764 Embrace Your Struggle with Devon Still

IT'S OK TO NOT BE OK. So often we feel like we have to mask what we are going through. We hide our fears. We cover our scars. But the adversity you face makes you a stronger person. You’re not the only one who is battling something. The more vulnerable you can be about what you’re up against, the more other people will be able to support you. It’s going to take a team effort. Don’t let a weak moment become a weak mindset. On today’s episode of The School of Greatness, I talk with a former NFL player who is now tackling childhood cancer: Devon Still. Devon Still is a professional athlete, entrepreneur, motivational speaker, and advocate for childhood cancer awareness. He is also a former Houston Texan’s defensive end, a former Cincinnati Bengals’ defensive tackle, Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year, and a Penn State University All-American. Perhaps most importantly, he is Leah’s dad, helping her publicly “beat up cancer” and embarking on a pediatric cancer-fighting journey. Devon shared that once he opened up about his daughter’s battle with cancer, the more love and connection he felt. He now wants everyone to be vulnerable about the storms they are facing. He also knows the importance of having fun along the way. So get ready to learn Devon’s lessons from the football field and life on Episode 764. Some Questions I Ask: What were the biggest lessons Joe Paterno taught you? (8:00) How have you been able to reinvent yourself after football? (30:00) What’s your mission moving forward? (33:00) What’s your dream for your daughter in the next 15 years? (46:00) In This Episode You Will Learn: What it was like playing for Penn State during the Sandusky Trial (3:00) The importance of visualizing your dreams (12:00) About Devon’s daughter’s battle with cancer (14:00) The biggest lesson Devon learned from football (23:00) Why it’s important to be vulnerable (40:00) How to appreciate the struggles life gives you (47:00) Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 764 with Devon Still.

• 0:05Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:30Lewis Howes?

  Joseph Campbell said, "We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us." Have you ever been through an experience where you had a dream, you had an expectation for your life to go one way? In a relationship, maybe, supposed to work out, a career, a dream that was supposed to work out. And then all of a sudden, it doesn't work out. But later, you reflect back and you realize, wow, I'm so glad it never worked out. So this new life did work out. Well, that's part of the story with Devon Still. For those who don't know, he is a former NFL football player,

• 1:12Lewis Howes?

  defensive end, was drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals in the second round in the 2012 NFL Draft. He played college at Penn State, where he was All-American. He's also a member of the Houston Texans and the New York Jets. And in this interview, we talk about what it was like to be the captain of the football team at Penn State during a major controversy where his coach, Joe Paterno, went through incredible criticism in the media, and it was all over the world, and how he was the one who had to step up to rally the team to finish the season. All the different ins and outs of that moment, what that was like. Also talk about Devin's life and how it completely changed after his four-year-old daughter was diagnosed with cancer.

• 1:57Lewis Howes?

  How he learned how to deal with cancer for his child as a new father. We'll talk about his career in the NFL and how it was impacted his mindset on and off the field. And we discuss vulnerability through the power of owning your scars instead of hiding what you've been through. Guys, this is a powerful one. Devin is a great guy. Make sure to share this with your friends. You're going to learn a lot. You're going to be inspired. LewisHowes.com/764 for the link to share with your friends. All right, guys, big thank you again to our sponsor. I'm so excited about this episode. Without further ado, let me introduce to you the one, the only Devin Still.

• 2:41Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness Podcast. We've got Devin Still in the house.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  Good to be here.

• 2:46Lewis Howes?

  Good to see you, brother. I appreciate you being here. You got a new book out called Still in the Game. Finding the Faith to Tackle Life's Biggest Challenges. And you've been through a few big challenges in the last, I guess, eight years. One, you were the captain at Penn State. This is crazy. You were the captain at Penn State, superstar there during the whole paterno. Your coach was, you know, going through madness. And I can only imagine what that would have been like. I remember watching the doc or the movie with, what's his name?

• 3:16Speaker 02

  HBO.

• 3:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, HBO series. And I was like, this is crazy. And it was probably even more crazy being an athlete while you're trying to play and all this is happening.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:27Lewis Howes?

  And you were the captain. So everyone's probably coming to you being like, what do we do?

• 3:30Speaker 02

  What are the answers?

• 3:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. What do we do? Do we like protest? Do we not play? Do we play? I mean, what was that like?

• 3:36Speaker 02

  It was tough. I felt like not only were the players really relying on me, but the whole coaching staff was. Just to be able to keep the team upbeat and just keep them gathered together and focused on football. It was tough, but it's a responsibility I had as a captain when I decided to step up and lead the team.

• 3:53Lewis Howes?

  What was that like? I mean, because he, did he recruit you?

• 3:55Speaker 02

  He did. It was interesting, right? Because during this time, Joe had just got injured, right? I guess somebody

• 4:01Lewis Howes?

  His foot or something, right?

• 4:02Speaker 02

  His hip.

• 4:03Lewis Howes?

  Or his knee?

• 4:03Speaker 02

  He had broke his hip or something, fractured his hip during practice. So he wasn't traveling a lot. And during my senior year in high school, he actually made the trip to my high school. Was shut down my school. It was like no teachers were teaching, nobody went to class. And he came to visit me to show me how important it was for me to come to Penn State. And after he did that, it was like it was a no brainer. The legendary Joe Baterno can come to my high school in little old Delaware, then I definitely have to go to Penn State.

• 4:28Lewis Howes?

  With a busted hip?

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Exactly. With his little cane. Yep.

• 4:31Lewis Howes?

  So he came and he watched you at practice, or he just came and?

• 4:34Speaker 02

  He just came and met with me, my family and my coach inside the school office.

• 4:39Lewis Howes?

  And you were there for, you didn't redshirt, you played right away, pretty much?

• 4:43Speaker 02

  Well, I was supposed to play right away, but then I ended up tearing my ACL in training camp. So I had to redshirt my freshman year.

• 4:49Lewis Howes?

  What was he like for those five years then?

• 4:52Speaker 02

  He was an amazing person, to be honest with you. A lot of people thought that he was getting old and he wasn't really a part of the program as much, like calling the plays and stuff, but he was very heavily involved. And the knowledge that he had, you know, as an 80-year-old was just, it was impeccable to see the way that he was still able to maneuver.

• 5:08Lewis Howes?

  He'd probably seen so much. I mean, coached for how long? 50 something years?

• 5:12Speaker 02

  60.

• 5:12Lewis Howes?

  60 years. I mean, you get so good at something. Talk about 10,000 hours, he got it like 500,000 hours, it seems like. He was probably just so, he'd seen every instance.

• 5:24Speaker 02

  Like he, he didn't even have to see how the beginning of a play unfolded. Like all he had to do was see the end and see what you did wrong in the beginning. His football IQ was, was ridiculous.

• 5:35Lewis Howes?

  Ridiculous. And you felt like he was a great coach for those four or five years for you?

• 5:39Speaker 02

  For me, because I think he brought a lot of structure to the program. Like you hear a lot of coaches that say it's important to be a student athlete, right? But he really embodied that, right? He really put a lot of focus on making sure that his players were the best students they can possibly be, was showing the graduation rate that we had at Penn State. But also teaching us certain values to allow us to be better men than just football players.

• 6:03Lewis Howes?

  Now, when the whole scandal came out about, because it was the assistant coach, what's his name, Jerry?

• 6:08Speaker 02

  Sandusky.

• 6:09Lewis Howes?

  And was he an assistant coach?

• 6:10Speaker 02

  Not while I was there. When he was, when he was at Penn State, I believe he was the defensive coordinator up until the 2000 year, and then he had stepped away from the program. And I may have seen him two or three times working out in the weight room while I was there, but he wasn't a guy that really talked too much. He seemed a little bit weird, but I didn't really understand exactly the things and the pain that he really brought families during that time.

• 6:33Lewis Howes?

  Wow. And so, when the news came out, he wasn't really working there then?

• 6:38Speaker 02

  No.

• 6:39Lewis Howes?

  When the news came out, there was a lot of pressure on Joe, right? What, and it was in the middle of the season, wasn't it? Like, in the middle?

• 6:45Speaker 02

  It was right bef, it was towards the end, so it was around November, it was right before our senior night that the news had broke.

• 6:53Lewis Howes?

  Oh, gosh.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  The crazy thing is, is that Joe called a squad meeting and he told the team that some news was gonna come out, but just try to stay focused. That was always his thing, like, just stay focused, take care of the classroom, take care of the football. When we go to practice, we'll handle the rest. So, we left that meeting. I didn't think it was that big of a deal.

• 7:12Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  But I remember just sitting in my living room on my off-campus apartment, and they announced that Jerry Sandusky was caught for all the things that he had did, and it just blew my mind completely because I wasn't expecting to hear anything like that. Oh, yeah. I wasn't expecting, I don't think anybody was.

• 7:33Lewis Howes?

  Why? Wow. And so, it was right before senior night.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:37Lewis Howes?

  What happened after that? Joe, he went and coached that game, right?

• 7:40Speaker 02

  No. So, the next day, we had another squad meeting, and Joe let us know everything that was going on, and he said that he was gonna finish out the season because they was asking for him to step down.

• 7:53Lewis Howes?

  That quick?

• 7:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was that quick. And he told us that he was gonna finish out the season, and he was gonna retire after the season. But what I remember is that squad meeting, he did something I'll never forget, when he always stands in the front of the room at his podium, and then when he's finished the meeting, he turns to his left and he goes to walk out the double doors that we have in front of the squad meeting. And as soon as he got to those double doors, he stopped, and he just looked back at all of us when his eyes just started watering up. And to me, that wasn't a sign of somebody who was going to finish out the season. That was somebody who knew that it was coming to an end real soon. And when he walked out that door, that was the last time he was the head of our team.

• 8:38Lewis Howes?

  Wow. So he didn't come, he didn't coach, practice, and then that next game? And then he was done for the season?

• 8:44Speaker 02

  Done.

• 8:45Lewis Howes?

  Didn't he die soon after the season?

• 8:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. So what had happened was he got fired right before our senior night. So they promoted our defensive coordinator to be the head coach at the time. And when I graduated and I went on to train for the combine, when I was down in Florida, I got the news that Coach Paterno had passed away, which I thought was going to happen anyway, because he lived and breathed football. And when you take away somebody's reason for living, what do you have to live for? So it wasn't a shock that what happened to him.

• 9:15Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Did you talk to him after all this stuff occurred?

• 9:19Speaker 02

  No, I didn't, because it was such a media circus. There was so much going on with him and his family that I felt like that was a time for him to be around his family and figure out what was going on. That the last time I talked to him was when the last time I saw him.

• 9:32Lewis Howes?

  Really? That was the last time you saw him, last time you talked to him? A few months later, he was gone. What was the biggest lessons that he taught you that were really valuable for you?

• 9:44Speaker 02

  I guess the biggest one, because people always ask me as a Penn Stater, how do you feel about Joe Paterno being fired? And I honestly feel like the way that they fired him was wrong. When somebody gives 60 years of their life to a program and really helps change the way people looked at Penn State, you don't fire them over the phone, regardless of what has transpired. You bring them in and meet with them face to face and let them know what was going on. So for them to fire him over the phone, I think was very disrespectful. But one of the things that Joe taught us is that as a leader, you have to be willing to take the credit, whether it's good or bad, for the actions that the people underneath you take. And this happened underneath his watch. So I'm pretty sure he understands that he has to take the responsibility for that.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  And he could not go on coaching that program. It would have been ridiculous if he did, because as a father, the amount of pain that was brought to those children and to those families is ridiculous. And somebody has to be held accountable for that.

• 10:42Lewis Howes?

  Wow. How do you view him today?

• 10:45Speaker 02

  Because I know who he is, right? I know the type of person he is. I know the values he holds, but I honestly feel like there should have been more done. I feel like as adults, we have to do everything we can to protect our children. Whether you reported what was going on or not, if you saw that nobody took any action, then you need to make sure that somebody takes action to protect our kids.

• 11:07Lewis Howes?

  Right. So do you feel like he was in the wrong and the whole time and knew about this and wasn't willing to address it? Or just try to sweep it under the rug?

• 11:16Speaker 02

  It's so crazy because you hear a lot of mixed stories. I'm not sure what exactly Joe knew, but I feel as though the information he came out and said he knew, you have to do more.

• 11:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  Like you have to do more to protect our children. That's the number one thing. It's not football, it's not to protect the integrity of the university, it's to protect our children. So with the information I know that he had, he should have done more.

• 11:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  He should have done more.

• 11:42Lewis Howes?

  What was the biggest lesson you learned about yourself being at Penn State during that time? What did it teach you about being a better father or human being?

• 11:50Speaker 02

  A lot happened during my time at Penn State. Actually, I was one of the biggest recruits coming out of high school. I've had over 50 scholarships to go play football at pretty much every Division One school there was in the country. But when I got to Penn State, I faced two huge obstacles. You know, my freshman year, I ended up tearing my ACL, my MCL, and that ended my whole year for my freshman year. And it was really deflating, but I fought my way back from that. In a year's worth of rehab, I ended up making it back to the football field, the next training camp. Then I ended up breaking my leg.

• 12:28Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  In that training camp. And that's when I really hit a dark spot in my life, where I just felt like my dreams of making it to the NFL was out of reach that, you know, I probably wouldn't make it back to the football field because this is what people were telling me. This is what the doctors were telling me. This is what players who have seen these type of injuries was telling me that people don't make it back from these type of injuries. But what I think helped me through those times is when I first decided that I wanted to make it to the NFL, right? I visualized it so strongly, right? It was so vivid, my dreams of making it to the NFL. I felt the feeling that I would get making it to the NFL so intensely so that when these obstacles and adversities were thrown in my way.

• 13:12Speaker 02

  The feeling I got from making it to the NFL, the visualization was so strong that it was stronger than any excuse I could have made for myself to give up. So that really taught me the importance of visualizing your dreams and making sure that you sacrifice or go through whatever you need to go through to make your dreams come true.

• 13:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Then, of course, my daughter was born my junior year in college, which really gave me that added motivation because I said to myself, I'm in so much pain right now from all the injuries I'm facing. I'm in so much pain for feeling like my dreams of making it to the NFL is over. But I understood the type of environment I grew up in, right? I came from Wilmington, Delaware, which is an environment stricken with drugs and violence. It's pretty heavy there. And there's a lot of times where I was with people one night and then the next night we're wearing their faces on shirts to funerals, right? And I needed to make sure that whatever I did, I needed to provide a better life for my daughter than I had for myself.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  So having her, I think, gave me the extra motivation. It made me understand there was no turning around regardless of what I go through because my daughter could not live in the same environment I grew up in.

• 14:21Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Now, is your daughter's mom, is not your wife, right?

• 14:26Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 14:27Lewis Howes?

  Someone you met at Penn State?

• 14:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's actually somebody I met in high school. So I met her my senior year in high school.

• 14:33Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool. And things just didn't work out with you guys? It wasn't the right fit, it wasn't the right time?

• 14:37Speaker 02

  No, I think it was just, I was immature, she was immature. We was kids being kids and we had a kid. And, you know, we didn't, we didn't know what we were getting ourselves into. And I felt like the best thing for us was to go our separate ways because if we created this toxic environment for Leah, it wouldn't be good on her outcome. It wouldn't be good for her well-being. So we decided to go our separate ways.

• 14:59Lewis Howes?

  Is she, is the mother in Houston or where?

• 15:01Speaker 02

  No, she lives in Florida.

• 15:02Lewis Howes?

  Florida, okay. But your daughter's with you most of the time?

• 15:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, she just, it's her first year living with me in Houston, which has been pretty cool. No more weekend that is every day that. It's a lot of responsibility, but I enjoy it so much, especially because. Leah had stage four cancer, so there was a time in my life where I didn't know how much time I had with her. You know, I didn't know if I was gonna be able to experience all the things that dads are able to experience, watching their kids grow up. So to have her every single day, I put her in sports for the first time after she asked me, because she plays soccer. It's just been amazing to be able to wake up to her and go to sleep, tugging her into the bed.

• 15:38Lewis Howes?

  That's pretty cool, man. And so, when she was four, you guys got the word that she had cancer? How did you guys find out about this?

• 15:45Speaker 02

  So I put Leah into dance class during the offseason, and I had to go back out to Cincinnati, because we were living in Delaware for OTAs, and her big dance recital was coming up. So I had asked Coach Lewis if I could leave OTAs to go back and support my daughter, because that's something, you know, my parents always did for me. They was divorced, they had their issues, but every time I looked up in the stands at my games, they were sitting right next to each other, supporting me. Yup, right next to each other.

• 16:12Lewis Howes?

  Divorced?

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, divorced. It was pretty crazy to see.

• 16:14Lewis Howes?

  They weren't on the other side of the field?

• 16:15Speaker 02

  No, right next to each other. So I knew how much that meant for me to be able to look in the stands and see my parents there supporting me. So I needed to make sure I was there at my daughter's dance recital. So I went back home, and she went out to breakfast with her maternal grandmother that morning at IHOP. And I remember driving, I went back and I stayed with my then-girlfriend at her house, and she worked at the mall that was right next to the IHOP that Leah had went to breakfast to. So I went to go drop my wife off at her job. And as I was going home, I passed the IHOP, and I'm sitting at a red light, and I get a phone call. And it's Leah's grandmother, and she's telling me that Leah is not eating her food, she's

• 16:58Speaker 02

  acting very lethargic, that I needed to set up a doctor's appointment to find out what's going on with her. So I was gonna wait till I got home to call her pediatrician to set up an appointment, but when I was sitting at the red light, something told me that I needed to act now. So I asked her where they were at, and she said they were at IHOP.

• 17:17Lewis Howes?

  You were right there.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  Right across the street from IHOP.

• 17:19Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  So I made the U-turn, and I pulled into the parking lot, and when I walked into the restaurant... Leah was there sitting with her head down on the table. And when I was talking to her, she wasn't really responding. She was looking at me, but she wasn't responding. She had a really high fever when I touched her head. So I took her across the street to the urgent care. And I let them know what was going on, hoping that they were going to tell me it was an ear infection or something.

• 17:44Lewis Howes?

  A laryngitis?

• 17:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I didn't think it was something serious. But they didn't find anything wrong. So I started to tell them about leg pain that Leah had been complaining about for some months. But I thought it was because of gymnastics, her falling off the balance beam. And she only complained about it when I told her to clean up her room. She'd be like, oh, I can't, my leg hurt. So I didn't think it was anything serious. They touched her hip and she jumped from the doctor. And the doctor had told us that it could be probably a hip infection for her, you know, growing too big. And since I'm not the smallest kind of girl, I thought that was it. So they sent us to the children's hospital about a half a mile down the street. And they ran some blood work on her. They came into the room and told us it can be about ten different things. And the last thing they said was cancer.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  So I'm like, it can't be cancer because you probably would have said that first. But after giving her ultrasound, they found a tumor in her stomach. And then hours of more testing, we end up finding out that she had cancer.

• 18:40Lewis Howes?

  That day you found out?

• 18:41Speaker 02

  That day.

• 18:42Lewis Howes?

  Wow, so they found a tumor in her stomach?

• 18:44Speaker 02

  Right, up in her abdomen.

• 18:46Lewis Howes?

  Dang, how does this happen to kids so young?

• 18:49Speaker 02

  I have no idea. I have no idea. They said it wasn't genetic, right? And because she had neuroblastoma, which is a nerve tissue form of cancer that's usually found on your adrenal gland. There's no signs that you can catch it early on. Normally, kids are diagnosed at stage four. So I'm not sure how this happens to kids, but hopefully if we continue to raise awareness, continue to raise money for research. One day we'll find out so families don't have to experience the pain that me and so many other families experience.

• 19:18Lewis Howes?

  And stage four is the worst?

• 19:22Speaker 02

  Worst.

• 19:22Lewis Howes?

  Is there stage five or no? Stage four is the last stage? So you caught it at stage four? Which, if you wouldn't have caught it, how much longer would she have to live, essentially? What were they saying, like?

• 19:35Speaker 02

  I know when we, I'm not sure how long she would have had. I'm glad that I didn't have to find that out. But when we found out she had a fifty percent chance of beating the disease.

• 19:44Lewis Howes?

  Wow, just beating it by taking the chemo and the therapy?

• 19:50Lewis Howes?

  And you've been, you, well, the next year, two years, you guys were in the hospital. I mean, I remember this because you were on the ESPYS, right?

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:57Lewis Howes?

  Like four years, three, four years ago.

• 19:58Speaker 02

  Two thousand and fifteen, I believe.

• 20:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, three and a half years ago, you gave a speech and she was there, I believe she was there.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  Well, she just got done her stem cell transplant, so her white blood count was so low that she wasn't allowed to travel, be around people.

• 20:10Lewis Howes?

  But you gave an amazing speech for the Jimmy V.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, Jimmy V Award, first appearance.

• 20:14Lewis Howes?

  And, um, so what was that like? From the moment you heard that she had cancer? And how much longer was it until she went through her, her journey?

• 20:23Speaker 02

  It was a year and a half until she started the treatment, until she finished. And it was, it was tough.

• 20:28Lewis Howes?

  Three days a week?

• 20:29Speaker 02

  So she would go in for five days and she would get out if everything went well. Her ANC rose, which is basically the amount of white blood cells that are able to fight off any type of infection. So we're usually being there for about five days. We'll get a twenty-one day break and then she'll go back in for another five days. But it was a roller coaster because I didn't know anything about this world, right? So when the doctors are speaking to me, I feel like they're speaking to me in a foreign language. So I had to do so much research in a short amount of time to try to catch myself up to speed to the terminology that these doctors were using. And they had just came out with a new clinical trial for kids who had this type of cancer, which was called an MIBG,

• 21:11Speaker 02

  which is a radiation type of treatment where the radiation, you put radiation into the kid's body and it localizes. So it finds the, the cancer cells in the body.

• 21:21Lewis Howes?

  So it's not the whole body?

• 21:21Speaker 02

  Right, it attacks the specific areas that have the cancer cells. So they thought that this was going to be the treatment that was going to cure Leah. And so did I. So we started off with a couple of months of high dosage chemo. And then we gave her the MIBG radiation, which was the craziest experience I ever saw in my life. Because they put you in this room that's covered with complete plastic, right? And it's metal doors separating from you and the outside world. So nobody was allowed to go into the room with Leah for five days and.

• 21:51Lewis Howes?

  Five days?

• 21:51Speaker 02

  Five days.

• 21:52Lewis Howes?

  By herself?

• 21:52Speaker 02

  By herself.

• 21:53Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 21:54Speaker 02

  By herself. And then doctors would go in.

• 21:56Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  With the suits that astronauts wear.

• 21:58Lewis Howes?

  Shut up.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  So that they wouldn't get any contact with the radiation. So it was crazy not to be able to just hug her and let her know it was going to be okay because she had to be in there by herself.

• 22:08Lewis Howes?

  How old was she?

• 22:09Speaker 02

  She was four.

• 22:10Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow.

• 22:11Speaker 02

  She was four.

• 22:11Lewis Howes?

  Did you like?

• 22:12Speaker 02

  Thank God for iPads, because it kept her attention.

• 22:14Lewis Howes?

  So you could talk to her on?

• 22:16Speaker 02

  Yup.

• 22:16Lewis Howes?

  FaceTime or something?

• 22:18Speaker 02

  FaceTime, yeah. So she had an iPad that just took all her attention.

• 22:21Lewis Howes?

  That's it?

• 22:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:22Lewis Howes?

  She just watched movies all day, sat by herself?

• 22:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:25Lewis Howes?

  For five days?

• 22:26Speaker 02

  She was strong. She was strong.

• 22:27Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow!

• 22:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, she was strong.

• 22:29Lewis Howes?

  Were you just like watching her in another room?

• 22:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we had... So they had a little bench outside the room and there was a little square door inside the metal door where we would be able to look in and see what she was doing, but...

• 22:41Lewis Howes?

  Could she see you guys? Could you like wave at each other?

• 22:43Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 22:43Lewis Howes?

  Wow, man. That's intense.

• 22:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. It was crazy.

• 22:47Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow, that much radiation?

• 22:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:49Lewis Howes?

  What does that do to someone's body when they have that much radiation?

• 22:53Speaker 02

  Straight damage. The amount of chemo that they put inside your body, the amount of radiation is so much toxic that you're killing other organs while trying to kill the cancer cells.

• 23:05Lewis Howes?

  Can your body recover though? Can your organs recover years after?

• 23:08Speaker 02

  Not completely. Leah still has issues that she's dealing with from the amount of chemo that she got and the radiation. So you're gonna have lasting effects way past, you know, the day that you go into remission.

• 23:19Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 23:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:20Lewis Howes?

  But the goal is hopefully that the body will recover at some... and heal itself eventually enough?

• 23:26Speaker 02

  I mean, for me, to be honest with you, the goal was just to make sure that my daughter was alive.

• 23:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  Like, whatever we had to deal with, the ramifications of that type of treatment we were gonna deal with, but the main goal was to do everything possible to make sure my daughter was alive.

• 23:39Lewis Howes?

  Better be alive and have some issues and not last a day. Wow.

• 23:48Lewis Howes?

  I want to take a moment from this interview and talk to you about Organifi Gold. Organifi Gold is the answer to better sleep. You know how much I care about my body, my health, and optimizing my performance in life? Well, you need great sleep to recover and have the energy throughout the day with your high performance. With Organifi Gold, you just add it to hot water, you drink it, and you let your body soak up the benefits. Now, if you've ever gone days without getting good sleep, you know how frustrating it can be. You feel tired all day, you're...

• 24:18Lewis Howes?

  And it's hard to reach peak performance when you haven't slept. And Americans are spending fifty billion dollars a year on sleeping pills, guys. The irony is those pills don't let you get the rejuvenating rest that your body needs. And that's why the superior nutrition provided by Organifi Gold can help in so many ways. It's one of the reasons why I love using Organifi. It's so quick and easy, but it also tastes great. Right now, you can go to organifi.com and use the code LEWIS, that's L E W I S, at checkout to get twenty percent off your order. That's organifi, O R G A N I F I dot com and use the code LEWIS to get twenty percent off your order

• 25:02Lewis Howes?

  and allow yourself to get the rest you've always dreamed of. Check it out, organifi.com, use the code LEWIS. And now, let's get back to the interview.

• 25:17Lewis Howes?

  So how has she been doing now, four years in remission?

• 25:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's been doing good because that treatment didn't work. That treatment didn't work, which is one of the scariest things that I ever went through in my life because we ended up getting testing done and we found out that the cancer spread all over her body.

• 25:33Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 25:34Speaker 02

  That it had went from her hip to her shoulders, her chest, her neck, her skull. And that was probably the real moment when I came to the realization that I'm probably gonna lose my daughter.

• 25:45Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  Is I really had to have that talk with myself about what my life would be without her. And when I say this, it's not a joke, this is not something you see in the movies, but there were times where this was playing so many tricks on my mind that I could literally be looking at a family picture and my daughter would fade out the picture.

• 26:05Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  This is when I knew that something was going wrong in my head because my daughter would literally fade out of pictures. But thank God, just from playing football, you know, there were certain lessons that I learned, right? And the first thing they teach us when we play sports is it doesn't matter what the scoreboard says, right? You give it everything you have, no matter how tired you are, no matter how much pain you're in. You go until there's no more clock, there's no more time on the clock. So although the cancer has spread all over my body. I looked at my daughter and I told her that we still have time left. We still have other options and we're not giving up until they bury me or they bury you.

• 26:42Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  But we're gonna keep going at this, right? We're gonna fight for four quarters. So they ended up coming out with the new treatment that we put her in. The scary thing about this treatment was we couldn't choose what treatment she went into. All we can say is that, yes, we want her to be a part of the new clinical trial. And then the computer would randomly pick a treatment for her, which is arm A or arm B. Thank God the computer picked the right treatment because my daughter wouldn't be here today.

• 27:08Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  Because a couple of months after that, she ended up going into remission.

• 27:12Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 27:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a couple of months after, spreading all over the place.

• 27:16Lewis Howes?

  So she did a treatment for a couple of months and it worked?

• 27:19Speaker 02

  It worked.

• 27:20Lewis Howes?

  Wow, and it's been four years now?

• 27:22Speaker 02

  Four years.

• 27:23Lewis Howes?

  So you need to be five years until?

• 27:25Speaker 02

  Five years until we can be declared cancer-free, but we live our life like she's cancer-free already.

• 27:30Lewis Howes?

  Oh, that's good.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:31Lewis Howes?

  Wow, man. What is that like then, when you see her photo fade away, images of her? When you're, you know, it feels like time's running out?

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's scary because I still have a job to do. I still have to play.

• 27:44Lewis Howes?

  You were playing in the NFL?

• 27:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was in the NFL and I did not know how to balance all of this. When the story broke, a lot of people thought that I had got released because I wasn't performing at a good level and they did just sign me back, put me on the practice squad for insurance. But I talk about it in my book, that's not true. I actually was told that I was playing the best out of all the defense alignment, but because I was in Cincinnati and Leah was in Philadelphia, there were so many times where I just wanted to be with my daughter, to hug her and let her know it was gonna be okay because I was watching her change over FaceTime. I was watching her lose weight. I was watching her eyebrows fall off, being hooked up to all these different machines. And as a father, I couldn't hug her and kiss her to let her know it was gonna be okay.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  So there were times where I would just walk out of meetings because tears would just start flowing down my eyes as we're watching film or we'll be at practice and I have a 300-pound man in front of me, maybe two men, that's trying to block me and just blow me out the water and I have tears growing down my eyes because I'm not even focused on practice.

• 28:48Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  I'm focused on my daughter. And one time when I walked out of a meeting and I was sitting in a hallway. Crying, the GM saw me. And he knew I was supposed to be in the meeting. I knew that by him seeing me not in the meeting, it was it was gonna be bad. And that's when I knew that I was probably gonna be released because when you're playing at this level, you have to dedicate 100% of your time to this game or else you're just not gonna do good. So struggling with that was just, it's the hardest thing I ever had to figure out how to do in my life.

• 29:18Lewis Howes?

  How many years you played, three years, two years?

• 29:19Speaker 02

  No, five years.

• 29:20Lewis Howes?

  Five years in the league?

• 29:21Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:22Lewis Howes?

  And do you feel like, you also started to get some injuries too, isn't that right or no?

• 29:27Speaker 02

  So, this is the crazy thing, is my second year, I'm having a bigger role on the team, I'm playing really well.

• 29:35Lewis Howes?

  In Cincinnati?

• 29:36Speaker 02

  Yup. I dislocated my elbow against the lines, right? So I have to fight my way back five weeks from that injury. And I make it back to play San Diego. I did okay. The next game, we played the Steelers, and I blew my back out. And I ended up having to get back surgery. So I was done for the season. I end up flying home to Philadelphia to be with my daughter. And I got rushed to the hospital with blood clots in my lungs. And they told me if I didn't make it to the hospital when I did, then I probably wouldn't be alive. So all this started happening, right? And I just knew that my life was not going right. That my life felt like it was falling apart. And my wife talked me into getting back into church, because I never really went to church.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  I didn't have a strong foundation in church, but she just felt like I could find some guidance there. So we went to church. A couple of months later, we get baptized, right? We give our lives to God. We thinking that our lives are gonna turn around for the better. Two months later, Leah is diagnosed with cancer.

• 30:38Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  And this all happened within an eight-month timeframe. So I just felt like my world was falling apart.

• 30:45Lewis Howes?

  Wow. After that, did you stop playing?

• 30:49Speaker 02

  No.

• 30:49Lewis Howes?

  After?

• 30:50Speaker 02

  2014, I had got released, got picked back up on the practice squad. Then a week later, I got put back on the active roster, so I played out that season.

• 30:59Lewis Howes?

  After you had the back surgery and everything else?

• 31:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I made it back.

• 31:02Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  And then 2015, I didn't play that year. I stayed in Philadelphia with my daughter to help her finish the treatment. And then I made it back from that and got signed with the Texans.

• 31:13Lewis Howes?

  Wow. And then, one year with them, or?

• 31:16Speaker 02

  Third game of the season. Foot surgery, yeah.

• 31:19Lewis Howes?

  And now you're in a boot, getting this off soon, the second surgery, right?

• 31:21Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah.

• 31:23Lewis Howes?

  That was 2015?

• 31:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:25Lewis Howes?

  Man, so that was the end?

• 31:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, I, I made it back from that because I wanted to prove to myself that an injury wasn't gonna stop me from, from living my dreams. So I made it back from that foot injury with the, the Jets. But it was like, after every training camp, practice, when I went back to my room, I felt like I wanted to cut my foot off. Like I was in that much pain.

• 31:44Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  That I felt like I wanted to cut my foot off. And I realized at that moment that it was probably time for me to hang it up because I didn't want to impact my future well-being outside of football when I get older. I still wanted to be able to go out with my kids and play with them in the backyard. And I wasn't willing to sacrifice that for my dreams of playing in the NFL.

• 32:04Lewis Howes?

  Man, do you miss it at all?

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do, to be honest with you. But I think that we can miss things in life and not want it back. And I'm not sure if I really miss playing the game, or do I miss the routine, right, of always having something to do, of being in the locker room with your teammates, or, you know, being out in the practice field or lifting weights with them. I don't, I'm not sure if that's what I really miss, or just playing the game. And to be honest with you, I feel like I never got to enjoy playing in the NFL. Like I worked so hard to get there, but I never got to enjoy it because of injuries, because of my daughter's battle with cancer. So it's tough, it's tough, since I've been playing since I was 13. And I tell everybody, it's like a relationship, right? Where you, you dedicate so much time and effort into the relationship, and you never reach that level of marriage.

• 32:51Speaker 02

  And then you have to start all over, getting to learn somebody new. It's tough. And it's the same thing when you dedicate 13 years of your life to a career, and then all of a sudden it's over and it's, what now?

• 33:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 33:02Speaker 02

  What now?

• 33:03Lewis Howes?

  Did you feel like your identity was?

• 33:05Speaker 02

  It's tied up in sports.

• 33:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 33:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, because everybody says, oh, that's the NFL player, that's the football player. Now, I'm not the football player. So it was important for me to sit down and find out who exactly I really am. And I think that the great thing about me has always been level-headed. I knew I wasn't a football player. I played football.

• 33:23Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:23Speaker 02

  And right before I got drafted, I remember Oprah saying something that completely changed my life. And she said, if you don't know who you are before the money and fame comes, then you'll never know who you are. So I made sure that I knew who I was as a man before I made it to the NFL so that I didn't allow, you know, that identity of being an NFL player to consume me completely.

• 33:45Lewis Howes?

  Wow. How have you been able to reinvent yourself and your identity?

• 33:49Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:49Lewis Howes?

  Through the last few years?

• 33:50Speaker 02

  So it was just taking the lessons that I learned from football. You hear people say all the time that it's the journey, not the destination. And it's completely true because I look at it as climbing a mountain. See, the first mountain you climb is going to be extremely hard because you don't know what you're doing. You don't know the tools you need. You don't know the obstacles you're gonna face. But when you get to that top of the mountain, sometimes the view is what you think it is gonna be, or sometimes it's not. And you have to start all over and climb a new mountain. But the second mountain you climb, you're more well-equipped to climb this mountain because you understand what it takes in order to get to the top. And for me, that's what I'm doing now. Taking the same mindset that I took to become part of the 1% of athletes that ever make it to the NFL,

• 34:33Speaker 02

  to now create a new identity for myself and become the top in the world that I'm in now.

• 34:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, man. Wow. Oh, man.

• 34:42Lewis Howes?

  What do you feel like was the biggest lesson for you from football? That you've used to translate into this new world? Besides having the mindset and things we've talked about already, but what's... Because you went through so much in college and NFL, so much adversity. I mean, college seems like it was the craziest adversity ever, at least your senior year. But you also had injuries the first couple of years. And then the NFL, five years of injury over and over again, you never really got to enjoy it.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 35:09Lewis Howes?

  Sounds like you never got to enjoy much of football, except for maybe in high school, your senior year, when you were like, the man.

• 35:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:14Lewis Howes?

  Fifty schools were trying to recruit you.

• 35:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 35:16Lewis Howes?

  That was probably your highlight of football.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:19Lewis Howes?

  The most fun you had is probably when you were 18.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  Right. That's true. Yes. Man, now that you say it like that, it's true. I think the best lesson that football has probably ever taught me.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  Was that it's not over until it's over. What I said earlier about, you know, fighting until the clock hits zero. Because there's a lot of obstacles that we're gonna face in our lives. Whether it's on a football field, a basketball court, or just in life in general. And if you're not really willing to fight and give it everything you have as as long as you're alive, then what are you really doing it for? Right? And I feel like that's helped me with my success in football. It's helped me with Leah beating cancer and it's gonna help me with whatever I try to do in the future.

• 36:03Lewis Howes?

  What's your mission moving forward?

• 36:05Speaker 02

  Right now is definitely to get my winning playbook out to people all over the world and teach them the lessons that I've learned to help me get to where I'm at today. Whether it's through a book, whether it's through speaking engagements, my podcast, Instagram. Right now, my main objective is to put as much positivity into this world and let them know that, let people know that whatever struggle you're facing, it's possible to overcome.

• 36:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. What are some of the keys from the winning playbook?

• 36:31Speaker 02

  Man, it's so much in there. And probably the best thing is what I have on the back cover, which is to be proud of your scars.

• 36:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I like that.

• 36:39Speaker 02

  Because a lot of people look at their scars as a bad thing. A lot of people try to hide the pain that they're in. But I believe that your scars really show that you overcame whatever tried to break you. And the reason why I put that on the book was before, the night before Leah's seven-hour surgery. We're sitting in a hotel room and she looks scared to death of the surgery that she's about to have. Right? And I go to sit on the bed with her and I just start talking to her. And she start asking me questions like, Dad, are they gonna cut me open? Like, how big are my scars gonna be? Like, is it gonna be there forever? So I started to like, just pull up my pants leg and show her the scars from my surgery. Show her my scars from my back surgery and let her know,

• 37:24Speaker 02

  look, daddy been through this too. It's not to the same extent that you're about to go through. But I have scars from the surgeries I've been through. And because I'm able to sit here and show you them and tell you them, that means they're my warrior wounds. That means that whatever tried to break me, I overcame it because I'm here and I'm able to talk about it. So don't look at your scars as a bad thing. Look at it as when you get older, you're gonna have this scar on your stomach, on your chest from your broviac catheter to show people, look, I had stage four cancer, but I overcame it. And I'm not afraid to or ashamed to show these scars because this means that I overcame something that tried to break me. So that's probably the biggest message in that book is just to be proud of whatever you went through. It doesn't have to be physical scars.

• 38:05Speaker 02

  A lot of people go through mental scars. A scar is a scar. But if you're still here to be able to talk about it, that means you overcame something. So be proud of it.

• 38:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I think it's hard to trust someone who has no scars.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:17Lewis Howes?

  It's really hard to like, trust someone, believe in someone if they've never faced some type of extreme adversity, whether mental, emotional, physical, whatever it may be. I think that's when you really learn about someone. When they face a challenge.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  Definitely.

• 38:30Lewis Howes?

  You've faced a lot of them, man. It's crazy. What's another winning lesson for you?

• 38:35Speaker 02

  Something that you really talk about a lot and it's just being vulnerable. Allow yourself to be vulnerable. Because writing this book was very stressful because you had to relive certain moments of your life that you don't want to relive. But it was also therapeutic in meaning I was able to learn a lot of things, not only about myself, but about my daughter. So I told you earlier about how I used to be on FaceTime with her and want to break down because I couldn't hug her and let her know it was gonna be okay. But when we were on FaceTime, I would hold it together and I would cry when we hung up the phone because I didn't want my daughter to see me crying because as a man, I felt like we had to be strong. You know, we have to be that rock. As a football player, we're taught that warrior mentality that

• 39:18Speaker 02

  you can't let your opponents to see you being weak. So I took that approach with my daughter.

• 39:24Lewis Howes?

  Do you feel like it was hurtful or helpful?

• 39:26Speaker 02

  It was hurtful. It was hurtful.

• 39:28Lewis Howes?

  Because she never got to see you sensitive or emotional.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  Exactly. Like a lot of people come to me or write me on Instagram talking about how I'm a great parent, that I'm really a role model for parents. And although I appreciate that, there's a, I'm still learning how to be a parent. And I really dropped the ball when Leah was battling cancer because I wasn't vulnerable enough. So when I was writing this book and I told her about how I would get off the phone and cry, she said, Dad, I was doing the same thing. That when we hung up the phone, I would go in the bathroom in the hospital and I would cry because I wanted you to be here so bad.

• 40:03Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 40:04Speaker 02

  And you wasn't. And I realized that I had dropped the ball because if I would have allowed myself to be vulnerable and showed her that how bad it was hurting me, that I wasn't there, maybe we could have shared those moments crying on the phone together and letting her know that it was okay because I'm teaching her by doing this without knowing that you have to hide your pain, right? And what I really believe is that it's okay to not be okay. And I dropped the ball in teaching my daughter that lesson during that time, but since we wrote this book, I was able to learn that. So now I'll cry in front of Leah whenever I want to and we'll just cry together.

• 40:40Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  It's something I had learned during this experience.

• 40:43Lewis Howes?

  How old is she now?

• 40:44Speaker 02

  Eight.

• 40:45Lewis Howes?

  Eight. Does she cry more often around her now?

• 40:47Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, I let it go. Yeah, I let it go, yeah.

• 40:49Lewis Howes?

  Really? What are the moments that make you want to cry?

• 40:51Speaker 02

  It's interesting because it's a lot of things that I'm not able to handle that my daughter says now that she's older and she's able to express herself about this journey. So we're shooting a vlog for our YouTube and while we're shooting this video, Leah says to the camera that she's scared because she doesn't want to lose her life. Right? Because just because she's in four years in remission doesn't mean that we're out of the fight, that she has one of the high she has high-risk neuroblastoma, which means a lot of kids relapse from it. And when she said that, I almost broke down and cried. I didn't know what to say, to be honest with you.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  Because as an eight-year-old, there's no way that you should be focused on losing your life. Right? And normally I would just keep that to myself and just move on with it and not let Leah know the type of pain I was in when she said that or what was going through my mind. So I took her into my room and I just opened up and let her know, you know, how I was feeling because we had a big day of testing ahead of us because the doctors thought that the cancer might be coming back. So I let her know that I was scared, right? That I was nervous about the upcoming date and she opened up and she told me she was too, but we told her, we told each other that. Regardless what happens, we're gonna be ready to fight. We already beat this one time, we'll beat it again. And now that we had this talk, we're not even gonna be nervous no more.

• 42:19Speaker 02

  Now that we spoke about it, we let it out, we understand the mindset that both of us have. Whenever we get in this frame of mind, we're gonna think positive and try to get ourselves out of this bad thoughts that we're having.

• 42:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, as opposed to living in fear, you talk about the fear.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 42:32Lewis Howes?

  You share it, you express it, and then it's not as scary anymore.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. It's scary when you bottle it up, and you have to deal with it on your own.

• 42:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 42:39Speaker 02

  When you know other people are experiencing that emotion. Knowing that you're not alone is probably the biggest relief that anybody can have. Because a lot of people feel like they're just fighting battles on their own. And when I saw the way that our story of Leah battling cancer touched people. It showed people that, yo, you're not the only person that's battling cancer. You're not the only person who's scared that you might lose your child. I'm going through it too, but we can go through this together now that we know we're not the only people fighting.

• 43:06Lewis Howes?

  What advice do you have to parents, both fathers and mothers of young kids who are going through some type of extreme adversity? Whether it's cancer, or a sickness, an illness, an injury.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  Right.

• 43:18Lewis Howes?

  What advice do you have for them from the lessons you've learned now?

• 43:21Speaker 02

  The first one would definitely be to allow yourself to be vulnerable, right? Second is, don't blame yourself. The first thing I did when Leah got cancer was, how was this my fault? What did I do wrong? Why did I allow her to eat certain foods? Why didn't I see any signs earlier, right? I just started blaming myself for what my daughter was going through. And something she said to me early on didn't help. Because when I first took her to the hospital, they was poking her with all these needles for testing. And I remember, it was probably the second day in the hospital. She just looks at me with a room full of doctors and family, and she goes, "Dad, this is all your fault." And it ripped me apart.

• 44:03Speaker 02

  It ripped me apart, and I just had to walk out the room and get my mind together. Because although I knew it wasn't my fault, I felt like it was my fault. But I realized that, you know, although I felt like I broke my promise that I made to her when she was first born, that I was gonna do everything I could to protect her. There was nothing I could do to protect her. But there was something I could do in that moment, and that was to allow her, that allow her to know that she wasn't alone. That we were gonna fight this battle together. So it was just be vulnerable and understand that it's not your fault and that you can make it through it. That it's gonna take a team effort. That you're gonna have, it's gonna be days where you feel like giving up. It's gonna be days where you feel like you're weak and you don't wanna, you don't wanna push anymore.

• 44:47Speaker 02

  But allow yourself to have those weak moments. Don't allow it to turn into a weak mindset. Because there was a lot of times where I wanted to give up. Where I wanted to throw in the towel and say, man, enough is enough. I can't keep going through all these struggles that I'm going through. But I didn't let that moment turn into a mindset. And I ended, I decided I was gonna continue to fight.

• 45:05Lewis Howes?

  Wow, I love that. Don't let the weak moment become a weak mindset.

• 45:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 45:10Lewis Howes?

  That's powerful. You can have the weak moments.

• 45:12Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:12Lewis Howes?

  But just don't let it ruin your life.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Right.

• 45:14Lewis Howes?

  Or consume your mind forever.

• 45:16Speaker 02

  Right, yeah.

• 45:16Lewis Howes?

  But that's what I think vulnerability allows us to like have a moment. Okay, as opposed to trying to be tough and strong all the time. We can be vulnerable for a moment. Maybe a few moments or a few days, whatever. But then it's like, we gotta get the mindset back on track.

• 45:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. And that's what I think the fight gave me a different meaning to strength. Because I really thought being strong was to not show any signs of weakness. But now I feel like strength is showing people that you have your weak moments. Because so many people are afraid to do it. That it takes a strong person to say, look, I'm not okay. I'm not gonna wear this mask to try to make you feel comfortable. Because a lot, tell you this, it's interesting because I'm at an interview yesterday. I'm at an event. And this lady walks up to me and she goes, "I lost my daughter to cancer five years ago." She was 24 years old. And then after that, I lost my mom and I lost my dad, right?

• 46:13Speaker 02

  So I asked the lady, I was like, how are you handling all this stuff that you've been going through? She takes a deep breath and she looks down at the ground. And then somebody runs over and says, oh, she's doing great. She's doing really great. And starts rubbing her back and the lady lifts up her head and says, you know what, I'm doing good. It's like, no, you're not. I saw the deep breath you took when I asked you that and you was about to express what you were going through, but because this woman has walked up to you and told you you was doing great and didn't allow you to answer that on your own. You're now not going to open up about the things that you're facing, so now nobody can help you. And it's like, so many people do that. So many people wear these masks acting like everything is okay

• 46:57Speaker 02

  to try to make other people more comfortable. Because you said you were great to make her more comfortable because she said you were great, not because you actually were great. And until we allow ourselves to open up, until we stop putting out into this world that you have to wear a mask and wear a smile when deep down inside you're falling apart. Then a lot of people are going to be fighting battles that nobody knows anything about, so. That's probably one of the biggest things I want people to get from this interview is to understand you don't have to always be okay.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  What do you and Leah talk about now? Everything, boys. She's eight. She's eight and she just told me that she has her first crush. Shut up, eight-year-old? Killed me. Come on. It killed me, but you know, I had to put on a smile because Oh my god. I want to have that open communication, right? I don't want to act like I'm angry that she told me that she has a crush. But then she started asking me if, you know, she can give him candy for Valentine's Day coming up. I'm like, yo, you're hurting my heart right now. I only can take but so much, but. You've been through a lot of pain already. Exactly, this is more painful than anything I worked through, right? But it's just, um, we talk about everything, uh, because we have a very close relationship.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  We had it before she was diagnosed with cancer and it, it only made us grow a stronger relationship. So just teaching her about life, because now kids are growing up in an environment where the internet or YouTube is teaching them so much about life. And if you don't get on top of things before the computer do, the, the computer's going to raise your kids. And I can't allow that to happen with my daughter.

• 48:30Lewis Howes?

  What's your dream for your daughter over the next fifteen, twenty years? And what's your dream for the next fifteen, twenty years?

• 48:36Speaker 02

  For my daughter, my dream is, for her is to make sure that she lives her dream. To let her know that she's capable of doing whatever she puts her mind to. And I think that she's already proven that to herself with her battling cancer. Letting her know that, you know, she's stronger than she ever thought she truly was. And if she takes that approach to anything that she sets out to do in life, then I'm pretty sure she accomplishes it. And I'll be right there supporting her and cheering her on. For me, my biggest dream right now is to just try to live in my purpose and teach people that no matter what you're going through, that you're still in the game. And you can just follow my struggles. I've been through so much in my life in a short amount of time. But I realized that those storms, every storm that I went through, right?

• 49:21Speaker 02

  It wasn't meant to break me, but it was meant to build me. That life wasn't always working against me, it was working for me. Because if I didn't go through the struggles I went through early on in life, I wouldn't have been able to cultivate the mindset that I had to help my daughter through her battle with cancer. So I can only imagine what the struggles of watching my daughter go through, the struggles compared or combined with the struggles I went through, what that's preparing me for in the future. So I'm just excited to see where life takes me.

• 49:49Lewis Howes?

  Well, your book's out right now. It's called Still in the Game: Finding the Faith to Tackle Life's Biggest Challenges. Make sure you guys pick this up. I've got a couple of final questions for you. But where can we connect with you online? Where do you hang out the most?

• 50:02Speaker 02

  I hang out a lot on Instagram. You can find me at StillInTheGame. I really built a pretty cool community where people are very open and really share the struggles that they're going through. And we just try to help each other, you know, through our struggles and motivate each other in order to overcome the obstacles we're facing. And I'm starting to have a bigger presence on YouTube, just getting more videos out there and just sharing the knowledge that I've been able to gather from all the struggles that I've been going through. And that's also Devon Steele.

• 50:29Lewis Howes?

  Devon Steele on YouTube. Devon Steele or Still in the Game on Instagram?

• 50:31Speaker 02

  It's at Still in the Game on Instagram.

• 50:33Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool. Make sure to follow you there. This is called The Three Truths. If this was your last day and you could share three final truths with the world, lessons that you'd want the world to have, that you've learned over your whole life experience. And this is all people would have to remember you by. What would be those three lessons or three truths?

• 50:54Speaker 02

  Wow, that's a good question.

• 50:58Speaker 02

  Number one would be just to let people know that

• 51:03Speaker 02

  failing in life doesn't make you a failure. That's important for people to understand that you have to learn to accept failure, but never accept defeat. Because on your climb to the top, it's gonna be a lot of failures you experience, right? But the people who are successful understand that failures come with success and they don't allow those small failures to defeat them mentally or physically or spiritually. They continue to move forward. So number one is just learning to accept failure, but never accept defeat. The next one is just to understand that no matter what you're going through, it's important to always have fun. One of the lessons that I learned when I was playing Little League football. And I played on a really good football team. We was having an undefeated season, but

• 51:48Speaker 02

  one game, we were playing against the Bulldogs. I remember this because it was hurting. But we was losing and everybody was walking around with their heads down, showing signs of defeat. I remember our coach pulling us up and he says, "I want to tell y'all something. If there's one thing that you, I want you to learn from me is this. Whenever you stop having fun, you already lost a game." Right? And when he said that, it hit me even as a 13-year-old because I felt like he was talking more about life than he was about football. That when you stop having fun with life, then it's over. And I recognized this when Leah first got diagnosed with cancer because I never left her bedside for two weeks when she first got diagnosed.

• 52:33Speaker 02

  One day, I decided to leave and go back to my girlfriend's house and just get my mind right. And I was sitting on the couch and her roommate had a bunch of people over at her house. And somebody told a joke and the whole room burst out in laughter. And I started laughing and within five seconds, my brain told me to stop laughing. And what did I think was so funny when I had my four-year-old daughter fighting death in the hospital? How could I be enjoying myself in this moment? But then I thought about that lesson that my, my little league coach taught me. And I said, if I allow myself to keep this same mentality, there's no way in hell that my daughter is gonna beat this disease. That I'm gonna make sure we have fun regardless of the circumstances we're facing right now.

• 53:16Speaker 02

  That's why people saw me posting videos of us dancing when she didn't have no hair, I didn't have no hair, her painting my nails and me wearing wigs. I wanted to show her that we were gonna have fun regardless of what we were going through. So that would be number two is just, don't allow your current circumstances to dictate the emotions that you feel in life. And the last one would be, to fight for four quarters or overtime if you have to. Because I went through so much leading up to my career in the NFL. Five, three surgeries before I even made it to the NFL, five major injuries before I made it to the NFL, and two more surgeries once I got to the NFL, right?

• 54:00Speaker 02

  But the reason why I made it to the NFL is because I continued to fight despite what I was facing. Even with Leah battling cancer, her first treatment didn't work. And we could've just gave up and thrown the towel once the cancer had spread all over her body, but we didn't. We kept fighting for four quarters and she ended up going to remission just three months after the cancer spread all over the place. And even with that, I talk about how we almost lost her again a couple of months later when she was diagnosed with VOD, which is a, a disease in the liver from the high doses chemo. It damaged all the nerves inside of her liver and a lot of kids pass away from that. But when that happened, I told Leah, this is the definition of overtime, right?

• 54:45Speaker 02

  We thought we were out of the woodworks because you went into remission, but we didn't know we had another quarter that we had to fight.

• 54:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 54:53Speaker 02

  So right now, we have to do everything we did in the first, second, third, and fourth quarter and do it in overtime because it's the people who are able to outlast the pain that they were going through who eventually win the game. The people who are able to push even harder than their opponents that win the game. So people just need to, when they have a dream for themselves, it's just, to say to yourself when you see this dream for yourself that you're gonna fight for four quarters in overtime if you have to and that you can't win the game of life from playing from the sideline. You can't wait for other people to come win this game for you. You have to have the courage to get off the sidelines and get back into the game.

• 55:30Lewis Howes?

  My man, I like that man. I want to acknowledge you for a moment, because I can only imagine what it'd be like being a father. First off, being a father, and the stresses of having kids, but then, and the joys, but also the challenges of being a father, going through your own emotional struggles, physical struggles, and the physical struggles of your daughter, and what that would be like. So I want to acknowledge you for staying in the game of yourself, you know, allowing yourself to work through the emotions, the challenges, the adversity, and keep loving yourself and loving your daughter the way you do. It's been a big inspiration for so many people around the world, man, and to do it with fun. I think it's really important you said that. Not many people say that their three truths is fun, but it's something I live by as well.

• 56:13Lewis Howes?

  It's just like, when I'm not having fun, it's like, it's hard to manifest your dreams. When you're just serious all the time, you can have fun and still be focused. You know, you don't need to be serious and like stressed. And I think it's important to remember that we're here, we don't know when it's gonna be over, it could be over in a moment. Let's enjoy the best of it, let's enjoy the most of it. So, I'm glad you shared that. I acknowledge you for everything, man, and I'm really proud of everything you're up to, and make sure everyone gets this book, Still in the Game. Check it out right now, follow Devin on Instagram, Still in the Game as well. Let them know what you thought of this interview. And the final question is, what's your definition of greatness?

• 56:50Speaker 02

  Wow. For me, I think my definition of greatness is just living in your truth. You know, not living your life based on what other people think you should live your life like, not doing things based off what other people tell you is possible, is not possible. Greatness is dedicating yourself to your life purpose and doing everything you can to make that come true.

• 57:11Lewis Howes?

  My man, Devin Still. Thanks, brother.

• 57:13Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 57:13Lewis Howes?

  Appreciate you, man.

• 57:17Lewis Howes?

  And there you have it, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you are new here, please click on the subscribe button. It's absolutely free over on the podcast app, on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or anywhere else that you can listen to podcasts. We'd love to have you come back and listen to more. We've had some incredible guests in the past month alone that have blown people away, and we've got-

• 57:39Lewis Howes?

  There's a big guest coming up, that's right. Make sure to subscribe. If you've been here for a while and you have yet to leave a review, please leave a rating and a review and let us know what you think. We're always looking for ways to make this better and improve your life. Again, a big thank you to our sponsors. And if you enjoyed this, make sure to share with your friends. Remember, no matter what you faced in your life, you may feel like something has completely ended, but it's just bending. It's just bending and guiding you into the right path, into the path you're supposed to be in. And as Joseph Campbell said, "We must let go of the life we have planned so as to accept the one that is waiting for us." I love you so very much and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.