[00:00] Tom Ryan: Take the time to do the things you love to do. I write them out. They’re written out. I got a list of many things I love to do, cuz I think if we don’t plan them, right, they’ll never happen. If we don’t at least bring them from the subconscious to the conscious, we’ll never do them. And we’re just caught every day, doing the things we need to do and life becomes mundane.

[00:19] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Welcome to another episode of success through failure. This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr. and today I bring you Tom Ryan. Coach Ryan is the head wrestling coach at the Ohio state university. He was a two-time NCAA All-American wrestler and NCAA finalist for the university of Iowa. And he’s also been the national championship coach in 2015, Ohio State won their first-ever NCAA team championship and wrestling, besting, Iowa besting, Penn state, and some of the best teams, all of the best teams out.

[00:53] He has embraced what he calls chosen, suffering throughout his life to become elite at what he does and is the title of his book is chosen, suffering, becoming elite in life and leadership. He’s also lived through what he calls unchosen suffering. He and his wife Lynn suffered the loss of their healthy five-year-old son Teague in 2004.

[01:15] And he addresses that. The interview here today. And in this fire, they found their faith and they found a process to push through pain. Tom’s passion is to transform ordinary lives into elite champions. He’s the most humble leader you’ll ever meet. This man is so well read. He’s so incredible in terms of his ability to create champions and also his ability to impart his wisdom to you.

[01:39] And to me, here we go. Let’s get into this fascinating interview with the great Tom. You wrestled your first couple years at Syracuse, you were having a good career, your big brothers on the team you decided to transfer to Iowa. Why did you do that? Especially knowing that you had an all American or returning all American in your weight class.

[01:59] Tom Ryan: As a young person, I used to go to camp south. The university of Iowa. My big dream was to wrestle there. I had an older brother at Syracuse, IRA looked up to, I really liked gene mills and the program was doing well, seemed like, you know, Syracuse would be a great spot. Wasn’t too far from home, but deep in my soul, I felt drawn to wrestle for coach Gable.

[02:19] And after my sophomore year, I was two Intuit nationals. And I, I listened to your Ted talk, right? This, this longing right to attain certain things. And it was different than driven to me. It was more of just right. We were drawn to it. And at the end of my sophomore year, I decided that I was gonna pack my car and transfer and walk on at the University of Iowa.

[02:40] And, you know, Jim, like, it didn’t matter who they had. And I wasn’t concerned about not making the team or, you know, it was about if I’m gonna be my very best, then my best chance at that was to be under the training of Dan Gable. That’s why I left.

[02:54] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: You talk a lot about the process, like focusing on the process, not the outcome.

[02:58] And that sounds like what you’re talking about there is like, you didn’t. You know, you wanted to be the best you wanted to be elite. You wanted to win an Astro championship, and this is the best opportunity to do that. But you really didn’t care. You just wanted to go and be the best you could be. You also talk about how Gable didn’t really talk about winning championships.

[03:17] He just talked about getting better every day. And you even said at one point in the book and I highlighted this quote, you said even the perfect plan executed perfectly. Can come up short. So you truly were focused on the process of just becoming as elite as you could be. And that was the place where

[03:33] Tom Ryan: you had to do it.

[03:34] Yeah, I think we can trick ourselves into thinking that the perfect plan guarantees things. And the reality is there are no guarantees again at a young age, you know, I was going to these camps, really, Jay Robinson, you know, I’ve been really fortunate to be around people that were really influential that were great leaders.

[03:50] Not everybody is as fortunate as we are and not everyone is gifted with the opportunities that I know I was great family. Dad could swing it to get me out to a one-month summer camp. And Jay Robinson was the one that really helped me connect. I would say the work-reward relationship, you know, and it really became a foundational piece of this doesn’t guarantee you anything, but certainly the harder you work, typically, the Luckier you get.

[04:14] So it’s really Jay S in a young age that, that had me really focusing on the. And the love of the work and the process, right? No guarantees, you know, quite frankly, in my 30 years of coaching, 15 years as a competitor, there were very few seasons that ended where I attained what I had set out to. Right.

[04:34] Very few. If my life was defined on the number of seasons that worked out the way I wanted them to. MIH would be defined as a loser but that’s not the definition that I abide by. And

[04:47] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: I just wanna pause for the listener. Can you hear like another man say this, but actually apply this to your life? Like, can you actually think about where you’re at and maybe you’re not in a coaching position where.

[04:58] I mean, it’s out there. You’re, you’re seeing, you know, your win loss record is out there for the world to see. And how many national champions, all Americans, your final placing at the national championships and the big tens, like it’s all out there for the world to see, but you for listener, can you apply this to wherever it is you’re at in your life?

[05:13] So Tom, you make the trip cross country from Syracuse, literally. And you talk about this in the book and for the listener, I, I, you gotta buy the book. I’ll have the link in the action plan, but you talk about this cross-country trip overnight. You drive to Iowa. You show up, you crash for a few hours on a couch in one of your new teammates’ apartments, and you go to your first workout.

[05:34] Talk to us

[05:35] Tom Ryan: about that. I think all of us as humans, we have these events that we would consider line in the sand, you know, events line in the sand moments. And this was certainly a line-in-the-sand moment for me at this time of my life. You know, I’m a sophomore in college, I’m know, been on my own for a while.

[05:49] You know, I’m going into my junior year. And you know, I walk in this wrestling room at the University of Iowa. It was, it was a summer, it was a warm summer day. It was Carver Hawk, eye arena, right? The wrestling facility, there is low kid on the second floor. I knew that again. I spent a lot of time there.

[06:03] Because of summer camps and I’m sitting in the corner and I’ll never forget coach Gable walking up to me and saying, who are you? Like, I don’t recognize you. What are you doing in my wrestling room? And I just said, my name’s Tom, and I’m gonna be transferring here next year. And then, you know, not to embellish, but I, I don’t remember any like really deep conversations with coach cable or if any conversations with him for another six months after this one.

[06:30] And he basically just said to me, If you can use these words, you’re not gonna get better sitting. So he said, go wrestle these two. And he pointed to these two guys that I didn’t know who they were. You know, there was no internet at the time. Right. I mean, life was just different. I mean, now, now every wrestler knows everyone, right?

[06:46] I mean, I didn’t know, you know, I knew Doug Stryker was there and I watched him wrestle and he was a very good top wrestler. And he was a fifth in the country. He was a sophomore and I knew I would have to wrestle him at some point, but these two guys, they were named the Steiners. One was Terry and one was Troy and they were both smaller than.

[07:03] So I grabbed them and I started working out with them and you know, about an hour into the drill. I got really tired, but you know, I was fortunate that Gabriel yelled time. And of course I thought practice was over cuz time means right time it’s over. And it was actually the warm-up. And I watch again on your Ted talk on failure and I mean, you know, there’s a fine line, right?

[07:26] I’ll just play on words between fail and failure. Like fail is that workout was a fail because I thought I was prepared for it and I wasn’t, but it definitely wasn’t a failure, you know? And I know these guys that write the programs on these gaming, you know, the kids are these gamers they’ll say fail level up, fail level up.

[07:45] Right. They never say fail. Right. Because it was a fail. You did fail, you know, but you’re not a failure. And I think that workout was brutal. I was broken. Uh, I left crying. I was a 21-year-old man. Couldn’t pick my head up to drive my car back to where I was staying, you know, again. Right. You don’t make decisions when you’re down.

[08:06] I was so down, so I let myself cool down. And you, you self-assess and you tell yourself the truth. The world is full of people that tell themselves lies. Right? We constantly lie to ourselves. I know I have many times, but when I get somewhere that’s productive, I tell myself the truth and I have truth tellers around me.

[08:23] In this scenario, I just told myself the truth. You got the living snot kicked out of you. They were better fit than you. They felt stronger than me. They were very technical on top. I couldn’t get out. So you just assess what happened and then you slowly work at it and I wasn’t gonna leave. I was gonna stay.

[08:44] And if I was gonna stay, I had to put my best self out there. And these guys gave me truth. And boy did I. But there’s a lot of listeners right now

[08:52] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: saying, but Tom, couldn’t the truth just as easily have been you’re in the wrong place. Get back in your car and drive east

[09:01] Tom Ryan: for about 15 minutes. I thought about going home, but this wasn’t like, I wasn’t driven.

[09:08] I was driven, but I was drawn to this. Right. It was just something greater. I really loved it. I knew I needed this. I needed every single weakness to be exposed. Right. So I could okay. Plug this hole, plug that hole. So I did believe even though I got beat really badly, I did believe that it wouldn’t happen forever.

[09:31] Three weeks later, after a couple of three, a days, right. Three a days almost every day, three weeks later, I held up longer. You know, or I got to a leg three more times than I did the time before, or I got two scores, you know, rather than none. And you hold on these little nuggets that bring you faith and hope that things are getting better.

[09:56] And I held onto them. And within six months, you know, the tide had completely changed. What do you

[10:03] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: say to the listener? Who’s sitting there listening to this and they’re thinking. I’m there, or I’ve experienced that and I’ve walked away from the thing, right? Maybe it was six months ago and they applied for the new job or they tried to start this business, or they tried to heal this relationship or to get off the couch and run the 5k or whatever it is in their world.

[10:26] They’re in this dark place. What do you say to the person who feels that right now in their life? And maybe it’s as intense. Maybe it’s not as intense right now, but what do you say to that?

[10:37] Tom Ryan: Yeah. The first thing I would say is you gotta be real with yourself. Gotta tell yourself the truth. I knew how much work it was gonna be.

[10:44] Do I really want this? You know, I have plenty of guys. I’ve coached plenty of people through the years that say they want something. Right. And then when it’s time to show up at six. They don’t show up at six. Right. So I think be just being deeply honest with ourselves about this is what it’s gonna take and am I willing to do it and then starting small, right.

[11:05] Just start small, right. Just, you know, get there at six and take a small bite out of what you’re doing. Right. Put a plan together. You know, I knew I needed work on bottom. I knew I needed to be better, more fit. I knew I needed to be stronger, you know, and then would help me also, you know, once you come to terms.

[11:21] I’m willing to do this, and I know what it’s gonna take, and I’m not lying to myself at what it’s gonna take. You know, you jump into a world of people that will pull you through, you find a running group, right. Or you find a group of people that are gonna hold you accountable. And. At the time there, there were a number of people, you know, when I was really fortunate, Jim, that about two weeks of, uh, in, of living there in Iowa City.

[11:47] And there were right, there were nights in the car, there were nights in a hotel. Terry brands, as you know, is a committed person to what he does. He asked me to live with him during the next season. So I moved in with him right away and I lived with him for three years and we really fed off each other.

[12:01] And it was really a blessing. the other thing I would say, Jim, we have this, this term at Ohio state and. For the guy that’s down on themselves. I mean, there’s a clear distinction between being hard on yourself and down on yourself, right down on yourself. Doesn’t help you at all. Right. Being hard on yourself.

[12:18] Heck yeah, you better be hard on yourself, but being down can take you to a place you don’t want to go. So, you know, for the people that are, you know, some things have passed, you buy right. You had the opportunity to seize it, move past it. Be mad at yourself if you want to for not seizing it, but certainly don’t beat down on yourself. Get the next one.

[12:39] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And so you commit to this, you go all in, you took that risk, you went out there and you end up having an amazing career, but it didn’t end the way you

[12:50] Tom Ryan: wanted it to. I mean, it was a fail, right? My goal was to go there and win two titles. I had a red shirt in two years left. So my first year I went there, they tried to pull my red shirt, but I wasn’t allowed to cause at the time I didn’t get released.

[13:03] So the rules didn’t allow me to wrestle that December. Of my first year there, I had beat pat Smith who ended up winning the nationals that year, what his, I think his second title, but I couldn’t wrestle. And then my next two years I was third and second, my goal was simply right to win it. And I never want it.

[13:22] Does it hurt? Well, yeah, of course it hurts what I can say with, with absolute honesty that by no means, do I consider myself a failure? I really have very few regrets. Sure. There were things I could have done more of, but I really have a few regrets. I’m definitely not gonna be at my, my deathbed, you know, wondering, well, you know, if you would’ve chased that big dream, what would’ve happened?

[13:44] Well, I did. And it didn’t. But I have no regrets.

[13:48] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: You talk a lot in the book about mindset. We’re gonna take a bunch of quotes and kind of put ’em together here into kind of one paragraph. Cuz I kept grabbing these different quotes from the book that I thought were really interesting. And I’m gonna read ’em all kind of together here.

[13:59] We must fight to reclaim our head space. What we allow into our mind must be well vetted because over time it’s reflected in our actions, our daily choices mirror, our thought. There’s a battleground. That must be one hour after hour, day after day, week after week. It’s a never-ending fight. The six-inch space between our ears must remain vigilant to war daily. What do you mean by that?

[14:23] Tom Ryan: So summarizing that is basically right. We’ve gotta be the landlord of our minds, right? For any of those real estate investors out there and owners, you gotta be the landlord of your mind. I was really blessed to grow up in a home where I was believed. My dad believed in me. We had seven kids.

[14:42] I was never told I couldn’t. I was told I couldn’t do certain things, but never do things that I had set my mind out to. And I think for me, I was really blessed that that seed was never planted in my mind. That allowed me to think of what I couldn’t do. And I think a lot of young people have to fight that because there’s for some of us, right.

[15:02] There’s a negative voice. That’s overpowering the positive voice. I didn’t have. I was really fortunate that I didn’t have to overcome that. So being a landlord of, of our mind, right? We have to be very careful. One of what we look at these days, people can look at things far more damaging than you and I could at the time.

[15:20] The internet, right. Pornography will completely destroy our mind. Right? That’s factual. It’s more addicted than heroin. We’ve gotta know what we’re looking at and we’ve gotta know what we’re letting in. And we’ve gotta realize that we’re the conductor of that we wanna, you know, make our lives something that we want them to be.

[15:37] So being very careful of what we let in and then look, we all let things. I know it’ll be the landlord of my mind, but sometimes I see things I shouldn’t, and I think about things I shouldn’t, but then we need to know that landlords can evict too. And the quicker you evict, the quicker you change direction, the better chance you have of it not manifesting itself in our lives.

[15:59] So just controlling the space is just so important, right? It’s the engine, all things in our lives. And we’ve gotta know that it’s that. And we gotta know it’s a battle. It’s not an easy battle.

[16:08] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Specifically, what can you do? Like, are there habits, are there routines that you do that you’ve seen others do that the listeners can do to make sure they’re getting the right stuff into their

[16:18] Tom Ryan: brain on the way to, and from work?

[16:20] What I choose to listen to is chosen. So it’s coming into my brain. I’m gonna process it. So the music I listen to the words I listen to, the books I read, I don’t even watch scary TV shows. I really try to protect my thoughts. Because I know that ultimately there’s a, there’s a chance that I’ll act on them.

[16:39] Right. And I write, I write a lot. I think writing is really important. Just free writing, not bullet point. Writing journaling. Yeah. So journaling, I think journaling every day. Right? Give it 10 minutes before you go to bed or first thing in the morning. Right now I’m going through a book called build to lead.

[16:53] I have a life coach, right? I’ve got people around me that are pouring into me. I mean, I’m 53. I still need people around me that are strong voices. Right? The world is way stronger than we think. I mean, the world is powerful and the world wants to consume us. So we need people that understand that and help us fight it.

[17:10] So I’m reading a book right now called build to lead. It’s a 365-page book that every day my team’s going through it as well. My freshman, I go through it with them every day you read it’s about, uh, probably a three-minute read, and then you just write whatever emotion, whatever thought, whatever scenario it, invokes and just freely write about it.

[17:30] Uh, so that’s what I’m going through right now. And I get my student-athletes. All my freshmen are doing it as well. We come together once a week and we share and we talk about it and it’s been powerful and good for. And me

[17:41] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: any other tactics, habits, routines for protecting that

[17:44] Tom Ryan: space. I’m a big fan of suffering.

[17:47] I think suffering is critical. And I think the kind we choose is the kind we can control you. Can’t control on shows suffering, which is the impetus of the book, which I called it chosen suffering, cuz it was UN shows, suffering that leveled me, you know, the Steiners leveled me, but they didn’t level. UN shows and suffering really leveled me as a man.

[18:07] So my routine just, just work out six times a week, make yourself realize that you’re not that tough and that you’re vulnerable to things that are really hard. And when things get really hard, you really learn a lot about yourself. I believe in getting up early. You know, I think getting up, getting a good start to the day matters.

[18:24] I believe habits of writing down your, I love twos. I think that’s critically important list out your, I love twos, right? Like all the things you love to do. I think the world we get consumed with just the things that we need to do. I need to do this. I need for work. I need to go to this. I need to do that.

[18:38] I. Like take the time to do the things you love to do. I write them out. They’re written out. I got a list of many things I love to do, cuz I think if we don’t plan them, right, they’ll never happen. If we don’t at least have them in our, bring them from the subconscious to the conscious, we’ll never do them.

[18:53] And we’re just caught every day, doing the things we need to do and life becomes mundane. Boring and painful too painful. All of us have lots of things we love to do. I write out my beliefs right? What is your belief system? Every one of us have a belief system. It’s summarized in the things we do.

[19:10] Right? Whatever things I’m doing in my life, typically. You could say that they’re the end result of a belief system. Why are you doing them? You must believe something what’s causing you to do them, you know, kind of taking a step back, you know, doing some of those things has been really beneficial for me.

[19:25] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: When I read the book, you said that you teach your team members to create a two word sentence, like a mantra. Why do you do that? Maybe. What are some examples about that? How do you coach them to use that?

[19:36] Tom Ryan: It’s I think a psychological right thinking there’s truth. Right. So it’s not like this philosophy that can’t be validated with any data.

[19:45] I think human beings can think about things in chunks, in small, right in small chunks. And when things are hard, our mind can unravel. We just go all over the place. Right. And we let our thoughts take us to places that are just, you don’t have time to think that much about it. So like my mantras keep working, right?

[20:05] When things are getting really hard, it’s simple, like stop thinking about you’re exhausted and you’re not good enough, whatever these thoughts are in our life and just slow down, you know, for some guys, keep moving my feet. Keep my hands me. So anything that just kind of brings everything to a fine point.

[20:23] So that’s kind of how mantras just help us unravel the madness and stick with something simple.

[20:31] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Quick interruption. Hey, if you like what you’re hearing, be sure to get the notes, quotes and links in the action plan from this episode, just go to JimHarshawJr.com/ACTION. That’s JimHarshawJr.com/ACTION to get your free copy of the action plan. Now, back to the show, you talk a lot about your priceless. Like what’s priceless to you. Talk about this concept of one’s priceless or my price.

[20:57] Tom Ryan: It’s interesting. I was 36 years old. The first time I ever really deeply consciously thought about a price. And then Webster says, definition says, it’s so precious.

[21:09] It’s value. Can’t be determined, right? That’s priceless. There’s no value to it. And I was 36 when I was truly broken and I was broken as you know, by the loss of my five-year-old, healthy son to a massive heart attack at the dinner table. You know, I went from having six people to dinner table, right? Four children, six people to dinner table living the most amazing.

[21:33] To being completely broken in an instant. Everything that I knew to be true about life was taken. I believed you will yourself to things. I believed you control the things in life. I had never been part of a situation in my life where I didn’t control it. Sometimes I controlled it and failed, but it was in my control pain had never dropped me to my knees by something that I was not in control.

[22:03] And this did that night. It was February 16th, 2004. He passes out my wife calls 911. I’m pumping on his chest. I’m doing CPR on him. The ambulance took 14 minutes to get. They grabbed him. They rushed him to the hospital. My wife and I followed my three children, stayed behind. Jordan was 11. My first son, my second son, Jake was eight.

[22:25] Teague was five. My third son and my daughter was three Mackenzie. Three of them waited the house, my wife and I followed the ambulance. We were the hospital for an hour and a half. When the surgeon came out and said, he’s sorry, he couldn’t save him. Now I’ve gotta drive about 10 miles back from the hospital to my house.

[22:42] And those kids are there. And I can tell you. That when my son Jake saw us pull in the driveway, well, all three of them came running out of the driveway and he asked me. Where is Teague and I’ve been around a lot of successful people like you are right. This field, I’ve been really blessed to be around successful people.

[22:59] And many of them say that the most critical gifts needed is common sense why they climbed high in the whatever venture it is. They’ve climbed high in some of them build skyscrapers. Some of them are soil experts in Vegas and build Vegas hotels, whatever these people are, they say common sense. So this eight-year-old kid asked me a common sense question, which was where.

[23:20] Well, that became my priceless because I did not know. I only knew he was gone. I did not know where he was. I knew he wouldn’t be at dinner. I knew I’d never hug him again. I knew that he, my other boys would never be partners, training, partner, all the things of his dad’s. We envision, I knew that wasn’t gonna happen.

[23:37] So my priceless became so precious its value. Couldn’t be determined. Where is he? And there’s two options. The way I saw it, option one is that there’s a God, an option. Two is there is no God. And find that answer became my priceless. There is a God, or there isn’t, there is a meaning behind life, or there is random chance behind life.

[23:59] It doesn’t mean there’s not meaning and random chance. And it, and I’m not saying science and God do, they can go hand in. But it’s for me, it was what do you put above the other? I put God first I put science second. I didn’t turn to God because it was easy. I didn’t turn to God because I’m weak. I didn’t turn to a God because I’m blind.

[24:19] I turned to God because the evidence showed that there’s as much of a chance of there being a God as there is that me and you and everything else could come from nothing. Both of them took. I chose God.

[24:34] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Yeah. And you did your research. I mean, this is, you know, most people experience something like that.

[24:39] They lose faith, right. And they maybe even move away from faith. And for me, you know, when I went through the loss and my, my sister and her kids really went through the loss a few years ago of losing, you know, her husband, their father, but. You know, it was a loss for the whole family and we’re all scarred from it.

[24:53] And for me, it brought me closer to it forced me to come to grips with things and understand things more. And you went through this process of, I mean, reading and research, and that’s what you base this, ultimately this decision about your faith on.

[25:08] Tom Ryan: I watch videos on great scientists and on evolution, I got DVDs and evolution.

[25:13] It’s like, I wasn’t in search of God, Jim. I was just in search of the truth. Like I didn’t preload my mind that God’s real. I didn’t preload my mind that it has to be science. It has to be pure evolution, right. From nothingness. I was willing to accept either. And then as you gather information, the information blew me away.

[25:30] I, I read, you know, Lee Strobel who was an atheist, you know, I went to very intelligent. Right. People way smarter than me guys like you, right guys with high CT scores, not an ECT score like me, right? Like really intelligent people. Like let me study the greatest minds. I wanted to go to the greatest minds.

[25:47] And these were wildly intelligent people that poured their life into it. And many, many, many of them believe. And Leero was one of the people that really led me top of Yale law school writer for the Chicago Tribune was an atheist set out to dispr. Well, read his book and see where he ends. Right?

[26:08] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Your book title is chosen suffering. Why that name?

[26:12] Tom Ryan: Because on February 16th, 2004, it was chosen suffering that I thought was the foundational piece. That was the most influential piece of my life. Right. I chose to do the hard things and I reaped the benefits. Ironically right in the book, we find that it wasn’t chosen suffering. That transformed me.

[26:32] That gave me a vision correction. It completely blew my mind. It was unchosen suffering. There’s a moment right. Where I share in the book where they, they collide. They collide, this chosen suffering. And one of the few closures to a season in my life ended the way I wanted to. We won the nationals in 15, most of them don’t right.

[26:52] Haven’t so we win the nationals and I’ve got this other moment side by side, where a buddy texts me and he says, your son’s looking down and I’ve got this deep on chosen suffering. That’s ripping at me and I’ve got this incredible love of my phones blowing up and all the hard work paid off. It was. When I knock them against each other, both are critically important, but unchosen refine me in a way that chosen couldn’t.

[27:19] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: What do you want people to get from reading the book?

[27:21] Tom Ryan: I guess hope, you know, Hope’s a piece of it. And if you’re in a place that you don’t feel like you have any hope that you can get through anything, I want them to hopefully open-mindedly assess truth. Maybe it just sparks an interest in them that, you know, they’ve already made up their mind that. There is no God, you know, and maybe this can kind of create this curious nature that, Hey, maybe I’ll read a couple of the books he read.

[27:47] I’d hope that that love is real, right? That love is the most powerful force in universe. And that it’s a choice. I wrote the book because a lot of alumni and people that have heard me speak told me to. And it’s kind of, for me, it was like, it was an ego thing. If I wrote it, it’s like, oh, he wrote a book. Oh, you know, like big deal.

[28:04] And I fought that and God praying about it helped me fight that, cuz I never wanted to be, oh, you know, he’s cool. Now he wrote a book like, you know, God’s cool. I’m not, I just happen to write a book about some things that may be able to help some people.

[28:20] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: The path I’ve chosen, suffering is going to involve failure is failure part of that process to success.

[28:27] Tom Ryan: Everything was a fail. They were everywhere. Relationships couldn’t make the basketball team soccer getting beat up. Even today, I was a fail. I wrestled one of our freshmen. He got me so tired. Right. It was a fail. Right. They’re everywhere. But again, failure is a different thing.

[28:43] I mean, putting ourselves in situations where we learn about ourselves, it’s just critically. I. I love the book outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. And he explains failure to me so well. And like, what I thought was, was failing when I went to camp and watched Jim Harshaw hit the move right away after the guy taught it and I’m fumbling over myself, I’m like, huh, why can he get it?

[29:06] And I can’t, I’m a loser. I mean, he’s just way better than me. And then, you know, he helped define the neurons and the science behind, you know, creating super highways and how through deliberate practice and repetition. Well, the only way you can create a super highway is to have someone challenge you in a way that that highway hasn’t been challenged.

[29:27] The only way you can master something is to be put in this situation and have it not work. And you figure out why it didn’t work and your brain will do it. Right. And the ultimate Testament to that right, is just children walking. I lean too far to the right. No one had to tell them that, but their brain realized I leaned too far to the right next time I lean to the left.

[29:43] So they fall to the left. They fall and they falled the right. And eventually they don’t fall. Failing is critical, you know, it’s critical. And when you do. Be hard on yourself, not down on yourself.

[29:54] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: For the listener who is fired up, listening to this, they want to take action. What’s something that they can do in the next 24 to 48 hours to start.

[30:06] Maybe moving towards shows and suffering. Maybe it’s being hard on themselves, not down on themselves, but if there’s something, maybe a habit of tactic, something that they can do in the next 24 to 48 hours.

[30:15] Tom Ryan: Yeah. I would say start with something really small. I listen to a lot of Jordan S and I think he’s really good at, I happen to like him, but it’s like, listen, you know, if you’re a high school kid or middle school clean your.

[30:27] Every day makes your rooms clean, clean your laundry, do your own laundry, make your own bed, depending on how far off you are. Right from getting to a place where you can build a life. I’ve read this and heard it said like, if I was gonna build a life for myself, what would it look like? Start writing? What would my life look like?

[30:43] If it went the way I wanted it to go? And then start to do small things that can get you there and stop doing things that aren’t gonna get you there. Something small. If you’re being a little aggressive with your internet, stop being aggressive with your internet. If you’re spending three hours of playing video games, cut it down to one.

[31:00] If you have a sugar addiction instead of having double scoop of peanut butter. Every single scoop, like just small little things that instead of setting ourselves up for failure, I would say just small little steps, protect your mind, start reading. Listen, if you don’t like to read, read a paragraph, Google, the most inspirational books ever written, you know, I just start somewhere.

[31:20] The principle, the path is brilliant. Outliers. Brilliant. So, so much knowledge out there. And we need to latch on to those that are sharing things that can help us and not.

[31:30] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Tom, thank you for your wisdom. Thank you for making time. Where can the listeners find you follow you? Obviously, you know, your Ohio state wrestling website will have the link in the action plan, but how about social media? Where can they buy the book, et cetera?

[31:43] Tom Ryan: Yeah, the book is on Amazon. It’s called chosen suffering on Buckeye 1 58. My was my weight class.

[31:51] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: I mean, wrestlers put their weight class in everything, their email address and their social media handle.

[31:53] Tom Ryan: There’s nothing genius about that. Yeah. Same thing with Twitter and that’s it on Twitter, Instagram. And so thanks, Jim. I appreciate you have me on, it’s good to spend some time with you.

[32:05] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Thank you, Tom. Thanks for listening. If you want to apply these principles into your life, let’s talk. You can see the limited spaces that are open on my calendar. JimHarshawJr.com/APPLY where you can sign up for a free one time coaching call directly with me.

[32:19] And don’t forget to grab your action plan. Just go to JimHarshawJr.com/ACTION. And lastly, iTunes tends to suggest podcasts with more ratings and reviews more often. You would totally make my day. If you give me a rating and review those go a long way in helping me grow the podcast. Just open up your podcast app.

[32:40] If you have an iPhone, do a search for success through failure, select it, and then scroll the whole way to the bottom where you can leave the podcast, a rating and a review. Now I hope this isn’t just another podcast episode for you. I hope you take action on what you learned here today. Good luck and thanks for listening.

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