I believe you and you're listening to Ted talks daily today on the show, Russell Wilson, I'm a big fan. He's the Super Bowl winning quarterback of the Seattle Seahawks. And Wilson has more than just physical trainers. He has a mental conditioning coach from that coach and his own experiences. He has learned to turn around negativity and the difficult circumstances of his life to cultivate a calm mind. He uses what he calls neutral thinking, and he explains it in his Ted 20-20 talk.

It's a useful approach to overcome the pressures of painful times. June 8th, 2010. Russell Wilson, fourth round pick to the Colorado Rockies, baseball, I'm fired up one of the highest moments of my life, every kid's dream to be drafted by a Major League Baseball team, June 8th, 2010. June nine, 2010. The line goes flat. My dad passes away. Highest of the high, the lowest, the low. Just like that, my dad laying on his deathbed, just tears running down my face and you know what I do next and my mind racing memories, flashbacks, moments, early mornings, getting up, taking grounders and throwing speed outs and deep post routes to my brother and my dad to to early morning car rides, a baseball to my dad being the third base coach.

Fast forward to the championship high of winning a Super Bowl, holding up the Lombardi trophy and the emotions and excitement of it all in blue and green confetti all over the place. And knowing that you just won the Super Bowl to a year later, the pressure of the game and the ball in the one yard line.

And this is the chance to win the game. And it doesn't work in however many millions and millions of people all over the world watching and having to walk to the median. What do I say next? What do I do? What do I think? Being married at a young age and just coming out of college and everything else to, you know, shortly after know, marriage, not working out and realizing, you know what, life happens, life happens, life happens to all of us.

Loss of family members, divorce, fear, pain, depression, concerns, worries. When you think about being super positive, yes, I'm positive by nature. But positivity, you know, it doesn't always work because when you're down 16, nothing NFC championship game and people are like, Russell, we're not going to win this game. And like, you know, that's not a great situation right now. And when you're facing cancer, when you have things you have to deal with or finances and this and that, like how do we deal with it?

And it's hard to be positive in the midst of it all. And what I definitely knew was this, that negativity works. One hundred percent of the time negativity was going to get me nowhere. I start saying to myself, new or his Merce's every morning, new beginnings, new starts. And despite hardship and pain and worries and one to get through it. And how do I do this? I started thinking about a car. You know, you guys have drive a car and get a stick shift and you want to shift to neutral.

Well, you go from first gear to second gear all the way to fifth. Well, you got to know how to shift to neutral. And I needed to shift to neutral immediately before I crashed. Sitting there after the Super Bowl, I had a decision to make while I let this define my career while it defined my life. Hell no. But I found out was this the mindset is a skill. It can be taught and learned. I started 10 years ago training my mind.

This guy named Trevor Moambe, my mental conditioning coach, and he's been with me for 10 years. And we've been best friends and partners ever since. And as athletes, we train the body. We train ourselves to be able to run faster and throw farther and jump higher and do these different things. But why don't we train our mind? What do you want your life to look like? Write it out. You know, talk about it. Say it.

What's our language? What is our language look like? Watch these highlights, Russell, when you're in your best moments, what does that what does that look like? And be that live that sound like that the best free throw shoes. They don't worry about the shot. They just miss they they think about this shot, this putt, this throw this first down. Then I met this kid, Milton Wright, 19 years old, he had cancer three different times this day when I went to go see Milton, Milton was frustrated.

Russell, I'm done. I don't want to do this anymore. It's my time to go. And said Milton, I start telling the story about my dad and how my dad used to say, Son, why not you? Why don't you graduate early? Why don't you play pro football and pro baseball? Why not you? Why not you want to you said Milton. Why not you? If you try t cell therapy and you try this and it doesn't work, you know, you won't remember.

So Milton got a smile on his face. He said, you know what? You're exactly right. Yes, I do have cancer, Russ. When I can either let this kill me, not just physically, but I can also let it kill me emotionally and mentally, and I have a choice right now in the midst of the problem, in the midst of the storm to decide to overcome. One of the questions I always get asked about neutral thinking is this does that mean I don't have any emotion?

I always say absolutely not. Yeah, we have emotions. We have real life situations. We have things to deal with. But what you have to be able to do is, is to stay focused on the moment and to to not be super emotional. It's OK to have emotions, but don't be emotional. When people look at me, they see that I'm the highest paid player in the NFL. They see that I have the girl and Sierra, that I have the family and this and that.

But I still have real life situations. We all do. We all have, you know, sadness and loss and depression and worries and fear. I didn't just get here, what's the truth and how do I come through this better? And that's really kind of how my mind started shifting. It was not just on the on the success of it all or the failure of it. It was it was on the process like, you know, what is the next step?

How do I do this right here? Right now? You have a choice to make in life. And for me, when I was young and I didn't have much, I made a choice. I made a choice that I was going to believe that great things were going to happen. Then I was going to have my mindset right and I was going to have the right language and the right things to think about, which helped prepare me for the date because I'm just human.

I just have ability to throw the ball a long way and run around and make some cool and fun throws. And it makes some people smile. But the reality is, is that I still have pressure. I still have worries. I still have fears. I still have things that happen. I still have loss. Positivity can be dangerous, but what always works is negativity and never want to live in negativity. So I stayed in neutral. I kept my my shift in neutral.

And so that's where I lived. That's where I've been living ever since. PR ex.