Unlikely Olympian Reveals How to Succeed When the Deck Is Stacked Against You | Devon Harris

[Music] everybody welcome to impact theory i'm here with devin harris uh devin i am super excited to have you on man thanks for joining me yeah and i'm i'm excited as well i've been following you from afar so it's great to connect here definitely dude and it is super rare that i begin an interview with a quote from somebody's bio uh but this hit me so powerfully and it really encapsulates what i think is so exciting about the way that you think so i'm going to start with this so this is straight from your bio the greatest gift devin harris ever received was the belief that a positive attitude and a never say die philosophy would carry him farther than a sense of injustice and a heart filled with anger so i want to know man how how did you come to that conclusion obviously growing up in one of the most violent parts of kingston jamaica that isn't sort of an obvious um way to think so how did you start thinking like that it's a really good question i'm you know i'm not i'm not sure when that uh when that flip switched in my mind and i often blame or my grandmother for the way i thought i spent my early years with her outside kings and her rural parish or saint elizabeth she told me these amazing stories about soldiers and how they could uh perform these amazing feet and not get injured were the ones that kind of lit up my five-year-old mind my little imagination but more than that it inspired me to want to do things that other people thought were impossible or just incredibly difficult yeah that it's so interesting to me because almost certainly people will come into this and they'll have read the headline that will announce that you're one of the the original jamaican bob's letters that the movie cool runnings was based on and so the punch line here is pretty extraordinary you go to an elite military academy uh you end up being one of four people on this bobsledding team and you know it's obviously extraordinary that you guys born in a country with no snow and then you know being able to compete in the winter olympics so it's uh it's pretty crazy but i i really want to dive into one what it was like growing up we were growing up because right now we're living through an era where the sort of pull yourself up by your bootstraps is it's really a divisive statement but it sits at the core of how i changed my own life it sits at the core of so many people's transformations and i just really want to understand how you began to develop that so if it started grandma planted a seed how did that like dreaming and looking at these big houses and you know how does that begin to take shape in your young mind so i'm 15 years old i just started running track and no i'm from jamaica but i'm not one of the sprinters unlucky me right um but it's 1979 tom and it's a year before the moscow olympics and abc wild weather sports had a program called road to moscow and in it they're featured athletes from all over the world different disciplines telling their stories and so on now when we think of olympic athletes we tend to think of these super human beings but what i was seeing in that program were these average ordinary people with extraordinary dreams i'm like crap you know basically then you know this show is telling me that anyone can become an olympian within reason if they have these extraordinary dreams and an equally extraordinary desire to go after those dreams and so by extension you could literally go accomplish anything in your life if you have these extraordinary dreams and an equal extraordinary desire to up to achieve them so that really as i just said you know built on the the seed that my grandmother planted and so i'm i'm living in the middle of the hood and i'm dreaming about being an army officer and and going to sandhurst and and competing in the olympics admittedly not as a bobsledder that just kind of happened so that is um it's so interesting to me when you begin to like piece the things together and i certainly j um genetics is going to play a part right so something tells me that you and i are both sort of optimistic by nature um ambitious certainly seems to fit you quite well um was your grandmother saying things like you could be a soldier like that or you could live in a house like that one day did you have any adults that were telling you that or are you one of those people that pulled yourself out of the matrix yeah no no i didn't have that so you know unfortunately my grandmother saw none of this she died even before i left elementary school and it's kind of uh you know and when i when i maybe the next book i write i'm gonna i did dedicate my last book to her but what i really should have said was that her greatest ambition at the time was for me to learn to read never written over written a couple of books you know so that was that that was kind of what she wanted to tell me these stories i don't know if she had a plan in mind but that was the impact that she had on me so when you think about the inner cities now so you live in new york obviously there are areas that are just ravaged um what what do you think is ultimately the thing that will help people to change their circumstances um so it's like you can't allow yourself to settle and i think it's so easy to do that right because you know stepping out of the environment that you find yourself in to go get that thing across the street that looks so much better and you know it's a much better life is difficult because you feel so out of place you feel you know almost not so worthy and you have to do you know i call it a real job on your mind you have to convince yourself that you deserve this if somebody were to ask me what is the secret to success it's you know the will smith notion of i'll die on this treadmill and that to me is is one of the most powerful quotes i've ever heard you know he's talking about what separated him from other people and he was like you know i get on a treadmill i know what my goal is and i'll die before i'll get off this treadmill before i reach my goal and i just thought man any [ __ ] that's willing to go that hard on a treadmill like you know that they're gonna succeed in life so yeah when i hear people talk about that i i am i get drawn in hard so what does it mean to you to keep on pushing or to have a do or die well in my mind it's not like i have a choice but to achieve the goal that i set for myself uh you know and so of course you know keep on pushing has a bobsled analogy and i tell you my first boss had run i crawled in and slept behind a guy who has never driven one before and people don't believe this because i joke around a lot i'm scared of speed and hike right that's bombsledding and i just remember being terrified and i remember saying to myself if i die i die but i'm going there's just no way i'm not going down this track and you know what three runs in i was scared to death but hoped and and so that's kind of the the mentality that i approach the things that i really want is like i don't know how i'm going to do it i just know i'm going to do it and there's just there's just no way that it's not going to happen and so i just i throw myself into it do or die now you come across as super sweet and i know when people ask you which of the um bobsledders was based on you in the movie you always say the guy who was a dreamer but he also happened to be the guy that was super aggressive and and identified as the sort of mean one is there that gear for you like do you have a level of intensity and ferocity that you can switch into or are you always as sweet as you come across in interviews well definitely when i when i compete i am a completely different person i i don't even recognize that guy um in what way can you be specific just just i'm i'm i'm way more intense than your brother just way more um you know he was an intense guy i am you can multiply that by 10. when i when i'm on the line you know i i speak about bob selling all the time like when people watch american football they see the aggression because they see a guy going up and hitting another guy bobsledders are just as aggressive it's not as apparent because you're pushing a sled but there's so much contempt that you have for the sled at the start you want to put the push the crap out of it right um i get you know you don't see that level of intensity on my face when i'm working on another another goal but there i i do get singularly focused um maybe to a fart do you know i was just gonna ask you do you like that about yourself or do you actually think it's a problem i like that about myself you know but you know all of us we spend time or we should anyway kind of looking back on your life and so so this is why i would encapsulate you know those early years trying to get out of olympic garden so it's kind of like me being on one end of a rose garden trying to get to the other end and all i'm focused on is how i'm going to get to the other end and get into the other end and i never paused really to smell the roses and so if there's one thing i would change really is that ability to kind of take a a few seconds of you know sniff a rules and then move forward so yeah so to a fault in that sense i you know i remember just having these conversations with my friends from high school and they're talking about all this [ __ ] that they were doing i'm like really when really when and they're like well where were you like i was training i was busy you know so i i do get that singularly focused it's interesting so i take a slightly different take on that and maybe because i don't have kids i'm not entirely sure one of the most contentious posts that i've put up in a long time was me saying this is a competition referring basically to life like if you want to get something extraordinary you're going to have to [ __ ] work your ass off and you've got to come at it so hard with so much intensity and i and the like you know final phrase in the post was this is a competition and people flipped out and i was like i don't understand people that fear actually i do understand because for a long time when i was young i feared competition because i didn't think i could win i didn't think i could get good enough to win and when i didn't think i could get good enough to win then i was like oh yo yo competition it's ugly it's gnarly it brings out the worst in people then when i realized i can actually improve i can get better the more energy i put into something just like anybody else the more time and energy you put into it the better that you get doesn't mean that you know genetic gifts don't play a role they do for sure but i can get better at something and once i embrace that and realize man if you can channel that intensity if you can love that about yourself if you can find the joy in just all out pursuit of something then stop stopping and smelling the roses i'm not saying don't like if that if you're motivated to stop and smell a rose man you should stop and smell a rose but i'm just saying if in that moment your motivation is i'm going to tear through these rose bushes and i'm imagining you getting ripped and cut by all the brambles and the thorns as you're raging through this thing for me the ability to sometimes smell a rose and sometimes tear ass through a bramble and accept all the you know blood and sweat and tears i get as more if i'm completely honest i get a lot more joy and a sense of self out of being willing and able to [ __ ] tear through a bramble and take the sort of cuts that other people just aren't willing to deal with yeah and i'm absolutely that way too but i think that you know we have to strive to live a really fulfilled life a rounded life you know and i think it's so it's really important because there's nothing that i'm going to allow prevent me from reaching that goal but as a goal i'm like whatever that goal is that i'm pursuing right there's nothing that's going to prevent me from from achieving a goal but i think you know if we can think holistically i'm not sure how because maybe i've never done it oh how to mess the two this is the intellectual side of me saying hey you know it's okay to smell the roses i haven't figured out how to do it yet because have you really not i mean when i look when i look at your life you've done a lot of extraordinary things that are clearly engaging with other people trying to help other people all of that to me seems like savoring this human experience do you not see those things that way oh yeah oh i mean i guess now there is there's you know as they the shift as the focus has shifted from man i need to get out of the ghettos to go do something and now i'm not done but i'm on the way and i think the way i think is hey help others along the way take who you can take advise who you can advise you can't necessarily put everybody on your back but you can you can you know if you imagine you're walking along the street and you meet a guy hey you know you need to drop that and and that will lighten your load or good job keep on going that kind of thing um that's what i'm doing now as i continue to look for ways to to grow and if you had to define what a rounded life means because i want to get back to this idea that they're sort of myopically focused on a goal and going just super super hard for that and then there is a rounded life you said two things you should live a fulfilled life you should live a rounded life um can you define fulfillment can you define well-rounded yeah which as you know success is such an individual such a personal journey but for me it would be yes to accomplish those things those trappings that the world see as success but at the same time recognize quite frankly those things are fleeting so what do you have left you have family right like i'm i'm married i have five kids i'm a homebody you know i don't roll around with the kids anymore they're a little bit older you know i don't fool around with my son anymore he's much stronger than me you know but but uh just being able to like last summer this uh well you know last july i was in europe with my with my kids and i loved traveling through europe but the best part of that was just being there with my kids you know that for me brings the level of fulfillment um just being able to um share an inspirational word or a word of encouragement with somebody else and and for them to come and say man you know what i come off stage and this guy says you know i felt like you were talking to me that brings fulfillment so all the other trappings that i am myopically focused on are important to me but being able to touch a life and bring joy and hope and inspiration to that life is also important that makes in my mind a fulfilled life i love that when you're spending time with kids that are in the inner cities what tools do you give them to do what you did you made reference earlier to the lamp post um it's probably worth telling people what you were doing on that lamp post um and then i'd love to know if that's the kind of thing that you're encouraging kids to do or you know just what that toolkit is that you hand to people yeah so i was doing the d word and you know when i when i speak live i ask people that were you doing drugs no man i was dreaming that all the people were right i just kind of stood there and dream and and i think that's you know who's at napoleon hill that says there's a starting point to all worthwhile achievements and yeah so when i'm speaking to kids and disadvantaged communities i'm like hey have a dream find a dream and i know a lot of them won't want to be professional athletes or and that's fine um i challenge them and encourage them to dream but i also encourage them to to do as as to pursue an education get educated because that gives you a leg up it gives you a level of confidence and is going to open doors for you that you won't be able to would not be able to open otherwise right and i think i agree with you so violently on education that i'd love for you to take a minute explain why it opens doors how does an education open doors i know people think this is self-evident but i think the reason people don't pursue it they really don't understand why it think first of all is that it gives you a level of confidence that you cannot have if you are not educated you know i wanna so it really does start there it gives you that sense that hey there let's say it's a job that there's a job over there that i can go apply for because of i have gained this knowledge and i have a piece of paper uh to show for it but more importantly i think is it's the fact that we know that lifelong learning is is really the key to continued success and if you're if you have a personal history of uh putting in the discipline putting in the work to learn you start recognizing that hey you know that thing that i did in high school i can now apply quite frankly i could not have i could not wait to leave high school i never wanted to see another book right i thought i'm going to go join the army i'm going to run around the countryside i'm going to shoot some guns right and at first i did all of that but tom they gave me a big stack of books i'm like [ __ ] they tricked me but after a while you realize man you know this learning thing is really important because it really does it opens up your mind as well because it challenges you gets you to think in different ways and just again allows you to have the confidence that you know if if i don't know this thing that i want to go pursue i can go learn learn about it and then go pursue it all right so back to the toolkit we've got we're teaching them to dream and we're making sure that they get educated what else um something that is really hard to do walk your own path uh and by that i mean if you are hanging out with a guy or girl or a group of people who are heading in the direction that is opposite of your dreams you need to say hey see you later i'm going to be over here so if you want to join me feel free and that is very difficult for most people to do especially young people the peer pressure is is great but that's one of the things they have to do what do you say to somebody who's like look man i'm growing up in the inner cities uh the world is stacked against me people don't want me to succeed i actually had a kid whose mother told him the world does not want people like you to succeed and i was like what is happening so the things really are stacked against them they've grown up in poverty they've had a terrible education they don't have any connections they don't know how to raise money like they they look they have legitimate excuses to stay where they are what do you say to somebody like that everybody has legitimate excuses if they were there that's that's the the [ __ ] of life um but i think that when you develop this when you trick yourself lie to yourself you just develop this belief that you know i so the term the words i used to use to myself thomas i have no idea how i'm going to do it but i just have to you know and so if you i could argue that the world was stacked against me as well and i had no idea how it was going to happen but you just you don't listen to the guys who say man you're from the hood you can't be in the army as an officer right um we have definitely a a social construct in jamaica that would would support that as well right um but you just you ignore that you ignore that i heard a guy i don't remember who he was he was in hollywood a black guy and he said i just i just had to lie to myself so that i could succeed in hollywood right and i think you know that kid in the inner city or in rural wherever who has uh supposedly the deck stacked against him and maybe even people telling him that have to create i heard uh listen to david goggin talking about just you have to create this other story this other guy who can go accomplish this there are examples there are tons of examples and now unlike when we were growing up we had the internet with so uh much information at your fingertips and examples of people who came from exactly the same circumstances or worse and so the question is man if they can do it why can't i if i'm watching abc wild world of sport and this person is competing at the olympic games training to compete at the olympic games and have the whole host of problems in their personal lives that they're overcoming i mean just doing that alone would be a miracle but doing that and competing at the olympic games i'm like i can do it too why not the what's the worst that can happen you fail oh well get back on the horse keep on pushing talk to me about learning so one of the coolest things in your story was seeing you guys that first year in the olympics in the background like trying to watch all the other teams to try to learn what does it take to really get great at something and you guys did it so quickly i mean you really didn't have a long time to prepare for the olympics um how did you how did you guys do it what's the secret to getting good fast um commitment man you have to be committed to just doing what you need to do when you need to do it even when you don't feel like doing it you know my focus was just on learning how to push a boxlet and getting comfortable working through my fears because i was really scared of getting down right do you have a dream for working through your fears like if you're afraid of speed and heights um obviously i love your sort of breakthrough moment of if it kills me it kills me but do you have breathing techniques or is it all just yo i have a goal and i'm going to do it no matter what and i don't allow myself to back down yeah yeah so part of it is especially in a race it's so much easier because it's just like i turn into this other person like i don't even know who he is but as even so in my first olympics i was a pusher then i became a driver on the other two and i'm nervous leading up to the moment when they say the start is clear for jamaica it's work time this was work time so you just go um i think whether you're bob studying or you're trying to sell something to a to a client um you just you just have to make yourself do it you have to make yourself pick up that 100 pound phone and made the phone call um man you might screw it up but you every time you do it you learn something you become more comfortable and you may never be totally comfortable and that's the thing with fears you may never be totally comfortable with them but they become manageable um and in my mind if that's what you need to do in order to achieve that goal yet so that's what you do so yeah we we just kind of committed ourselves you know watching the very good people and the not so good people trying to figure out what is what are they doing that i'm not doing what can i pick up what can i apply to myself and i do that all the time right as a speaker i watch everybody i watch a politician and i watch you know john doe being interviewed on the side of the street where there's bad english you know but he may say something i'm like i like that um i'm going to use it but i'm going to say it this way kind of thing you know you you you study it's about lifelong learning and what in terms of competition or i guess anything but what's the power of visualization do you use that as a technique i do i've i've been using visualization before i knew what visualization was i used it in high school as i told you i'm not a sprinter i ran 800 and 1500 meters and so we have a thing called sports day and i ran the 400 it's a sprint race i always win um but i know i'm not the fastest guy but i i remember one particular race calm that night the night before i didn't really sleep i was in a stupor because all i did that entire night was think of myself running every meter of that race and then i woke up the next one and got to school earlier i walked through the race and i won and when i joined and started bobsled and they call it visualization but it's important man it's it's important on so many different levels right one it it gives you it it puts you in that place that you have done it before so it really helps you to improve your performance but but also if you really believe in the law of attraction it's one of those things that as you put yourself in the places of that person having this thing achieving this thing living this thing the the powers that be the universe brings it to you so it's a really important part of successful living in every aspect is what do you think about um the law of attraction do you think it's about it aligns you so you take the right actions or do you think that the universe is actually giving you something because you've asked for it well good question because a lot of people when they hear that and heard i just said think that you just kind of sit on your sofa and you visualize or you meditate and it comes maybe i don't know that hasn't happened to me yet maybe i should try that maybe not um i'm too impatient to tell you awaiting so so dude what it does is that it allows you to take what i call inspired action because as you're visualizing and you start feeling the sense that you can be this person you can become this army i saw this bobsledder then you you just and you and i know that it takes so a tremendous amount of work to achieve any goal that you set for yourself and it and that in itself can uh demotivate you because that's a ton load of work and pain and suffering man but when you have it i guess in here and in here then you just work and then i think that's how the universe right the providence that somebody says do what you can but be bold because providence basically will meet you halfway i think that's what happened i love that man are there any um so i use beliefs most people probably call them mantras but i have like uh 25 beliefs that really govern how i approach my life do you have any beliefs or things you repeat in your head that allow you to keep going when things get hard yeah i'm wearing a ring on my chest right now and that's kind of the thing that i i just um i don't know how to give up and i i don't know how to give up now you know let me clarify that too because or expand on that because a lot of people think that you know when you are working at something and it's difficult and as i say keep on pushing it means that you you just kind of keep going and and don't stop and you keep doing the same things over and over again and you know i say all the time that really successful people quit all the time they quit on the strategy right they quit and they they change their plans because they realize this plan isn't working they don't quit on the goal that's still out there um and so yeah i i the tougher it gets is honestly the the more my spine's different i'm like you know what i i have to figure this out so this is not working let's uh you know let's think about another route another strategy to get there so yeah it's uh uh and it can be from you know all of us we feel frustration at a time and i get frustrated by them like like in my head i don't give myself another option but to succeed so i keep on pushing i love that are there core values or anything that you made sure you instilled in your kids um perhaps some the more well yeah definitely yeah i try to get them to believe in themselves i think that's the first first thing because without that self-belief you can't get anything done um work hard i i'm a believer in in hard work treat others kindly um and you know don't allow and and by the same token don't let other people take advantage of you and so it's uh you know the world that we live in right now where um um you know if you're a kid at school and you have an issue you go to the teacher or some guy or girl punches you um and my kids believe that right and my my wife believes that i don't believe that i believe that you uh if he hits you hits him back harder and so next time he knows not to hit you you know but they're not there my kids aren't buying that one from me but they're definitely impressive upon them treat people well don't allow others to treat you poorly dude i love that it's obviously super controversial right now but yeah to me if if somebody hits me it is um i mean look are there circumstances where it would be a turn the other cheap moment yes of course but for the most part if somebody is coming after you it's time to stand your ground um yeah disproportionate response as uh it has been called i think is is a very powerful way to move through life it's like look i'm more than prepared to leave you alone like i have no interest in this whatsoever but if you bring the fight to me you should expect a response and a very aggressive response and then and they'll learn and they'll learn i mean it's one of those things that because i and it should be the last kind of last you know you know course of action you know i spoke about when i was a teenager growing up and we ended up in blows with some of the guys i grew up with it was really the last course of action and i ignored them i took the jeering i did all of that but then eventually i go you know what let let's let's have a different conversation and so sometimes that that is necessary i believe controversial i agree but sometimes very necessary it's just it's real life man that's that's the world we live in too true man where can people find out more about you dude i i have so enjoyed my swim in your mind thank you mine it's great hanging out with you devon harris.com very easy i tell people i'm the easiest guy in the world to find maybe second museums to you but uh devonhorse.com is my website at keep on pushing 88 keep on pushing 88 the year of the olympic first olympics are my handlers on twitter and instagram and of course i'm on linkedin as well so i'm there man come find me i love it guys all right you're definitely going to want to dive in it's absolutely extraordinary he's got so much powerful advice and speaking of amazing advice if you haven't already be sure to subscribe here and until next time my friends be legendary take care you're expected to jump over the table and and there's so that's it's going to happen so what are you going to do to best prepare yourself and that's kind of that motivation of like getting to the contest and throwing the big tricks and seeing your competition and that motivation and i've always loved that