Carl Nassib joins us to do his first interview since coming out publicly in the NFL. His story is a testament for everyone to look deeper and realize that we all share similarities in this life of truth, discovery and triumph. In hopes to inspire the youth and bring further awareness about the LGBTQ community. Being the first does not mean having to stand alone.

• Carl felt he had a huge obligation to the LGBTQ community to come out publicly and tell his story. He did not come out publicly to break barriers. It wasn’t until 4 years ago when he actually realized he was Gay. He struggled with the idea that he needed to be someone else’s priority.
• He came from an Athletic family of 4 kids, his Mother, father and siblings were also in sports.
• Carl never lacked in Confidence, due to his mother who alway’s pushed him to be his best, keep a high standards.
• He never puts too much stock in things or people that put him down in life, only focuses on the things that brings him happiness.
• While in College at Penn State was the nation leader in sacks.
• Before becoming a Raider, he played for the Browns but was later cut from the team. This fueled his fire to play better and be the best.
• He learned early on to not focus on being like others but to be himself.
• Carl is the first active NFL player to come out publicly as gay, which coming out to his family was already stressful, however with the support of family and friends, this eased his decision to go public.
• He feels that if he can just help a few kids who are also finding themselves in a similar situation than it would allow him to sleep better at night.
• Teammates Darren Waller, Maxx Crosby have played a pivotal role inspiring Carl by telling their individual life stories in a team meeting. Choosing to come out publicly in the NFL has proven to be even more stressful, most would believe it to be the opposite.
• Your confidence shouldn’t be based on what other people say if you think you’re amazing because of what other people say, you don’t have confidence.
• Be confident seven days a week.

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Oliver Davis shares the story of how his love for football and the willingness to put in the work every single day eventually became the basis for his successful private coaching practice, and how setbacks can be blessings in disguise on your journey to doing what you love. Learn about Oliver’s 4D philosophy and why something as small as a 1% improvement each day can change your life completely.

• Growing up was competitive for Oliver, especially being the youngest kid in a large family. It was a challenge moving to Georgia after living for years in Texas, but overall it was fun.
• At the time, moving from a small town to another state was a big change and very disruptive to Oliver’s life and expectations, but looking back, it was the best move his family could have made at the time. 
• In many ways it was good for Oliver. He went from being a big fish in a small pond on the football field, to playing with guys that were bigger than he was, so he had to learn how to adapt.
• He remembers being frustrated with having to sit on the bench a good portion of the time, but Oliver always believed that if he put in the work he would get his shot.
• At the end of Oliver’s sophomore season, everything changed. His new coach came in and changed everybody’s mindset around grades and what it means to succeed in life beyond just excelling on the field.
• Oliver never made it to the NFL, but he knew that chances were slim being 5’8” tall and was more than happy being able to give it everything he had when he was on the field. Now he carries that same mindset into the world of business.
• The first real message that stuck with him came from his coach during his sophomore year who put grades first. He taught Oliver that he could be the next guy to come through and make a difference.
• It’s easy to think that some people are meant to be certain things, but some people work their way to being the best, and why can’t that be you?
• Oliver’s lowest point was in being barred from playing football during his senior year. He remembers going to a number of different camps and working with a number of different teams just to keep football in his life. He leaned on his discipline and took a major chance that eventually resulted in landing a position in the AFL.
• Oliver’s father was always a positive example of hard work and consistent effort in his life, and he demonstrated the pattern that Oliver could emulate and bring to the field.
• Once Oliver’s family was on the way, he knew he needed to start thinking about making money outside of what he was earning in the AFL. He got a job merchandising for Coca-Cola and quickly figured out a system that grew his route rapidly, born out of his mindset and discipline.
• Oliver started running into a ceiling on what he could earn and achieve at that job, so he pivoted into brokering and logistics. He didn’t know what he was doing, but he had the mindset of success and doing what it takes to figure things out. The whole time, football coaching was always on Oliver’s mind.
• He decided that he was going to make a go of turning his passion into a business while still working full-time. Oliver asked his boss for a probation period to give him some runway, and put up some videos on Instagram and jumped into private coaching.
• It’s a process to find your purpose. Some things aren’t going to work for you and that’s okay. 
• If people were really disciplined and didn’t just talk about it, and stayed true to what they want they would get what they want. The common thread through every story of success is they never gave up.
• Oliver never expected to be an entrepreneur, but all his experiences and training have moulded him to be the leader he is today. 
• Daily discipline determines destiny. The things you do every single day will lead you to where you are going to be.
• If you think you’re worthy of the things you want, honor that every single day. If you can get 1% better every day, you will eventually achieve all the goals that you’re working towards. It will just be a matter of time.
• If you’re struggling right now, it’s never too late to get yourself in order. There are multiple examples of people who achieved their success at the age of 50. Always know that no matter where you are now, you can make the choice to change and improve things.
• Be optimistic, think positive, and write things down. You have to be the first person to believe in yourself and set the foundation for you to build on.
• Oliver’s comeback story shoutout goes to his wife. She was the one person that never doubted him and could see the vision he had. 

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Laura McKowen shares her story of discovery and pain in struggling with an alcohol addiction, and how nearly losing her daughter brought her back from the brink. Find out how Laura learned the way to find purpose in the everyday little things that make up life, why gratitude outweighs pain, and why the struggle with addiction is the common peril that connects everybody.

• Laura grew up in a suburban town in Colorado. Her parents were divorced and she spent a lot of time around people who drank. As a consequence of her parents separating, she became hyper-attuned to everyone else’s emotions. The demands of the external world eventually became too stressful to handle and they manifested internally.
• Her earliest memories of struggle were of contorting herself around her father’s tendency toward anger. She experienced that as low self-esteem and being whoever the other person needed her to be at the time.
• If you don’t have a sense of identity for yourself and your sensation of being okay is determined by the outside world, you’re not going to feel okay.
• Laura was told by authority figures in her life that she was tough and resilient because she didn’t project her pain on the surface. She tried to live up to that perception, which only drove the pain deeper.
• We develop false selves when our needs are not getting met. We need these false selves on the surface to interface with the world, but if you don’t have a stable core underneath, you are always performing which leads to addiction because the pain can be too great.
• We often build our entire lives around this performance. To denounce it is to blow up your life, so we avoid doing that.
• Laura’s grandmother comes to mind as one of her earliest teachers, but she found many of her teachers in books. She had always been attracted to Buddhism and has been drawn back to Pema Chödrön many times over the years.
• Her greatest moment of adversity was hitting the wall with her drinking. After waking up next to a stranger instead of taking care of her four year old daughter, she knew she had a major problem. Despite her outward appearance of success, Laura put in jeopardy the most important person in her life and she couldn’t reconcile those two things.
• Extracting herself from the emotional, physical, and psychological addiction was the hardest thing she had ever done. It was the dark night of the soul that lasted a year and a half.
• In that time of purgatory, Laura got a taste of sobriety. Just getting through a day without drinking was the challenge she had to overcome and it took a few months of effort before she had a tough day that didn’t require a drink to get through.
• Being an author, podcast, and CEO are all parts of the expression of Laura’s potential, as much as the little things.
• Your purpose doesn’t have to be as big as your destiny. It can be the moment to moment events of each day and how you choose to show up for them. It’s often the unseen actions that feel the best.
• Being in purpose is a practice, but what we practice gets stronger.
• “If you bring forth what is within you, what will bring forth will save you, and if you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” -Gospel of Thomas
• When you spend time with people who have been through something hard, nothing surprises you anymore. What’s extraordinary is the ability to let something go and make meaning of it.
• At the beginning of Laura’s reckoning with her alcohol addiction, she realized that we all have some addiction. It’s the most ordinary story of humanity, and she realized that she wasn’t alone in her struggle.
• The struggle is the common peril that connects us.
• Gratitude is a blanket over everything Laura experiences now. She’s grateful specifically for being okay in any given moment, even when she isn’t really alright. Being satisfied in an everyday moment is enough.
• What is enough? We all feel the disease of more and it will erode all your achievements and happiness if you let it.
• Darren practices self acknowledgement to avoid the never ending race of needing to always be more. Acknowledge yourself for the progress you have made.
• Defining your own level of success is important for feeling happy. Don’t measure your success against other people’s standards.
• Everyone has to do this work, but for people in recovery the stakes are a bit higher so it’s more present and clear in our lives.
• Writing your thoughts and feelings down has been proven to improve health factors and doing it coaxes things from the subconscious to the conscious, which is the only way to release them. If you can maintain an attitude of curiosity, you can start to reveal things to yourself. 
• Verbalize what scares you to someone you trust.
• Laura’s comeback story shoutout goes to her daughter. She has taught Laura what it means to love someone without reservation. Without her, Laura wouldn’t have learned how to talk to herself. Being a mother grounds her to her true purpose.

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On this episode of “Monday Motivation Raw,” Donny talks about the “Four C’s of Mental Toughness,” and how these four practices/qualities can make your mind strong, and your life beautiful.

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Kelsey Chittick talks about the emotions and pain of losing a partner, and how the process of grieving and allowing herself the space to feel and release her emotions showed her that healing is possible. She learned that when you share your pain with the people that support you, it gets better.

• Kelsey says she grew up living a charmed life. She spent her childhood in a small town in Florida with a close-knit family. Kelsey focused on sports as she got older and eventually met her future husband in college.
• This gave her a strong foundation for the rest of her life. Her grandfather was very spiritual and her mother and father allowed Kelsey to choose her own spirituality, as long as it ended in love. Her mom was way ahead of the game, diving deep into self-improvement and meditation well before it was cool.
• She didn’t struggle as a child in the same way that some others have. Kelsey’s brother dealt with addiction to drugs and alcohol, but Kelsey’s first real experiences of pain didn’t happen until she was in her 30’s, after she had kids and when her husband passed away.
• Her first real teacher was her grandfather. He taught Kelsey that she had everything she needed inside of her to heal and be who she wanted. Kelsey says she married her husband because he was so similar to her grandfather.
• We are given a vehicle and must decide how to drive it. Kelsey’s husband Nate used his football career to get people to pay attention, and then used it to have real conversations with them.
• Two years before Nate died, Kelsey started to feel that something was off. She could tell that he wasn’t the same and something was wrong. Kelsey later went on a spiritual retreat to Jamaica and on the last day she got the call that brought her to her knees.
• On the flight home, Kelsey made the decision to be there for her kids and do what she needed to do to be present. Now meditation is the most important part of her routine. She still gets anxious and fearful, but she fights to be alright everyday.
• You have to do it until it stops feeling weird. Yoga and meditation can be challenging when you begin but if you keep at it, eventually it becomes easier.
• Kelsey’s lowest point happened around a year after her husband died. After all the logistics were finalized, there was just the hole that was left. The nights with the kids were the worst. She was not prepared for their pain and it took two years for Kelsey to figure out how to support them, which for them was sitting next to them without saying a word.
• At the beginning of Kelsey and Nate’s relationship, his brother was 13 years sober, and they committed to sitting with the awful. After Nate died, this became about embracing the grief and feeling the emotions until they passed. Kelsey allowed herself to feel the tsunamis of grief as they came so she could move on.
• Kelsey has always loved to write and be on stage. The experience of losing her husband gave Kelsey the opportunity to write about something truly meaningful, and the book she wrote after Nate died was born out of the journals she wrote afterward.
• Compared to the pain of the last four years, Kelsey feels like she’s on drugs, metaphorically speaking. The joy outweighs the pain now and life feels more bright. It wasn’t until recently that she could see the beauty of it all.
• The power of journaling is that it gives you the ability to get things that are eating you up out of you.
• Writing things down is the great gift of handing something over to something bigger than you. One benefit of journaling is you see your growth over time and when hard things happen, you get the mindset of having dealt with hard things before.
• We’ve all been through hard times, and they need to be honored just like the good times.
• There is a difference between meditating, yoga, and having a meditation practice, which is something that Kelsey realized only recently. When doing anything public like a podcast, Kelsey used to get herself fired up but now she tones things down so she can settle herself.
• Her morning routine starts with a meditation from Sam Harris. If you’re just getting started with meditation, start with something in your ear. It could be either music or someone speaking but it will help you. After a while, you can get to sitting in silence. That's great.
• For Kelsey, emotion needs motion, so she moves her body a lot through walking and yoga. Yoga has helped her process a lot of the emotion and pain that came from the last four years.
• Kelsey is proud of making it through everything. When life is simple and easy, you don’t think you can handle the hard times. Kelsey was tested, and she and her kids made it through.
• We don’t have a lot of choice about what happens to us, but we have a huge choice on how we deal with what happens and how we define it, and a lot of that comes from the language we use. Kelsey decided to change the story she was telling herself about her life and reframe it.
• What you speak becomes your truth, and your truth becomes your reality.
• You can go back and change one thing in your life without changing everything. She doesn’t want her son to play football, but she wouldn’t go back and change the fact that her husband did play because then she wouldn’t have had the life she did have with him.
• If you’re struggling right now, find a community and people who will hold you accountable who are also joyful and will keep you moving. Do one thing better each day and find support. Time heals but how you get there is up to you.
• Kelsey’s comeback story goes out to everyone in her town, who showed up in ways that are hard to describe after Nate’s passing, as well her friends and family who carried that pain with her.

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Today is Darren's 29th birthday and the start of the season - yet a great day to have that beginner's mind...

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David Meltzer shares some of the most powerful lessons he’s learned in the process of losing over $100 million dollars and nearly losing his life and family, and then rebuilding his life from scratch. Learn about David’s philosophy on faith and money, and why gratitude and humility are the keys to accelerating the process of creating wealth and happiness in your life.

• David grew up in the world of “not enough”. He had no shortage of love and happiness, but his family certainly struggled with money. This shaped him as he got older because, in his mind, the only missing piece to his life was money. That gave him a drive to achieve everything he could, but it also gave him a major chip on his shoulder.
• The story of not having enough had positives and negatives. In a healthy way, it taught David to keep his options open and be creative when figuring out how to solve problems in his life. During the pandemic, the ability to see opportunities where other people can’t has been a superpower.
• The problem with growing up with not enough is that you are always asking for crumbs, because you don’t know any better. The size of the world you live in is so small when you’re poor, and you focus on what you don’t have rather than realizing how limitless life really is.
• Many people that achieve big results in their life still feel unhappy because they are constantly chasing the things they don’t have. You need to find a way to be enough for yourself.
• When David lost everything, he was almost relieved. He had this extraordinary gift to sell but he never really felt like he earned it. He bought things he didn’t need to impress people he didn’t like. Losing everything allowed David to reassess his approach and appreciate what he has.
• When you appreciate what you have, you add value to it and expand it. When you give it away, you now have a bigger space to receive even more. Appreciating what you have must be part of the process.
• Receiving starts with our belief system. The moment that David shifted his paradigm and realized that he was already happy and healthy, he just needed to identify how he was getting his own way.
• Where are you putting all your energy? Put your emotion and energy into the relationships that are feeding you instead of the people bleeding you.
• David was abused as a nine year old. Pain and trauma are going to happen to everyone, it’s part of living, but it’s what we do with the pain that’s important. Pain was trained into David to be a propeller.
• Faith was David’s ultimate GPS because he had faith that anything that happened in his life was an opportunity to grow, learn, and accelerate instead of a punishment.
• Everyone has a different definition of meaning and happiness that’s unique to them. The way that you reconcile that with your successes will determine how much you can give and how great an impact you can have.
• David’s mom and two grandfathers were the biggest influences in his early life. One lesson he learned along the way though was that just because someone loves, that doesn’t mean they give good advice.
• Two years before David lost everything was the greatest moment of adversity. He almost lost both his life and family after years of going down the wrong path in life. On the edge of taking his own life, David realized that he didn’t hate his father, or his best friend, or his wife, he hated himself. 
• Of everything that David teaches, the two things that have had the most impact are gratitude and to ask for help. The same lessons he learned before he was 3 years old.
• If you say thank you before you go to bed for the next 30 days it will change your life.
• No one knows everything, but we often pretend we do. There are only two types of people in the world: people who don’t know and ask for help, and arrogant people that pretend they know and cause separation and offense and pain. Come from a place of humility in everything you do.
• David’s early story was that he wanted everyone to love him, but that’s changed to simply loving himself. When you try to get people to love you it turns people off.
• Gratitude changes the way that we see the world and turns what we have into enough.
• People need to know their what, who they can help and who can help them, how to get it done through the lens of gratitude, and then apply the why within. The more you get done, the more you will be profitable, passionate, and personable in what you do.
• David is always grateful for his health. He spends an hour everyday on his health because when you’re healthy you get as many wishes as you want. When you’re unhealthy, you have only one.
• Happiness is the greatest virus. All you need to do is witness giving and happiness is released.
• If David were to give his younger self advice, it would be the same thing that’s currently on his nightstand: ask for help. Asking for help is the fastest way to accomplish something, but it also allows people to feel important and special. Be ignorant and humble, and ask for help.
• The key to life is to be interested, curious, and creative. Ask people open-ended questions and be more interested than interesting. When combined, it accelerates the process of creation.
• Meditation is the practice of being quiet so that you can acquire a higher vibration. It’s the one practice that has changed David’s life more than anything else.
• David’s comeback story shoutout goes to his mom and wife.

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On this week's episode of "Monday Motivation Raw," Donny taps into the 1st Agreement from Don Miguel Ruiz's "The Four Agreements.” He shares some powerful lessons and insights on why it's so important to be impeccable with your word, and how this one agreement will totally transform your life.

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Ryan Clark shares the lessons he learned from his near death experience and how facing death allowed him to realize how precious life really is. Ryan also tells the story of losing one of his oldest friends to suicide in college, and how that changed his perspective on life and why you shouldn’t wait to be a better friend and person to those people in your life, because they aren’t always going to be there.

• Ryan didn’t grow up rich but he doesn’t have a story of childhood adversity that many people do. Even at an extremely young age Ryan wanted to play football, to the point of preferring to watch a game in 8th grade instead of kissing his then girlfriend.
• Ryan’s earliest memory of pain involved one of his oldest childhood friends. His friend took his own life and it was Ryan’s first time dealing with the death of someone close to him.
• Up until that point, Ryan considered himself tough. At his friend’s funeral, he recalls how angry his sister was and how confused he felt. It was his first true memory of pain.
• Up until that point, you think you have an infinite amount of time with the people that are close to you. Thinking back now, Ryan wonders if the questions his friend was asking him were actually an attempt to get Ryan to ask him the same questions. To start a conversation that could help.
• The emotion he dealt with most was regret and being upset at himself. It was the first time Ryan started to ask what kind of friend he is. This experience of pain allowed Ryan the introspection so he didn’t have to relive the same relationship with his son.
• The person who mentored Ryan the most was his oldest first cousin, Gary Lewis. He would talk to him constantly about life and showed him that football is not just about the glamorous lifestyle, it’s about the discipline and focus you need to get the things you want from life.
• He taught Ryan that even his time is valuable. Gary was the first man other than his father that had a huge impact on who he became.
• The adversities that Ryan has dealt with ended up being the greatest thing for him. He recalls a day where he felt like he was dying. After losing 20 lbs over a couple of weeks Ryan began shaking uncontrollably and truly believed he was going to die. He began praying for his wife and his family, and upon accepting his fate his shaking stopped.
• The doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him for weeks until he called a doctor in Pittsburg who ran a test. Two hours later Ryan was in the hospital and went through five procedures over the course of the weekend.
• Ryan had a Sickle Cell Crisis and by the time he got to the hospital, his spleen was four times larger than normal.
• One of the key lessons Ryan learned from his experience is that not everyone is built the same. The truth about concussions in the NFL was coming out around this time and it gave Ryan the perspective to understand the anxiety and depression that other player’s were experiencing.
• All these experiences brought lessons in the loss for Ryan. Death can teach us how to live.
• Everybody’s comeback story is unique to them and it’s not so much about the story as what you take from it. It’s important to value the stories of other people instead of trying to compete with each other.
• When telling his story, Darren tries to relay the message that you don’t have to be perfect to impact the lives of other people in a positive way.
• The story doesn’t stop when you overcome a trial. Everyday you have to wake up and defeat the obstacles in front of you. Even with millions of dollars, you have to overcome your bad habits, some of which get amplified by having money.
• We all want our story to be bigger.
• Ryan is grateful to simply be alive. He’s also grateful to God for keeping his family safe, especially his mom. He’s even grateful for the trials he’s gone through, as a football player and off the field, and having to grow up once his football career was done.
• Losing his first passion led to Ryan having to find a new one. Now learning about the world and how he can help has become his new passion.
• For someone who’s stuck, the first thing to realize is you shouldn’t be embarrassed. It’s never too late to start, but don’t start too late. It doesn’t matter what age you are, you can start feeling and being better right now, but don’t put it off.
• Don’t wait to feel better. Take action now, and you will feel better. You can’t control how people see and value you and you can’t control how you see and value yourself, just start.
• Ryan’s comeback story shoutout goes to people who are still in their story and actively working to be better right now.

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For this week's Monday Motivation, Darren reflects on the power of self-acknowledgment.

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