it's not really what's at the top of the mountain that's important but it's the lessons along the journey because whether you get what you wanted at the top of the mountain or you don't get I think you're left with the same question which is what now if you look at your situation you was at the top of the mountain you built this billion-dollar company but still when you got to the top of the mountain you asked yourself okay what next what's next because I think happiness only comes from progress so if you stay at the top of the mountain too long you no longer are happy so what you did is you took the lessons that you learned from climbing that mountain to climb a new mountain to build this type of company so I think it's important for people to understand this it's really the lessons along the journey that's the real big prize when you go climb the new mountain you now have understanding of what equipment you need to climb that mountain what lessons you need in order to climb that mountain because the next mountain you climb it's easier because you already been through the hard part which is just initially trying but when you're doing it for a bigger purpose than just yourself it's harder to give up because you know people are depending on you and that's how it was when I was going through with my injuries were football you know I had a lot of instances during my freshman year in college where I realized that it would be selfish of me to give up because there was times I wanted to give up it was hard like suffering two major injuries two season in the surgeries back-to-back years you have a you question yourself a lot is it worth it it's a worth fighting through but I realized that I had a way to provide a better lifestyle for my family you know I grew up in the type of city where all there is is drugs and violence and actually growing into my freshman year I went home to go to a party with some of my friends and at that party I watched somebody get killed right in front of my face and I told myself that no matter what I went through in college that I was gonna keep fighting because I didn't want my family I didn't wanna have to raise my kids in that same environment that I was raised in so when I faced adversity and I wanted to give up I realized that if I give up I'm letting a lot of other people down and I couldn't do that yeah man I get that for sure what is your purpose now you know it took for me to watch my daughter battle cancer to find out what my purpose was because I always wanted to be in the NFL make a name for myself in the NFL but then my daughter's fight with cancer really brought a lot of perspective to my life and what's important so I tell people all the time I may not be playing football anymore but I'm still in the game and it's it's my game my game of life I don't know what quarter I'm in right now but as I tell everybody you know as Ashley I'm conditioned to fight for four quarters so what I want to do with my life now is just empower people take the lessons that I learned from my pain and my obstacles to help people overcome their pain because as a competitor I was taking so many losses you know and when you're an athlete when you're a competitor you'd like to win and the way I looked at life is if I'm able to take these lessons to help people change their life then I'm gonna win overall because the more obstacles I faced the more lessons I learn the more content I had in order to share with people so I'm just looking to win the game of life so I had written an intro for you that was more focused on the like just the accomplishments all-american you know 53rd overall like going through all of those and then I heard you say that and I was so I was stopped in my [ __ ] tracks when you said that not only did you not resent the things that you've gone through but that they were giving you the tools that you needed to go and help other people and I was like Jesus like so many people have such a hard time reframing their life in general the smallest thing will stop them but to be able to reframe the story that you've had wit it's literally this unrelenting like a list of problems obstacles things you've had to overcome and in all of that you get to one of your plays which is have fun mmm and I thought wow like to be learning from what you're going through and to have like one of your marquee take aways from everything you've been through to have fun why is that so powerful that's a lesson I learned playing football you know as you get to different levels of sports you really start to see the fun you're taking away from it because it starts to turn into a business remember when I was young my little league coach always told us that you have to have fun because once you take away the fun you already lost because you you're not doing it for what you started out doing it for and it was interesting because when Leah first got diagnosed with cancer you know I stayed in the hospital all the time before I never left the hospital for a straight month when she first got diagnosed but one night I decided to go to my wife's house just because I needed to get my mind right and just get myself out of that type of environment for a little bit and while I was there you know her roommate had a group of friends over and they was talking it was having fun and somebody told the joke and the whole room burst out in laughter and I started laughing and it was crazy because in the instance my brain told me to stop laughing and I stopped and I just sat down on the couch thinking to myself like what was so funny like my four-year-old daughter was in the hospital battling death there's absolutely nothing that should be funny but as I started to sitting and I was thinking more like I can't take this approach because if I have this mindset going into Leah's battle with cancer we're always just so somber always asking the question why us why do we have to go through this then we're gonna lose but if we learn to control our own emotions and not tired to certain events but have complete control of our settings then you know we we can overcome this disease and I'm telling you I feel like because of we I was able to shift my mindset in that moment that allowed us to overcome because we had joy we had happiness it didn't matter what the doctors were telling us it didn't matter what she was going through it didn't matter the stress that I was going through being away from her we just tried to have fun as much as we could so that's really incredible and I can only imagine having to face down something like that and what I love about this is there's always this sense when you tell your story of learning lessons in real time that have real practical use that you learn and then you apply which i think is is really really incredible and you once said that we all have moments of weakness and but they're just that they're moments and I don't let my moments of weakness turn into a mindset how important is mindset like what are elements that make up like the kind of powerful mindset that you have that you've passed on to your daughter where I see a lot of people go wrong is they think those strong side of the weakness is weak but I think it's necessary because sometimes you have to cry you have to get it all out so that you're able to make decisions that are not based off emotions you know a lot of times when people saw me on TV talking about my daughter crying a lot because I was trying to deal with these emotions that I was facing with when I was behind closed doors and I was just with my wife at the house I was crying a lot I was trying to find something inside me to keep fighting for my daughter to keep keep moving and I didn't let those those moments where I thought we consumed me and turned into a mindset I let them be just that let them be moments and when I got done crying I wiped the tears off got up and was like okay this is what we need to do next to keep fighting and I think that's that's the key that people need to realize that it's okay to be weak but when you you're able to show these signs of weakness then people are able to step in and help you and you can't get through things along that you need to help and in order to do that you have to show that you're weak it's really interesting I have multiple questions in here so one do you have things that you're telling yourself in those moments of weakness that will get you quickly out of it or and if so what are those things it's not something I tell myself is something I pictured um those are intangible they always thought I was intangible you first have to see it in your mind first in order for it to become true and it's it's interesting because when I'm traveling a lot people always ask me the same question is how does it feel to play in the NFL right and I always respond and say it feels exactly how you think it would feel if you reached your goals and I would see the person's face just light up because they were able in that moment the pitcher would it would feel like a day accomplish their goal so that's what I always would tell myself what would it feel like if Rhea beat cancer what would it feel like if you made it to the NFL because what I did was take that feelings and compare it to the pain I was facing at the time and if that feeling of overcoming the obstacles I was facing was greater than the pain then I kept pushing you know I wanted to use my pain in order to get many greatness but I first had to feel and see what it would be like if I overcame these obstacles and achieve my goals that's really powerful in terms of being a pretty simple math equation of being able to look at okay this is what I think this would like and that's a certain kind of RAD and then there's what I'm going through are gonna have to go through in order to get there have there been times where you're like add the math equation doesn't add up and so now I'm gonna stop it happened with me retiring it's hard I tell everybody that you have to learn gonna call audibles in your life you have to learn when to fake pivots a lot of people get confused and think that you know if they keep fighting then that's that strength that's true strength but sometimes true strength is being able to see what life is giving you and making a pivot and your life to do something different and I had put thirteen years into football of literally blood sweat and tears and to walk away from it was the hardest thing I had to do but I felt like I had a bigger purpose and I realized that what I could could achieve on the football field wasn't worth the pain that I I was going through you know because I had foot surgery a couple of years ago after playing against the Titans and although I could make it back because I proved that when I I made it back with the Jets the long-term pain that I would go through but you know the arthritis and stuff that I was facing my foot and what my family would had to go through it wasn't worth it to me you know I felt like it was time to walk away and do something I felt like my true purpose was that and when I thought about it of course starting over it's hard you know the unknown is it's always hard that's why people don't like to do new things because you don't know what he's gonna lead towards but I was willing to take the chance because when I feel the feeling that I would get from being able to change people mindset I'm able to build this big company that just empowers people it's greater than the pain of walking away from the sport that I love makes a lot of sense you mentioned earlier playing through four quarters all through all four quarters what did you tell Leah about that because I know her first round of experimental treatment didn't work and so that had to be a wildly disheartening moment for you guys and when it's a wildly disheartening moment for adults and it's crushing I can only imagine what it's like when you're a four-year-old and are going through that so what did you tell her what is that whole concept yeah so when she first got diagnosed we we put her into a new clinical trial that they had made specifically for her type of cancer which was Nora blastoma and after the first four months of treatment it was hard but I was able to motivate my daughter to keep her pushing because let her know that when we get these results back that things might change for us so when we got the results back after her first treatment and we found out that the cancer had went from her hip to her chest her arms to her skull to her shoulders she was disappointed I felt like she thought she was letting me down because she was she promised me in the beginning that she was gonna give it everything she has and that she was gonna overcome cancer but that moment was hard for her right so we had put her into a new trial in this trial it was tough but I saw that really wearing my daughter down like it was it was literally beating her up it was one time in the hospital that things got really bad and she hadn't talked to me in two days she didn't eat nothing she was just she was just there you know if it wasn't for the monitors I would have thought that my daughter was going but the monitor showed that her heart was still beating but I went over to her bed and I just whispered in the hair here and I told her you know I know you're going through a lot of pain right now but this pain is only temporary and you promised me when we first started this fight that she was gonna fight for four quarters and I need you to keep that promise I need you to fight through the pain that you're going through right now because we don't know if this can be the treatment that saved your life and she had whispered to me and she said okay dad I felt like in that moment that I knew my daughter wasn't gonna give up and a couple of months later we went back in to get the results from her new treatment and the doctors told us it was gonna be about three to four days before we got the results so we left the hospital and as we were driving home my phone started ringing and I picked it up and it was the doctor and she said mr. Steele I know that I told you was going to take three to four days but this couldn't wait I'm a hard job because I thought it was gonna be something bad there's no reason for you to should call me when you just told me it was gonna take three to four days but she told me no we just looked at the scans and there's no evidence of disease its she's in remission and I just dropped the phone and I just started smiling and I looked to my left at my wife and I looked in the backseat at my daughter and they both had big smiles on their face and my daughter said dad did I beat up cancer and I told her yes and at that moment I can't even explain the feeling was like knowing that my daughter was born again the feeling that I had when she was first born it was multiplied by a thousand because it was like I was watching the rebirth she had a second chance at life and in that moment I realized how important it is to fight for four quarters because you never know would you what can happen if there's still time on the clock it's incredible man so when you're fighting for four quarters and it's brutally difficult and it's really painful what tactics do you have for dealing with that pain whether the pain is physical which I imagine you've gone through in just catastrophic amounts and rehabbing and things like that or mental like what are the the tactics that you have um yeah like you said I've been through some crazy injuries Hey I mean painful I mean painful the rehab process is gruesome but like I said earlier people try to make it seem like having this type of mindset is just it's so hard that you have to have all these different things in your backpack to use when you need it but it's really simple and it's really just picturing what you want out of life being able to visualize what exactly do you want and being able to hone that feeling that you would get from not giving up the feeling that your family would get from experiencing the life because they knew you didn't give up and if that's greater than their pain which most of the time is going to be and you got to keep fighting because it's painful success it's painful you know I mean you have to go through a lot of ups and downs but when you get that up that last up it's it's a beautiful thing if you ever had anybody say to you okay I get it but I don't know what I want mm-hmm what do you say to them if you don't know what you want I can't tell you you cannot admit you have to do some soul-searching yourself to find out what you really want because a lot of people they go through life without having goals they're just here and I honestly believe that everybody's here for a purpose but you have to find out what that purpose is so do you think there's a process that people can go through and and I push on this one because I get asked us a lot it's probably the the question I get asked the most is I don't have a passion how do I find my passion I don't think anybody finds their passion I think do you develop a passion I think you create it much like you created your passion for football and I'm guessing you didn't touch on it too much but I'm guessing that a big part of it was looking around where you were growing up and saying there's only so many escape routes for me and I know that you were the first person to graduate college in your family so that becomes a potential like path out but the only way that I might have enough energy to actually see this all through is to fall in love and I find that even that is a process of Fanning the flames and the first time somebody tell you oh you're really good at that you think oh wow that felt good I want that feeling more so you fan those flames and then you can develop it into a fascination which then through the gaining of mastery and now I'm just stealing from a book called so good they can ignore you through the process of gaining mastery it actually turns into a passion do you think that there's a similar kind of process to help people find a purpose or do you think judging by what you just said that it's sort of merely giving a story to it like you did with your daughter that helps bring that purpose yeah I think it's all about perspective the end of the day that might not have been the the reason why my daughter had cancer but because we tied that story with that situation it gave us a purpose and I think what people have to do is they really have to do some soul-searching and find out what do they like doing in life I don't want to talk about your shirt for a second so one you have a lot of cool shirts which we will definitely make sure that we link to your website and stuff because some of these are really dope what what does this fear and excuses are both off I made this shirt because I needed to remind myself that I was in control of my own settings and no matter what I go through in my life that if I wake up I had the change and I have control of how I attacked that day so the biggest things to me were excuses determination and fear because the things I went through in my life I could have made a bunch of excuses for why I didn't make it to the NFL why didn't I become a Penn State all-american but I knew if I used those excuses in that instance I would use that for the rest of my life and everything that I don't accomplish so I felt as though I needed to turn my excuses off in my life so that I can accomplish the things that I want and determination I think everybody has to have that because you find out when you're trying to become successful when you're trying to do something great if you don't have determination if you don't have the mindset that you're never gonna give up it's going to be easy to give up because there's a lot of ups and downs that you have to go through along the journey and fear is just something that I think holds people back like I told you a story about the mountains people have fear of climbing that mountain not knowing what's at the top of the mountain but people who are fearless I'm gonna go out there and do things even if they don't know what the outcome is just because they know it's gonna hold them back from achieving great things so these are the three things I wanted to put on my shirt to remind me as long as I have control of these three settings and I can go out there and do whatever I wanted to do it for my life and do you think it's being fear less or do you think that it's overcoming fear I think it's a little bit of both I think that you need fear and sometimes you don't need for you sometimes fear motivates people to keep pushing it so some people are scared of failure so you want to keep pushing yourself to make sure that they don't fail but along the journey you're gonna eventually fail sometimes so you have to have you have to turn the fear off in a sense of failure you have to use fear to push you to new heights but when you reach the heights when you face those fears in your life you have to be able to turn off fear of failing so you know where I'm gonna keep working there may be failure later on down the road but I already felt would failure felt like so it can't be that much worse so I have to keep pushing myself you've got a couple of other shirts what are some of your favorites no no your work I think it's very important for people to know that work before they go out into this world because it's a scary place and when you don't know what you what's your work somebody or something will tell you you know a lot of times when I was growing up and I was facing these type of injuries people were telling me you can't come back from this but I already believed that I could because I seen other people do it I know what I'm capable of doing so it doesn't matter what you tell me I know what I'm worth you know if people go out here and you know some teachers tell people they're not smart enough to go to college you're not pretty enough to do this you're not you know capable of doing that but if you already believe in yourself that you're able to accomplish whatever you set out to do then I feel like you can accomplish anything because you know your work I'm glad you brought that up you talked about people that negativity a is is going to happen and then be that you can actually use it to propel you forward how do you think about negativity and I'm sure you've had a lot more than just somebody thinking oh no no you're not gonna be able to come back from this leg that actively like you're never gonna succeed people from Wilmington Delaware they don't go on to become athletes like how do you use that I think the begger biggest example of that is my junior year in college and I had just overcame these two serious injuries with the ACL MCL and then breaking my fibula and I would go on the internet cuz it was a big block size for Penn State football and I saw people on there always saying Devin still sucks we don't know why we got him why he came to this school and it hurt but I used that hurt to push me my senior year and you said say you know what when it's all said and done I'm gonna prove these people wrong then i'ma show them that I'm here for a reason and that these injuries are not gonna stop me from doing what I first came here to do so every day I will post those negative blog post on my wall right and every time I would wake up I would read those when I was waking up at 4 o'clock in the morning to go workout when I was standing in the gym later than everybody else I visualized these blog posts where people were telling me that I wasn't gonna make it to the NFL and I wasn't gonna be good enough and I used that as fuel to keep pushing myself to do the things that I didn't necessarily wanted to do but I knew I had to do it in order to get the goals that I wanted I absolutely loved that do you think at all about having a chip on your shoulder and it being useful I think you do you need a chip on your shoulder in order to push yourself when you want to give up because there's a lot there's gonna be a lot of people that doubt you but you have to go out there and not only prove those doubters wrong but prove yourself right there's a lot of people you get bullied or when people tell you can't do something they picture their suffering they picture themselves in your situation and they tell yourself man if I was going through that there's no way out being able to overcome that or reach my goal so I know they can't do it but you have to prove to them that you can overcome and that not only turn them into supporters but it will also inspire them that whatever they're going through and they're like they can overcome it as well because they just saw what you went through all right now I need your help you mentioned bullies so now I want to go down this path so I was doing an AMA live where I talked to the camera you can ask me anything you want about anything and this guy wrote in and said I have a much younger brother and he's he's overweight and he's getting bullied and it's really starting to be a problem for him and I don't know what to do and I said you know what give me on a I gave like a whole spiel about here's what I think you need to do and I felt like it was awesome advice on paper but I didn't know if it would work in real life and so after giving the advice which was more or less like at the end of the day I don't want this to be true but [ __ ] has to toughen up so just know I write I'm not saying that that's a good thing or a bad thing I'm just saying he's gonna have to get tougher mentally he's got to decide whether he's okay with his weight or not because if he is and [ __ ] everybody that tells me he's got a problem and if he's not then he's got to make a change like that's that's the truth and then I said feeling good about the advice I've given on camera I said put me on the phone with this kid and hey I want him to know somebody else cares right so if his brother looks up to me then potentially I'll have some juice on the call so let's do this guy called get me on the phone with him and we got on the phone together and I was completely ineffective and I realized I don't know how to translate this to kids so as because literally every tool that I have assumes that your brain is developed and that I can hit you with that that I can reason with you that I can point out conflicting moments in your own arguments like I don't care about my weight at all and yet I cry myself to sleep right then it becomes very easy to say hey look you don't need to care about your weight but don't lie to yourself if you secretly do right now that's easy with an adult that's hard as hell with a kid you've gone through this with a four-year-old I don't understand so like what would you say to a kid let's say he's 10 11 years old he's being bullied and he's being bullied about his weight right so he does something very real and he's very sensitive about it it's touched on what you say you have to be honest with yourself know when you're at 10:11 your brain is more developed in you know me dealing with my four-year-old or daughter but you have to be real to yourself and a lot of people say you have to look yourself in the mirror and be honest but I I think you can't look in the mirror when you look in the mirror you have to see the person that you you don't want to see I think that's what stops people from being successful we looking at mirror and we say you know what I'm not I don't care about my way I'm comfortable in my way but deep down inside or not so you have to look yourself in the mirror and tell yourself you know what I'm not comfortable with the way I am and this all goes back to knowing your work if you don't like your work then you have to find ways to add value to yourself you have to go back to school you have to go to the gym you have to do things that make you feel good about yourself because no matter if you Cho lose the weight for them so you stop getting bullied if that's not something you really wanted to do then you're gonna have to deal with that later on mentally yeah I love that you exude the qualities of what I would say or a good leader it's not a surprise to me at all that the FBI brought you in for leadership training and it's also not a surprise to me that you were the team captain but what people may not realize is that you are the team captain through the school's worst scandal what was it like what was it like to watch your coaches and everybody who's supposed to have it all together start to crack and fall apart how did you step into that leadership position and and what does it mean to be a leader the interesting about it I never looked at myself as being a leader when I was growing up I thought that you always had to be born with those leadership qualities but what I realized is that the leaders didn't always start in front of the line that a lot of them started off in the back but they had the courage to step out of the line and go up to the front and I decided to do that my junior year at the bowl game I knew that our seniors were graduating our leaders were graduating and I wanted to take on that leadership role and I let that be known going into the bowl game and then seeing my senior year I got elect to be a captain but I didn't know what being the captain was all about at that point in time I thought it was all fun and when the news broke I was sitting in my my house and across my screen I saw Joe Paterno is fired and I looked on the screen and they showed the campus breaking out and what they called riots and I told myself I couldn't let Penn State be known for this that that's not what the Penn State community is all about so the next day I called a squad meeting with the team and I told them when we go out for this game for Iceni this weekend that we're not gonna run out the tunnel as individuals but we're gonna lock arms and show everybody if we stick together then we can overcome this adversity and I think that was a pivotal moment for Penn State as a whole because it showed people that we wasn't gonna fall apart no matter what people thought about us on the outside that we knew we were strong enough to overcome when I you know took that role as the captain then I was basically telling the players I was telling the Penn State community that I'm gonna do was whatever is in the best interest of the university and not what's in the best interest of Devon you've talked about in the notion of integrity that it has to do also with hidden ifs what are the hidden ifs and how do they stop people from living up to their integrity all right so what I mean by hitting ifs is you know when we go through life sometimes we will set a goal for ourselves and without knowing we'll tie hidden hitch to it like if I said I wanted to make it to the NFL if I get a scholarship or if I don't go through any injuries and I think if we want to make progress as a society we have to learn to start taking away those hidden X because there was a time period where you know if you shook somebody's hands and you look them in the eye you say you just want to do something you did it no matter what but nowadays we have all these different contracts that have words in it that we don't even understand just to protect ourselves from people if they don't follow through so I feel like in life when you tell yourself you're gonna do something you can't base it off of what opportunities that you're giving to what is next for you what are you doing how do you make sure that your future is bigger than your past which was pretty massive yeah so it's basically letting go of the last play I think whether you accomplished a lot in your life but you don't accomplish a lot I think the people who are at the top of the game in business and life and in sports is people who forget about the past and let go of the last play so right now I'm focusing on not thinking about all the things that comes in my past but focusing on right now and how I can be successful in this moment and what I want to do is just bring the mindset that we have of athletes to the business world to people's lives and let them know that you don't have to be an athlete in order to think like an athlete that is its all-out mindset that you need to have and once you have this mindset you're able to compete at the highest level of life no matter what you're trying to do so just empowering people and letting them know that whatever your dreams are doing you're capable of reaching it all right before I ask my last question where can these guys find you online right I'm on still in the game on YouTube on Instagram and my website is Devin still in the game calm nice alright my final question what's the impact that you want to have on the world it's a tough one I actually I went to a funeral not too long ago of a family member and when I was sitting in the crowd you know the pastor was talking and he said what do you want your tombstone to read when it's all said and done and that made me reflect a lot in that moment is that I've been chasing so long for my tombstone to be you know he was this great NFL playing he was a great football player but I feel like I'm destined for so so much I'm like greater things than just you know playing the sport that right now I'm playing the game of life and I'm trying to help other people win the game of life so what I want when it's all said and done actually I don't even want a tombstone to remind people that I've been here I want to leave an impact in the cancer community in the business world in people's lives that when I'm going that the values and the lessons that I taught people live long wait wait longer than I did thank you so much for being on the show all right guys this this truly is one of the most incredible examples of mindset that I've ever seen in my life go back and listen to all the things that he had to overcome I literally couldn't give each one their due because the listing amount made this intro about twice as long as my normal intro but that's how many problems he went through and had to overcome and every time he fights back and he doesn't just fight back to playing he fights back to playing at an elite level it's literally absurd how one injury after another he comes back he comes back he comes back and then when finally it seems like okay all the injuries are behind him that's when then it gets passed on to his daughter and he has to go through that incredible ordeal and somehow on the other side of that not only does he return to football but he finds something bigger than that beyond football so that he can really create the next amazing chapter in his life and through all of it he doesn't make excuses he doesn't give in to fear he understands that his life is in his control it's something that he has to create that he to stand up that he has to paste the people writing about him that he sucks that he never should have been there whoever that hater is at that moment in his life to be willing to stare at that to leverage that to fight through to believe in what he's doing enough that no matter how much pain he has to suffer through that he's going to keep going to be a man who has integrity to be a man of his word to be a man that needs only shake your hand and tell you that he's going to do it and then execute against it and we all get to see that that's exactly what he's done with his life it's absolutely incredible he's lived it in the spotlight and I will make a prediction right now what this man is about to do with his life will dwarf everything that he's done up to this point right now as of the recording of this show he is very difficult to find on certain parts of the internet I'll say you to specifically go watch his content it is bright of the chills it is breathtaking it is powerful he is one of the most effective speakers I've ever seen in my life and that's him at the beginning of his career five years from now I think he's gonna be a dominant force you hear it heard it here first alright if you guys haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care hey everybody thank you so much for watching and being a part of this community if you haven't already be sure to subscribe you're gonna get weekly videos on building a growth mindset cultivating grit and unlocking your full potential