ManTalks – Pro athletes and overcoming adversity

Date: June 27, 2016

Name: ManTalks – Pro athletes and overcoming adversity

Presenters: Rob Friend, Shea Emry, and Manny Malhotra

Every successful leader will face uncertain adversity in their career lives. Moreover, when they overcome their obstacles, they will be on their way to the road of success in their respective industries. ManTalks invites Rob Friend, the former Major League Soccer player, Shea Emry, the all star middle linebacker in Canadian Football League, and Manny Malhotra, a Canadian professional ice hockey player, to discuss how they deal with adversity at the top peak of their athlete career. In this presentation, They will share their milestones of their journey and how they overcome fears. Leaders will learn the concepts and mindsets behind these successful athletes and transition to their business careers.

When things get bigger, leaders will face more stress. What makes up adversity is not the big things, it is the combination of all little things in life. Leaders need to step up and move forward. Leaders need to figure out what get in their ways. The question every leader needs to think about this main question.

“What centre you when you face adversity”

Journey of Rob Friend

Rob Friend, the former MLS player, started his athlete journey in Canada and moved to Europe playing for Moss Fotballklubb in Norway, Borussia, Monchengladbach. Later his career, he advanced to Major League Soccer club Los Angeles Galaxy. After his retirement, he started a foundation to support athletes who have retired and help them to start new career life.

Friend mentions when he was young, he was an average kid who loved to play all kind of sports. In his town, the odd of being a professional player was low. As a farm kid, Friend was grateful for every opportunity he had.

Friend took the path of being a professional soccer player because of a childhood incident. When he was 7 years old, he got injured from playing hockey. His mother forced him to stop playing hockey, so Friend decided to pursue soccer. In the age of 15, he felt stiff on his body. The doctor told him he was diagnosed with neuromuscular disease. Friend did not know what will happen to him. He got depressed at first, but he battled it by shifting his mindset. He wanted to be heathy again.

When Friend reformed his mindset, he started to take care of his body at highest level. The change of focus and started to take necessary steps. His career rise. During that phase of his life, there were only two things in his career: work harder and train harder. Friend wanted to be better than anyone else on the team. It was exhausted, but Friend never gave up.

Mentality is important. The injury made him think differently. When he met players who are young than him, two questions came to his mind.

• How can I be better than them?
• How can I beat them?

Both questions led to one answer, which is work harder than them. When he started to train to make up the missing time, he realized he is going up the ladder.

From outside, it is easy for people to criticize athletes. Friend states the result of game is a small percentage of work and majority is training. Friend believes athletes are always on 24-7. Stress and pressure come from 75,000 people who are on every action athlete makes. To overcome that, athletes must have thick skin.

Leaders need to learn to brush things off when pressure comes. Leader need to learn how to perform high performance on pressure. Friend emphasizes the best thing he had is his family. After a bad game, family will comfort his pressure. Friend realizes it is not just the sport.

“Expect having family will be stressful, but I am glad they are there”

During his peak, Friend’s mindset shifted to Finance, which led him to stress. Friend started to chase money because every action he had revolved around money decision. It killed his career. Chasing money was his biggest mistake in his career.

“As athlete, there is many voice going around”

Friend focuses on the value of family, health and career. He loves making money on the sport he loved in front of his fan. When 70,000 fans chanting, his life changes.

When he realized he had the opportunity to play the best league of the world, he took it. At the end, it did not turn out as he expected, but the memory was the best. The concussion took his career away. It was a dark time for Friend and he knew it was time to shut down. He felt he lost his identity overnight. Everything crumbled down on him.

Friend started a program for athletes to overcome these fears.

Friend suggests leaders not to put too much pressure on their kids. They must be rounded because each event is only a chapter of life. Leaders need to ensure that they are putting effort every single moment in their lives every day.

“Hard work every single night, success will come”

Journey of Shea Emry

Shea Emry is the All-star Middle Linebacker in the Canadian Football League. After his retirement from his injury, he founded the organization called “Wellmen” to help men to find their balance lifestyle. Emry also launched a fully mobile Axe Throwing Axe-perience called “Thrown”.

Many leaders refer to Shea Emry as the “Handsome Devil”. Emry was born in Richmond and played sports all his life. He had a wonderful childhood where he had many opportunity to succeed in life. Until one day, he realized he was not as great as he thought.

Emry pursued his dream of becoming professional football player. Emry mentions he had been wearing a mask. Everyone has adversity every time, and as a football player, he faced adversity every moment of his career. Adversity led him to depression, and he needed to take alcohol to relieve himself. He was not happy at all.

When he transitioned back home and tried for Canadian Football League, his career launched sky rocked. Later in his career, he got concussion and football had been taken away from his life. Emry knew he needed a change, so he started to read books and tried yoga.

Emry mentions during that moment, the only thing he needed was to talk to the right people. He realized it was easy to hide these emotions behind the football mask; until the stress appeared in his career, he needed to survive. Emry shares in his childhood, he was abused. It terrified him and it turned up his red flags when he was surrounded with people in the room. The question in his mind was “who is going to betraying and who got my back?”.

Emry managed to confront his trauma experience and it gave him the clarity of where he was going. Emry felt gifted by 4 important elements in his life.

• Good looking
• Good at football
• Physical condition
• Embrace the diversity

These 4 elements reframed his identify.

“When football was taken away from me, I started to see everything”

Emry found someone he could look up to and took him to a process. It was courage he learned from his journey and he was now able to share his story on stage. He was able to be real and became who he really was in life.

Emry believes how leaders show up in life will take away the adversity. He was given the gift of trauma, but now it became something he could share to people.

Emry reveals his hatchet. The hatchet is a symbol to cut the past and move forward. It is also the symbol for him to detach the limited beliefs in life. The company “Wellmen” is a place for men to find their voice. Many people could not do that because of their limited belief.

“When you put everything out there and take risk, you will succeed”

Journey of Manny Malhotra

Manny Malhotra is a Canadian professional ice hockey player. He played with many major NHL teams, such as Montreal Canadians, Carolina Hurricanes, Vancouver Canucks, San Jose Sharks, Columbus Blue Jackets, Dallas Stars and the New York Rangers. He also participated in AHL with the Lake Erie Monsters.

Manny Malhotra grew up in a Canadian household. In the age of 4, the only sport he knew was soccer, but he wanted to play hockey. His family was supportive and there was zero pressure from parents with his decision. His parents will only ask 2 questions after every practice.

1. Are you hungry?
2. Did you have fun?

Malhotra grew up in multicultural environment. He never saw colour was a problem and never though he was different. Until a couple games outside of his hometown, he started to notice some “N” words. These moments triggered Malhotra to a question of “Am I belong here?”. Because of his family support, he overcame the fear.

“When someone told me I cannot do something, it triggers me. You dare me to play now”

Malhotra mentions even though hockey was his dream, he wanted to be a professional soccer player. Eventually, he needed to make a decision. Being a Canadian, hockey was the top of his list. He attended the training camp when he was 16 years old and for the first time he felt he was playing with men’s league. He realized he was one step away of making to NHL. It made him focus even more.

“Without proper guidance, it can deter your path”

“I have to focus to craft my own path”

Malhotra shares a childhood memory. His family had a strict rules. His parents requested him to finish homework before any sports activities. Because of the rules, he learned that he needed to keep things in line with any distraction. If he is off track, he knows his family will remind him to go back on track.

Every team Malhotra played was grateful moments in his hockey career. Columbus Blue Jackets was the birth of his career. During that stage of his career, he felt isolation. It was a wakeup call for Malhotra because it was the moment he realized his dream would be dead if there was no change. He started to work on 3 things in his career.

• Refocus
• Diet
• Training

After Columbus Blue Jackets, he got traded to San Jose Sharks. It was a winning team for Malhotra. He continued the same routine: train, play, and train again. When he got drafted to Vancouver Canucks, the team took him to the next level. The culture of Vancouver Canucks took care of players’ families, so players could focus on the game. Malhotra loved playing with Canucks because of family culture value.

From start of his career, he got his play time. As his career continued, the play time got smaller. After getting trade and putted on wavier list, he started to think it was a wake up call.

During 2011, Malhotra was injured from puck in the eye. The doctor said he could not play anymore. It was a dark time for Malhotra. If it was not for his family support, he could not make it.

He needed to focus on recovering. He had faith he will be back, but it would take him step by step. He changed his mindset by shifting “I want to play” to “I have to play”. With his determination, his career went up to another level.

“If you think you can or you can’t, you are right”

“I do not care who says, I am going to do it anyways”

Malhotra thinks as parents, they should not put limits on kids. Whenever obstacles occur, Malhotra wants leaders to think about these 2 questions.

1. Who is holding you back?
2. What is stopping you from going forward?

“If you want to do it, go do it and go after it”