NFL Cornerback Jeff Okudah on Achieving Greatness

On today’s episode of the podcast Ryan talks to NFL cornerback Jeff Okudah about how to manage high expectations and criticism, how to recover from injury and over-training, why reading is so important and how books can change your life, and more. Jeff Okudah is an American football cornerback for the Detroit Lions of the NFL. He played college football at Ohio State, where he was named a unanimous All-American and a finalist for the Jim Thorpe Award in 2019 before being selected by the Lions third overall in the 2020 NFL Draft. Get the books mentioned in this show: The Alchemist, Mastery, Letters To A Young AthleteAthletic Greens is a custom formulation of 75 vitamins, minerals, and other whole-food sourced ingredients that make it easier for you to maintain nutrition in just a single scoop. Visit athleticgreens.com/stoic to get a FREE year supply of Liquid Vitamin D + 5 FREE Travel Packs with subscription. 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. 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. Streak is a fully embedded workflow and productivity software in Gmail that lets you manage all your work right in your inbox. Sign up for Streak today at Streak.com/stoic and get 20% off your first year of their Pro Plan. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookFollow Jeff Okudah: TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  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,

• 0:46Speaker 00

  and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

• 0:53Speaker 00

  Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I don't know about you, but sometimes it hits you, not how old you are, but just how easy you could sort of get lost in your conception of time. There's this great story of Seneca where he's visiting one of his properties and the trees are getting old and the house is falling apart. And there's this old guy working on them. And then it hits Seneca. He planted those trees himself, you know, and now they were old and dying. And he just realizes how old he is in this moment. Every once in a while, I'll have a moment. I'll talk to someone and I'll have to look them up or whatever. I'll see when they were born. And it just gives you, you're just like, oh, man.

• 1:38Speaker 00

  Today's guest was born in 1999. So this is far and away the youngest guest on the Daily Stoic Podcast, if I'm not forgetting anyone. It just hit me. I mean, I know I'm only in my early, early to mid 30s, whatever you want to call it, but, but just seeing 1999 and remembering very distinctly the year 1999 and how old I was in that year. And I remember, I just have memories of...

• 2:10Speaker 00

  Of, you know, December 1999, January 2000, you know, and you're having to write the year 2000, you know, on your school papers or whatever for the and what a huge transition that was because before you'd be like 96 and then it become 97, then 97 become 98, but it's like, wow, the millennium and pretty incredible that I am talking to someone who's 1999 and that person is a second year veteran of the NFL. There's something about sports too. You know, I saw a meme about this where it was like, and now comes the grizzled old veteran who's, you know, your age or as you get older, like half your age and you, you

• 2:54Speaker 00

  watch, you realize as the stoics say, the, the constant rhythm of time, how time is, is, is passing this by. We're always moving forward. We're getting older every minute, every day, as Seneca says, dying every day. I don't know. That was just some, some interesting thoughts I had as I was prepping for this intro. My guest today, I actually met when Adam Lefkoe, the sports announcer and commentator, sent me a screenshot of the fact that today's guest had been reading Stillness is the Key. Jeff Okudah is a cornerback for the Detroit Lions in the NFL. He played at Ohio State. He was a unanimous All-American, a finalist for the Jim Thorpe Award.

• 3:39Speaker 00

  And he was selected third overall in the 2020 NFL draft by the Lions. He is, you know, one of the most promising cornerbacks in the NFL, largely considered the best cornerback prospect in the game when he was drafted. His rookie year was obviously thrown off kilter by COVID. He soldiered through. He missed the first game of the season, actually with a, with a hamstring injury. That's actually one of the things we talk about in today's episode. How do you manage insane expectations for you? How do you manage criticism and doubt? And then also, how do you recover from injury? How do you figure out how to train? How do you worry about overtraining and burnout?

• 4:26Speaker 00

  I really, really enjoyed this interview. Jeff and I had an awesome conversation. I got really into it. And it was just really encouraging and exciting to talk to someone with such a great head on their shoulders, someone who is clearly committed to not just being the best at one element of their profession, but really optimizing themselves completely. Epictetus quoting Socrates says, you know, "Some people delight in improving their fortunes or their farms." He says, "Me, I delight in my own improvement day to day." I think that captures Jeff well. And so I was not just excited to talk to him, but I came away feeling very inspired.

• 5:10Speaker 00

  It's gonna sound a bit condescending, but you know, you talk to a young kid, I'm sure people have felt this talking to me, or maybe the opposite of talking to me. You talk to a young person, you're like, "These kids are all right. They're gonna be fine." It gets you excited about what Gen Z is going to be able to do. And I think Jeff is a person who has not just a ton of potential, but as you'll see in today's episode, a ton of stuff to teach us. I think you're really gonna like this. We got into a ton of really great books that I think you should read. I'm following up this list with him as well. A bunch of the titles I carry at the painted porch, so you can check the show notes, the

• 5:55Speaker 00

  episode description on iTunes or Spotify or whatever, and get some of the books we recommend, like The Inner Game of Tennis and The Alchemist. You can get Mastery, of course, by Robert Greene, and a bunch of other awesome books. You can get those in the description at my store, The Painted Porch, or of course, on Amazon. We'll have links to both, but Jeff is a big reader, and so we nerded out about some books, so I think you'll like that. I would tell you to follow him on social media, but he deleted his Instagram. So he does have a Twitter. You can follow him at Jeff Okudah on Twitter. That's Jeff O-K-U-D-A-H.

• 6:36Speaker 00

  And you can also watch him on TV this season. Follow along. I think he's gonna have, I think it's gonna be his breakout year. I think he's a kid to watch. So here's my daily stoic interview with the one and only Jeffrey Akuta. Are you in Texas?

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm in Frisco, Texas right now.

• 7:00Speaker 00

  Are you from here? What? How did you end up in Texas again?

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm actually, well, I was born in New Jersey, but I was moved to Texas when I was 11. So I've been living in Texas ever since then, Grand Prairie, Texas.

• 7:12Speaker 00

  Nice. I'm curious, how does it work in the NFL, like, sort of season versus offseason? I know this is technically like only your second offseason or whatever, kind of your first offseason. But like, how does it, how does it work? Like, you're going back and forth for OTAs? Is it different because of COVID? Like, like, how does it work as the season starts to ramp up?

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Pretty much, I mean, the season concludes, whatever day or less game may be, you pretty much do an exit physical and it's like, you go off and you do your own thing. Like, everyone kind of has like an individualized program. And then you report back for OTAs. You know, some guys do the voluntary OTAs as optional. And there's like a three day mandatory mini camp, which everyone has to be present for. And then you go off and do your own thing again for like four more weeks. And you come back for training camp and then the ball gets rolling.

• 8:08Speaker 00

  So it's, that's sort of just starting to ramp up now, right? Like, you're starting to actually have to think about the season starting here in like two months, basically?

• 8:18Speaker 01

  Well, honestly, I've been thinking about the season probably since January. I think if you're thinking about the season starting right now, and it's probably a little bit too late.

• 8:28Speaker 00

  Okay. Like, like, the offseason is weird for me. So like, as a writer, I'm kind of always doing it. Like, I guess some writers are sort of like, I'm working on a book, I'm not working on a book. I kind of try to stay like, at my fighting weight all the time. Like, try to sort of never think of an offseason.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:47Speaker 00

  But, but what I do isn't physically draining the way that what you do is. So like, how do you balance, like, you come off a season in January, you'd probably work out every day if you could. Like, how do you, I guess what I'm asking is like, how do you think about pacing yourself, your drive, your ambition to get better, but then also not burning out or injuring yourself?

• 9:11Speaker 01

  See, that's actually the balance that I'm, you know, kind of figuring out right now. Because, you know, in high school, middle school, college, it's kind of like you kind of just grind, grind, grind, grind, grind, because obviously you're trying to get to the end game, get into NFL. But then, once you get to the NFL, if you just stay in that grind mode consistently, you really just burn yourself out because the NFL season is really so long. It's strenuous on the mind as well as the body. So I think you have to be able to sit down and be able to identify like points where, okay, let me kind of take my foot off the gas right now. Let me take a vacation here. Let me pull back on a workout here. Because, I mean, it's kind of like you got to play the long game with it.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Because if you can't play the long game, I mean, it's a long season. Seventeen weeks of just going at it with the best of the best. You have to be able to find that, you know, the happy place.

• 10:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, it is a tension, right? Because you hear about, I don't know, like, let's look at the NBA. You hear stories about like Kobe Bryant working out every day the offseason, coming in better shape than he left. He shot thousands of free throws and three pointers or whatever. And then you also look at like this NBA season where basically by the time they got to the finals, because of the shortened and sort of the also longer season last year, like almost nobody who was in like, like none of the All-Stars were still standing by the end of the season, just like injury after injury after injury. And they're thinking it's a result of like the compressed season and not enough recovery time.

• 10:49Speaker 00

  So how do you, how do you balance like, like you want to get better? You don't want to have downtime, but then also knowing that like you need to have downtime?

• 11:02Speaker 01

  I think you find ways to get better that aren't necessarily physical, whether that may be reading, whether that may be, you know, talking to close family members, like getting out things that you may have been internalizing throughout the year. That's always beneficial. I mean, honestly, I've probably done less physical work this offseason, but I feel like I've been in a better physical shape than I was last offseason. So it's a pretty kind of interesting thing to me right now because I'm trying to kind of grasp the concept of doing less, but like achieving more.

• 11:39Speaker 00

  No, I love that. There's actually this great passage in Meditations. Mark Sturili says, you have to ask yourself at every moment, is this essential? He says, because most of what we do is not essential. And then he says, when you eliminate the inessential, you have the benefit. You get the double benefit of doing the essential things better. And I've got to imagine that, given the conditioning that you've been on for, you know, most of your life at this point, you're probably not trying to cut weight or add weight or add physicals. You're probably like by spending time watching film or spending time, you know, thinking or planning or, as you said, like dealing with something in your personal life.

• 12:22Speaker 00

  That may give you more of an edge than like an extra day in the weight room at this point.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Exactly. I think, once you reach the NFL, for the most part, guys are pretty much almost at their physical peak. I mean, you're not going to go from running a four or five to a four or three from the age of 22 to 24. So I think it's more so about the maintain game. Are you able to maintain it and not, you know, reduce your level of athleticism? And just find different ways to maintain it. Maybe like you might be able to increase it a little bit, but the gains are going to definitely reduce in that pro level as opposed to the gains that you'll see on the collegiate level.

• 13:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it's not like baseball or basketball where you like, you entered the league having spent a considerable amount of time in college and at a really good college program. So you didn't come in as like basically a high school senior. You, you're, you are roughly what you're going to be physically as opposed to like, yeah, coming into the NBA and needing to add 30 pounds of muscle.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 13:28Speaker 00

  It is interesting too, yeah, like Tom Brady sort of leading the charge as far as football goes of like, actually, maybe less time in the gym, period, is the, is the key. And it's more about pliability and sustainability and not putting needle. If the season is 17 weeks of grinding and then you're grinding on top of that, that's a good way to grind yourself into dust, basically.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I pretty much had to learn that the hard way. You know, last offseason was really weird with the whole pandemic because I really didn't have a feel of how things were supposed to work out. So it kind of became almost a freestyle in a way, it just kind of. How do I prepare for the NFL? Like, and you kinda, I mean, for me, I felt like I over repaired. You know, I was trying to work out every single day. I was trying to do all this running and, you know, my body was going through it. When it came down to the season, I was already burnt out. I mean, I ended up having to get surgery on both of my groins. So I kinda had to learn to, you know, you gotta pace yourself and you wanna peak at the right time. I mean, if you peak in February, I don't think that's considered a win. I think peaking right at the time of going to training camp or even right before the season starts,

• 14:37Speaker 01

  that's what we can consider a win.

• 14:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was, I was just reading this book about Floyd Patterson. It was the heavyweight champion of the world right before Muhammad Ali. And he was telling the story about early in his career, he had this older brother. They were both boxers, but you know, he had more potential than the brother. But you know, you always look up to your, to your older brother. And it was like the day of a fight and he had done his conditioning and his brother showed up to the gym and was like, hey, I'm gonna go run five miles. You should come with me. And, and he said, no, I already have worked out. And his brother sort of, you know, started busting his balls about it. And so he went and he did another, you know, round of conditioning. And, and by the time he's in the ring later that night, he feels it like in the third or fourth round. He's just totally gassed.

• 15:21Speaker 00

  And, and that struck me as, as an interesting sort of encapsulation of what we're talking about. Because when you are self-disciplined and when you're competitive and driven, it's almost harder to say, no, I'm not going to do it. I've already worked out or to say, no, I need to recover here. I need to rest than it is to go run five miles or go like, it's easier to go to the gym than to stay home and be with yourself and be a little bit uncomfortable. Don't you think?

• 15:52Speaker 01

  No, no, exactly. And I think the big thing, you know, is just not really comparing your journey to the next man's journey. So just seeing, you know, like you said, being a competitive person, you might see one of your teammates or maybe one of the guys you're gonna go against doing a crazy workout. And then you kinda feel like, man, I need to go outside and do a crazy workout too. But it's not really about that. You know, it's about, you know, focus on your own journey, stay in your own lane and to focus on your own gains.

• 16:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, social media plays a part in that too, right? Because every time like sort of the workouts start, all these, all these guys start posting these crazy beach workouts and like everything on Instagram. And just like normal people sort of see what their friends are doing on social media and it, it sort of warps and messes with their mind. I got to imagine seeing, seeing somebody doing something crazy, you feel like you have to do something, but their trainer could be a total quack.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  No, yeah, honestly, this offseason, I've tried to, you know, keep my social media used to like a minimum, you know, just getting off of that platform and really just focusing on cabinet present mind, you know, not really worrying about what the next man is doing. Really just focusing on myself and I've just been able to see, you know, such a substantial growth, you know, in everything that I've been doing so far.

• 17:15Speaker 00

  It's also, I try to remind myself, like people are on different journeys, right? Like this is something I remember learning early as a runner, which is like, you know, let's say you go to the, some track and somebody's there when you get there and then you start running and now like, and then somebody else comes after you're going. All these people are at different phases of their workout, but then you get like next to each other and suddenly you're like, well, why is this person passing me or do I need to go faster, right? You have to, you, we're all running our own races essentially, right? And so like your race as a second year player is different than the race of a, of a 10 year veteran versus, you know, somebody who, who, who hates the game and is just coasting and, you know, collecting their paycheck versus, I don't know, some of these guys

• 18:00Speaker 00

  that are like so driven and motivated that the game is the only thing that matters to them, right? And you kind of have to figure out like, one, what am I trying to accomplish? Two, what makes me happy? You know, three, what's best for my body? And four, like, what does success look like to me? Does success look like, you know, having a long career? Is it a short career? Is it Super Bowl or bust? Is it, you know, would you consider yourself a success if you, you played 12 years, but you can barely walk afterwards? You know, you got to figure out what, what success looks like to you.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think the biggest thing are, one of the big things is, you know, it's multiple ways to get to the final destination. I think everyone thinks that it's just, you know, one way. To get to that final goal, whichever, whatever your final goal may be, but I think you've seen countless stories of this guy might go to a junior college and then go to a division one school, then go to the NFL, where this guy might go from a division one straight to NFL, or this guy might start division one, stop playing football for a couple of years and still end up in the NFL. I mean, there's multiple ways to get to that final destination. So I think fix heading your mind on just it being one clear cut way to do it. That's the wrong way to approach it, man.

• 19:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, and especially when so much of it is outside your control. I mean, your first season's disrupted by a once in a hundred years pandemic, but also like, you know, how many guys, you know, pull something the first day of training camp, or, you know, somebody pulls something, you know, right before the Super Bowl, right? There's so much that's not in your control. You have to kind of, so the Stoics have this image that like, that, that we're like dogs tied to a cart, right? So like, the cart's just trucking along and we're trotting behind it. We can try to pull the cart, but we don't actually really control where it's going. So we're just gonna, you know, strangle ourselves.

• 19:55Speaker 00

  Also, we can resist, you know, you could just lay down and it'll drag you. The idea is you kind of just cheerfully walk alongside as best you can. And, and I try to remind myself that, like, we're not really in control of how it's happening, how fast it's happening, how long it's gonna last. You, you just gotta go along for the ride.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  No, definitely. I think something that my coach told me this offseason, at the very start of it, is a Bruce Lee quote, where he was just like, be watered, you know, just be able to adapt to different situations and not, you know, as water is able to adapt to anything you put it in. He said, just kind of have that mindset, because like you said, there's a lot of external things that are just out of your control. So whenever something comes up to you, be able to adapt to it, you know, don't have your mind set on things should be a certain way, because if that's your mindset, when things don't go the way that you planned for them to go, then it kind of puts you in a state of, you know, dysfunction. So I think having that mindset of, okay, this happened, okay, I'm gonna adapt to this on the fly. That kind of helps you, you know, be ready to embrace anything that comes your way.

• 21:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, although the great Bill Walsh said that individuals like water will always seek lower ground, right? So the problem with water too is water just goes wherever, you know, water goes to the weakest point or to the lowest point. So it's a tension. But I do like, I do love that quote because the idea is, yeah. The other thing about water is not only is it adaptable, but you know, you drip water on a stone long enough, you know, steadily enough, it'll wear through anything. So there's also, you know, I think when people hear this idea of sort of resigning or going with the flow, that feels weak. And to some degree it is, right? The Stoics are kind of resigned to some things. But

• 21:43Speaker 00

  it's also incredibly strong because yes, you're not plowing through it with sheer force, but steadily and consistently over time, you actually are, you know, sort of drilling down where you want to go.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, if I sat down on January 1st and planned out how my year was going to go, I think I would be looking at myself on December 31st, like, wow, my year went nothing like I planned, you know, it was things that I couldn't have accounted for in that plan that came up along the way. So I think just having that mindset of, you know, just taking things as they are, embracing whatever comes. I mean, that's been big. I mean, that mindset, I think we've had a lot of discussions earlier on is when I was kind of getting to know the Stoic beliefs and whatnot, just learning all that stuff. That was something that's been really helpful for me.

• 22:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, I remember it being sort of around your age and like, patience was like my huge weakness, right? Because like, you have so little experience, like you've only, like, what's the longest thing you've ever done, right? Like college, right? Like, you know, you've, we don't do things for very long early in our life, you know, because we haven't been alive that long. But as you get older now, like, I've done stuff for 10 years, like, or, you know, I've, I've known this person for 15 years, right? You just have like a longer time span. And I remember thinking at the beginning of the pandemic, some of these young athletes where they're like, no, you're gonna, like, the season's delayed

• 23:15Speaker 00

  by four months. They're like, four months? That's 3% of my life, you know? But I just remember being like, so intense about everything.

• 23:26Speaker 00

  And not being able to be patient and in retrospect, like it all worked itself out. I just wasn't used to like things taking longer than I wanted them to take. And that made me really unhappy and it probably also made me very unpleasant to be around.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  No, definitely. I think that, like you said, I mean, I know people always say hindsight is 2020. A lot of the issues that, you know, might seem really big in the moment, we look back on it months from now and they seem a little bit more miniscule, you know?

• 23:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  I know that I read, I think stillness is the key. The one chapter we're talking about, the whole JFK thing, you know, when the problem, when he was deliberating on what he was going to do with the whole Cuban crisis. And then he kind of just took a step back and, you know, let the situation unfold. And then, you know, that deliberation right there would actually let him to have, you know, a clearer mindset, you know? So the things that seem like, okay, in the moment, it's a big deal. They just, they ended up not even being that big of a deal. I mean, they still were a big deal, but he was able to see it with a clearer mind, you know?

• 24:32Speaker 00

  And that must be extra hard for you because like for most of your actual profession, like when you're on the field, like the, the moments that you're dealing with are like three seconds, you know, like you're, you're, you're having to react in like instant, instant, instant. It's all about your snap reflexes, like, you know, how quick can you do this? And then you, but also you have to step back and think about it in the context of a season and in the course of a career and then also the course of a life as a human being.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. And another thing I know that just the whole zooming out, you know, just looking at things with a zoomed out perspective, you know, that, that kind of just gives you more insight on, you know, how, like how, like I said, how miniscule things actually truly are.

• 25:20Speaker 00

  Got a quick message from one of our sponsors here and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned.

• 25:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think about it as it's like weirdly both are valuable. So it's like, sometimes you have to zoom way in, like, what am I going to do in the next five seconds? That's all, all I needed, like, I was working out this morning. It's like, I only have three reps left. Is this extremely hard? But like, I can, I can do one rep, then I can do one more rep, and then I can do one more, and then this is over, right? And then, other times, you're in like, the thick of something, and you have to zoom way, way out and think about it like, am I going to care about this in a year? Or 10 years, or 100 years? And so it's like, sometimes you gotta look at it way up close, and sometimes you gotta take the 10,000 foot view.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  No, definitely. I agree with that 100%.

• 26:09Speaker 00

  So, so you mentioned like, that, that sometimes, training for you is, is not physical, it's mental. We got connected, because I think you'd posted about stillness is the key. But, but you do seem to have a very active reading habit. So, so walk me through where that started with you, and the sort of journey you're on, you know, educationally, as an athlete and a human being.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Definitely, um, so growing up, I think I always loved reading. Like, in elementary school, they used to have things in the summer where you read these books. Really, I think I liked reading because when you'd read these books in elementary school, you'd go to the library, and then they'd give you like this sticker, and with this sticker, you can take it to Pizza Hut.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  And we took this sticker to Pizza Hut, you get free pizza. And for me, I knew that was the only way that I was going to get this free pizza. So I would always go to the library, and I would read countless books, like, I might go to the library, grab 10 books, and I would just knock out 10 books, take it to the li- take it back to the library, and get my free pizza. And then, that habit, you know, I probably stayed in that from like, first grade to fifth grade. And then, I don't know, out of nowhere, it just, I stopped reading. Maybe from sixth grade, to probably...

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Twelfth grade, I wasn't an avid reader anymore. So I wasn't, I, I wasn't, I just, I don't know. Maybe with sports and everything, I just stopped reading as much. And so honestly, I mean, you know, you know, that goes, you have this going on, that going on. I did, I just stopped reading as much. And then, so when I got to college, I think it was my sophomore year, one of my teammates was reading a, a book, Dear Martin, by Nick Stone, I believe, was talking about a black kid who had gotten murdered. And it rests, basically the book was trying to make sense of, you know, there's social injustice that's going on.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  And the unjustified arrest, I mean, this kid in the book was an African American kid that was going to an Ivy League school, but still being, you know, racially profiled and whatnot. And that kind of caught my interest. But at the time, I, I, that was kind of like more my speed reading fiction books. So for me, at the time, I liked reading fiction books and I liked reading sport articles. So I could, I could read, it was weird. If you gave me a nonfiction book, I couldn't finish it. But if you just gave me like a ten, ten page sports article about any, any topic, I could finish that because I just love sports so much. I could kill that.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  So what I did, I just went on Players Tribune and I just started reading sport, like the, the essays that athletes would write, I would just read them, just, I would just knock them out. And that was kind of my thing. And then after that, Michael Bennett wrote a book. It was called Things That Make White People Uncomfortable.

• 29:18Speaker 00

  I had his brother on the podcast.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. We talked about that too, I think, earlier on in, earlier on this year. Uh, he wrote a book, Things That Make White People Uncomfortable. And I mean, that book kind of just resonated with me because for me, it was kind of the, it was an athlete writing a book. So I'm like, and the title was kind of, the title kind of just caught my eye. I'm like, I don't know, maybe just being like, maybe nineteen at the time, I was like, things that might go, make white people uncomfortable. Just it's, I was kind of curious, like, what's this guy talking about? I just want to, just want to see what he's talking about. So I read that book. And those two books, I might've read two more books, but those might've been the four books I read in college. And then.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  I think when I left for, when I left college, I was doing some interviews. And I like, when you're in college, you know, like you're just in this like college grind, football, football, football, football. And sometimes you don't really get a chance to like, you know, hone in on the, the school part of things like you'd, like you'd want to just because. When the reality is that football grind is taking up a big chunk of your schedule. When I got out of, when I declared for the draft or whatever, um, I was doing some interviews and whatnot. And I was just noticing that my word choice, like my diction was just off. I didn't, I was, my brain wasn't giving me the words that I wanted, wanted.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Me to have like, nah, this is kind of seeming almost not elementary, but it's, it's not as advanced as I'd, as I'd like it to be, you know? I try to stay as sharp as I can mentally, which is kind of always been one of the things that I felt like has been my edge and my playing career. So when the pandemic hit, there was nothing to do, obviously. So except sit at the house all day. And after a while, playing video games got boring and I was watching Netflix for a while, but then Netflix kind of loses its appeal. And that's like the only option that you have. I mean, when it's kind of something that you do because it's like a relaxation thing, it's different.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  But when it's like wake up and watch Netflix from sunup to sundown, it starts to lose its appeal. So I was like, let me just find a book that um, fits me, something that I would like. So the, the last dance was on at the same time and they were talking about Phil Jackson and the Bulls. So I was doing my research on that and I figured out that Phil Jackson had wrote a book called 11 Rings.

• 31:43Speaker 00

  Such a good book.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  A great book. So I'm reading this book and it's, and it's the best of both worlds for me because like I said, I like reading about sports anyway.

• 31:51Speaker 00

  Right.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  I'm like, wow, this book is amazing. I can, I can really dive into this one. So I read this book, it's talking about Kobe, talking about how Michael Jordan, the Shaq feud, talking about his zen-like approach to things.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  And at that point right there, that's when I was like, I don't know, so like the old fire was ignited again. But I was like, okay, I think I'm back into this reading stuff again. So I finished this book and then Rich Paul, who runs my agency Clutch. I was like, do you have any books that I could read? He's LeBron James again too, right? Exactly. I was like, you have any books that I could read and recommend? Cause I mean, at the time I didn't know any like, that was just the book that I've seen just cause of Last Dance. But I'm looking for other books now that can kind of, you know, keep my interest going. And I kind of wanted to venture off from that athletics side of it and just kind of start reading different type of books now. And kind of expand my knowledge on everything.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  So he was like, give this book Chop Wood Carry Water a chance. Yeah. So I was, I was a little bit hesitant because that was the first book that I, that I've seen. That wasn't that really like an athletic based book. Cause like I said, the Michael Bennett book, I read that one. And then this Levin Rings book, I read it. So now the child would carry water was a little bit outside the comfort zone. But when I started reading it, it was an easier read than I thought. So I'm thinking that it being, I don't know, a book that's not really catered to the athlete per se. I was thinking that's going to be like a hard, you know, some of these books are a little bit harder to digest. Sure. But I'm reading it and it was pretty, it was a pretty simple read, pretty straightforward conceptually.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  And I learned a lot of like things that I felt like that I could, you know, apply to my life. You know, where he was talking about comparison is this thief of joy. You're always building your own house, be where your feet are. And, and it's things that I was like, okay, these are all things that I find pretty applicable to my day to day living. So I started reading these books, taking these notes. And then I, after when I read that book, I don't know, it's kind of, it kind of like puts you on a crave for like, all right, let me see if I can find a book that's not too far away from this book, but it's pretty identical to this one. Like where it's kind of, it was kind of fiction based still. So I wasn't, I wasn't completely in the nonfiction yet. So I read The Alchemist.

• 34:15Speaker 00

  Oh, great book.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  So, but I'm doing my research, I'm on Google doing my research, like, I'm like, let me make sure that I pick the right books, because I don't want to have a bad experience and then, you know, put this fire out. So I read The Alchemist, and that was a great book in itself, you know, pursuing your dreams, following what your heart desires, talking about how fear is the biggest obstacle that can prevent, you know, for you from reaching your dreams, always getting back up whenever you're knocked down, get back up. And I think after that book, that's when I was like, okay, I'm ready for like, some of the more, you know, serious books. Because I tried to find another book like The Alchemist, but I couldn't necessarily find one. So I got back on Google, started looking, doing my research on some books, and then Stillness is the Key popped up.

• 35:00Speaker 00

  No way, okay.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  I was like.

• 35:02Speaker 00

  I was gonna ask you who recommended it, but you just found it randomly.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  It was just random, like, random books, like, books like Chop Like Carry Water, Chop Wood Carry Water, books like The Alchemist. And I would just go through, read the reviews a little bit. So I read Stillness is the Key, that was probably my first, you know, nonfiction, like, completely enlightenment book. And I read that one, and that book just, I mean, it was like, again, it wasn't as hard to read as I thought it was gonna be, it was pretty simple, straightforward. I mean, I was posting it on Instagram, when I had Instagram at the time, people were like, wow.

• 35:36Speaker 00

  Did you get rid of your Instagram? I wanted to ask you that.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got off of Instagram probably in February, just to kind of give myself, you know, more clarity, more peace of mind, heading into the second season. So.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  Dude, I love this, I love this so much for a bunch of reasons. One, very similar to my journey, I loved reading as a kid, but I loved Westerns and detective novels. I loved stuff that was fun to read, but there wasn't anyone to be like, no, no, here's what good books are, right? Not that those other books aren't good, because I think anything you're reading is making you a better reader, and it's making you love reading, and it's entertaining, and it's certainly better than just about anything else you could do. But they weren't like, no, no, no, like, here's the, here's the good shit, right?

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 36:18Speaker 00

  But, but, and then I went through a period where I didn't read much in high school, and then I really fell in love with reading towards the end of high school, and then in college. But I love that. One, you sort of, you were like, hey, like, I want to be better at something. I want to be more articulate, or I want to be more able to express what I'm thinking or feeling. I want a mental edge. And so you started a journey and then you asked for help on the journey from a smart, successful person like Rich Paul. I love that. And I love that you started from a zone of interest, which is sports, and then you expanded outwards. Cause I think one of the reasons people don't read is, is one, reading is hard and harder

• 37:03Speaker 00

  for some people than, than others. But two, they don't really understand that they just haven't read books that they could do anything with.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:11Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? Like, do you have to think about return on investment? If you're asking someone to spend a week of their time doing something and they don't get anything out of it, it doesn't help them with who they want to be or what they want to do, they're like, what's the point of this? You know? So I love that, that you just, you focused on sports and, and then you, you expanded from there. I'm so glad we randomly got connected to.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  Exactly. And I think something that I had to realize for me, like one of the obstacles, I mean, being a 22 year old, I'm probably on my phone more than I should be. So picking up like a book, like an actual, like the physical copy of a book and trying to read that, that was kind of difficult for me. I don't, I don't know why, but just picking a physical copy was difficult for me.

• 37:54Speaker 00

  It's a muscle you hadn't been working.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Exactly. So what I had to do was get these books on my iPad.

• 38:00Speaker 00

  Huh.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  So I, like, really like, that's really the main way that I read. I, I got the medications book. I got the physical copy of that one because you said that you recommend getting the physical copy and just to be able to.

• 38:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  You know, break it, break it down how you like. But for me, I, I read on my iPad and it's easy for me to like track it. I could highlight certain parts that I like, come back to it. And I don't know, it's almost like it's more comfortable for my eyes. I can't really explain it, but it's almost like it's more comfortable for my eyes to like read the message that way. Like, my eyes are kind of already used to looking at an electronic device anyway.

• 38:36Speaker 00

  Well, look, I, I, I think the other part of it is just like, we live in a culture that rewards, like, think about it's like, people were reading blogs and then they were like, that's too much writing. And they invented Twitter and Twitter's like so short, right? And then people used to like watching television shows. And then they were like, but what if the television show was only one minute long? And that's what TikTok is, you know? So it's like, everything's getting shorter and shorter and shorter, which is creating shorter attention spans. But like, even though you and I do radically different things, right? Like, you play a sport where very big people are trying to hurt you, and I, I write books. At the, at the core of it, what both our professions require is intense periods of concentration.

• 39:21Speaker 00

  Like, for you, it's concentration on the field, but also when the offense takes the field, and, and, and, sorry, and, and then when you're, when you're sitting on the sideline, right? You're having to watch as the, you're, you're having to rest and recover, but also think and plan and process, and then take feedback from the coach and so on and so forth. And I think, like, the, the more you're able to concentrate and not jones for your phone, or, you know, get distracted, or watch what's happening on the screen, or, you know, space out, the better you're gonna be. And so really cultivating that ability to concentrate is so important. Have you, have you read Cal Newport's book, Deep Work?

• 40:03Speaker 01

  I haven't got a chance to read it. I need to write that down. I'm always looking for book recommendations.

• 40:08Speaker 00

  I'll give you a couple more. So I'd read Cal Newport's stuff, Deep Work. I also had him on the podcast a couple times, so it's worth listening to. But then I was also thinking about you for sports books. There's a book called The Way of Baseball that I really like. If you like Chop Wood Carry Water, I think you'd like this book about sort of like a zen approach to, to baseball.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 40:29Speaker 00

  And then. And then have you read Education of a Coach about Bill Belichick?

• 40:35Speaker 01

  No, I haven't heard. I haven't read that one either. So.

• 40:38Speaker 00

  Okay, so, so one of the great biographers and journalists of all time, like, he's this guy named David Halberstram. Like, if you, do you know in the Vietnam War, there's the famous photo of the monk lighting himself on fire?

• 40:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've seen that.

• 40:52Speaker 00

  So he was there when that happened. Like, he was one of the great reporters during Vietnam. But then late, late in his career, or later in his career, he wrote two books about Michael Jordan. And then he wrote one book about Bill Belichick. And this is like, I think it stops like maybe in like 2005 or six. So it stops after three Super Bowls. So it's incredible like how much Bill Belichick has continued to dominate. But like, it's one of the great, great sports books of all time. And I think you would really like it.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know about you, but I'm always infatuated of always getting like insight on the mental of like some of like the great either athletes or thinkers or, you know, inventors. I always like to see how they think and kind of not just, just get an insight. I mean, these guys are some of the smartest minds that have ever lived. So just be able to, like, that's why the meditations really resonate with me. Just be able to see how Marcus Aurelius was able to think at the time. And you see how things that were going on back then still go on today. I just have like an infatuation with that because it is crazy to me because you might feel like in the moment, oh, this is horrible. I'm the only one that has to go through this. And then you look and it's like 2000 years ago, people are going through the same issues.

• 42:09Speaker 00

  Got a quick message from one of our sponsors here, and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned.

• 42:18Speaker 00

  Totally. Well, and you know what I find, and I think you, you may have already experienced it, but you'll definitely see more of it as you go through your career, you know, maybe you'll spend some time with the owner or some tech company will bring you in because they're big fans. Or you, you, you end up. You'll meet someone who's in the special forces, you'll meet someone who's in the NBA. You you meet people who are like elite at whatever it is that they do. And and like what I've found is like, they're all really, really similar. Like, it doesn't matter if they're throwing a ball, shooting a ball, kicking a ball, you know, shooting a gun, or like trading, you know, options or futures on the stock market.

• 42:59Speaker 00

  Like, the people who are world-class at their thing are all operating on a similar wavelength and a similar approach. And I think that's why Marcus Aurelius, as a philosopher, is so much more interesting than like Aristotle or something. Like Aristotle is a great thinker and there's good stuff in there. But you're not really getting the sense that like this guy was a doer who was like operating at a high level. And I think when I read about Marcus Aurelius, I'm like, oh, yeah, this guy was like, he was doing a really hard job really well, just like you are, or just like Bill Belichick is. And you don't have to like the person or even like the job that they did to to be like,

• 43:41Speaker 00

  oh, man, I could learn something from this, you know, Navy SEAL sniper because like they have to concentrate and focus and train and learn just like I do.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you see like a lot of like this quote unquote great people. They don't only talk about the physical traits, so to say, you learn a lot about the mental traits. And I think that, I mean, it's not, well, not to say it's not hard, but you can pretty much, if you wanted to, get your physical body to like where you want it to be. But a lot of it is really dependent on that mental state. That's what you see like the Kobe, Michael Jordan comparisons, you see a lot of similarities with how they approach things mentally, the Bill Belichick's and Nick Saban's, a lot of it's the mental, the mental part of it. So there's a lot to be learned from the mental part of these great minds.

• 44:30Speaker 00

  Well, it's also, we talked about sort of what does, what does success look like, right? So I remember when I had Manu Ginobili on the podcast, and I've gotten to know him a bit, what's always sort of blown my mind about him is like, so you read about a Michael Jordan, or a Kobe Bryant, or a Nick Saban, or you read about, I don't know, Napoleon, or like, somebody who's like, the best, most driven, dominant person in their field, and you're sort of like, man, like, it's probably not fun to be them. Like, like, does it suck to be that person? You know, like, you never get to have fun, you're consumed, all you think about is winning, there's no room for other stuff. And so you could kind of, when you read enough of those books, you get this sense that like, maybe that's

• 45:14Speaker 00

  what it takes, right? There's actually another good book you might like, by Trevor Moat, called It Takes What It Takes.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  I read that one, I read that one.

• 45:21Speaker 00

  Okay, yeah, yeah, because he's Russell Wilson's.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  And that's what attracted me to it, when I seen Russell Wilson, I'm like, okay, yeah, let me get, let me get an insight of how this guy Russell Wilson's thinking.

• 45:30Speaker 00

  But, but you know, you get this sense that like, it might, it might take, like, being a dysfunctional, unhappy person to be great, you know? And what I loved about Manu, and he's sort of, and maybe, this isn't totally true, but it's kind of what I make up of my mind, is the, the, the inspiration he serves for me is like, here's a guy who has four championships, but is, seems like a well-adjusted, you know, like, balanced person, who was very, who was both very driven, but it didn't like, corrupt or break him. And that's like, for me, when I think about success, like, if you told me, okay, Ryan,

• 46:10Speaker 00

  you could sell five times as many books, and have five times the influence, but you would have to, it would, it would, I'm flashing forward to the future, you're divorced, and you don't see your kids that much. Or like, you, you, you have those things, but, like, you drink a lot, or, you know, you suck to be around. I don't think I would take that trade. So like, to me, when I think about what I want my success to look like, and where I've looked for models, is like, people who are really great at what they do, but then also seem to be, you know, like, good humans.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's, that's the biggest thing, like, obviously. I mean, you want to be remembered as being a good human. I mean, you could be the best athlete, the best, whatever it is, whatever your thing is that you do. But I mean, at the end of the day, if people say bad things about you as the way you treated them, I don't think that's a trade off that um,

• 47:11Speaker 01

  that I would want honestly for myself. So I always try to find that balance, you know. I think I read a quote, it might have been the Daily Stoic, it might have even been on one of YouTube videos, when Anne Frank had said, no, nobody ever became poor by giving.

• 47:28Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  That's the one that really stuck out to me. That, I mean, because it just, I don't know, for me, it just connected to me deeper because that is almost the truth. Because by giving out, I mean, you're gaining something by that, whether it might not be a financial gain, but you are gaining something from that internally. At the very least.

• 47:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was reading, it's funny to hear that you loved, or very sweet to hear how much you loved the Players Tribune in college, because I read your article about your mom. And when I was reading that, I was thinking, like, that's almost more an impressive accomplishment than a Super Bowl. Like, to have someone write that letter about you, right, is like the sign of, like, I imagine when your mom had a kid, like, dreaming that her son would someday write that letter about her, to her, she would be like, I did a good job, right? Like, that would have been success to her. Do you know what I mean?

• 48:31Speaker 01

  You're right on that.

• 48:33Speaker 00

  And, and in a way, that's, that's a much harder achievement. Like, there's been, there's been a lot of great people, wealthy people, successful people, dominant athletes, whatever it is, who have, who have not managed to achieve what your mom achieved with you. Do you know what I mean?

• 48:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, because the reality is, you have to have a, you know, an enormous impact on someone's life to the point where they feel compelled enough to write a heartfelt letter. You know, to like regardless of like if it's your mother, if it's your football coach, if it's your boss, if it's your friend, like they have to have an enormous impact on our life to where you feel compelled to like, I want to pour out my heart to you and write a heartfelt letter telling you exactly how I feel about you, even if you can't read it or not.

• 49:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It it's a and and how many of those people who have, you know, hoisted a Lombardi trophy or whatever, actually their kids would have written the exact opposite letter about them. Do you know what I mean? Like their kids are in therapy right now because they weren't around because they were, you know, focused on this, that, or the other.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  No, that that's a great point. That's actually a great point.

• 49:48Speaker 00

  Did I send you the the Chris Bosh book that I worked on, Letters to a Young Athlete? I forgot.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I I'm looking at it right now and it's on my desk. I have one more chapter to read.

• 49:56Speaker 00

  Oh, amazing. I was kind of as we were working on it, I was because you and I had connected then I was kind of thinking about you as I was working on it. Like, what what would you say to this person who's in a different sport? You know, but but like and and because I've got to imagine that's something I was going to ask you. What is it like to be a first round draft pick? I've got to imagine it is both incredibly exciting and rewarding and then terrifying and incredibly stressful.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  No, definitely. I think with the good also comes the bad. You know, obviously, you you reached almost like you said, the pinnacle of your sport being a I mean, the dream being a first round pick. You see your dreams come to come to life, but the reality is after that day, after you get drafted, now it's time to, you know, contribute to help turning a franchise around, you know, especially like when you're dropped, the higher you're drafted, I think the more pressure you have to do that. So it's something that I don't think you realize the magnitude of that at the time. But that's something that you get you get to find out really, really quickly and something that you have to be

• 51:08Speaker 01

  able to embrace because it is a lot of pressure. Because when you get in there, you have expectations. I mean, there you have people are always going to compare you to guys that were drafted in that same slot. Guys, the team may have drafted in previous years, guys that you may be coming into. It's just so many comparisons and it's so many expectations. So you have to be able to embrace that. And at the same time, you can't let it overwhelm you.

• 51:35Speaker 00

  Well, it must be frustrating because like you have your own expectations and you know, when you are meeting them or aren't meeting them that you know, that's like both stressful, rewarding, whatever, like it's hard enough to just like, here's what I'm trying to do. Am I playing as well as I could play? That, that's, that's one level, but then it's not like you asked for any of these expectations. And, and I've got to imagine a good percentage of the time to people who are criticizing or, or sort of, you know, playing this standard or that. It's not your coach or your agent or something. It's like some, some blogger has no idea what the hell they're talking about to begin with. They've never, not only

• 52:19Speaker 00

  have they never played football, they're not even that knowledgeable about the game.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think at this point, you know, a lot of things, whatever can generate the clicks at this point, really. But the reality is, I think that what people don't really understand about like athletes, writers, whatever, people that put their work out there to be criticized, is that the expectations that I have for myself are probably higher than the expectations you have for me. You know, I don't, I don't think anyone, I don't think you ever put out a, a book and like, I hope this is a subpar book. I'm putting this out here and I'm hoping that it's a subpar book. Like you're putting it out there. Like, I hope this is a great piece of work that people can gain knowledge from, that can impact lives. That's the expectation, I would assume. So when people are criticizing you, like

• 53:08Speaker 01

  you're already, your expectation was already high enough, you know? So I don't, it's like, it's almost like they're reminding you of something that you already knew.

• 53:19Speaker 00

  Yes. Well, when I talked at Alabama, we, we talked about this idea of like the inner scorecard versus the outer scorecard. Like, what are you measuring yourself on? Is it, is it like what the stat sheet says? Is it the score? Is it what the critics are saying? Because they could be, you know, celebrating you and actually you could, you know, be not even close to fulfilling your potential. Or conversely, they could be Savaging you and it's like not your fault or you're actually, you know, making the most of a situation that's a lot more complex than they understand. So like what Saban ended up pointing out in an article after he was talking about how like,

• 54:01Speaker 00

  sometimes like Alabama will be up by a bunch of points and he'll be like scowling on the sideline. And people were like, he's miserable. He's never happy. And he's like, no, I just know we could be doing better. And so I'm focusing on that. And then conversely, when they win, he's not like, over the moon. He's just like, sorry, when they lose, actually, what I heard is that he's better to be around when they lose than when they win. Because when they win, and maybe Meyer was like this too. When they win, he's like, here's all the things we could have done better. When he lose, he's like, it was my fault, not the player's fault. Here's what I could have done better. So like, I think, yeah, people on the outside don't really understand

• 54:45Speaker 00

  that one, you don't care what they think. Two, they don't know what they're talking about. And three, there's, there's, they're already focusing on all the things that actually matter and trying to get better. Because that's what drives someone to be great at what they do.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was actually interesting. Like, so in high school, I was on a pretty average team. Like, we would go to the playoffs, we probably last the first two rounds, the first probably was the second round. So I really never was accustomed to like being at a school that was just used to winning. So when I went to Ohio State, it completely blew my mind because at Ohio State, not only is the expectation to win, it's to win by a certain amount of points. I never like, I didn't, it took me a while to understand it. Like, we play, we play a team, maybe they ranked number 25 in the country, won by two touchdowns. And all the stuff coming out was like negative, like what's going on with Ohio State? Like, they don't look as good as they used to look. So it's like,

• 55:48Speaker 01

  you, it's like you, they want every game to be a 30-point blowout. So you, it's like your expectations are just through the roof. And like I said, it's something you just have to embrace. I mean, it's not for like the faint of heart.

• 56:03Speaker 00

  So coming off your rookie season, which was probably, you know, more exciting and amazing than you could have expected, and then also disappointing and frustrating in ways that you couldn't have anticipated. How do you go into this new season? Like, I read that you sort of feel like you've got a new perspective on the game and what you're trying to do. Walk me through what that means.

• 56:31Speaker 01

  I think this offseason, just putting in a lot of work on the mental, the mental aspect of it. I mean, like I said, I've done less physical work and so, and I've seen the physical gains, which is great and all, but I think the, the thing about the professional level is physically, everyone's probably like the, it's not that big of a gap, you know, physically. Because with the combine and the way they do things, they pretty much like, kind of, kick out the guys who aren't as athletic, pretty much. Cause if you're running a 47, you're probably not going to get drafted, which is unfortunate because there are some pretty nice players who just happen to run a 47. So athletically, they pretty much, you know,

• 57:12Speaker 01

  compress it to the most athletic guys in the whole world. So it's really all about the mental part of it. So just like knowing who you are as a person, you know, being able to, like I said, adapt to whatever situations may come. And so for me, just getting into the whole stoic philosophy, reading, learning about some of these guys, just when I went back out there for OTAs, everything just felt so much more calm. Like, it wasn't like a big craze. And that may come with the experience. I know my rookie year, one of our coaches told me, you know,

• 57:54Speaker 01

  Every experience is a benefit, whether it's a good or bad experience, you know, something that you could take from it. So experience in NFL is a, is a great thing to have. So I think that having that experience, having the mental, like just putting in the mental work. I think obviously like learning the philosophy is always, you have to sit here and read and learn all these new things, which has been fun for me. But I, I've just been able to see my, my mental, you know, kind of strengthened so much over the course of the last nine, nine months. And I'm, I'm excited honestly, uh, for what's to come.

• 58:33Speaker 00

  I love that your coach said that because that was something Robert Green, who is my mentor, uh, is my mentor, but, but certainly was, uh, when I was coming up, he said, you know, it's all material. And I was like, what does that mean? It's just like, you can use all of it, right? It doesn't matter. He's like, that's the great part about being a writer is that everything that happens, you can use in material like directly or indirectly. It's all shaping your worldview. And yeah, everything that happens, uh, in the game is teaching you something. Even the injuries are teaching you something, right? Like, oh, don't, you gotta be careful about this. You, you know, you gotta be worried about that. You know, you, you, here's, here's, uh, how to take better care of yourself. That, that's

• 59:15Speaker 00

  such, that's such great advice to get early on. And, and when they talk about veterans, like the main thing that separates a veteran from a rookie or, or an inexperienced person is, you know, just the hours that they've spent doing the thing.

• 59:30Speaker 01

  No, exactly. Just watch, cause I remember my rookie year, just when I was watching film, I'm looking at these veterans and it's like, it seems almost like they're just relaxing on the field.

• 59:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:43Speaker 01

  And I'm over here running around like a chicken with my head cut off, just running around. And, and then you tend to learn, okay, the reason why he's relaxing is because he knows that with his formation and the way the receivers are lined up, well, he's not expecting this to happen or this to happen. He knows that this is going to happen. So he doesn't have to be running around like a chicken with his head cut off. He can play way more calm. And like, so that comes with experience.

• 1:00:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't want to get you in trouble. So you don't have to comment on it with your new quarterback. But when I watched that Rams New England Super Bowl, that's what I noticed is that is that Tom Brady was felt like he deserved to be there. And it was just a game to just another game to him. And Jared Goff was probably thinking, holy shit, I'm in the Super Bowl. Like, I don't want to lose to Tom Brady in the Super Bowl. And yeah, like, the idea of Chop Wood Kerry Waters getting to a place, I think, where you are able to calm down just a little bit, just enough that your training and your talent and your body can do what it's great at doing.

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  No, I think you hit that right on the head. And another thing, when I was watching, I think in December, I wanted to binge on December on your YouTube channel. I was just watching all these videos because, I don't know, I mean, you obviously, I had surgery probably first week of December. So I just had a bunch of free time on my hands. So I'm watching all YouTube videos and one I came across one Amor Fati, just loving your fate. And that just, I was something, it just clicked something inside of me like, instead of like, looking at this like a negative thing, like embrace it. I love it. I love that I got surgery because because now it gives me a chance to improve things that I probably wouldn't have improved if I didn't have to get surgery. Or I love, I love that

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  that somebody's plays happen because now I'm learning from these plays and there's a less probability that they'll happen again. So I was able to kind of see it from that perspective. It kind of like was a perspective change for me.

• 1:01:50Speaker 00

  Well, and it feels passive, right? To be like, I'm glad I'm getting surgery or I'm glad, you know, like, yeah, I guess it's good that I got, you know, I blew the coverage here and blah, blah, blah, or, you know, that they they rolled me over. It's actually not passive, though, because it's active, because you're having to choose to learn from it, right? It could happen and it not make you better, right? It could just have happened and just suck. It could just happen and have lead to, you know, points being scored. It could just happen and now you're, you know, In the hospital getting surgery and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

• 1:02:29Speaker 00

  You have to choose to respond to it and to integrate it and to grow from it and be improved by it. That's the active part is that like, like you, we all make mistakes, right? Failure is only educational if you choose to acknowledge or learn the lesson. A lot of people make mistakes all the time and then what do they do? They make the same mistake again, right? So, so it's not the failure so much that's meaningful, but how you choose to, to use it.

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  And for me, it just kind of keeps that fire burning. You know, instead of getting down on yourself when you love, like when you just kind of have that mindset of loving what's happening, it's like, oh, I wish that would happen again because now I have a chance to respond to it in a different way. As opposed to saying, oh, well, I hope that doesn't happen again because I don't want to be embarrassed. Well, now it's like, I embrace that, like let it happen again. Like that, that's just an opportunity for me to show my growth.

• 1:03:27Speaker 00

  Right, right. Have you read Mastery by Robert Greene? I think you would like it. Did we talk about this one already?

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  I don't think we did. You might need to send me just a list of books to just read.

• 1:03:36Speaker 00

  I will send you a list, but I think you'd like Mastery too. I love that you're watching the YouTube channel. Like the, the reason I do them is that I understand, like me, like if I want to learn about something, I don't really watch YouTube videos. Like I read books about it. That's how I learn, but I totally understand that different people are in different places, have different things going on, you know? And so I, I'm always thinking about like, what's the most, what, what is another medium that I can bring the ideas to people? And we've been doing like TikToks and stuff too. It's been going great. I don't even have TikTok. Like, I don't even know how it works. I heard like you should, like I'm, I'm such an old man. I'm like, aren't the Chinese going to be tracking me? I'm like, this like, I don't even have it, but like, I like that it's reaching people, you know?

• 1:04:18Speaker 00

  So I, I'm always thinking about like how, how to, how to do.

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  No, honestly, I thought TikTok was just a platform where people just make dances. I didn't even know that it was some resource for information on there. I thought that you just record skits and whatnot on there, but apparently you can get on there and, and learn something if, if your algorithm is set up properly.

• 1:04:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, and that that is the other thing we were talking about why we have such short attention spans. It's like if you do one thing on the internet, the internet's like, oh, I'm just gonna give him a million more examples of this. So you don't like, like, remember you were talking about going to a library. It's like you go to the library as a kid, you're just like bumping into all this random stuff and it's all totally unrelated. Like, you know, now it's like, you know, like you click one pair of shoes on the internet. It's like, let me show you a million pictures of the exact kind, you know, like, it's like, oh, you're a sneaker head. Here's a billion pairs of sneakers. That's not like, oh, let me tell you about watches, right? It's like just the same thing over and over.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  And I've noticed that because because I've gone off of Instagram and my Twitter usage is down. I kind of got into YouTube a little bit. So when I watch like one YouTube video, I might watch like a Joe Rogan episode about whether it's like an interview like Jordan Peterson or something. Next thing I know, my whole YouTube is flooded with Jordan Peterson's content. Like, that's all I see is Jordan Peterson content. And then I might watch a video about something else. And now my YouTube is flooded with all this now.

• 1:05:46Speaker 00

  And I think that's how these people get like radicalized.

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  No, for sure.

• 1:05:50Speaker 00

  They click this one thing and then all of a sudden they're like masks don't work and the vaccines affect, you know, the vaccine will make you magnetized and and also like JFK is still alive. You know, like all of a sudden you like, you just get like sucked into this rabbit.

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  It's like if you come on YouTube with the belief of, let's say, everyone should be vaccinated, then that's all they're gonna like, it's gonna just, you're gonna see videos that support that claim. And if you come on YouTube with a belief that nobody should be vaccinated, then you're gonna just get videos that support that claim as well.

• 1:06:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's actually a great book. You probably don't need to read it. The concept is good, but it's called The Filter Bubble. And basically what happens is the algorithms or the filter, like the filter that's deciding what to show you, it creates a bubble around you. And the worst part about it is you don't even know you're in the bubble. You're just like, you just think that everyone else is in the same bubble as you. But they're not. They're in their own bubble.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  Exactly. Exactly. And I don't know where I read this, but it was just, I just knew that it was true. Like, pretty much you can go on the internet and find something that backs up any claim that you may have. Like, if your claim is that... Let's say, for instance, the earth is flat. You can go on the internet and type in the earth is flat. You'll probably find a couple of articles that say the earth is flat and like have information by this guy that that's the reason why the earth is flat. And on the other hand, you could find information that proves the otherwise. So whatever you believe to be true, it's ways to prove that in your in your head to give you the illusion that that is true, like, and people believe that that is true as well.

• 1:07:33Speaker 00

  Well, funny enough, we did a TikTok video about this, but there's a great quote from Zeno, the founder of Stoicism. He says, you know, conceit is the enemy of knowledge because what happens is like it's actually not stupid people that fall for this stuff on the internet. It's moderately intelligent people who think they're very smart. Right? So like Kyrie Irving, where does he, you know, come off thinking that the world is flat? It's because he's overestimated his mental ability. So he's not coming to stuff from a place of humility. He's coming at it from a place of like, probably like, I'm great at this. Obviously, I'm, you know, brilliant too.

• 1:08:14Speaker 00

  And, uh, and, and so you can end up getting like sucked into like things that like when you, when you, when you look at most of these conspiracy theories, on the one hand, they're preposterous, but also they put the person who's believing in them in the position of feeling like they're smarter than every other person. It's like, oh, you're all idiots. I figured this out. Right? Like, they know most people don't agree with them. That's what's attractive to the idea of the earth being flat is it's like, oh, I discovered this and I'm smarter than everyone by understanding it. And so really, like, when we talk about ego being the enemy, ego is the enemy because

• 1:08:58Speaker 00

  it, it makes you fall for things because it's actually using your ego against you.

• 1:09:06Speaker 01

  That's true. That's true. And like you're saying, that's kind of who they're praying on. It's the, that's who they're praying on.

• 1:09:14Speaker 00

  A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, is another great expression.

• 1:09:18Speaker 01

  No, but going back to December, when I, when I was on a YouTube channel, um, I think just, I saw another, another video. Which really, it really propelled my offseason, kicked me off the right way because you know, in the Epictetus quote, when he was saying you must undergo a hard winter of training, and not rush into things in which we are not prepared. Just reading that quote, and coincidentally, it being December in Detroit.

• 1:09:49Speaker 01

  So it was really a winter. I didn't get a Miami winter. I got a Detroit winter. Where it was cold, so it was like, I was able to kind of get the whole imagery, and then also have to kind of live the reality of that too. And just having that quote, I mean, I was rehabbing in Detroit, so I was in Detroit from, doing my rehab from December all the way up until April. And that quote kind of just always stuck in my mind, you know, because obviously, some days are going to be better than other days. But I always came back to that quote,

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  which is that you have to undergo the hard winter of training, you know, and not rush into things like, enjoy the process of that. Because that process is going to get you ready for, you know, the season, or whatever your thing might be. And I actually said that, I said that quote to our Ohio State strength coach. And he loved it. He showed it to the whole football team.

• 1:10:44Speaker 00

  Oh, amazing.

• 1:10:45Speaker 01

  He loved that quote. I mean, he put it on the board. I mean, because it just, I don't know, it just so applicable for the athlete in the winter, because I mean, obviously, you don't want to do some of that stuff. It's tough. Winter is always tough in, in sports. That's when the workouts are the most extreme, because you, you're the furthest away from the season, so you pour more of a physical load on the body.

• 1:11:08Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:11:09Speaker 01

  So just having, having that quote on hand, is something that, that just helped me come to terms that, oh, it's going to be a tough winter. Get ready, get ready for it. But like also, like I said, embrace it.

• 1:11:21Speaker 00

  Well, I love, you know, some players, obviously, they think about like, what's the weather going to be for tomorrow's game? But like Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers, they never think about that because they, they know, like, they have played in the worst conditions that could possibly exist, right? Like, so when we talk about the obstacles of the way, or a more fatty, like, when you have to play in the winter in Detroit, although you guys have a closed stadium, but like, you know, if you're, if you're playing in, in Foxborough or, or Green Bay, like, you know, you can put up with anything. Like, Tom Brady probably shows up in Tampa and he's like, dude, I don't care about any of

• 1:12:03Speaker 00

  this. Like, I, I played in Boston in the winter, right? So like, when you go through that hard winter training, when you get your ass kicked, when you have to recover from surgery like you are, the one benefit is like, you know, you're tough, right? Because like, you, you, you got through it.

• 1:12:20Speaker 01

  No, exactly. And I think that, that's kind of like, I think it's something that we, at Ohio State, and that we always refer to is like, kind of putting those days in the bank.

• 1:12:29Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:12:30Speaker 01

  And then, when it's time, like, say, like, you get, you get that five degree game, now it's time to withdraw, it's time to withdraw it out of your, out of the bank, and you've already prepared for it. So it's not a shock to you because you already experienced it.

• 1:12:42Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, you paid your dues. I, I think about that, too, again, to go back to Tom Brady, like, how many Super Bowls has that dude lost? Right? Like, he, he now can go into anything and be like, I'm gonna be fine either way, so I can be present for this, you know? You, yeah, every experience you get is a deposit that you can make a withdrawal on later, or borrow against, right, to further the metaphor. I love that, that's smart.

• 1:13:12Speaker 01

  Nah, yeah. And just on the third point, I'm definitely fanboying your YouTube channel right now, but, so shout, shout out the Daily, shout out the Daily Stoic.

• 1:13:19Speaker 00

  Please.

• 1:13:19Speaker 01

  But, um, that video, you control how you play, that's something that I was probably watching, um, for every single OTA practices here.

• 1:13:28Speaker 00

  Wow, okay.

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  You know, just because, that, at the end of the day, that, that's really the reality of the thing. You can't control anything else that happens, like, you can't control the weather, you can't control whether you get hurt, whether...

• 1:13:46Speaker 01

  The the coverage gets busted. You just control how you play. That's the only thing you have control of. Same way they say like, okay, you can't. You can't fix. You can't fix the whole. I'm gonna give the world peace. You can just find peace within yourself and hope that passes on to somebody else. You know, like, but it starts with you. You control yourself first.

• 1:14:08Speaker 00

  It's funny because I I gave that talk when I spoke to the Browns, I think like two years ago. And so I went through it and this sounds like a name drop, but we we didn't meet or anything. So I'm not like pretending that we're friends. But um, so obviously Baker Mayfield sitting there. And then there was a lot of expectations about what the Browns would do that year. They did not end up doing well. And and I remember at the end of the season, or at maybe it was the beginning of this season. You know, he was like, uh, someone's like, you know, what are you gonna do differently this year? What did you learn? It was like, you know, last year I just spent way too much time focused on things that I don't control. You know, I spent too much time on social media. You know, I was and I was like, come on, man. Like, we talked about this at the beginning of last season.

• 1:14:53Speaker 00

  But but I think, you know, that's another thing is like, there's this great expression, you know, when the when the student is ready, the teacher appears. Oftentimes, we have the information. That's not the problem. It's that it just doesn't hit us emotionally until we're at a place where we can actually use it. And and there's so much advice I've gotten in my life that I was like, uh huh, yeah, I totally get it. I already knew that. And then like five years later, I'm like, why did I not listen to that for the last five years?

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  No, exactly. I was talking to my cousin the other day. He's in eighth grade and he was just talking about, you know, man, like my dad wakes me up, makes he's he's a boxer. My dad wakes me up.

• 1:15:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  We run all these miles. He gives me a certain amount of food to eat every day to make sure I stay on weight. Like, it's I'm miserable doing this. Like, it's tough. And I was like, you're gonna appreciate that because that's what it takes to be successful. Like, that sacrifice and that grind. But I'm I'm when I'm telling him, I'm looking at him in his eyes and I could tell that he wasn't really receiving the message. Like, like, like, like how I understood it at the time. And I just like, take a step back and go, okay, this kid is in eighth grade. He's probably not hearing what I'm saying right now. But four years, four, when four years passed, five years passed, he might look at that and be like, okay, I understand what my cousin was talking about. So you do have to be ready to receive the message, you know, the message could be pure

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  and whatnot, it could be really beneficial, but if you're not ready to receive it, you probably want to apply it.

• 1:16:17Speaker 00

  Have you watched the Jaco Willink good video?

• 1:16:20Speaker 01

  Um, I haven't seen that. I've seen some Jaco videos. I haven't seen that video in particular.

• 1:16:25Speaker 00

  That was one of the ones that inspired the, the, the you control how you play video, but you might like that one. He basically like, it's like shitty thing happened. He's like, good.

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  Oh, no, I've seen that. I've seen that. I've seen that one. He has like the kind of, the, the, the dark music in the background kind in a way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's talking in like, like this voice. Yeah, I got, yeah, I heard. I saw that one. I saw that one.

• 1:16:45Speaker 00

  He, he's amazing too. Well, so one other book recommendation, I'll put this on a list for you, but, um, uh, the inner game of tennis is actually, I think it's Tom Brady's favorite book. But it's an incredible book about the mental game, uh, of sports, mostly through tennis. But basically the premise is like, you can't hit and think at the same time. So how do you get to a place where the thinking is subconscious, right? So you basically, and you've probably heard this a million times, like, how do you get out of your own head? It's a book just about that. It's a great book. I think you'd really like.

• 1:17:20Speaker 01

  Have you read the book, um, A Man's Search for Meaning?

• 1:17:23Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 1:17:25Speaker 01

  That, that was a great one right there. I mean, I think I read that at the right time because here, here I was thinking like, okay, okay, am I in a shitty predicament right now? But then I, then I read this book and, and I see, okay, this is a real shitty predicament. And, and this, this guy Victor is able to, you know, find happiness in little things. Whether that, that's getting a scrap of meat, that, that, that's the highlight of his day. Whether that's, okay, I was able to make, um, one of these other camp prisoners smile. That's the highlight of his day. Like you see how the little like it's, you could find joy in these unfortunate situations.

• 1:18:07Speaker 01

  And it just makes, like I said, things that you feel like are big problems just seem so miniscule or trivial in the grand scheme of things.

• 1:18:18Speaker 00

  No, man, that's totally right. And so he has another book that came out somewhat recently. He's long since deceased, but they sort of compiled some of his lectures. He has a book called Yes to Life. And the subtitle, I love it. It's In Spite of Everything. So you'd like that one. But then there's another book, actually by a woman who was also in Auschwitz, named Dr. Edith Egger, who wrote a book called The Choice. And it's a great book. And I actually had her on the podcast. She's 93 years old. She's still alive. So you might like that episode as well. But her book, The Choice, is also really good. I agree.

• 1:19:03Speaker 00

  It's like you want to, you want to study people who have been through stuff that makes what you've been through look like fairy tale because it puts your problems in perspective.

• 1:19:15Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, it puts them in a great perspective. And so when those problems, like when they, I mean, because obviously life's not perfect. Problem's gonna come up again. It just makes you like, okay, now I see that I'm not the only ones gone through this. People have gone through worse. So I just need to buckle up and stay the course and I'll be just fine.

• 1:19:35Speaker 00

  No, totally. But I think buckle up is a great phrase, too. I think about that, too. When I think of Morfati, I think like buckle up, you'll get through this. It's not gonna be fun, but on the other side, something good will come out of it.

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  No, I agree with that, man. It's definitely, it's definitely a lot of insight. You don't even have to be a stoic, so to say, to just look at somebody's lessons and be able to learn from them. I think you just have to open mind is to try to receive that information.

• 1:20:05Speaker 00

  Man, I'm so glad we got connected. I'm glad you had Instagram long enough to post that one photo. And then Adam Lefkoe from TNT, he sent it to me. And then I'm glad we connected. And now we'll have to stay in touch. And let's, let's link up while we're both in Texas.

• 1:20:21Speaker 01

  No doubt. That sounds like a plan to me, brother.

• 1:20:24Speaker 00

  Dude, I love it. Thanks for rescheduling with me. And seriously, you got my number. You can call me anytime if you ever want advice about anything or you want some book recommendations. I am at your disposal.

• 1:20:34Speaker 01

  Thank you. It's been an honor, brother.

• 1:20:37Speaker 00

  Hey, it's Ryan. If you want to take your study of Stoicism to the next level, I want to invite you to join us over at Daily Stoic Life. We have daily conversations about the podcast episodes, about the daily email. We actually do a special weekend set of emails for everyone. You get all our daily Stoic courses and challenges totally for free. That's hundreds of dollars of value every single year, including our New Year, New You Challenge, which we're going to launch in January. You get a special cloth-bound edition of the Best of Meditations that we've done. You get a bunch of cool stuff. It's an awesome community. I've loved being a part of it. I've loved getting to meet everyone who's trying to take their study of Stoicism to the next level. Love to have

• 1:21:17Speaker 00

  you join us. Check us out at DailyStoicLife.com. We'd love to have you and join us on this digital stoia that we've staked out together and get better every day.