Ryan Shazier on Struggling in Public and Overcoming Obstacles

On today’s episode of the podcast, Ryan talks to former NFL linebacker Ryan Shazier about his new book Walking Miracle, his journey after being diagnosed with Alopecia as a child, how he managed to overcome incredible adversity after a career ending spinal cord injury, and more. Ryan Dean Shazier is a former American football linebacker. He played college football at Ohio State and was drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers in the first round of the 2014 NFL Draft. Shazier had a successful first few seasons in the league, including a Pro Bowl appearance in 2016. During the 2017 season against the Cinncinati Bengals, Shazier attempted to make a head first tackle that left him unable to move his legs, and he had to have spinal stabilization surgery and learn to walk again. After spending two seasons on the Steelers' physically unable to perform list, Shazier announced his retirement from football in 2020. He started a foundation called The Ryan Shazier Fund to ensure all spinal cord injury patients have the same support and fighting chance as Ryan to live independent and meaningful lives, no matter their socioeconomic status. His new book Walking Miracle: How Faith, Positive Thinking, and Passion for Football Brought Me Back from Paralysis...and Helped Me Find Purpose is out everywhere now. Read Paul Kix’s article on sports and Stoicism: The ancient credo that fueled the Patriot Way, inspired Nick Saban and helped Ryan Shazier healThe Jordan Harbinger Show is one of the most interesting podcasts on the web, with guests like Kobe Bryant, Mark Manson, Eric Schmidt, and more. Listen to one of Ryan's episodes right now (1, 2), and subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show today. Talkspace is an online and mobile therapy company. Talkspace lets you send and receive unlimited messages with your dedicated therapist in the Talkspace platform 24/7. To match with a licensed therapist today, go to Talkspace.com or download the app. Make sure to use the code STOIC to get $100 off of your first month and show your support for the show. Trade Coffee will match you to coffees you’ll love from 400+ craft coffees, and will send you a freshly roasted bag as often as you’d like. Trade is offering your first bag free and $5 off your bundle at checkout. To get yours, go to drinktrade.com/DAILYSTOIC and use promo code DAILYSTOIC. Take the quiz to start your journey to the perfect cup. LinkedIn Jobs is the best platform for finding the right candidate to join your business this fall. It’s the largest marketplace for job seekers in the world, and it has great search features so that you can find candidates with any hard or soft skills that you need. And now, you can post a job for free. Just visit linkedin.com/STOIC to post a job for free. We've joined Team Feed Corporate to help end hunger in America. No one should go without a meal, yet more than 38 million people in America still face hunger. We created this fundraiser to help provide these much needed meals to our neighbors through the Feeding America network of food banks and we're asking you to join us in our cause. Go to https://dailystoic.com/feeding to donate and let's end hunger together! Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more. Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookFollow Ryan Shazier: Instagram, Twitter, HomepageSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another special episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Now, it would have been four or so years ago, I got this email out of the blue from a guy named Thomas Toll. Now, Thomas is the founder of Legendary Pictures, which has done all sorts of amazing movies that you've certainly seen. But he wasn't talking about the film rights to one of my books or anything like that. He said, "Hey, could you do me a favor?" He says, "I'm a minority owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and you may have heard about this guy, Ryan Shazier,

• 1:29Ryan Holiday?

  who took a real bad hit in 2017 against the Bengals, and he's paralyzed." And what Thomas said was that he had given Ryan a copy of "The Obstacle is the Way", because it looked like Ryan would never walk again, and that Ryan had read the book there in the hospital, and he wanted to connect us. He wanted to know if I'd take a few minutes to talk to him. And I said, "Of course." I'd seen the hit on TV. I'd read articles about it. Actually, my friend Michelle Tafoya had done a report on it. And so I'd been following Ryan's journey. I had zero idea that he had read any of my work. And Ryan and I became friends. We texted back and forth many times. We've talked a bunch. I gave him recommendations. He asked me for advice. I took a whole lot of inspiration from it.

• 2:13Ryan Holiday?

  Um, and, uh, you know, we kicked off a friendship and I, I, I told Ryan that I thought he should do a book at some point and he, he has done one now, and that's what we're talking about today. But I thought I'd read this quick passage first from an article that Paul Kicks had done about Stoicism in sports because he talked to Ryan Shazier about it. And there was this beautiful passage, uh, that, that I think, um, gives you a sense of this connection that Ryan and I share. This is, this is Kicks' article. Here is Ryan Shazier, one day during those hazy months of his hospitalization. After a hit against the Cincinnati Bengals that left him motionless on the field, after

• 2:57Ryan Holiday?

  doctors told him he had a 20% chance of walking again, after he told his fiance, I understand if you don't want to care for me. And after she stayed by him, after spine stabilization surgery, and even after rehab sessions began at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. On one of those days when he still can't feel anything beneath his waist, here is Ryan Shazier sharing at the unadorned hospital walls and turning now to a knock at the door. In steps Thomas Toll, part owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Toll thinks of Shazier not just as Pittsburgh's all pro linebacker, but a friend, and he carries a book with him. Especially with what you're going through right now, Toll says, pulling up a chair next to Shazier. I thought this would be a good book to read.

• 3:40Ryan Holiday?

  The obstacle is the way. Shazier has never heard of it, but as he reads, he finds that Stoicism reminds him of the life he led before the pain and depression of those months in the hospital. If he is to live again and live well, he has a choice to make. Like the book's author before him, be the man he is or the man he should be. Live by his doctor's pitied prognosis or by a life of his own making. To be a professional athlete is to believe that nothing is impossible, to know that an obstacle in your path can give you the strength to remove it. And then the article goes on, "Thinking about how far he's come, Shazier, and there's no other way to say it, philosophical. Hey, this obstacle," he says, "it's not what you expected, but one of my ultimate

• 4:21Ryan Holiday?

  goals is to bring more joy, help more people be their better selves. These days, he and Holliday talk about a book he might write." I didn't have anything to do with this book, so I'm not biased at all when I say that I think you should read it. It's called "Walking Miracle: How Faith, Positive Thinking, and a Passion for Football Brought Me Back from Paralysis and Helped Me Find Purpose." It's out everywhere now. Ryan has also started the Ryan Shazier Fund to ensure that all spinal cord injury patients have the same support and fighting chance that he did to live independent and meaningful lives, no matter their socioeconomic status. The dude is a fighter.

• 5:03Ryan Holiday?

  He is a great human being who I am so glad to have gotten to know and to bring to you in this episode. We recorded a couple of months ago, and I've been sitting on it, waiting for the book to come out. And here it is, the one and only Ryan Shazier, all pro linebacker and a hell of an athlete who life dealt an incredible obstacle, and he has managed to come through it to fight his way back from paralysis. He danced at his wedding. He's probably never going to play football again, but he's found a way, as he said, to live a purposeful, meaningful life and to help others through that. Please check out his new book, "Walking Miracle: How Faith, Positive Thinking, and a Passion

• 5:46Ryan Holiday?

  for Football Brought Me Back from Paralysis and Helped Me Find Purpose," by Ryan Shazier. And enjoy this interview. You can follow him on social media, @Shazier on Instagram, @RyanShazierFund on Twitter, and RyanShazierFund.org. Check it out and enjoy this interview. And do read the Paul Kicks article about Ryan and me and professional sports, which we'll link below, and have a great weekend.

• 6:18Ryan Holiday?

  I was thinking about you. Obviously, you and I are connected in a sort of a weird way. But instead of starting there, I want to start with the sort of first bit of adversity, unexpected adversity that hits you in your life, which is alopecia. So talk to me about where you were in your life when suddenly this thing just starts happening to you.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, when I was younger, about five years old, I was diagnosed with alopecia. Me and my family, at first, we didn't know what it was. It kind of threw us off guard, and a lot of us were pretty scared. But after a while, we went to a few different doctors, and they were able to figure it out. And they just told me I had alopecia, which is an autoimmune disease, which causes people to lose all their hair. But some people, it is all over their body. Some people, it's just their armpits. Some people, it's just spots in their hair. So it started off with me with just spots. But then it started

• 7:30Speaker 01

  to grow even more. Then I'll go to different doctors. And as it continued to grow, I mean, not grow, but as it continued, my hair continued to fall out. It just came a point where I just talked to my mom and dad and just like, hey, I'm cool, man. I'll just go without my hair. And then, and my parents did a really good job of, you know, helping me define who I was. Because when I was younger, they told me, hey, you have alopecia, and you can't hide from it. So it's either you're gonna wear a hat all the time, or you're not gonna wear a hat at all. And when they kind of made me do that, it really just made me become more comfortable with who I was. And after that moment, I was, you know, completely

• 8:14Speaker 01

  fine with, you know, just rocking it, rocking, rocking with no, with no hair.

• 8:20Ryan Holiday?

  I imagine that was

• 8:24Ryan Holiday?

  A difficult thing for a kid that age to come to terms with because it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair. It wasn't your fault. There was sort of no hope, no solution. You just had to accept this thing that probably made you feel uncomfortable and certainly sort of, you know, probably made other people treat you differently.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, at first it was definitely

• 8:53Speaker 01

  difficult. I would say a little bit more for my, my family members than myself because my parents, none of them had any hair loss. My brother didn't have any hair loss. And all my cousins and everybody was completely fine. So it was a bit more difficult for my parents at first because just their child being a little bit different is difficult for any parent. So I think that scared them more than anything. But after a while, you know, we just, just said, hey, no matter what, like, we love you no matter what. Ryan's the same person no matter what. And, and I was completely fine with it after that. And my parents always put affirmation into, into my spirit and always had, gave me positive

• 9:37Speaker 01

  affirmation. So I always felt great about who I was. When somebody would try to knock me, you know, I always knew there was nothing wrong with me. I just didn't have hair. And my parents always gave me a heads up or always told me like, Ryan, just because you don't have hair, doesn't mean that you're the only person with problems. Everybody has problems. People can just see what you're going through. And when they told me that when I was younger, that really helped me out a lot because then when kids would try to pick on me or things would be going on, I'll be, I'll tell kids, man, you, you know, you can crack jokes all you want, but you know, you can just see what I'm going through. What like, what are

• 10:19Speaker 01

  you going through? Or, or like if a kid would crack a joke, you know, I'll just laugh at the joke. And after a while, when, when somebody's trying to bully you or pick on you, and you know, the joke's not funny or you're laughing at their joke, then it's not the same type of energy or the same type of. Excitement for a kid, you know, when they're trying to bring you down. So after a while, I just, you know, laughed at the jokes are, you know, competitive with that. And then, once I started to get older, you know, I was starting to be a lot bigger than most kids.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  The kids, kids are really bully kids or pick on kids that's bigger than them.

• 11:00Ryan Holiday?

  That, that's such a beautiful way of expressing it, though. What a, what a profound lesson they gave you, that everyone is going through something. It just happens that because yours involves what sits on top of your head, it's public. But that other people might be going through things much worse. I mean, the fact that you had two parents who loved you, who cared about you.

• 11:19Ryan Holiday?

  You know, there were plenty of kids, I'm sure, who were picking on you, who did not have those things.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was, I was really blessed to have both of my parents, both caring. My mom and dad was at every single game I had in high school, except for one game. And my dad was really sick at the time.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  The first time my parents actually missed a game, besides that moment, was when I was in college. And they didn't plan on missing any of those games either, it was just I was so far away. So I was just really blessed to have a really strong supporting cast.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  And I know a lot of kids weren't able to have that same type of situation. So I didn't really try to knock them for that. But I always used to tell people, you know, you know, you can just see what I'm going through. You might be going through something, and this is why you're expressing your way to the way you're expressing it. But after a while, I just like, hey, man, I'm, I'm good with who I am. And then that kind of, after a while, I just was like, man, you can crack jokes all you want. If it's funny, I'm gonna laugh. You know, and majority of the time, when somebody would crack a joke, I would have heard it before. So it really didn't bother me too much.

• 12:29Ryan Holiday?

  Was there at least some, I mean, I, I imagine you just sort of turned that into your look as well, right? Having, having basically a shaved head?

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just really just turned it into my look. And then my parents always used to try to tell me, like, or show me, like, athletes that were bald headed. And just like, man, you see Marvin Jordan's bald, or Jason Taylor's bald. Or I remember there was a lot of guys for the University of Miami. I wasn't a University of Miami fan, but a lot of guys were bald at the time. And my, my dad was like, see, like, like, these guys are bald and they're great athletes. You know, like, just because you're bald doesn't make you any different. You can still be you. Great at something just because you have no hair, you know, so they kind of had me look up to other people that were bald, you know, most of those guys lost their hair just because of old age.

• 13:17Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  You know, their family, their families, you know, they just have bad hair history or something like that. But when I was younger, it kind of made you feel, you know, something like them or alike. Like, hey, he's bald and he's a Hall of Famer. Like, why can't I be great or why can't I be good at something? I'm bald, you know, any, any, any little thing like that can help a, a five, six, seven year old.

• 13:42Ryan Holiday?

  Did you, do you feel like you channeled some of that energy or maybe pain or, uh, you know, whatever towards being great at football? Like what draws you to, to excel on the field?

• 13:58Speaker 01

  I, I've been playing football ever since I was five years old. So around the same time I was losing my hair was when I really started to play the game of football. And my dad used to be a coach for a high school team. He was a defensive coordinator. So I used to be with them all the time. And after a while, I just started to grow more and more love for the game. I probably used to ignore the hell out of the coaches because I used to just always try to draw up plays or tell them to do this or tell them to do that. And, you know, I'm a little kid, so they're like, we're not about to use that play. But, but I used to always love the game of football and just after a while I, I became better and better and better at it.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  And I was already kind of an aggressive kid, but that was one way to like, if some, something did bother me. I, I'm not a really combative person. Uh, if, if something caused me to, I will be that. But I used to just say, if I'm mad, I can use all this anger on the field. And I even did that until I was in the NFL. Sometimes I have situations where I'll be frustrated or mad or upset. And I'll just let it boil all the way down into the game. And then I'll just, you know, use it in practice or use it in the game. Uh, when I got to the NFL, I ain't trying to be as mad during games because, you know, you have to focus a little bit more.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  But when I was in high school and little league and in college, uh, if I was frustrated, sometimes I could definitely use those during practice or a game to kind of. Let on my, you know, emotions.

• 15:29Ryan Holiday?

  And you also, I mean, you picked a sport that you get to wear a helmet. So the hair thing's not, not, not visible.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not visible, but it's really easy to find out who's bald and who's not, especially when they take the helmet off. It's not most people that keep them on the whole game. So, but yeah, but you are right though.

• 15:48Ryan Holiday?

  So you, you, you, you, you start to be a standout football player. You, you play in college. You get drafted. You're, you do everything right. You're, you make it to a pro bowl. It looks like, you know, you're going to be, I mean, you're on a, you're on a Super Bowl contender. You're a standout player. You, how, how long had you been in the league? Three years? Four?

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got hurt in my fourth year in the NFL.

• 16:20Ryan Holiday?

  So you're going into your, your, your fourth season. It looks like, you know, most, it's really like sort of after that. Yeah. After that third season, that's really where the contracts start to kick in and stuff, right? Like you're, you're, you, you've made it longer than most people do. You got over the hump. It looks like everything's going your way and then life has other plans.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was crazy because that year I was, I was playing really well. I was at a really high level. And some of my teammates would say, hey, Ryan, you, you was in the, you know, competition for defensive player of the year, or you could have been this, or you could have been that, or, or Ryan, man, like you were having one hell of a year. And I, I feel like I was having a really good year. Then unfortunately, you know, guy had other plans for me. And I ended up getting injured on December 4th of 2017. And that's when my life went to complete, you know, turnaround because I went from being a world-class athlete,

• 17:24Speaker 01

  feeling like I was one of the best in my position in my job and possibly could have been one of the better guys in history at that job. And I went from being that to being completely paralyzed. So that's kind of the, the peak end of the spectrum. You know, being able to feel like you were Superman, then being.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  In a position where you just had to use somebody else's support and be dependent on somebody else so much, it's definitely it's definitely a situation where I don't wish on my worst enemy, but I also thank the Lord for allowing me to go through something like that because it's humbling, but also it helped me engage with so many other people that I don't feel like I would have engaged with.

• 18:15Ryan Holiday?

  Do you, do you remember what the last thought going through your mind was like you're sort of like old, old Ryan, the Ryan that comes out of the other side when you wake up in the hospital or you wake up on the field? Do you kind of remember what was going through your mind, what you were thinking about as you lined up on that play?

• 18:35Speaker 01

  I was just thinking it was a regular routine play and as the play was going on, I knew exactly what was happening. I was well-prepared for the play. One thing that was crazy is with all the NFL rules and rule changes, I was actually trying my best to make a, you know, a solid tackle, try to get my head out of the way and really focus in on trying to make a tackle the way that, you know, the league is trying to adjust everybody to making a tackle.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  But in that situation, me trying to change up the way I actually tackled, I think actually put me in a worse position and, you know, I, you know, didn't anticipate that my head would end up where it ended and I hit him in the hip. You know, so there was actually more about just, hey, this is a routine play. Let me just try to make a routine tackle. But, you know, let me try to do it the, the way that they're trying to adjust the league to. And that was really my thoughts during that play. Like I can remember the whole lineup of the play. I seen the receiver coming. I was like, oh yeah, this is a, this is not a hard tackle. This is a regular play that I'm, that I made, you know, thousands of times and hundreds of games.

• 19:52Ryan Holiday?

  Do you, and, and when you, when you come out, when you wake up, is it pain that you feel? Is it surprise that you feel? Is it?

• 19:59Speaker 01

  So I really didn't get knocked out. So I, I, I got knocked out, but it was. For like a split second, it was just more of, you know, of a pain. It was kind of just a surreal moment because, you know, being able to run a four three, get to wherever you wanted to at any moment to then now trying to get up and you can't move. It's definitely, uh, it was definitely a surreal moment and, and being a Monday night football game. You know, you have millions of people watching you and the whole stadium was quiet. It was just kind of a crazy moment because

• 20:41Speaker 01

  everybody, when they're doing any type of situation, they never feel like it's going to be them. The one that goes through a really bad injury, the one that gets shot, the one that gets struck by lightning, the one that gets in a car accident, you know, the one that gets cancer. Nobody feels it's going to be me, you know, and, and I felt that way in the NFL. I felt, man, I'm one of the best guys in the NFL at this moment. If anybody get hurt, I might get a stinger, I might hurt my ankle, I might, you know, dislocate something or tear MCL or ACL or something, but you never feel like, hey, at this moment on this play, this is going to be my last play that I'm ever going to

• 21:23Speaker 01

  play. Or this moment, I'm gonna get paralyzed. Like, people don't ever think about that. People always feel like, it's not gonna be me. Like, what's the odds? Like, the odds of that happening in the NFL are less than 1%. And I was that 1%. You know, so it's like, people don't think about that stuff. So that's, that's, that's the type of thing that I was really thinking. It's not going to be me. Like, this is no way. So when I got hurt, I was like, man, there's no way that I got hurt like this. And, you know, I just didn't think it was as bad as it was until actually going through the whole process of trying to get better.

• 22:02Ryan Holiday?

  How, how quickly did you realize that everything had changed? Was it on the field? Did you send something?

• 22:08Speaker 01

  No, it was, it was. I didn't say, oh, this is bad until probably two or three weeks into it because I was like, oh, man, you know, this is something like a stinger. I have a bruise on my spinal cord. I'm gonna get better. I'm gonna get better. You know, just like any other bruise, it heals. And that's kind of what I was thinking then, you know, about going into week two. I'm like, man, this is way worse than I thought. You know, this is not. This is not what I was thinking and and, you know, I just started to trust God and I was like, hey, this is what I was thinking. But one thing I've done before in my life is overcome adversity and be able to get back to where I wanted to be or even get into the NFL.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  The odds of getting in the NFL are less than 1%. So I was like, the odds of getting better are greater than, you know, greater than 1%, but less than 20. So I was like, hey, I got a good chance. So that's, so that's what I did. I just focused in and my wife, my friends, my family, we all just said anything that was positive. And we didn't really allow any negativity into the room, into the space, into my mind. And I just started to push forward.

• 23:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I read it. It sounded like people sort of encouraged you, particularly early on, that you could come back, that you would play again.

• 23:34Ryan Holiday?

  And, and maybe that was possible, maybe it wasn't. Do you feel like it was good that you believed that you would come back from it? Or did that set, do you feel like that set you up to be disappointed later? Or do you feel like you needed that hope, whether it was false hope or not? Do you feel like you needed to believe that you could, you could play again to get through those dark days?

• 23:58Speaker 01

  I feel no matter what you do, you always need hope. It doesn't matter if you feel like that hope is. Is a hundred percent certain or that hope is as fake as a Marvel movie. At any day, you have to, you have to go out there and believe that you can do something. If I was five years old, 10 years old, 20 years old and didn't think I would make it to the NFL, I would have never made it. You know, if I, if I didn't, and most people were like, man, you would never make the NFL. You know, for astronauts, some people would say, man, you would never touch the stars, but you, but they do, you know? And at any day, my goal was to always to reach for the sun. And maybe I might not make the sun, but at least I made it to Mercury. At least I hit a star, you know, at least I got to work.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Like I reached, I reached for the stars and you know, hopefully, I mean, I reached for the sun and hopefully get the moon. You know, that's, to me, that's, that's, that's how I, how I am when I'm achieving and reaching for something. Uh, I just don't aim for, hey, let me just, let me just try to get better. Because e- even if I don't get to play again, I got better. I got, be able to chance to play with my kids again. I'm able to walk around and enjoy life. I'm able to still do the things that I enjoy when I was playing before. So I definitely wanted to play football again. I definitely wanted to be a pro bowler, be a pro bowler, be a Hall of Famer. But at the end of the day, God has bigger plans for you.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  And, and you can, you can want something really bad at one moment, but four years later, you can think back and like, huh? I really wanted that, but that really helped me get to where I'm at now. But so it wasn't really a disappointment. It was just more of a setup for another, another path.

• 25:46Ryan Holiday?

  I remember one thing you told me, you may have still been in the hospital when you told me this, but um, it's interesting because you were talking about you, you have these huge goals. Uh, I'm going to come back, I'm going to shoot for the stars, whatever. But I also remember you telling me something like, uh, football is a game of inches. And that this recovery is also like a game of inches. Can you just make a little bit of progress? And I remember I passed that on to my mentor, Robert Green, who was recovering from a stroke at, at the same time. So, so walk me through how on the one hand, you're like, I'm going to do the thing that they say can't be done, which is I'm going to play again, but then also you're taking it inch by inch, day by day.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, so one thing, especially with this injury, like you were saying, football is a game of inches. And the reason people say football is a game of inches, if you ever see a fourth down play, or a third down play, sometimes you'll see a guy reaching for the first down, or reaching for the touchdown. And sometimes you'll see fourth and inches. Or they'll go for the fourth down, and then they'll bring out the measuring stick, and they miss it by, you know, a feather, or a pin, you know, like a marble. They miss it by that much. And that lets you know, like, football is a game of inches, and it takes, it doesn't, it might be a hundred yards in the field of football,

• 27:10Speaker 01

  but sometimes in that ten yards you're trying to get in the first down, you might get nine yards and eleven inches, but you don't get twelve. And, you know, you don't, and now the ball is turned over. And it's kind of the same thing with this, when it came to my injury. I wanted to just constantly get better, little by little, because at the day, everybody wants to hit the home run. Everybody wants to win the Super Bowl. Everybody wants to be an NFL player, but at the day, some people don't want to put in all the work. They just want to get there. And one of the things that me and my dad kind of came up with was, every, every little thing is a first down. And so, you have to get a bunch of first downs to get a touchdown.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  And then there are some times you'll have a big play, and you, you know, you might, you might go eighty yards, you might go ninety yards and score a touchdown. But that's, that's a lot less often than it is, uh, regular, you know, so. One thing that was, we kept saying, hey, that's another first down. If, you know, if I can stand up, that was a first down. If I can lift my leg up, that was a first down. If I can pick my toe up, that's a first down. You know, then I, I build all that stuff up. You know, then now, once I was able to take my first step, that's a touchdown, because I had to do all these little things to be able to do that. You know, now I was able to take ten steps.

• 28:38Speaker 01

  Man, that's another touchdown. You know, now I was able to, you know, able to do all that stuff without a walker. You know, that's a first down. And then now I had a cane. That's a first down. Now I don't have to use anything. That's a touchdown. You know, you used to, or you, you, you'll be doing all those little things. And I'm not saying that those specific were my, my touchdowns and my first downs, but walking at a draft, that is, that is a first down. I mean, that is a touchdown. You know, because at the end of the day, I, I was able to show everybody how blessed I was and how God allowed me to overcome adversity that people never thought I was able to do. And I was able to do that in front of millions of people.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  That is a touchdown because it didn't matter if you liked me or not. I feel most people in that situation just was like, man, it's good to see this man be able to walk. It's good to be able to see this man overcome what he overcame because I never thought he was able to do it. That's, that's a touchdown.

• 29:38Ryan Holiday?

  I, I think about like the greatest comeback in the, in the history of, uh, the NFL, the, the, the Patriots Falcons Super Bowl. And, and I had Martellus Bennett on, uh, like a year and a half ago, we were talking about it, but it was really, you know, just moving the chains, right? Like they didn't just miraculously come back in, in one swoop. It was like, are we moving the football? Are we putting points on the board? Let's just keep racking up progress and cumulatively that might put us in a position to be competitive at the end of the game. And it sounds like for you, you were just like, am I racking up inches every day? Am I racking up first downs? Am I moving the chains?

• 30:22Ryan Holiday?

  That you didn't quite know whether that would end up with you wearing a uniform again, uh, or graduating from college or, uh, dancing at your own wedding. But you knew that if you were just making progress, moving the chains, that was at least better than laying in the bed, feeling sorry for yourself.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  Hey, you're you're a hundred percent right about that. The one when I knew just every day is just a little bit by a little bit, you can get better. It'll be days that I don't want to do anything. It'll be days my wife will say, hey, Ryan, get up, come on. This is what you want, but you don't you don't wake up and just be able to walk.

• 31:01Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  You don't wake up and just know how to fly a plane. You know, you don't wake up and just end up in the NFL. There's a lot of people go write a book. You're right about that. You you just don't wake up and do that. You might have the skills to do it. And you might have the talent to do it, but once you start it, it's a lot more difficult to do it than it is to just than it it it would be if you build up off a cumulative of reps and actually learn from your mistakes. It then like, hey, I wrote a book this time, but uh, it was good, but I know what I can do better. I knew I knew what I did in this coverage. It was good, but I know what I can do better because if I do that versus

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Tom Brady, if I do that versus Ben, or if I do that versus Patrick Mahomes, that's not gonna work. It might work versus a young quarterback, but hey, I gotta get better. You know, Miles Gary, TJ Watt, they're some of the best pass rushers in the league. Aaron Donald, they're some of the best pass rushers in the league, but they practice hard every single day. They don't just wake up and like, hey, I'm I'm I'm Aaron Donald. I have three Defensive Player of the Years. No, it it comes from working and taking it step by step. Sometimes those steps are things that you don't even think will be things that can really help you in the long run, but but those are the things that do. So a lot of times people don't

• 32:29Speaker 01

  a lot of people, a lot of people want it now, but aren't willing to put the work in now.

• 32:33Ryan Holiday?

  So what, when was it exactly? Because I was thinking about this. When did uh someone pass you my book? I think it was it was Thomas Toole, right? One of the owners of the Steelers gave you The Obstacles Away?

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Uh, yes, sir. Uh, Thomas, me and Thomas are are pretty, pretty good friends. And uh, one thing me and Thomas talked a lot about was just reading in general, because I told him I wanted to start to read a little bit more and

• 32:58Ryan Holiday?

  Because you had time, right? Sitting in the hospital?

• 33:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I definitely had, I definitely had a lot of time, but I just wanted to start reading more in general and

• 33:07Speaker 01

  One thing Thomas does is sometimes is he would say, hey, this is a good book you should read, or this is a book you should read, or this was even before I got hurt. But then when I got hurt, he was like, Ryan, I think this would be a great book for you. It definitely talks about what you've gone through, but also it can help you along the way. And he passed along your book and it really, it really helped me out a lot because it made me really think about, hey, just because I'm going through something, don't, don't fight against it. Use that to help you find a way through it and that, that helped me out tremendously.

• 33:41Ryan Holiday?

  Do you, do you remember what you were thinking about, like was playing starting to be less likely to you? Were you then starting to think about how you were going to use this as you were, you know, deciding what the next course of your life would be? Or were you still thinking like, I'm going to claw my way back from this and, and play again?

• 34:01Speaker 01

  So I was still thinking about clawing my way back and playing from this again. Uh, I didn't really think about not playing anymore until pretty much right before I retired. Me and my wife would just talk and I talked to my family and I just, I, I knew how much I put into it. And I, and I really do feel if I could have, like I was rehabbing at the rate I was rehabbing, I think it would have been a possibility. But one thing about me is that when I do things, I always want to try to give my best and try to be great at it. And I didn't want to come back and be somebody that I wasn't before. I didn't want to come back and be a different Ryan Shazier. And I felt I could have been good, but I don't feel like I would have been the same guy.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  And one thing about me is I, I always try to put my best foot forward and, and I just, I just didn't want to go through possibility of, hey, man, we expect this out of Ryan, then Ryan can't do the same as he once did. And I actually thought I can do better, uh, you know, being a father, better at possibly doing business. Then I created a football at the time and that's why I decided to, to move on then.

• 35:17Ryan Holiday?

  And I remember as we started talking, there was all these sort of moments of stunning progress, right? You walk out on the field. I remember watching a video of you doing box jumps. There was footage of you running on the beach. It really did seem like you had already blown apart all of the expectations. Like you had already disproven so many doctors wrong just by, you know, standing on two feet, right?

• 35:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're 100% correct about that. There's a lot of doctors that didn't think I'll be where I'm at now. And I'm just, it was just a blessing. I put my work in. But one of my favorite verses in the Bible is faith without works is dead. And I don't know if that's exactly how it's written, but it's basically saying you can have all the faith you want in something, but if you don't put the work into it, it's not going to come to fruition. And that's one thing that I wanted to do. I wanted to make sure that I put the effort in and I was going to trust God and continue to push forward. And that's what I did.

• 36:32Ryan Holiday?

  So as the progress is, I imagine giving you hope. You know, I remember the GM said something like, there's no ceiling on what this guy's capable of. Everything was on the table. I mean, they didn't even cancel your contract. So you're like still, you still have a locker with the team, right?

• 36:52Ryan Holiday?

  But at some point, as you said, you start to realize maybe you couldn't come back to where you were. You realize that it wasn't, it wasn't gonna happen. After all the hope and the progress and the work that you put in, did that, did that break your heart? Like, how did you feel having to wrestle with like the death of a dream, you know? That feels like it must have been crushing.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  I feel if I were to retire right after I got hurt, like immediately just made a decision, I feel like it would have been a more difficult for me then than when I decided to do it. I was able to be around the team a lot. I was able to still enjoy the NFL. I was able to be a, continue to be a father. But as I continue to grow and see the path that I was going and where I wanted to be at, I just felt it was more important to be a father than it was to be a football player. And at the end of the day, sometimes dreams just help you find a path for somewhere else. And I think that's what football was for me in the first place.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  I wanted to be in the Hall of Fame. I want to be one of the greatest ever. But football is a platform to allow you to achieve multiple things. Some people achieve greatness in other ways. Michael Strahan, he's a Hall of Famer in football and he might be a Hall of Famer when it comes to broadcasting or TV. You know, and you know, Bill Cower is the same way. Tony Romo is the same way. And to me, unfortunately, my, my, my career ended a lot earlier than I wanted to. But as I continue to grow, uh, my love for the game is still there. But it came from a different passion and my passion to play wasn't the same as it was before.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  But honestly, I, it, it, it did hurt. Sometimes when I went to games or drive by the stadium, it would hurt because you, because at the end of the day, Ryan, I've been playing football since I was five years old. And my first time not playing football was when I got hurt. I've been injured, but not actually like deciding or not want or not deciding or, or something deciding I can't play anymore was when I got hurt. So when that happened, you know, it, it definitely hurt, but it also made me feel, it, it also gave me a peace of mind as well because I, I just can move on from it a little bit as well.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  Because everything I've done always been around football, surrounded by football and football created it. And the fact that I was able to create something. Myself, other than my kids, and just to be around my family a little bit more and just start thinking about things that I wanted to do after football before I got hurt. It really kind of gave me a peace of mind. So it it hurt. I'm not gonna lie, it definitely hurt because at the day I've been doing something since for 20 years and that's the only thing I've done in my life for 20 years. So I just, I would definitely say it hurt, but it definitely gave me a peace of mind because it definitely allowed me to continue to grow and and just find myself.

• 40:13Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I think when when people hear that phrase, the obstacle is the way, I think you it's easy to to misinterpret it, right? The idea that like you can turn anything around, that everything can be salvaged, everything can be saved. And I'm, I I mean, a lot of things can, but it's more complicated than that, right? To me, what Marcus Aurelius is saying is he's saying that every situation is an opportunity to practice virtue. So for you, you know, you you get hurt, it's this devastating injury. Obviously, at first it looked like there was an opportunity simply to come back, right? This was an opportunity

• 40:53Ryan Holiday?

  for endurance, perseverance, persistence, you know, strength of will. And it and and perhaps it could have been, but but what it ultimately turns out for you is it's an opportunity to discover who you're gonna be, what you're gonna do next, to deal with pain and loss and difficulty with grace. And then, as you said, to figure out how you're gonna use this platform you have now to write the next chapter of your life.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  You're you're 100% right. Like you said, a lot of people feel that. When you said obstacles away or hey man, you can save everything and I'm gonna be honest, everything's not savable and I, to me, I don't feel like I was getting saved from anything or salvaging anything. To me, I was just looking at it in a different light. I, I knew before I got hurt, football was a platform and they allow you to open up a lot of doors that you weren't possibly able to open up before. But, so then I just decided to say, hey, my obstacle is this injury. I got it from football, but football is still that platform that allowed me to open doors that I wasn't able to open before. So try to make

• 42:10Speaker 01

  your way to getting back to the game that you always love, but don't always, don't forget that a game that you always love is still a platform and I just continue to fight for what I love and I continue to use the platform that it gave me.

• 42:26Ryan Holiday?

  So walk, walk me through what you've done since, right? You started this nonprofit, you've done some investing, some business stuff, and then, and then you went back to college. I mean, that, that must have been really cool also.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've, I've been a, a, a very busy man since, since I, since I decided to, to retire from the game of football. So I, I went back to the University of Pitt and took some classes and then I finished off at the University of Ohio, or the Ohio State University. I almost messed that one up. I don't know.

• 42:59Ryan Holiday?

  And then that's where you played, right?

• 43:01Speaker 01

  Yes, and then I played at the Ohio, the Ohio State University as well. I went back and made sure I got my degree. Then after that, I started investing in a few different businesses. One is a real estate business. I'm also own a small e, esports gaming team. But the things that are kind of my pride and joy right now, and I'm really excited about, is that I started a foundation called the Ryan Shazier Fund.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  For spinal rehabilitation, it's a fun to allow other family members and other participants that have went through a spinal cord injury to be able to allow them to help them with a quality of life and be able to provide more support for them and their families. Because when somebody goes through a spinal cord injury, it's a very difficult, difficult journey. A lot of them are unable to get the amount of rehab and some of the resources that I was provided with. So I wanted to be able to allow everybody to be, not everybody, but allow people to be more equipped with resources and rehab.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  But then also their family members are often forgotten about because they're the ones who are going through the injuries. And their family members, they may not be the ones that can't walk, they may not be the ones in the hospital. But I promise you, they're hurting just as much as the person that has a spinal cord injury. So I just wanted to provide a foundation to support those families. So we have a few different programs that we recently started that I'm really excited about. Another thing that I just started is, or that's coming out in November, November 30th, is my book and it's called Walking Miracle. And it's about, about my story and a little bit about what we talked about today, but a little bit more in depth.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  And it's, I'm really excited about it because it really shows people how I was able to overcome a lot of adversity in my life. And I had a spinal cord injury, I had alopecia, but I also had some other things in my life that, that I feel that built me for this moment and helped me be able to overcome a lot of obstacles that I was able to overcome. So I think that would be a great book that, that people will really enjoy and it comes out on November 30th. And lastly, I just started. A business and the business that I started is a logistics business. It's a car transportation business. So when people are moving across the countries or buying across the countries or buying cars

• 45:44Speaker 01

  across the country, they can use my services to move their cars across the country. And it's called shade trucking. So I'm really excited about all three of those things.

• 45:54Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I remember talking to you and you're sort of talking, you were interested in writing and I said you should do a book because you have this, you went through this thing that unfortunately thousands of people go through every year all over the world. They're not usually doing it on Monday Night Football in front of tens of millions of people. But people, my father broke his neck when he was like eight or nine years old and spent like a year in the hospital. So you know what happens and you, you had resources, but you also had, and you had advantages, but you also had, you know, other difficulties and you were able to get through it.

• 46:38Ryan Holiday?

  I think you have, when we go through something, one of the ways that the obstacle can be the way is that even though it was terribly hard for us, by sharing our experiences, by learning lessons from it, we can make it less hard for the people that come after us. And that, that, that takes a negative situation and makes it slightly less negative.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're right about that. One thing my dad, my dad says this quote a lot. He said, borrow wisdom saves you a lot of time, pain and money. And one thing that I've done my whole life is borrow a lot of wisdom from other people and a lot of life experiences from other people. So I felt, why can't I do the same thing and be able to help others?

• 47:28Speaker 01

  Overcome their obstacles and helped them find their their path through their obstacles. And from from my past experience, so, uh, you know, I just try to give some borrowed wisdom in my book and just talk about the things that I went through to to help others.

• 47:48Ryan Holiday?

  How do you feel like the organization treated you? I I I got to imagine, uh, that that was difficult for everyone involved, but it it does seem like you guys have a a good relationship going, you know, coming out of what was a a tragic, unfortunate situation.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  I I think the organization couldn't have treated me any better. Uh, honestly, I I I can't complain at all. The the Rooney family and the Steelers, I think, done everything they possibly could to to support me, support my family, uh, and support my foundation, just supported my whole life. They they've been really here in just supporting supporting us through this whole journey. It it it could have went in a whole different direction. And one thing that the Rooney's did is to make sure that they knew that I knew that they were there for me, that the Steelers were there for me and the city of Pittsburgh was here for me. So I couldn't complain at all because they they provided so much support for for my

• 48:49Speaker 01

  family, my my family and and my friends and just, I I can't, I I have I have so many words to say, you know, I I can't say them all because I I really, I really feel like I'm part of the family, the way they treated me.

• 49:03Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I know, and the reason I bring that up is because, you know, when we say the obstacle is away or there's an opportunity inside every disaster, it's not just for you, the person who this thing happened to. But I think from, and again, I only know Thomas, uh, we've gotten together a few times that we're not, we're not like, uh, uh, close, close friends. So so I I don't know the particulars of it, but it looks like the team, the organization, uh, the owners, it it it seems like they they also saw this as an opportunity to step up and show what support looks like. What grace looks like, what loyalty looks like, what sort of putting people before business looks like, right?

• 49:45Ryan Holiday?

  I mean, I don't think they they did have an obligation, but they probably didn't have, they probably went well beyond whatever their legal obligation was to you contractually and did what's what's obviously the right thing. And and unfortunately, that's like kind of rare.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, especially in the NFL, it's a lot of it's a lot of owners. And and I'm not going to say just the NFL, but in a in just a lot of national sport leagues. A lot of ownerships and a lot of the teams are owned by people that are more business minded and business savvy, so they're more focused on running it like a business.

• 50:22Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  And obviously, they're when they win, it's enjoyable, it's it's their it's their video game, it's their real life video game. So to them, it might they might not get as emotionally tied to other people as some teams do. But being with the Steelers that I know from personal experience, I know everybody's experience is a little bit different than mine. But I feel that they treat it more like a family business, and it is their family business. And I think that's why they have a closer attachment to players than a lot of other sport teams and sport leagues do because of their family, the way they run the business, the way they treat people

• 51:03Speaker 01

  and the way they've done business in the last eighty years. So that's why I feel that they treat people so kind, so respectfully. And I'm just blessed to be somebody that was drafted there and have the support of this great franchise.

• 51:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, because look, people will talk about, hey, this is a family, hey, we're all in this together. And I think, you know, we saw this during the pandemic, businesses had said that for a long time. And then something happened and suddenly they're like, but by the way, you know, business is business. And and I think there's this stoic idea of like, look, you don't talk about it, you you do it, right? Don't. Talk about it, be about it. And it strikes me that what happened in your case is again unfortunately rare. But you know, you people talk about how we're a team, we sacrifice for each other. We're all in this together, but then something happens and it costs you money or time or a spot on the roster to like actually stick with that.

• 52:09Ryan Holiday?

  You know, then people don't do it. And I think what to me, what I what's at least inspiring about your story is that like, all the things that people said, they actually used this as an opportunity to prove. You guys were in it together and you you did sacrifice together. You were committed together and you you got better together. And and now you're you're you'll always be part of each other's story forever because of that.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  You're very right about that. A lot of people always say, hey, we're a family. We're doing things together. But like, but like you said, when things, when things get ugly, you see how people true colors are. And to me, I feel like there's still a show who their true colors are. And let everybody see, hey, this is how we run our organization. This guy has been with us and supported us and done everything

• 53:10Speaker 01

  the way that we've always supported. And I don't see why we would stop that right now. And like you said, a lot of businesses will say, hey, we're family, we'll do this, we'll do that. But some people, you know, will cut a dollar to save a penny. You know, so it's sad, but that's just the life we live in the world we live in. And I'm just blessed to be able to be be by and stand by an organization that live by the principles that they talk about.

• 53:41Ryan Holiday?

  And and on that note, I think this is a good place to wrap up. I've got to imagine your girlfriend now wife, you know, in the wedding vows we say, you know, in sickness and in health. It must have been a surreal moment and a test of you guys and that like, you know, she shows up at that game, you're a Pro Bowl player in the NFL, making millions of dollars on your way to be in a Hall of Famer in your profession. And that night, you know, she sees you in the hospital, being told you're never going to walk again. How, how did this experience? I mean, it could, that could break a lot of couples apart.

• 54:25Ryan Holiday?

  How did, how, how did you guys use this experience to, to get where you now are?

• 54:36Speaker 01

  One thing with us, Michelle, I actually talked to her about this and I'm just truly thankful she didn't listen to me. I was like, Michelle, man, you're, you're a beautiful, you're a beautiful young lady. At the time, we were 25 and I said, Michelle, you're a beautiful young lady. You don't, you don't have to be with me anymore. I don't want you to take care of somebody that's going to be paralyzed for the rest of their life. You can go find whoever you want. And she pretty much told me, shut up. And she was like, hey, I decided to be your fiance before you got injured. And I told you, no matter what, I'm going to be here for you. And that's exactly what she did.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  Every day in the hospital, she slept by me in the bed in a, in a, in a stretcher that they brought in for her. And every single day that I stayed in the hospital, and I was in the hospital for 10 months straight, she was in the hospital every day with me. And she could have slept in our bed. That's a lot more comfortable, I'm telling you, than a, than a hospital stretcher. But she was, she was like, like the stiller, she, she said what she would do and, and was the person that she said she would be before I got injured. She was the same person after I got injured. And it wasn't easy. We definitely had a lot of hiccups and, and it was a lot of pain and struggle, but we were able to overcome it.

• 55:57Speaker 01

  And I think it was because how supportive my wife was, how, how strong she was. And I was just, I'm, I'm just truly blessed to, to have her in my life.

• 56:08Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I think sometimes, especially ambitious people, they're like, you know, I, I, I don't have time for family. I don't have time for a relationship in my life because I want to be best in the world at writing or football or being a movie director or an investor. And, and I definitely get that because there's, there is a cost to sort of having people in your life, right? I mean, it takes time and, and the one thing you don't have when you're trying to master something is, is free time. But it strikes me that that is a very, that is a strategy that only works if everything goes your way. I've got to imagine that your

• 56:47Ryan Holiday?

  story might have ended differently had you been single when this all happened. Or if you'd, if you'd had to do this alone. I, I wonder, I wonder how it would have gone if there wasn't someone sleeping in the hospital bed next to you.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I definitely feel this would have been a little bit of a different situation for me if I didn't have my wife with me at the time. And the reason I say that is because she, she's just really been my rock. She's really been there for me this whole time. I would have had my mom and dad and my, my mother and father and my brother, and they were all very, very supportive, but they all had their own lives as well. And just to have somebody that's very supportive to be there with me, I, I don't know, I don't know how I would have done it any differently. I know a lot of people, like you said, it's great when, you know, I don't have time for family. I gotta do it my way. I gotta grind

• 57:46Speaker 01

  it out. But sometimes that, that works really well. But if, if you don't have, if you don't have a somebody in, in those really hard times when you need them, it, it gets very lonely and really tough. Uh, when you're, when you're by yourself.

• 58:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's and it sounds like she was in some of the moments when you, when you were, you'd lost motivation, or you doubted yourself, or you, you didn't want to do it, or you felt like you couldn't do it. It sounds like she was not unlike the teammates and coaches you have, which is that she saw that there was, that you did have what it took, or that you, you did actually want to do it, and that you needed to be encouraged, and you needed to be pushed, and you needed also to be supported. But it sounds like she, she was there, uh, when she was there pushing you to be, to do what maybe sometimes you weren't even sure you could do.

• 58:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I wouldn't say that it was a bunch of times I didn't feel like I could do something. It was more about, uh, she was just there and understood, hey, Ryan, you want to achieve this goal, and I'm not going to allow you to not achieve it because of your lack of, your lack of want to, or your lack of, I'm tired right now.

• 59:12Ryan Holiday?

  At that moment.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  At that moment. Yeah. So she, she definitely knows, knows my, uh, my, my good and my bad, and she knows how I am in certain situations. So she definitely, uh, she, she definitely was there for me no matter what.

• 59:32Ryan Holiday?

  She held you accountable to the standards that you had yourself set.

• 59:38Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. Yes, sir. That's the best way to put it.

• 59:40Ryan Holiday?

  So last thing, um, because now you think about this with the, with the nonprofit, and I'm sure, I'm sure the Steelers bring you in when someone gets hurt. I'm sure athlete, I'm sure your phone number gets passed around. Um, as, as, let's say you're an athlete, let's say you're, you know, you're just someone who's walking down the street, you got clipped by a car, or let's say you just got some terrible diagnosis from the doctor. What do you, what would you say to someone whose life has just changed because of an injury, because of a setback, because of a, you know, a door that got closed?

• 1:00:18Ryan Holiday?

  What's, what's the sort of process you would walk them through having, you know, been, been through that darkness now yourself? What kind of light would you, would you help shine for them?

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  So everybody's a little bit different because I could tell one person something and it might work for them, but then I tell somebody else something and it doesn't work for them.

• 1:00:38Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  So based off of the person's experience, based off of their life and, and this, you know, what they, they've told me, I, I just like to talk to them personally and just see what, what they're going through, how they feel about things and, and, and I just build a conversation off of that. And I just try to help them grow off of what helped them get to where they were at before they got hurt. And talk to them about things that they enjoyed before they got hurt and just let them know that those things are still there. You just have to still fight for it. You fought for it before you got hurt, but it was just a different type of fight and everybody has their adversity. Or everybody's been through some type of adversity to allow them to get to where they are now.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  And I just try to make sure that they know that and use whatever they did to fight through adversity that they overcame before to use that to overcome what they're going through now.

• 1:01:34Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And, and, and probably I guess you'd tell them that it, it's going to take longer than they think, right? I, I'm, I'm sure.

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. That's definitely one of the, the one of the key things I tell people that hey, Rome wasn't building today. And most people didn't recover in a day. So I tell people, one thing you have to understand is that it's not, it's not a sprint, it's a marathon. So you're going to want all you want to just get up and run, run to the mailbox tomorrow. Hey, I'm not saying you can't do it, but just know.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  It's gonna take a lot of work if you're gonna try to do it.

• 1:02:12Ryan Holiday?

  Well, and, and I guess this is another key Stoic discipline, but like, if you force it, if you push it earlier, too early, you might end up hurting yourself more or doing more damage that actually makes whatever you're trying to do less likely or further away.

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, that happens to a lot more people than, than people actually think. A lot of people, they, they, they want it so bad sometimes that, that they push it way too much. And it's, it's nothing wrong with working hard. But one thing I tell people too, you have to also gauge where you are in the moment. And I told a lot of guys this because a lot of guys will want to, and I'm, I'm all right, I can, I can do it, I can do it, I can do it. And I'm like, you can do it, but you also got to understand when your body is tired, your body is telling you something. So you have to listen to your body and understand where your body wants you to be at. And don't, don't, don't try to overdo it because at the end of the day,

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  if, if your body, if your body's telling you to stop, that means to stop. If your body's telling you to go, go. And then it might be sometimes when you can push it a little bit extra, but you, you always gotta listen to what your, what your body's telling you.

• 1:03:31Ryan Holiday?

  I love that. Ryan, I'm so glad that we got to meet, to meet when I, when I sat down and wrote this book about ancient philosophy, that this isn't the kind of connection I thought would come of it, but I'm so sort of humbled and honored that it did. And, and your journey is like incredibly inspiring to me. And, and I, I think the good you're doing coming out of it, even though it came at the expense of, you know, what you wanted to do most in life is, is just a profound sort of lesson and example for us all to follow in. And I'm, I'm really glad we got to meet and, and I'm, I'm glad you did this book. And I think it's going to help a lot of people.

• 1:04:11Ryan Holiday?

  And I, I hope you keep using what happened to you as, as a way to make the world a better place and to, to provide a great example for people. And, and I think that's what you're doing.

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  Thank you so much, Ryan. Your book really helped me out a lot, and I know it's helped out millions of people. And I'm just grateful to be able to join your podcast and just to talk to you about how it was able to help me and help others.

• 1:04:40Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I hope we can meet in person someday and maybe we'll go for a run or something as you, as you, as you, as you recover it. It would be truly an honor.

• 1:04:50Speaker 01

  Thank you so much.

• 1:04:52Ryan Holiday?

  Daily Stoic is raising money for Feeding America. Last year, the Daily Stoic community came together and raised over $100,000 together, providing more than a million meals. And this year, we're trying to go twice as big. We've donated the first $20,000, and we'd like your help getting to our goal, $200,000, which would provide more than 2 million meals for families across the country. You just have to head over to dailystoic.com/feeding, and together we can make a small dent in a big problem. We can't alleviate everyone's struggle or suffering, of course, but for the people we can help, the difference is

• 1:05:32Ryan Holiday?

  huge. So let's do it. Let's be good Stoics today. Let's fulfill our obligation. Just go to dailystoic.com/feeding. Even $1 can provide as many as 10 meals. So head over to dailystoic.com/feeding to help us reach our goal of providing 2 million meals for families across the country.