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June 8, 2010,
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Russell Wilson, fourth-round pick
to the Colorado Rockies baseball.
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I'm fired up,
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one of the highest moments of my life.
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Every kid's dream to be drafted
by a Major League Baseball team.
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June 8, 2010.
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June 9, 2010 --
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(Imitating flatline sound)
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The line goes flat.
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My dad passes away.
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The highest of the high
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to the lowest of the low.
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Just like that.
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My dad laying in his deathbed,
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just tears running down my face,
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you know, what do I do next?
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My mind racing, memories,
flashbacks, moments,
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early mornings, getting up,
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taking grounders and throwing,
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speed outs and deep post routes
to my brother and my dad,
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to early morning car rides
to AAU baseball,
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to my dad being the third-base coach.
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Fast-forward to the championship high
of winning a Super Bowl,
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holding up the Lombardi Trophy
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and the emotions
and the excitement of it all,
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blue and green confetti all over the place
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and knowing that you just
won the Super Bowl,
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to a year later, the pressure of the game,
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the ball on the one-yard line,
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and this is the chance to win the game,
and it doesn't work.
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And however many millions
and millions of people
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all over the world watching.
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And having to walk to the media,
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and what do I say next,
what do I do, what do I think?
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Being married at a young age
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and just coming out of college
and everything else,
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to, you know, shortly after,
marriage not working out
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and realizing, you know what?
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Life happens.
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Life happens, life happens to all of us.
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Loss of family members, divorce,
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fear, pain, depression, concerns, worries.
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When you think about
being superpositive --
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yes, I'm positive by nature,
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but positivity, you know,
it doesn't always work,
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because when you're down 16-nothing
in an NFC championship game,
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and people are like,
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"Russ, we're not going to be able
to win this game, man,
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it's not a great situation right now,"
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or when you're facing cancer,
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or when you have things
you have to deal with
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or finances and this and that,
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like, how do we deal with it?
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It's hard to be positive
in the midst of it all.
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And what I definitely knew was this:
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that negativity works
100 percent of the time.
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Negativity was going to get me nowhere.
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I started saying to myself,
"New are his mercies every morning,"
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new beginnings, new starts.
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And despite hardship and pain
and worries and wanting to get through it
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and "How do I do this?",
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I started thinking about a car.
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You know how when you drive a car,
you've got stick shift
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and you want to shift to neutral?
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You go from first gear to second gear,
all the way to fifth?
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You've got to know
how to shift to neutral.
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And I needed to shift to neutral
immediately, before I crashed.
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Sitting there after the Super Bowl,
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I had a decision to make:
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Will I let this define my career?
Will I let it define my life?
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Hell, no.
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What I found out was this:
that mindset is a skill.
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It can be taught and learned.
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I started 10 years ago,
training my mind,
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with this guy named Trevor Moawad,
my mental conditioning coach.
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He's been with me for 10 years,
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and we've been best friends
and partners ever since.
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As athletes, we train the body,
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we train ourselves to be able to run fast,
throw farther, jump higher
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and do these different things,
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but why don't we train our mind?
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What do you want
your life to look like?
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Write it out, talk about it, say it.
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What's our language,
what does it look like,
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watch these highlights, Russell,
when you're in your best moments.
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What does that look like?
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And be that, live that, sound like that.
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The best free throw shooters,
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they don't worry about
the shot they just missed.
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They think about this shot,
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this putt, this throw, this first down.
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Then I met this kid
Milton Wright, 19 years old,
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he had cancer three different times.
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This day when I went to see him,
he was frustrated,
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"Russ, I'm done,
I don't want to do this anymore,
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it's my time to go."
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I started telling him
this story about my dad,
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how he used to say, "Son, why not you?
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Why don't you graduate early,
play pro football and pro baseball?
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Why not you, why not you?"
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I said, "Milton, why not you?
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If you try T-cell therapy,
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and you try this and it doesn't work,
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you won't remember it."
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So Milton got a smile
on his face and said,
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"You're exactly right.
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Yes, I do have cancer, Russ.
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But I can either let this kill me,
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not just physically,
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but I can also let it kill me
emotionally and mentally.
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And I have a choice right now,
in the midst of the problem,
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in the midst of the storm,
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to decide to overcome."
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One of the questions I always get asked
about neutral thinking is this:
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"Does that mean I don't have any emotion?"
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And I always say, absolutely not.
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Yeah, we have emotions,
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we have real-life situations,
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we have things to deal with.
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But what you have to be able to do is
to stay focused on the moment
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and to not be superemotional.
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It's OK to have emotions,
but don't be emotional.
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When people look at me,
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they see that I'm the highest-paid
player in the NFL,
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they see that I have the girl in Ciara,
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that I have the family and this and that.
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But I still have real-life situations.
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We all do.
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We all have, you know, sadness and loss
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and depression and worries and fear.
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I didn't just get here.
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What's the truth,
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and how do I come through this better?
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And that's really, kind of,
how my mind started shifting.
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It was not just on the success of it all
or the failure of it,
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it was on the process, like:
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What is the next step,
how do I do this right here, right now?
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We have a choice to make in life.
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And for me, when I was young
and I didn't have much,
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I made a choice.
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I made a choice
that I was going to believe
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that great things were going to happen,
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that I was going to have my mindset right,
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and I was going to have
the right language
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and the right things to think about,
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which helped prepare me for today.
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Because I'm just human.
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I just have the ability
to throw the ball a long way
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and run around and make
some cool and fun throws
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and make some people smile.
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But the reality is
that I still have pressure,
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I still have worries, I still have fears,
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I still have things that happen.
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Still have loss.
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Positivity can be dangerous.
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But what always works is negativity.
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I never wanted to live in negativity,
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so I stayed in neutral.
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I kept my shift in neutral.
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And so that's where I lived,
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and that's where
I've been living ever since.