In this episode, Nikou introduces season 3 of the podcast by talking to former NFL players Reggie Walker and David Carter about failing forward and how to find your best self through trials, tribulations and adversity.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Mental health is something everyone needs to maintain and suffers from from time to time.
You become very aware that football carries a 100% injury rate, they tell you in the NFL that it's not an ‘if' thing, it's a ‘when' thing. As soon as you're thinking about not getting injured, that's your time to get out of there, because to do the job you need to be in a very special place.
If anything's bothering you, you shouldn't be on the field. With anything other than what's in front of you on your mind you will get hurt, as soon as you hesitate.
Any professional coach will tell you that sports are 90% mental and 10% physical. There are some monsters out there that can bench-press the world and can outrun a cheetah, but they'll be cut and out of league next week. The ones that last are the ones who have their mental down, they understand what their strategy is, what their tools are, what their weaknesses are. It's the same in life too.
You need to be regimented, you need to know you're putting the best possible product out there. You're competing each and every day, so you need to eat right, manage your relationships in and outside of the building.
Sports is all about relationships, the rest of the team could win without me and don't absolutely need me, but I can help to win more. So you have to be a good leader, a good follower, support people, gain their trust. You need to have a set of tools to bring to the game, not just one.
There's a lot of weight on you because it's a game of inches and there are 53 players on a team and only 11 on the field. I've seen guys get cut because they were around the guy who made the mistake!
Keeping the negativity from the press, the internet and the commentators – I have a special place of dislike for those guys, when you're watching a game, you can't ever tell definitely who made a mistake in a play.
When you tell yourself ‘I'm not gonna do this or that' you're kinda telling yourself to actually focus on these things. You need to say ‘I'm doing this solely and nothing else matters'. Meditation helps with that.
I've always brought curiosity to what I do and get excited About exploring something different, finding out something new about yourself and seeing where that takes you.
It's all about the setup. I've gone through a lot of abuse – mental, physical, sexual. I do belly breathing because it's hard to control thoughts popping up, but you need to get ...

Interview With Reggie Walker And David Carter: Athletes Are Humans Too

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