How To Make Vulnerability Your Greatest Strength With Jay Glazer

Speaker 1 When you don't have any self-worth or you don't have these roommates in your head tell you what a bad person you are all the time, it forced me to, instead of just lay in bed and say I'm cashing on my chips, it's gotten me to do all this great stuff so I can get some love from the outside in.

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Speaker 6 Before the episode starts, I want to give a quick trigger warning that we do discuss different forms of sexual abuse and healing from those experiences.

Speaker 6 Welcome back, everyone to the School of Greatness. We've got the man, Jake Glazer, and I'm so glad you're here, man.
So grateful

Speaker 6 about what you're up to.

Speaker 1 Last time I saw you was in my gym, Unbreakable, right? You came in there.

Speaker 1 You lifted every weight in the place. We were never the same.
Exactly, yes.

Speaker 1 Unbreakable, yeah. Now you live around the corner.
Let's go, man. We got to get you back in there.
I'm coming back in. I promise.
This place is great.

Speaker 6 It's a great little community. I'm excited, man.

Speaker 6 You've had an amazing story and your whole book, Unbreakable, is about how you turn depression, anxiety into really motivation that you can accomplish things without feeling overwhelmed and stressed.

Speaker 6 But you just told me before we started that you've had a panic attack since 2005 until now, every week.

Speaker 1 Every week. Every week.

Speaker 6 How did you, now when I grew up, and I'm assuming when you grew up, I grew up in the Midwest, I was never able to talk about my feelings.

Speaker 6 It was just like, suck it up. You grew up in the Midwest.

Speaker 1 I grew up in New Jersey. It should be even harder for you.

Speaker 6 But I was, we wouldn't allow to talk about, you know, how I felt, playing football, playing baseball, playing whatever. It was just like, suck it up, keep going.

Speaker 6 When did you feel like it was okay to talk about feeling of anxiety, stress, mental health?

Speaker 6 When was this like a conversation you could have without being made fun of, laughed at, picked on, bullied, told you're a wussy or whatever it is?

Speaker 1 No, look, for me,

Speaker 1 and you talked about the motivation part, right? My, and I got it, I have depression, anxiety, ADD. elemental P, whatever you,

Speaker 1 I got everything, you know?

Speaker 1 But, you know, we talk about mental health, but who describes it? Like, God bless me with the ability to communicate. And I want to be a service and give a words.
I was never,

Speaker 1 I was never, I don't want to say this. I'm going to say I was never ashamed because there's been shame.

Speaker 1 Like, I've been embarrassed to tell certain people and not others. But I also don't make the rules of depression and anxiety.

Speaker 6 Right.

Speaker 1 It's not.

Speaker 1 My best friend's Michael Stray, and I didn't really tell him until three months ago that I couldn't go out to dinner one night because I had a really bad attack. It just got me.

Speaker 1 And he's, so you want me to come over and talk? I said, no. Would you just get on the phone? No.
He said, why have you never told me? I said, man, I don't know.

Speaker 1 Like, I just, with you, I felt embarrassed. I don't know.
Really?

Speaker 1 But yet other people, you didn't feel like when I'm at Fox and the sky's falling, Howie Long will say, hey, hey, hey, the sky's not falling. Yes, it is.
And so I talked to him about it. And so, right?

Speaker 1 I don't know. I have no idea why.

Speaker 1 So why I came out and started talking about it is because I know I could help people, give them words.

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 you know, my own misery,

Speaker 1 my own darkness, like The Rock wrote the foreword and he said, man, you're going to be a voice to get through the gray for a lot of us, us, him included, which is pretty wild, right?

Speaker 6 So, what does the gray mean to you?

Speaker 1 The gray is that depression, anxiety. So, I'll tell you this.
I wake up every single morning and it hurts. And it sucks.

Speaker 1 Look, I get choked up talking about it because I, you know, when I talk about it sometimes, I feel bad for this guy.

Speaker 1 Like, I don't know what it's like to wake up in the blue and like, you have a, man, your life is great. And, and, and my life is great.
Like, I'm sitting here doing a podcast with you.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 It's pretty awesome. You got great friends.
You got a good business. You're on TV.

Speaker 1 People go, what do you have to be depressed about? My life is great, but in between my ears sucks. And it's just the only way I've ever, it's my earliest childhood memory.

Speaker 6 Has it always sucked? It's always sucked.

Speaker 1 Really? Always. Earliest childhood memory.
And man, I was always in trouble because I was acting out.

Speaker 1 But again, the motivation part,

Speaker 1 when you live in this gray, you have no

Speaker 1 idea how to love yourself up from the inside out. I don't feel worthy of being loved from the inside out.
Still today. Oh, my God.

Speaker 6 It's awful. On a scale of one to 10, 10 being you love yourself

Speaker 1 a lot. A negative zero.
A negative. Even today.
Man, it's awful. And why is that? Why do you think that is? It's what it tells me.
I kind of call it,

Speaker 1 I wrestle with my abuser.

Speaker 1 Who's the abuser? The depression, the anxiety. There's roommates in my head that tell me these things that aren't true.
And like I said, I know it's logically, it's not true. I know that.

Speaker 1 And I've had to build up this persona on TV all these years to hide it. So my friends all say Glazer's crazy.
And that's a badge of honor in football and fighting and those worlds.

Speaker 1 But they never knew how much pain I was in. And until now, and then I first talked about it a few years ago.
And I have a charity that I work with veterans, right? MVP.

Speaker 1 So I talk about it openly to them and we're veterans and ex-athletes right we we merge them together mvp merging veteran players and i see how much connects with them and one day i was just

Speaker 1 i did an article somewhere where i was being this vulnerable how i am in the huddle with them with the rest of the world and the reaction was like oh my god you too you have depression anxiety i'm like yeah like i'm I've never hid the crazy, if you will.

Speaker 1 And I just saw how the reactions, I was like, I could really be of service to people.

Speaker 1 And And that's where I wanted to be. And I say the motivation part because, again, when you don't, when you don't have any self-worth, or you don't have

Speaker 1 these roommates in your head, tell you what a bad person you are all the time. It forced me to, instead of just lay in bed and say, I'm cashing to my chips, it's got me to do all this great stuff

Speaker 1 so I can get some love from the outside in.

Speaker 6 Right. But how do you get the love from the inside?

Speaker 1 I'm working on it.

Speaker 1 I'm working. And

Speaker 1 as I start doing things like this, I hear the effect I have on people. And there are days that

Speaker 1 I feel it. I think I feel

Speaker 1 I cry a lot now of,

Speaker 1 and I think it's pride of being able to help people. And like, man, the number of people that have reached out.

Speaker 1 And again, in the book, I really describe what it's like to have depression, anxiety, what it's like to have mental health issues. A lot of this, a lot of this self-worth.

Speaker 1 Like I wake up every morning feeling that the sky is falling.

Speaker 1 Every single day of my life, I wake up, sky's falling, the universe hates me, world's against me, and I've got to get myself out of that gray. I've got to work myself out of it every single morning.

Speaker 1 And there's different things I do. And I see therapists.
I've tried a lot of meds.

Speaker 6 How long have you been seeing therapists for?

Speaker 1 Since I was about four. Really? Yeah.

Speaker 1 My parents took me to the psychiatrist. Like, I was a crazy one.
I'm like, sure.

Speaker 1 Come on, gang. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 So it's a consistent thing you do as therapy support because I found therapy extremely helpful to me because I felt like I was in a lower number of the spectrum for many years of lacking self-worth, which I think a lot of people probably feel that growing up in a challenging situation.

Speaker 6 And it's been extremely helpful for me to heal that inner child or that little

Speaker 6 Lewis or the psychology part of myself.

Speaker 1 It's like a little Jason, which that's my real name, yeah.

Speaker 6 Exactly. But you're big now.
You mean you're big.

Speaker 1 I built that up. Of course.
I built up warriors. The defense mechanism.
It's a defense mechanism when really the warrior side is not the strength of me. The vulnerability is the strength of me.

Speaker 6 That's where you make the biggest impact. There you go.
Just like with this book and sharing vulnerably, you're able to touch more lives than being like bigger and stronger and tougher.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's only so much I could make people laugh on TV or, you know, give them inside information, right? And it's definitely a distraction from that's where we are. We're escapism on TV.

Speaker 1 But to really do something like this, and I was saying, I was, I'm getting people now, I'm getting grandmothers reaching out saying, thank you.

Speaker 1 For the first time in 80 years, I have the words to tell my

Speaker 1 husband and kids and grandkids what I've been going through. Wow.
Or

Speaker 1 girl dads saying, and now boy dads do, like a lot of them saying, well, I don't have it. And I'm like, yeah, I probably do.
But I didn't know how to connect with my child. And now I do.

Speaker 1 And the book is filled with expletives and F-bombs, this thing, because there's nothing pretty about what I'm talking about.

Speaker 1 And so if you don't like curse words, then, man, overlook it.

Speaker 1 That's my, that's who I am. I just want to be authentic.
Of course. And that's how I talk.

Speaker 1 But I have a lot of them saying, I didn't know how to connect with my son or daughter. And now I do.

Speaker 1 And they got the books to read together or to just say, okay, now I know what they're going through.

Speaker 1 So when they wake up in the morning, again, I wake up in the morning every day of my life in the gray. It's never blue.
And I've got to make that decision to get myself out of bed.

Speaker 1 And once I make that decision, I decide I'm going to be relentless in everything I do. Wow.
Like, I'm just not going to let this. thing win.
But it's a, it affects me physically too.

Speaker 6 Like it's when it does it feels like a weight.

Speaker 1 It feels like these chains.

Speaker 1 So it feels like these.

Speaker 1 I wrote in the book, it was almost like these heavy chains are pulling my soul down. Oh,

Speaker 1 and it's heavy.

Speaker 1 It hurts.

Speaker 1 But when I'm having really bad days, like this past weekend, Saturday night, I woke up, three o'clock in the morning, and it normally doesn't wake me up in the middle of the night.

Speaker 1 But man, a beast got out of the box and kicked my butt.

Speaker 1 And when that happens, I feel it behind my rib cage. It feels like I'm having a heart attack.

Speaker 1 The left side of my gut, it's like, man, I get a gut punch right here. Oh, man.

Speaker 1 And my joints ache like I just got out of a fight, a fight in the rain, like a 50-round boxing match. So there's a physical-visceral reaction for me.

Speaker 1 I've got to, and this is why I wrote the book too, to give people ways to get out of it, at least the ways I've used to get out of it. And I got to do it every single day of my life.

Speaker 6 So what have been the strategies to get out of it? Therapy, working out?

Speaker 1 The three tempos I put in here is one, uh, have a team. Oh, of course, don't do it alone.
No, absolutely. But go mad.
We have teams all around us. We may not realize it.

Speaker 1 So, I've always like you played football, right? That's a team. This crew right here is a team for you.

Speaker 1 My dog is a team with me, right? God's a team with me. That one up there, you know.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 1 There's, I have a little group. So, Fox Annabelle Sunday is a crew, right?

Speaker 6 My unbreakable crew.

Speaker 1 Unbreakable crew. My gym crew, those are my team.

Speaker 1 And like this weekend, when when I was struggling, called it, I called a teammate to come over. I called other teammates to let them know, man, today's just, it's a bad day.

Speaker 6 Just to check in on you, make sure it was good.

Speaker 1 I called Dwayne. Yeah.
I literally, like, he's my battle buddy on this. Yeah.
Called him, dude. Today's one of them freaking great days.
It today hurts. And he stepped away from filming his 90 shows.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 hey, make sure he was there because I'm there for him. And that's what teammates do.
It's not a, it's, it's give, give, right? It's loyalty. I've, I've gotten to where I am too out of loyalty.

Speaker 1 So it's this loyalty factor. Loyalty is a dying art, right? It's a rare, rare art now.
And more need to do that, I think.

Speaker 1 So I have these teams. That's one.
Number two is being of service.

Speaker 6 That's huge, man. That's my MO right there.

Speaker 1 Well, as I was, for everybody that I called this weekend to tell them I... I need help and man, I'm struggling.
I called the same number of people just to see how they were doing.

Speaker 6 Right. The same day or me? Say.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, yeah. So if I called four people and say I'm struggling, I called another four.
Say, hey, checking in on you.

Speaker 6 Checking in on you. How you doing?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Being of service.

Speaker 6 Because what happens when you're of service in that depressed, anxious, stressful state? Does it feel like it helps you get out of the way?

Speaker 1 Yeah, so I hump the blue.

Speaker 6 Not focus on you, but focus on others. And it's being of service.

Speaker 1 And I'm in the book, I give several ways that I've always,

Speaker 1 look, my first. 11 years of my career, I was making $9,700 a year living in New York City.

Speaker 6 Is it the TV with TV or with?

Speaker 1 Yeah, i was when i was working at new york on tv for 450 bucks a year oh man and i finally got a job at the new york post for a whopping nine grand a year um

Speaker 1 trying to outwork the world working 100 hour weeks trying to be this reporter um so i couldn't get like side jobs to help right so i had no my electricity got turned off all the time um

Speaker 1 you know heat all that all the time get turned off i just grinded for all those years you know but even then i figured out ways to be of service to whether it was just stopping talking to a homeless person.

Speaker 1 I still to this day will go to the little 99 cent store with my son and go get toothbrush, toothpaste, handy wipes, band-aids, band-aids, socks, soap, pat and pen, and gloves. It's eight bucks.

Speaker 1 And I put them in a bag and I hand them out to homeless. So you don't have to be loaded to go be of service.

Speaker 1 But also just calling somebody saying, just checking up on you, amen, just telling you I love you.

Speaker 1 That's being of service. And

Speaker 1 it's hard for the roommates in your head to tell you how bad you are when you are lifting somebody else up. Absolutely.
So that's huge.

Speaker 6 I'm so glad that's a strategy for you.

Speaker 1 What's number three? And by the way, therapists are part of the team also. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 And the third one is laughter.

Speaker 6 That's what you do really well.

Speaker 1 I laugh a lot. I try.

Speaker 1 The gray age, laughter.

Speaker 1 And I do see blue when I'm laughing. But I'll tell you this: that most don't know.
And nobody knew until I wrote this. Nobody knew.
Again, I've had a panic attack starting in 2005.

Speaker 1 I was in Empty Raider Stadium doing a hit for Fox Neville Sunday.

Speaker 1 It's weird for me to have had one because I'm like, I suck in calm, but I'm really, really good in chaos.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So chaos of TV for me, I feel sorry.

Speaker 1 You're in the zone there. Yeah.
Great. So I don't know why it happened, but it was 2005.

Speaker 6 It was peaceful. No one was there.

Speaker 1 Nobody in the stadium but me. And it stressed you out.
It stressed you out. I don't know, but I, but I've been on TV since 93.
Right. So I don't know why 12 years in, it suddenly suddenly happened.

Speaker 1 Wow. But when I have an anxiety panic attack,

Speaker 1 the walls cave in. Wow.
My eyes start going like this. My hands start shaking.
I start sweating. I feel like I'm having a heart attack.

Speaker 1 It's hard to breathe.

Speaker 1 And I've had it. It became habitual.
So it's now between my ears. So every single time, I had a little mini one when we sat down here.
before

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 it just became like habitual. But they're not dangerous.
But for 10 years, I didn't know that I was getting my heart checked out. We didn't talk about panic attacks from 2005 to 2015, whatever.
Like,

Speaker 1 no one knew who it was. That's why I'm trying to give these words for somebody to go, oh, that's what I have.
Okay, so you're not alone. It's you're, a lot of us have them.

Speaker 1 And it may not be every week. And

Speaker 1 everybody out there also. Like, I'm clinical depression, anxiety, but we all have something now.
It's a harder world these days. Social media makes it harder.
We just came through a pandemic.

Speaker 1 We had to isolate. Worst thing we could ever do, right?

Speaker 6 Right. Especially if you're depressed.

Speaker 1 Especially if, but we're all going to have something now.

Speaker 1 Especially because we compare ourselves to everybody else. It's filtered, filtered fraction of one second of one day.

Speaker 1 And we think, and we feel left out. And we think, man, I'm not successful.
Look what this person's doing. Look at that person.
It's not real. Or the bullying and hate we see on Twitter.

Speaker 1 The human condition is not made to see so much a thousand times a second. It's just not meant to.
Something's got to give.

Speaker 1 So I'm trying to lead us all through to start giving together and be kinder to each other. But the laughter part, when you see me

Speaker 1 force in a joke, the first segment of Fox, it's because I'm having a really bad one. Really?

Speaker 6 And that's why you tell the

Speaker 6 joke.

Speaker 1 So if you see it, you're like, well, that didn't fit. I'm trying to get myself out of a panic attack.

Speaker 6 You're trying to get back in the zone and focus and present.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because I'm, man, it's when I'm having this panic and anxiety attack, it's, yeah, you're not, it's, man, it's weird. It's like I'm not there.

Speaker 1 Again, I'm having all this physical stuff but it's like i'm over there or some it's just i'm not

Speaker 1 i don't it's i'm not there i'm i am i'm somewhere else deep behind my eyes somewhere else so the quicker i can make you laugh or me laugh i get out of it and it usually only lasts two three minutes right maybe five and then it moves on yeah for the most part i've had ones at the Super Bowl a couple years ago lasted an hour and a half.

Speaker 1 I have no memory of the first hour of our show. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 6 How much does that suck?

Speaker 1 That sucks. Biggest Biggest show of my life.

Speaker 1 100th anniversary of the NFL.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 none of the guys knew I was experiencing this until this. And then Stra-Ann said, why don't you tell us? I said, because I don't want to bring down your day on live TV.

Speaker 1 You know, now,

Speaker 1 if I have one when we're off the air, I'll say, hey, uh-oh, it's coming on.

Speaker 1 And, you know, I'll tell,

Speaker 1 I usually lean on Howie and Kurt Menefe a lot for that. Or,

Speaker 1 yeah, I'll be open open about it now. So I just won't suffer in silence anymore.

Speaker 6 What's the, I mean, 2005 was the first time you started really having them, right? What do you think was the shift from not having them to having them in 2005?

Speaker 1 I have no idea. And that's the thing.
It's like,

Speaker 1 not only that, it's not like I had a great story that day.

Speaker 1 I remember it was D'Angelo Hull and Terrell Lowens got in a fight on the field. They had some others, and they didn't talk to anybody but me.
So I'm like, hey, I got this great exclusive.

Speaker 1 So I had great stuff. Nobody was in there.
It was actually really peaceful.

Speaker 1 I have no idea why my abuser decided to step up that day i got no idea why i decided to step up the morning of the super bowl right before we're about to redo the immaculate reception with terry bradshaw and franco harris like are you kidding me man right right little jason is dream of dreams

Speaker 1 i don't have any memory of it it wasn't until i got in the car with jimmy johnson and kirbenefe we started busting chops and laughing where I got through it. After the fact, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we were going to the next site. Yeah.
We, again, we had a three or four hour pregame show, whatever it was. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Man, I mean, you've worked with thousands.

Speaker 1 By the way, that day, I just got to tell you this. Yeah.
Because the laughter part, again, it's the 100th anniversary of the NFL, right? Yes. The centennial of the NFL.

Speaker 1 We're standing on the feet on the sideline. Ball just kicks off.
It's Terry Bradshaw, Harry Long, me, Stray Henn,

Speaker 1 Tony Gonzalez is standing over there. Kurt Menifit, Jimmy Josh, Will standing there.
And Terry Bradshaw, who is the funniest dude you'll ever meet, legit funny like that. He says, you know what?

Speaker 1 This 100th anniversary the nfl thing

Speaker 1 this worked great this centennial this this thing went great we said yeah it was great and we did it all year long he said great he said you should totally do this again next year we all went what didn't you just say

Speaker 1 he literally was just like oh i get yeah

Speaker 6 100 years

Speaker 6 i'm sorry to cut you off that's great man that's the ad part cutting you off no it's all good man side stories are classic um you've trained or you've worked with or have trained and i'm also just seen thousands of athletes and pro athletes come through your facility and over the years train them?

Speaker 6 What would you say is the level of which the high-level athletes face mental health, stress, and anxiety? Or do you feel like most of them don't face that?

Speaker 1 They all face it. You can't be great and not have some crazy.
Yeah. Like your work ethic, you just, it's not normal, right? Right.
And that's good. Like, I want us to embrace it.

Speaker 1 Like I say, I'm messed up, but I'm good with my messed upness. Yeah.
Look at the stuff you've done. Yeah.
You're not normal. Right.
I don't think, I think most of us aren't normal.

Speaker 1 And what makes us not normal is we outwork the world, not by a little, by a lot. You got to have,

Speaker 1 you got to be off to put those hours in when no one's watching. Right.
Right. Not as if we're everybody's watching.
It's those hours when everybody else is, when nobody's watching. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 to be on that level, right? And this is what I tell anybody, right? You played arena ball.

Speaker 1 You playing football.

Speaker 1 right is not who you are but what's behind your rib cage that got you to beat out millions and millions to beat your record holder in ncaa that's one of one that that no one could ever take that from you and too many

Speaker 1 feel like oh man i i didn't do enough or i didn't go here or i didn't go there yeah you did like you playing the nfl or you playing arena ball is not who you are what's behind your rib cage that makes you so much different than everybody else that's who you are and that suddenly doesn't just go away it's always there yeah

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Speaker 1 But who reminds you all of that, right? So, like,

Speaker 1 even you were telling me, well, I didn't do it. No, no, no.
You played arena ball, dude. I never got to that level.

Speaker 1 I got paid to play.

Speaker 1 Yeah, most of the world didn't get to that level.

Speaker 1 Right. You were, you were a top-level athlete in tacathlon, right? Just there's something different about you there.
We all have something different about us. We got to find what that is.

Speaker 1 For me, like, do I wish I could have played football? Yeah. I'm a five-foot-seven Jewish guy.
It's not going to happen. Right.

Speaker 1 Your parents were like, let's just play some chess or something.

Speaker 1 And then for me, I got into mixed martial arts early

Speaker 1 Because I actually, I felt like I belonged in a cage. That's what led me to me.
I feel like an animal. I felt, but not only that, I felt like I belonged there and I felt like I deserved to lose.

Speaker 1 Really? Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's what my self-worth was. Wow.
So that was the easiest place for me to kind of take beatings. And it's not like my dad didn't beat me growing up or anything like that.

Speaker 1 So it was just my self-worth. And it wasn't until I started really, I started coaching.
Fox made me stop fighting in 2003 or four.

Speaker 1 I only had two fights. See, I just did it right right there.
I only had two fights.

Speaker 6 At least you fought.

Speaker 1 But then, see, you did it. I started minimizing myself right there.
And that's what I'm trying to do. Me too.

Speaker 6 I only played the arena.

Speaker 1 That's what I, that's, I was just getting, I knew about that. Now I just did it, right?

Speaker 1 I took those three steps up in, and it did make me feel special because we were kind of like the island of misfit toys back then.

Speaker 6 This is just pre-big new FC.

Speaker 1 Yes, yes, yes. And

Speaker 1 it still makes me feel special from my physical scars from it. So when Fox made me stop fighting, I learned how to start coaching guys.

Speaker 1 And that's how it came to Bat War. I opened up the gym unbreakable and I've coached a thousand southern NFL players, full teams.

Speaker 1 Wrestle every single one of them. Wow.
Get in there with every one of them.

Speaker 1 And like it's, that's my, that's my own messed upness.

Speaker 1 When I have a fight team, the roommates in my head talk a lot nicer to each other. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so I've always bragged about these physical scars, even like internally, when I walk in a room, like, man, I've ruptured ruptured L4, L5, four times, and L1, L2 twice from wrestling with Randy Couture and Chuck Liddell and Andrew Whitworth and Lane Johnson and this guy and that guy.

Speaker 1 But we don't brag about our mental scars. So that's what I'm trying to do now.
Man, it's time I give myself a break and learn how to brag about the stuff I've overcome mentally, right?

Speaker 1 That's what we have to do.

Speaker 6 What happens when we start to talk about it? What happens to us physically, mentally, when we start to bring it out to light as opposed to hide it and should be shamed about it?

Speaker 1 We don't have a secret anymore. It's just this relief.

Speaker 1 And I'll tell you this too. The fear of someone's going to tell us to suck it up or, oh, come on, man, just,

Speaker 1 you know, you're being a wuss or whatever.

Speaker 1 Every single person, 100% that I've opened up to about this, it's brought me closer together with them.

Speaker 6 100%.

Speaker 6 Vulnerability is the key to connection in my mind. Yes.

Speaker 6 I talk about this openly on my show, but... When I was five, I was sexually abused by a man that I didn't know.

Speaker 6 And for 25 years, I held on to the secret, the shame, because I thought to myself, if anyone knew this, no one would love me. And so it was this shame that I held on to.

Speaker 1 That's a lot.

Speaker 6 It's a lot to overcome. It's a lot, man.
And so it drove me to become bigger, faster, stronger, you know, protect myself, kind of like what you were talking about, building this defense mechanism.

Speaker 6 But it left me feeling less connected to people emotionally because I wasn't able to tap into that vulnerability. And it wasn't until about nine years ago, I started opening up.

Speaker 6 And it was like this weight came off me.

Speaker 6 And also, like you said, all my relationships got stronger, stronger all of them and how many people did you help because they're like dude so many happened to me too right so many men started emailing me good for you I wrote a book about it the whole thing and it's like that was my most downloaded podcast in 1200 episodes wow and it was the one that made the most impact when I talked about the journey for the first time and it's just like what you're doing now it's helping so many people give a voice and give words like you said to what their challenges might be faced with in their head.

Speaker 1 I'm curious.

Speaker 1 Just

Speaker 1 so I know, look, it beyond sucked that happen to you. It's the ultimate betrayal.

Speaker 1 But if it didn't, like,

Speaker 1 like, think how many, think how many lives you saved because it did. Yeah.
Right? Yeah. That one day,

Speaker 1 you open up, think about,

Speaker 1 like my co-author here, Sarah, I only chose her because she overcame cancer. Wow.
And she didn't know why. I sent over the last chapter about it, and I said, I know it sucks.
You had cancer.

Speaker 1 I know it. But you came through that other side of that tunnel and it didn't break you.
And that's why I chose you.

Speaker 1 I know it sucks because you went through it. You're going to save people's lives.
So that's the thing. We've got to use our pain and the things that have happened to us to help others.

Speaker 1 And I'm not saying it's ever going to be worth it, but

Speaker 1 who knows the people's lives that you've saved and the good and great they go on to do. Absolutely.

Speaker 6 You never know.

Speaker 6 You never know the ripple of the proudy, man.

Speaker 1 I'm proud to be here with you.

Speaker 6 you appreciate it man thank you and i very strong i started talking about it

Speaker 6 yeah i don't know i guess seven years ago maybe seven eight years ago and i remember feeling terrified because at the time seven eight years ago i never saw any guys talking publicly about especially who kind of looked like me the front athlete jock opening up and talking about any of this stuff.

Speaker 6 So I was so scared. I was like, I'm going to lose my business.
No one's going to like me. No one's going to fall, like, no one's going to be friends with me.

Speaker 1 And it was the opposite.

Speaker 6 It was kind of like it allowed me to connect with my audience even stronger.

Speaker 6 And I think that's what you're doing as well: showing a side of yourself that really connects people, your athletes, their followers.

Speaker 1 Proud of our scars. Absolutely.
These are, this is no matter what happened to you, it's something you overcame. Absolutely.
So we can look at it as something that happened to me that broke me or that.

Speaker 1 Or something that I overcame.

Speaker 1 So we have a

Speaker 1 girl named Andy Ward

Speaker 1 who is, and I can talk about it because she talks about it.

Speaker 1 She's a member member of MVP.

Speaker 1 She came into,

Speaker 1 she's now, well,

Speaker 1 she came into our MVP session. There's an MVP up here.

Speaker 1 We're in seven cities right now, but in LA, we train at Unbreakable. We take the combat vets and athletes and we merge them together on Wednesday nights.
It's free to all of them.

Speaker 1 And we train for about a half hour just to give that burn. But then after we have these mental health talks and these huddles.
And man, they have the sexual trauma that they've opened up about

Speaker 6 has been just, wow, well, it's probably healing for so many to talk about it and

Speaker 1 every one of us is just, man, we got your back. We are there for you.
Well, Andy,

Speaker 1 for the first year and a half, Andy, we met Andy, she was homeless.

Speaker 1 And I think she was living on the VA campus by then.

Speaker 1 But Andy's, and she came in, she didn't say a word for the first year. Just came in, didn't say anything.
And after a year, she's like, wow,

Speaker 1 these are brothers and and sisters. I could, it's a team I could, a vulnerable team.
Wow. She finally, the stuff she's held on to, she finally opened up.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 she grew up in a cult. She was

Speaker 1 repeatedly, abused, repeatedly grown up by

Speaker 1 her father.

Speaker 1 She used the military to get away. And then she was

Speaker 1 and then came back over here, homeless,

Speaker 1 drugs, alcohol.

Speaker 1 She is now my second highest ranking female executive at all.

Speaker 6 Oh my gosh, it gives me chills. She is.

Speaker 1 So she talks about this now.

Speaker 1 And last year, we had Josh Burris in, who's the CEO of GNC, and he was listening to a session. She was opening up.
She goes, guys, today's this anniversary of this, this, this.

Speaker 1 And she starts opening up and she's like, for the first time, I have brothers who get my back. I have men who get my back.
And Josh Burris is like,

Speaker 1 oh my God, this person just said all this public. Oh, my God.
And he said, I'm donating a million dollars right now

Speaker 1 to MVP. And it was because this woman was so vulnerable and open with us, Andy.
And she's like, she went from homeless to our second highest ranking female executives. And she works at Unbreakable 2.

Speaker 1 She's amazing. Wow.
So

Speaker 1 when you turn your,

Speaker 1 we just had a Dallas chapter opening. She went down there and spoke with me and Dan Quinn, who's a defense coordinator down there and a bunch of us.

Speaker 1 And Troy Aikman was there and a bunch of people were there. And Andy told her story.
And afterwards, I said, how do you feel? And she said,

Speaker 1 I think pretty cool. And I said, You're the biggest rock star in this room right now.
Wow. There are people.
And she goes, I actually am feeling it. And she said, but you know what? I deserve to.

Speaker 1 It was my suffering. I'm like, yeah, here you go.
But that's what I'm saying. Like, we've all,

Speaker 1 this isn't heaven where we live, right? It's not going to be perfect. We've all had really bad things happen to us.
We could overcome it, right? And we could use it to motivate us.

Speaker 1 Or we could let us just

Speaker 1 let it beat us down. And it's easier to let it beat us down, but that can't be the option that I want us to all take.

Speaker 6 It's more worth it overcoming it. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 Look how did you feel?

Speaker 6 I know. What was the biggest, the first thing you felt like you had to overcome early in life?

Speaker 1 No, it was, it was, so I was tiny.

Speaker 1 It was

Speaker 1 growing up in New Jersey, being the smallest one in the room all the time.

Speaker 6 You were getting picked on a lot.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Not even, yeah, but. Not even picked on.
I wasn't, yeah. I just,

Speaker 1 I couldn't pipe. I was, you know, I wrestled 101 101 pounds in high school.
Right. I was 101.
Right. So kind of always kind of got left.

Speaker 1 I was a few years behind everybody. So that was always hard.
But I was always kind of this in-your-face type of cat. But it was in your face.
I knew I could only get a certain point.

Speaker 6 In your face until you started.

Speaker 1 Until they beat me up. Yeah.
Until the guys who were 200, just like I'm 101.

Speaker 1 But I've always been like a tough kid, but I couldn't really do a lot about it.

Speaker 1 And I just also,

Speaker 1 I just never felt loved growing up. That was the hardest thing.
You never felt love. Did you ever have a faith? You never love you? Yeah, and I just didn't, I just didn't feel it.
I just didn't,

Speaker 1 yeah. And actually, I would go upstairs at night.
I always get punished because I'd lash back out and

Speaker 1 I was afraid of the dark. And I just started talking to God by myself.
Like,

Speaker 1 yeah, just no one taught me. I just did.
And that's my choice to have faith. I believe in a loving God and it's like my best friend parent.
And that's my choice.

Speaker 1 It's not a hateful God where I'm getting punished for everything, which is weird weird because I always feel like I deserve to be punished.

Speaker 1 It's kind of odd.

Speaker 1 I think that way.

Speaker 6 What was the biggest lesson you learned growing up and who taught you that lesson?

Speaker 1 Biggest lessons were from my dad. Outwork the world and be loyal and your dreams will come true.
Wow.

Speaker 6 Absolutely. From your dad, huh?

Speaker 1 From my dad. Outwork the world and be loyal.
So loyalty was, man, it's always, it's my brand.

Speaker 6 That's cool.

Speaker 1 And I have just... Worked my butt off my whole life to make sure.

Speaker 1 Like I had, I got a text from a Navy SEAL buddy of mine the other other day he said i had a dream the other night that man i was about to get jumped in these football stands and you were right behind me and he just said i was good because you were there and it's just like it's just this loyalty and he goes we all know you're there for us that's nice and i was like that's yeah that that fills me up but they know i am like drop of a dime if you're stranded anywhere in the world you know to call me and i will drop everything for you that's and i kind of view it

Speaker 1 I view everybody like I'm going to be so loyal to them.

Speaker 1 hoping it's going to sound a little morbid here, so loyal that I'll end up being their pallbearer. Wow.
Right. That's as loyal as you get.

Speaker 1 And if I can get 10 or 15% of my crew to treat me back the same way, I got a pretty good little team around me.

Speaker 6 And you got 15 pallbearers for you, too.

Speaker 6 Yeah, wow, man. What was the biggest lesson your mom taught you?

Speaker 1 Biggest lesson my mom taught me.

Speaker 1 My mom, so I have a million, I have six careers I do at the same time my mom did the same thing growing up yeah so she was like a stay-at-home mom but she started all these businesses in the house and they ended up starting preschools for communication handicapped children so I worked at those my whole life growing and that's actually how I got diagnosed with ADD in 1989 through them it took me to they had a one place over by Princeton University and they brought me in and this is 89 So I got diagnosed with that.

Speaker 1 I got put on Ritalin, which

Speaker 1 talking about messing up your brain chemistry.

Speaker 1 And then I have to go tell my teachers, hey, I got this new thing called ADD

Speaker 1 and explain it. And they're like, and I was like Ferris Bueller.
They're like, oh, yeah. You know what?

Speaker 1 You need to take a pill and step out of the room. Yeah, whatever.
Right. So, yeah, they didn't.
And I wasn't, it was my first year of college, or my first year, I didn't get kicked out of college.

Speaker 1 But, you know, I had to educate college professors. Yeah.
And then I was also trying, and I've tried to do this, and I've written a lot of this in the book, don't call it a learning disability.

Speaker 1 What should we call it?

Speaker 1 ADD. It's also, they've decided to lump it in all together, ADD and ADHD.

Speaker 1 Not

Speaker 1 like my kid has ADD and they call it ADHD. He is not hyper at all.

Speaker 1 So they kind of lump things in, but also like, man, when we're growing up and they say, oh, this kid has a learning disability, there's a negative connotation to it. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 We just don't learn like everybody else. It's not a disability, but I know the way I learn.
is way better than the way that teacher over there made or that coach over there.

Speaker 6 We just didn't learn well well in school format.

Speaker 1 Yes, we didn't learn their way.

Speaker 6 Sports and in the world, and we were able to connect with people and learn in other ways.

Speaker 1 But if you brought them into a football meeting room and they couldn't pick up your playbook, would you call them disabled? No. They shouldn't call us disabled.

Speaker 1 That's true. Yep.

Speaker 6 You're just not good at that thing?

Speaker 1 Not good at that? Yeah. It's not disabled.

Speaker 1 We don't pick that up.

Speaker 1 We're not going to call you disabled because you can't pick up a playbook. That's true.
And that would always hurt me a lot when they would say, yes. And

Speaker 6 I was a remedial English early and yeah here I wrote a book so I know I almost fucked out English my senior year my my teacher my my senior year teacher she was like Lewis you can't go to college you don't finish high school English class and so she was great at just like tutoring me every day after class like trying to help trying to help me just get a passing grade so I could go play football yeah wow that's my parents got me a tutor every day Yeah, I mean, my class is like, where did you get it?

Speaker 6 It's the worst, man. It's hard to remember.
I would read like pages in a book and just have to keep rereading the same pages and be like, after an hour, you're like, this is pointless.

Speaker 1 I'm going to fail anyways.

Speaker 6 What's the point of doing this?

Speaker 1 I skipped the reading comprehension part for my SATs. Yeah.
So I was just like, skipped it. I knew I had no shot.
But clearly, I'm not learning disabled.

Speaker 1 Clearly, it hasn't held me back from reaching my dreams. I've accomplished my dreams.

Speaker 1 So, you know, again, it's there are certain things I'm good at, certain things I'm not good at. We all have that.
Let's not call us disabled in any way.

Speaker 6 What's the three proudest moments of your life?

Speaker 1 Three proudest moments.

Speaker 6 That came to your mind, you know, obviously if you have more time to think about, but what's the first thing that came to mind? Three proudest moments from early childhood till now.

Speaker 1 When I started getting comfort in the giants for all those years, just broken and broke.

Speaker 1 The first day I walked in that giant locker room in 1993, which is already four years into my career, finally got a break for that $450, which is like nothing. But it was my first real job.

Speaker 1 I walked in that giant locker room and I said, okay,

Speaker 1 I have no education compared to everybody else in there i have no this is the mecca of you know television sports new york city i have no experience how could i be different

Speaker 1 and for me i try and preach that to people let's not be a face in the crowd let's be the crowd be your own crowd yeah that's what stands out right you're different everybody we're different

Speaker 1 so how could i be different so what'd you do so i said number one if these reporters here work i said i'll be the last dude standing so if they work 40 hours a week i'm not gonna outwork them by a little i'm gonna work them by a lot a lot so i'd work 100 hours a week

Speaker 1 and i had i couldn't afford subway to bus to giant stadium and back every day so michael strahan drove me into new york city how'd you convince him to drive you nobody talked to him for like michael didn't like make it tools for theater right no one talked to him he got drafted to be the the top pass rush of the giants to replace lawrence taylor lawrence taylor is still on the team right michael has bad teeth and a speech impediment comes from germany wasn't a good thing right so no one talked to him and those other reporters didn't talk to me we met our first ever days on the job ever wow and latched on each other and we just every day and what i would also do is i would get these other reports so so he would drop you off every day of my life so i owe him i owe him 29 000 a month in telefare

Speaker 1 and like what michael validated me to other players that you could trust this guy he's right but i also did the other thing i did is I said, okay, A, I'm not working by a lot. B,

Speaker 1 I'm not going to use my pen as a weapon.

Speaker 1 You're not going to

Speaker 1 talk bad about them. Well, I'm just not going to, I'm not going to use my pen as a weapon.
Back then, it was everything splashed on the back page. It was bad, right?

Speaker 1 I said, I'm going to start relationships. I have more in common with these players than I do my fellow reporters.

Speaker 1 So I'm going to start relationships. It was so frowned upon back then.
Really? Oh, my God, they used to kill me and Michael.

Speaker 6 Now that's all they want to do is try to build relationships to get the story.

Speaker 1 I started a different way of doing it. So I had every scoop and every story.
But that's the smart thing. Build a a relationship, the scoops will come.
If you go for the one scoop, you burn yourself

Speaker 1 short-sighted. But I also, again, me needing a team, even though I was the reporter and they were the players and the coaches, that was a, they're my team for my own mental health.

Speaker 1 Like I lost on them. I needed that.
So

Speaker 1 it took me, again, overall 11 years to get a full-time job. Wow.
But I just kept going. I kept grinding.
And what I did too is I got those players that I was covering and the coaches to see my plight.

Speaker 1 Man, this guy's so broke, but he's the first one here by hours. He's the last one here by hours.

Speaker 1 We want to see him make it. Like I got them to see my plight.
I collected more of a team around me to walk this walk together with me. Finally, in 1999, I am on

Speaker 1 a driving range on Randall's Island with Tiki Barber, the Giants running back.

Speaker 1 My agent is still with me, Maury Gostrand, who kind of got turned down by 20 agents.

Speaker 1 I was just trying to build this team that it's not just me

Speaker 1 doing this. And he just happened to be home sick one day and saw me doing a free show on Channel 5 there.
And he's like, oh, this kid's good.

Speaker 1 He calls me up and he says, hey, what are you doing? I said, I'm playing golf with Tiki, a little driver wrench. He said, okay.

Speaker 1 And I get choked up here

Speaker 1 because this is my moment. There's only time, there's a few times in life we really find out who we are.
And this is one of them. And he said, you can excel.
And I said, what do you mean?

Speaker 1 He said, we finally got you a full-time job. Now, this is 11 years of, and let me back up.
Not only did I outwork these guys, I was trying to get a job every week of my life.

Speaker 1 I got rejected more than any human being you'll ever see in your life. But that relentlessness I told you about of me having that depression, anxiety, I had to go for something bigger.

Speaker 1 So I felt that love from the outside in so hard. I'm like, I'll be rejected over and over and over and over and over.
Just constantly rejected.

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Speaker 1 and um

Speaker 1 and i had this thing where actually every week so for six days i got rejected i covered the giants cover the nfl grinded grinding grind it's exhausted swimming upstream and again i tell you i'm real spiritual and i've read in a prayer book the fourth commandment god commands you to take a day off and drink some wine so

Speaker 1 he had a good time right yeah i take it literally every week i take one day and say okay, whatever happened this past week, it's done. It's over.
Like all the rejection, let it go. It's over.

Speaker 1 And I'm giving myself a day to heal. One day.
And literally after that one day, I would look up the guy and say, okay, God, I'm not asking you to get me this job.

Speaker 1 I'm not asking you to help me win this interview. And I think we do that too much, right? I'm not asking you to get me money.

Speaker 1 All I'm asking is you pick me up, brush me off, let's keep walking this walk together. Yeah.
Right? So I've never felt fully alone, right?

Speaker 6 Wow, that's beautiful.

Speaker 1 And I didn't look at it as 11, an 11-year span of being rejected. I looked at it as 11 years of one-week periods.

Speaker 6 Interesting. So it's much more easy to manage.
Because I was like, I've been going for a decade and nothing's happening.

Speaker 1 I have a thing in here that says, you never know what lies around next Tuesday. Absolutely.
I was always hunting for that next Tuesday when something happened.

Speaker 1 So finally, 11 years in, that Tuesday came.

Speaker 6 Wow. So he said you can exhale.
And what did he say? We got you a job.

Speaker 1 He said, you finally got a full-time job. I said, with who? He said, the NFL today on CBS.
They just got football back. I said, he said, you're going to be their NFL insider.
I said, I'll take it.

Speaker 1 And he said, don't you want to know how much it's for? And I said, I don't give a.

Speaker 6 It's more than what I'm making now, probably.

Speaker 1 I said, and here gets the choked up part. I said, Maury,

Speaker 1 this was my validation. When I walked in that giant locker room all those years later and I said, I will be the last dude standing.
Wow.

Speaker 1 This validated that. Like all this stuff I've done, all the rejection, it validated it.

Speaker 1 And I said to him, before you tell me the salary, if it took me another 10 years to get this, I would have done it. And it's, and it takes, and listen, it takes a lot out of you.

Speaker 1 It does beat your soul down. And it was for 50 grand a year, and it was the biggest thing that ever happened to me in my life.

Speaker 6 Like, so it's a long story there, but 2005, is that what that was?

Speaker 1 No, no, no, 99.

Speaker 6 Oh, 99 when you got this.

Speaker 1 2005. 2005, I went to Fox.

Speaker 1 2004.

Speaker 1 I went to Fox.

Speaker 6 So five years later, you got the Fox. Yeah.
And that was more than 50K.

Speaker 1 Well, what happened when I got the 50 grand from CBS and also that internet thing came out, of course. Which I think is going to take off.
You should invest in it now. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I became the first minute-by-minute breaking news guy in America. Me, John Clayton, who just passed away, and Lynn Pascarilli,

Speaker 1 we were kind of battling out. And no one did that back then.
So before us, there was no, it was you'd away from the newspapers the next day.

Speaker 1 And before us, there was no crawl on the bottom of the screen. So we started it and

Speaker 1 um so i got an extra 50 from cbs sportsline to do that nice and another 25 or 35 from local cbs to do the jets giants so i went from nine thousand seven hundred and fifty bucks a year to 135 grand yes pretty good coin back then too oh my god it was just 99 that's pretty good yeah yeah that's good money back there yeah but again what i what i realized is As I started moving up the ladder, and then Fox saw me from CBS, which obviously way better fit.

Speaker 1 made my wallet's not an antidepressant it's not an antidepressant what do you mean by that i thought when i made it big big big

Speaker 1 it was gonna be rainbows and unicorns that's why i've worked so hard to man look where i am now i've had now now i've had a lot of those moments so it's it was definitely there's two sides there's it was there's a lot that's better like i'm broke and i've been unbreakable right right but when you're broke

Speaker 1 There was a lot of things like I had nothing to lose.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So I didn't have that fear of losing stuff, that anxiety. Now when you have all this, you're so horrified you're going to lose it.
Really?

Speaker 6 So you have more anxiety now than then?

Speaker 1 I think so. I think you're just petrified to lose it all the time.

Speaker 6 Maybe that 2005 was when you went to Fox. Yep.
And there was more to lose then.

Speaker 1 Well, now, as I've gotten to this level, that's right.

Speaker 1 You know, that whole more money, more problems thing. And it's all different type of problems.
But I just think that

Speaker 1 when you get, when you work so hard and you finally do make it, you're so afraid of losing it. You don't want to lose it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's almost like fighting

Speaker 1 not to lose instead of to win. Yeah.
So I've had to alter that i've had to make sure i recognize and just go and like

Speaker 1 play for me yeah yeah just be me you know but it's look it's it's all and a lot of it too is like i don't think logically a lot because those remains in my head yeah don't like me to have joy like don't so anytime i want to enjoy something you don't deserve it you're not worthy of it so and i think that's part of it also i don't know if it's for everybody sure it's part of it for me and and listen i'm a work in progress man yeah of course We all are.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm trying to learn to get there. That's why I'm, you know, I keep doing things like this to hope that, okay, maybe this is the thing that's going to help finally get me to meet in the middle

Speaker 1 where I could feel that worth from the inside out. And it's like I know I'm worthy of being loved.

Speaker 1 So here's the crazy part. I know I'm worthy of it, but I don't feel like I deserve it.
Really?

Speaker 1 No, it's probably the other way around. I feel like I deserve it, but I don't feel like I'm worthy of it.
That's it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Now I'm kind of doing a little stuff.

Speaker 6 When was the time you felt the most loved?

Speaker 1 And this isn't good because this isn't real love, but

Speaker 1 like, yeah, when I would break huge stories in the NFL and everybody would be like, oh my gosh, when, again, I was ahead of the game in this, and it was like, man, I was the first one doing this.

Speaker 1 It's like on a different, like, I had the Spy Gear video. That was a crazy time of my life.

Speaker 1 That was my second week in Fox, and that's the biggest scoop in the history of sports. The actual video when the Patriots got caught, you know, filming the Jets coaches and cheating.

Speaker 1 But you're asking me, like, the love, that's not a real love.

Speaker 1 I felt admired, and people, like, oh my God, this is like,

Speaker 1 you know, this is, this is different. This is amazing.
But the most loved, I don't know. I don't know how to answer that question.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't know how to answer that.

Speaker 6 You have a son, right?

Speaker 6 It's lovely the son or with friends or family.

Speaker 1 I mean, but you said

Speaker 1 that.

Speaker 6 When you've had the most love,

Speaker 1 I don't know how to answer that. Interesting.
Yeah, I don't like,

Speaker 1 I enjoy being with my friends. I love being with them.

Speaker 6 You don't feel loved.

Speaker 1 And I always feel like

Speaker 1 they're going to catch on soon to this fraud that I am because I'm, you know, I'm this terrible person inside. And that's what tells you a lot.
Yeah, that's why you're

Speaker 1 masculine.

Speaker 6 Why do you think you're a terrible person?

Speaker 1 That's what it tells me. I don't know.
Yeah, yeah. But my mother asked me recently.

Speaker 1 She said, do you, because she sees how exhausted i am from it it exhausts me yeah and she said how do you and i told her how bad and i won't say to her how bad i do view myself she's like what

Speaker 1 she's like look at all the good you do i said i i know but

Speaker 1 i i just don't feel that i deserve that right and

Speaker 1 um or i'm worthy of that and she said that has to be exhausting and i said

Speaker 1 so exhausting So I said, mom, when I don't get right back to you, that's why. Like, I'm going through it.
Right. Right.
And

Speaker 1 it is totally exhausting. So, yet, all I want to do is be loved.
And then people kind of reach out and love me. I'm already so tired from what I'm doing.

Speaker 6 You can't receive the love. Yeah.
It's hard to receive it. Man.

Speaker 6 Well, that was your one of the most proud moments, you said, when you got that phone call. Yeah.
What was the second and third most proud moments, would you say?

Speaker 1 Man.

Speaker 6 And it can be a big thing, it can be a small thing. It can be.

Speaker 1 I would say

Speaker 1 when I first started MVP,

Speaker 1 that was pretty cool. That's pretty cool.

Speaker 1 Having

Speaker 1 kind of a bet say like, man, thank you, you saved my life.

Speaker 1 That's got me a lot.

Speaker 1 We have another employee named Denver Morse,

Speaker 1 who's our national outreach director. We met him.
He was living in a homeless shelter coming off his third suicide attempt. Wow.
He still.

Speaker 1 First time he told him that, man, you saved my life. Like, oh my God, MVP saved my life.

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 those moments. Now, I, there's a lot of those, yeah, and those get me.
Um,

Speaker 1 I have one

Speaker 1 two days ago from one of our guys here.

Speaker 1 Hey, brother, just checking in on you. Hope you're doing well.
I'm coaching the weekend with a positive mindset. Love you, brother.

Speaker 1 Next time you look in the mirror, tell that guy thanks for saving my life. Wow, and tell that guy, thanks for saving my life.
Wow, grateful you've made this impact on the world.

Speaker 1 See, I can't like, listen, I've, I'm a, you know, no one's questioning my manhood i could drop crying a drop of diamonds i can sit there and be like oh glazers a wussy so but let's think about that me and both just read this to you it's pretty so these come in a lot so there's a lot of proud moments now yeah and it's for me being of service to people it's that's pretty cool that's incredible man that's pretty cool that's beautiful

Speaker 6 what do you see i mean you you've accomplished so much in the last really last 20 years i guess 23 years since you i call it 30 years since you started the journey for for 11 years of going after

Speaker 1 now it looks fantastic don't it

Speaker 6 and then you know getting the job you know the the bigger job and then then on Fox and then Hall of Fame and TV and all these you know unbreakable and all the thousands of athletes that you work with and all don't forget bowlers

Speaker 1 on bowlers that's one of my favorite shows heck yeah absolutely

Speaker 1 I know you're so

Speaker 1 great looking Jewish reporter exactly and I didn't follow my lines because I couldn't remember him so I just make it up and yeah and I just messed with Dwayne So that's the whole thing.

Speaker 1 That's actually, look, we've been close for a while, but we really started having mental health talks way back then. Really? Yeah, we get real vulnerable to each other.

Speaker 6 What's the biggest lesson DJ has taught you in the space of mental health and also in just life?

Speaker 1 Man, he is, he saw me a couple weeks ago on TV promoting this, and he called, he said, what's up? I said, what do you mean? He said, I saw you today. I said, yeah, he said, what's wrong?

Speaker 1 And something was wrong. I was going through with another, an issue.

Speaker 1 and he saw it. But the fact that he stepped away and saw that and he said, okay, I'm going to call you four times a day.
I got your brother. And but the biggest thing for him is,

Speaker 1 man, he is like this authentic dude. He same thing though, like he, that dude thinks he's going to be broke next week.
He literally thinks he's going to have seven bucks in his pocket again next week.

Speaker 1 And for me, we're a special. Here's the biggest star in the world.
And yet we call each other and send each other notes and lean on each other for mental health almost every day.

Speaker 1 Whether it's when I had that anxiety attack the other night, I reached out to him, struggling, and

Speaker 1 there's another issue I was going through. Hey, how did you handle this? And boom.
When I had the book too, again, he's like, you're going to be that voice of the gray for all of us.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to put my team behind you also. Wow.
Because it's going to help you. It's going to help me.
It's going to help a lot of us.

Speaker 1 It's going to help the next generation of Dwayne's and Jays out there and stuff. So he's very selfless.
He's incredibly selfless.

Speaker 1 And that's the biggest lesson I learned from him is you could be the biggest star in the world and

Speaker 1 still be incredibly selfless. Yeah.
Still just give, give, give. And I think he does so much charity work and all this work he does for people.
Same thing. He's trying to show himself, I'm okay.

Speaker 1 Like when you work so hard and you get all that rejection that he did or I did or you did, right? He's showing upstream all those years. It's exhausting.
It is.

Speaker 1 So yeah, it takes, it beats down your soul a lot so we're there to love each other up man i'm it's just so crazy he became him my little niece

Speaker 1 who looks like sasquatch

Speaker 1 when did you first meet him have you guys known each other for i did a movie with him called the game plan a disney movie where i was just like and i just started messing with him again that the laughter part i mess with everybody yeah and it just kind of stood out everybody else was like and i was just So when I go down and do ballers,

Speaker 1 like he'd be over there with his team and then everybody else would be over there and I was kind of walking through and I'd be like, where's Sasquatch? I can't work like this.

Speaker 1 And I'd go through and, you know, he would sit there and he would like, he'd have his lines. And I'd be like, don't say it like that.
He's like, who are you telling that act?

Speaker 1 I'm like, I got this what I do for a living. He's like, no, you don't.
I'm just messing with him. Or I would change my lines.

Speaker 1 They eventually had, it went from scripts, they said, to like Glazier scripts, at least for my size.

Speaker 1 They just knew. It was a bullet point.
Yeah, just say something. They know I just wouldn't remember it.

Speaker 1 And I would just be myself. So I would mess with them all the time.
And we try and get a little, you know, me.

Speaker 1 I run a fun locker room, so I try and make it ranting and dirty and kind of shocked value. And they kept most of it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, man. It was great.

Speaker 6 You had a great little cameo in there every time I see you.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I was like, I had five seasons of that. It's pretty big, man.
Right? It's pretty cool. It was all.

Speaker 1 And it was like, that was, that's the obviously Fox and Evil Sunday for me every week is just incredible because that's our locker room.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it's fun. And we sit back there and watch games together and just

Speaker 1 crush each other. And there's six of us on the show, and there's 19 personalities.
And Bracho and I have 11 of those.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 but ballers was so much fun. That's cool.
Because I probably couldn't care because I'm not an actor. Right.

Speaker 6 So I'm just going to be myself. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm not being judged.

Speaker 1 I can't care. But I also know, they're not firing me.
I got this guy. I'm all right.

Speaker 1 I'm okay. That's amazing.
And he would just be like, yeah, just keep rolling. I would just, so, I mean, I would say,

Speaker 1 Yeah, 90% of my stuff probably wasn't. It was supposed to be scripted.
I just didn't follow it.

Speaker 6 That's amazing, man. I'm really excited about People to Get This Book, Unbreakable, How I Turn My Depression and Anxiety into Motivation, and you can too.

Speaker 6 This is powerful because I think a lot of people feel unmotivated when they have anxious thoughts, stress, depression, or just issues where they don't feel worthy, don't feel love, don't feel enough.

Speaker 6 I know I faced a lot of that in my life, but I was.

Speaker 1 What was your turning point?

Speaker 6 Man, I was driven.

Speaker 6 The thing is, I had a drive to prove everyone wrong about me. So everyone, you know, just being bottom of my class, special needs, picked on, being kind of tall.

Speaker 6 You were the short kid? I was a, I was this tall when I was like 11, but not this built. So I was like this goofy, kind of like big-eared, you know, big teeth, just they made fun of the appearance.

Speaker 6 So it wasn't until I really turned 16, 18, 20 where I started to fill out my body. So it's kind of like the opposite.
You know, I was tall, but I was made fun of being tall.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 6 I just remember many moments being made fun of, picked last in the, you know, on the playground, whatever it is for little sports.

Speaker 6 And just being like, I'm going to prove everyone wrong who's made fun of me, who's doubted me.

Speaker 1 Were you resentful to them? Do you want to get back at them?

Speaker 6 I just wanted to show them, look, I did something that they never thought I could do.

Speaker 6 And it drove me to get incredible results. And that it gave me motivation, but it was a motivation out of

Speaker 6 more anger and resentment than love and inspiration.

Speaker 6 And so I would accomplish and achieve. And then I transitioned from sports.

Speaker 6 And then I played with the USA handball team for nine years played on you know i don't know your knees held up in that i know right you kidding me and but i i was like i'm gonna do this in sports and then i did it in business but then i hit a turning point at 30 i'm 39 now where i was like i'm accomplishing and accomplishing and accomplishing but i still don't feel lovable and i don't feel enough the turning point was facing the sexual abuse and talking about it and allowing myself to be vulnerable.

Speaker 6 And that's where everything shifted because I was in such a competitive mindset. I had to win at everything.

Speaker 6 I had to be the number one and win at everything at everyone else's expense of being a loser.

Speaker 6 And if I lost, then I was worthless. I was not good enough.
Even if I broke, the day I broke the world record for the most yards in the game, we lost. So I was beating myself up for days.

Speaker 1 It was good quality, though, because you lose. It's not.
Yeah, I lost. But you lost, yeah.
Exactly.

Speaker 1 It was great quality.

Speaker 6 Yeah, but it wasn't until I hit 30 and I started down a healing journey of therapy and lots of different stuff where I said,

Speaker 6 it's not going to be about competition. It's going to be about collaboration.
It's about how can I win and how can I get everyone else to win with me?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 6 And that collaborative, and I didn't know collaboration was a thing. I knew teamwork was a thing, but not against someone else like collaboration.
So now it's just like, how can I win?

Speaker 6 by lifting everyone else up.

Speaker 6 How can I make you win?

Speaker 6 How can I shine the light on you, put you on a platform, support your message, your mission to serve people.

Speaker 6 And and in return good things are gonna happen You know good things are gonna happen to me as opposed to I need to be the biggest show the best show the the most successful in the world to make me feel good instead How can I serve the world?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 and I feel great that that's the and that's that give give right that loyalty I talked about how it'd be and that you know whenever we train Football players I've helped a lot of coaches kind of move up in the NFL ranks and that's why I have this loyalty but I always tell them listen I know I'm crazy you follow along man we'll change your grandkids lives.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Right.
So it's like, we'll lift you to such stuff, but it's not, we don't get anything out of it. This is for you to change your kids.

Speaker 1 And when I do see that, and this guy gets a head coaching job or makes a Pro Bowl, or just, or starts getting up here where he can give back to charities that, again, when things happen to other people, you ask, so you, your question was, what's the best thing that's happened to me?

Speaker 1 I don't see that. If you said to me, What's made you feel the best out of it? It's when something's happened to everybody else.
Like you're saying you lift people up.

Speaker 1 then i have something tangible for me right man this has happened that's happened i've walked this walk with this person i've helped this person overcome this i've got they've gotten up here now that's that's the key that's really the key to success absolutely right the best thing that's ever happened to me that i think at this moment was learning how to heal my heart

Speaker 6 because my heart was in a prison yeah for so long and it felt trapped and it felt painful and it felt tension and all these things and learning how to and it's a journey it's not like it's one night it's it's all better it's been like a journey of finding,

Speaker 6 having more inner peace than I did stress. Because it used to be all stress and anxiety, and I couldn't sleep at night.
It would just be up all night thinking, worrying, stressed.

Speaker 6 Learning how to find inner peace has been a game changer because I feel like I have more energy.

Speaker 1 And look at, it's hard to see right now that we live in a good world, right? There's so much stuff. However, look at two guys right here.

Speaker 1 We're in sports who've talked now about sexual trauma, suicide, depression, anxiety, everything. Cry to hear.

Speaker 1 So we are actually coming along a lot further in certain ways

Speaker 1 to make this world a better place. Like that's our only, it's kind of our only hope moving forward for this next generation.
Absolutely.

Speaker 6 I think specifically for men who are holding on to trauma, I think in order for the world to heal and relationships to heal, I think men need to heal personally and start talking more like this.

Speaker 1 And it's interesting because I thought, obviously, me being...

Speaker 1 center of dudeism with you know football and fighting and bowlers i thought it was going to be a male-centric book and oh yeah

Speaker 1 it's majority female flights gotten it so they can, and they're saying, hey, to their boyfriends or husbands. And they're all just like, hey, that's not me.
Yes, it's definitely you.

Speaker 1 And that's why we got to get dudes to get it. So like, it's you, dude.
It's so you. You're telling me this is.

Speaker 6 I wrote a book five years ago called The Mask of Masculinity, which was for men on how to open up and people are vulnerable.

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Speaker 6 Almost all 80% women bought it and try to give it to the men. But this is the challenge that

Speaker 6 we're going to face where women are going to hopefully bring this in and share with their guys more.

Speaker 6 And this is why we got to continue to be a Trojan horse, you know, talk about sports and do the rough and tough stuff, but slide in the vulnerability when we can, I think.

Speaker 1 But it's, did you, were you able to make that, did it switch over it? Or is it still?

Speaker 6 Yeah, there's a long tail now where it's like...

Speaker 1 You got to tell me off here. You got to tell me.

Speaker 6 Yeah, yeah. No, it's been great.

Speaker 1 I was kind of shocked. I thought it was,

Speaker 1 you know, but it's, but like, I had dinner recently

Speaker 1 and there's a couple they're friends with and this dude's a big dude and his wife was sitting there with me and his wife was like

Speaker 1 She was just telling me what somebody said oh just James just wrote a book and she's like and we just talked about how Miss Use just committed suicide.

Speaker 1 She was the most beautiful girl in the world felt that lonely that alone, right? And this woman said to me, that's me, that's how I feel. And I said, well, talk to your teammate.
He's right there.

Speaker 1 And she said, he won't get it. And I said, you deserve to have him understand what you're going through you deserve this at least

Speaker 1 right and she literally is saying that she wants and i said you need to and i call him over and i said and she said we have some homework and he said i heard about his book and she said i do need you to read a couple these chapters of me so like that's good man yes but that's exactly your point took a woman yeah

Speaker 1 and she's like he won't get it well dudes need to start getting it absolutely they need to start getting it they deserve to get it their wives and girlfriends and their moms and dads and children, they deserve for them to get it.

Speaker 1 But most importantly, the dudes themselves deserve it. They deserve not to be in this kind of pain that we're talking about.
Absolutely. I don't deserve this pain.

Speaker 6 I didn't sign up for it. I know.
Well,

Speaker 6 you're working through it, too. It's just beautiful.

Speaker 4 I could use it, man.

Speaker 6 I've got two final questions for you. Before I ask them, I want people to get a copy of the book, get it for your friends.

Speaker 6 If you have a friend that maybe is feeling more stressed or anxious, get them a copy to really inspire them.

Speaker 6 Follow you all over social media. You're mostly on Instagram, right? Is that the main place you're hanging out?

Speaker 1 out twitter twitter you you're a lot of twitter instagram too my ig following sucks i don't know what i'm doing

Speaker 1 you can share more on twitter well i used to break stories on twitter all the time but now i try not to look on social media because it's just

Speaker 1 me now so so fast

Speaker 6 check if you're in la check out unbreakable it's an amazing gym it's world class it's so inspiring and it's going to get you amazing

Speaker 1 another level of uh and it's a great community it's the only gym in america i have a therapist in there that's incredible i hired a full-time therapist in there. That's cool.

Speaker 1 So, because that's when, like, for me, I feel done working out is when I feel the most vulnerable, going to talk. That is cool, man.
And our motto is, we build you from the inside out.

Speaker 1 Oh, that, I love that. I love that, man.
And there's not the only gym in America missing, no mirrors. That's cool.
Because I don't want anybody's back turned to the rest of Dem. Wow.

Speaker 1 And you're sitting there checking yourself out. You got your back turned to everybody else.
So we really are, we build you up from the inside out.

Speaker 6 That is cool, man. Appreciate it.

Speaker 6 So make sure you guys check that out. This is a question.

Speaker 1 And anybody can get in.

Speaker 6 Yeah, of course. This is a question I ask everyone towards the end of the show.
It's called three truths.

Speaker 6 So I'd like you to imagine a hypothetical scenario.

Speaker 1 Well, then it wouldn't be true.

Speaker 6 The scenario is it's your last day on earth, many years away. You get to live as long as you want to live.
You get to accomplish everything.

Speaker 6 You put out more books.

Speaker 6 Whatever you want to do, you do it.

Speaker 6 But for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your books, this interview, video content, anything of you speaking or saying anything, written, audio, video, it's got to go to the next place.

Speaker 6 So no one has access to your information anymore. Just memory.

Speaker 6 But you get to leave behind three lessons to the world. Three things you know to be true, and this is all we would have to remember you by.

Speaker 6 What would you say would be those three lessons or three truths?

Speaker 1 Vulnerability is true strength. Ooh, yeah,

Speaker 1 that's right out the gate. Vulnerability is true strength.

Speaker 1 The secret of success is outworking the world

Speaker 1 and being loyal.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 the last one would be love yourself up.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we got to give ourselves a break. Amen.
All right.

Speaker 1 Learn to love yourself up. All right, learn to love yourself up.

Speaker 6 That's beautiful.

Speaker 6 Before I ask the final question, Jay, I want to acknowledge you for...

Speaker 6 Going on this journey.

Speaker 6 I think it's really hard for men in general, but specifically a guy like you from Jersey in this world, kind of grown up, you know, before me when this stuff wasn't even talked about, to be able to open up about it, write a book, pour your heart out to the world and really share a lot of rough stuff that you're sharing here and the vulnerabilities at the platform that you have.

Speaker 6 I think it's really inspiring. And you're allowing other men like you.
to be inspired to do the same with their communities, their families, their girlfriends, whatever it might be.

Speaker 6 So I really acknowledge you for

Speaker 6 doing the work, showing up, and being willing to not be perfect, not have it all figured out. You know what I mean? So it's a beautiful, it's a beautiful journey, man.

Speaker 1 I'm really, I'm really excited for you. And like I said, look, I'm trying to learn to love myself up.
I'm trying to learn to be loved because like,

Speaker 1 I, like, that's all I want is to be loved and have that love, right?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I haven't felt worthy of it. So far, it's gotten the way of most of my, a lot of my relationships.

Speaker 1 And now I think I'm, if I can, you know, again with this, the more I can do that, I could hopefully feel

Speaker 1 that worthiness. Yeah, then I'll have that happiness I've been kind of searching for.
Of course, man. It's coming.

Speaker 6 It's part of the process.

Speaker 1 It's that journey there where probably wasn't,

Speaker 1 I couldn't have recognized it years ago, but now that I'm talking about like this, this is the version of me that I do want somebody else to be with and me to do with. Absolutely.

Speaker 6 That's beautiful, man.

Speaker 1 Thank you, brother.

Speaker 6 Final question. What's your definition of greatness?

Speaker 1 This is lifting somebody else up. Yeah.
This isn't being cliche. Like,

Speaker 1 again,

Speaker 1 it's not success in like a career.

Speaker 1 No. It's how you use whatever you ask for somebody else, but it's like

Speaker 1 you see what some of the great, the great ones have done, but what they've done with their platform. That's greatness.
If you just do it for yourself,

Speaker 1 that's not greatness. You've just done a lot of really good stuff.

Speaker 1 You've accomplished some things, but it's not greatness. Greatness when you lift everybody else up, right? Like, listen, I said it in Stray Hands Hall of Fame speech.

Speaker 1 I said, you know, being a great player, you're, you know, you're great. But Hall of Famer, you lift up everybody else around you.

Speaker 1 Yeah. That's what greatness is, lifting up everybody else around you.

Speaker 6 That's a great definition. I always say that success is what you do for yourself.
Greatness is what you do for others.

Speaker 1 Here we go.

Speaker 6 Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness.

Speaker 6 Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links.

Speaker 6 And also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple Podcasts as well.

Speaker 6 I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most.

Speaker 4 And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.

Speaker 6 And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

Speaker 3 The School of Greatness is sponsored by Capital One.

Speaker 3 Nowadays, most people subscribe to everything, music, TV, even dog food, and it rocks until you have to manage it all, which is where Capital One comes in.

Speaker 3 Capital One credit card holders can easily track, block, or cancel reoccurring charges right from the Capital One mobile app at no additional cost.

Speaker 3 With one sign-in, you can manage all your subscriptions all in one place. Learn more at capital1.com/slash subscriptions.
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Speaker 8 Hey, it's Parker Posey. How did I get here? I love improvisation when it comes to acting, but when it comes to a real-life plan, I stick to a script.
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