Joel Green, CEO of Pro Level Training, National Director of Nike Sports Camps, and a former professional basketball player, talks about growing up in an abandoned home, explains the concepts of “filtering” and “camouflage opportunities”, striking deep and striking gold, why fun doesn’t come first and insecurity is the ground for improvement, recounts playing professional basketball in Europe, how to respond instead of react, and not being put here FOR ourselves, but to BE ourselves.

Today's guest is Joel Green, chief Executive Officer of Pro-Level Training, the National Director of Nike Sports Camps, a former professional basketball player and a renowned motivational speaker, a thought leader in the motivational category.

Joel has a BA in psychology from Ryder University and brings his wisdom to business owners, entrepreneurs, and young.

A.

Joel's book Filtering the Way to Extract Strength from the Struggle is out now.

We hope you enjoy.

Joel Green, welcome to the Action Catalyst.

Uh, thank

for having you.

I appreciate it.

It's

gonna be a lot of fun to learn more about your new book that's out now called Filtering.

I really curious about that concept, but I wonder if you could take us back in a little bit of a mini biography of your life and, and share some of those major pivot points where things were going in a certain direction and some that happened to make you move in a different direct.

And over time it culminated in the position of influence that you're in today.

I mean, I've had quite a few of those, you know, so many pivotal moments, moments to where I detect to suddenly shift unexpectedly, you know, shift as towards my mindset, not just a physical shift.

Emotionally.

Um, you know, growing up I went through a number of things early on that helped me develop, I dare say, a callus to different hardships, a callus to different difficulties in life.

And many of those difficulties has helped me comparatively.

Today when I'm going through a difficulty, I say, you know what?

Don't sweat it too much because of what you've gone through even at a young age.

You know, growing up I grew up in, in Philadelphia, north Philadelphia.

Uh, I grew up in an abandoned home.

Sounds pretty crazy, but, you know, we literally had graffiti on our, on some of our walls, holes in the staircase that maybe my siblings used to play games on, like hopscotch, just hop around the hole to say, you don't get stuck.

Things like that, you know, it sound like it was fun and games, but in hindsight, as I began to get older, I'm like, That was a difficult time, you know, to not have hot water sometimes, and my older siblings had to go next door with pots and pans from our parents to get hot water and we have to come back and sit 'em on top of the heater.

So we had hot water, you know, different things like that helped me to really grow up and say, you know what?

I know where I came from.

I know what tough feels.

I, I witnessed violence early on, being close to a shooting when I was six years old, things like that.

I don't sweat too much nowadays, and people will see me in a positive light.

Call me an optimist.

I'm just really grateful.

It's not being optimistic.

I'm just grateful to be here and I'm grateful to have opportunity to succeed at

something.

I think that's an incredible story because not everybody chooses to respond in the way you did.

Can you share maybe why you feel like you had that inner ability to, to respond to this in a grateful way?

Not a harsh way.

Not in a giving up way.

You know what?

In my household, my parents literally, Told us we're not allowed to say cat.

And it may sound cliche, it may sound a little corny, but we, we got in trouble.

I, I got in trouble.

I remember when I was eight years old for saying, cat and I didn't eat that night.

I'll, I'll put it that way.

That type of belief system helped develop that I can attitude to where despite what was going on in life, no matter what was going on internally or externally, I could still do something.

Beyond what occurred.

You know, what I began writing about and what I began speaking on to different audiences over the years was this, this method of filtering that I came up with just to distract myself, to be honest, difficult things would be going on, and I would distract myself by setting a goal to not think on the difficulty.

I just began extracting some good stuff from the bad stuff, and they became my driving.

Hmm.

Well, let's, let's dig into that.

Your book is called Filtering the Way It Extracts Strength From the Struggle.

Can you expand on some of those principles of filtering and first, how you used it and then how everybody can use it?

Well, absolutely.

So filtering it itself, it is a method that I, I've used just to, like I said, to really, you know, break my situations down so that I'm not overwhelmed by it.

You know, so much of what we go through shuts us down and stops us and make us quit at different things, merge ventures and goals, cuz we're overwhelmed.

It's too big of a.

By filtering the experience, whatever the circumstance is, you know, you're able to break things down.

You lean into it as opposed to try to ignore it and run from it, and you, you literally will say, okay, what can I take from this situation to actually propel me further as opposed to just living on the surface of our situations?

The surface generally is always as.

But when you dig into it and you lean into it a little bit more, you find that seed of positivity within it, some type of driving force.

And that comes by way of filtering and just breaking down the situations and learning how to properly make adjustments.

And as we do these, these things, We'll start to see so many opportunities that exist within things that seems non opportunistic.

I'll, I'll put it that way, camouflage opportunities.

That's something that I'm big on.

There's so much in front of our eyes that we don't even see and if, if we dare to lean into them by way of filtering.

What we have going on, we'll actually gain foresight into what's taking place as opposed to going through something and having to wait on hindsight to reveal the answer to us.

Man, I love that approach.

Honestly, it's a game for me now, and that's one thing I've been telling people.

I said, life will become fun.

With the difficult isn't even a difficult thing for you anymore because now you even take those things on as a challenge to improve you.

You always see an opportunity to improve.

I tell people now I'm undefeated.

I wing some and I learn some.

I don't lose.

I'm undefeated

, Dan Moore: I win some and I learn.

So , that's a great way to put it.

Now, no.

Along the way you've hit numerous brick walls.

What can you share with us on some ways to figure out what to do when our progress is completely stopped?

Well, number one, be trans.

Be transparent with yourself to begin with, not just with other people.

You know, we always talk about transparency with, you know, with other people, and being open and honest.

You have to do that with yourself first.

And if you don't start there, even once you talk to someone else, it won't fully come out.

So when we hit a brick wall, realize, okay, something got me, I, I'm stuck and I understand that.

I notice it now.

It's the proper, the perfect time to try and make an adjustment and, and not allow for.

That difficulty, that out school, that failure to to be an end point, it has to be a midpoint, and realizing that you're just literally in a process right now.

That's how I look at every failure.

I, I literally see it as a, as a midpoint from you.

It's never an end point.

That is so great because that forces you to realize there's gonna be a sun coming up tomorrow.

There is something after this thing.

It's not an hand, it's a midpoint.

That's a great mindset to take to it.

I

try to remind myself as fast as I possibly can.

That's the thing too, and I speak on that often.

We have to remind ourselves as quick as we possibly can.

It is a process.

It's a process.

It's a process.

As opposed to this was it.

As soon as I'm able to remind myself of that, I take one more step forward and that's all I need half

the time.

Well, that's true.

That one more step can often be the difference.

Joel, how do, how do you keep growing personally?

I mean, you've had career as a professional basketball player.

You're highly successful entrepreneur with, uh, pro-level training, expanding into many different states, all parts of the world.

Eventually, you're very recognizable as a product spokesperson and model.

You're a speaker.

What do you do to, to avoid that sense of getting complacent and just kind of on the coast a bit?

I don't know how this really sounds, but I celebrate less, right?

I enjoy my moments, believe me, so I internally I celebrate.

But externally, I don't allow for the celebration to make me stagnant.

I enjoy all that I do.

I'm grateful for all that I'm able to achieve.

I thank God for it and that I keep moving forward.

I know what it feels like to become complacent.

I felt that as an athlete before, and I saw the resulting factor was I played a little worse the following season when I became complacent after victory.

And I said, okay.

I did great and I celebrated during the off season, and I come back as a lesser athlete the next year.

I said, okay, I'm not doing this again.

I'm gonna celebrate for, you know, a day or a moment.

And I'm gonna move on to the next goal.

And that's one of the main things for me to where, when I achieve something, you know, I, I, I try my best to achieve, you know, to have a, a, a mindset of humility.

You know, you've done this great job, don't be high on yourself.

Another thing that also helps me out is having a heart of expectancy.

So, I'm big on when I set a goal for myself, I visualized this goal to a t.

I'm talking about to the, to the points where I feel like as if I already have it before I even scrape the surface of touching it.

There's an exercise that I do, I take myself through and I feel what I'm about to go after, so that once I'm already pursuing it, I feel like I already have it.

I expect it to occur.

So once I finally get it, I'm not celebrating so high as if it was something I've never done before.

In my mind, in my heart, I've already done it, and so once I get it done, I'm already working on it.

The next.

Can you share a little bit about the role of other people that keep us on

track?

Absolutely.

I mean, there, there's a number of people, my parents to be begin with.

You know, my parents are amazing.

They're, you know, two of the most intelligent people I know, you know, I dare say they are the two most intelligent people I know.

They've taught me so much and still are.

I reach out to them if I'm going through a difficulty of challenge.

I figured they have some type.

They don't have the answer.

They have something that can lead me to the answer.

Uh, they're two pastors.

They're, they're preachers, so you know, they're, they're well read.

They, they, they know a lot about life.

They help guide other people.

Those are two of my guides, and I have some other mentors as well.

Former coaches.

One of my high school coaches, he's become like an uncle to me, to where I can reach out to him for anything.

Uh, just a bit of advice.

He will be very open and honest with me, and that's exactly what I need.

And that's why I will hope that when someone's going through something, don't reach out to that yes friend all the time.

Don't reach out to the Yes mentor all the time.

Reach out to that person that may strike you deep, you know, with some of their.

But what you have to realize is a lot of times they'll be striking gold.

You know, a lot of people aren't willing to strike deep.

Those aren't the ones you always need to reach out to.

For me, I reach out to those people like my brothers, my sister, my parents that can literally tell me what it is and what I need to do and not try to butter me up.

The

ones that'll speak truth to you cuz they love you enough to do that.

Absolutely.

I mean, that's, that's really what it's all about.

Yeah.

Now you work some really long days, you, you take a lot of pride in your work ethic.

Do you have a, a morning routine that just starts every day in very much similar manner?

Yeah.

So, you know, preferably, you know, I wake up at 5:00 AM and I'll, I'll, I'll pray to begin the day for a good 20 minutes or so.

Pray form of meditation beyond that point by just sitting, still thinking about whatever.

Comes to mind, to be honest with you, as I prep for my day, I go ahead and I work out, do a physical workout for the day, for about an hour or so.

Usually wake my son up by the time we work out together, and he prefers to work out in the morning.

He's nine years old, but he is already, you know, a little version of me.

So we work out and then I get to work after that point, you know, do business and, uh, start to prep the emails and calls and things that I.

For me, it is so important to, to maximize for my end, to maximize on the hours of the day.

Uh, and I realized that the earlier I began, I got it from being an athlete.

I'll be honest with you, I picked up that characteristic, you know, from the athletic side of things, as I would start my day at that time around four 30 and be out on the track and, you know, get my early workout.

And I used to tell myself the earlier I began, the more training I can get in throughout the day, the more training equates to.

Me improving.

I carry literally the same mentality in business now, uh, that I carry as an athlete.

You know, part of your interesting background is the fact that you played professional sports in Europe.

You played in Ireland, a couple of other countries.

What are some of the insights you got from coaching styles that people in other countries might practice that, that maybe people in America just don't listen to that much or know

much?

I saw a bro that they're very, very regimen like.

We would do something a thousand times and I loved it.

That's the way I train.

Now, I'll be honest, a lot of the ways that I run my business and the way I train different athletes is I picked up a number of those characteristics from Europe.

We would literally go into practice and some of our training sessions and work on two things here in America.

We may work on about four to five things that work out over there.

We worked on about two.

They wanted us to get it down that day, so we would do it hundreds of times that one workout, just to make sure we were comfortable enough by the end of that workout to properly execute whatever we were taught.

That mentality over there of perfection rapidly, you know, versus over here to where it's a bit more gradual, a little more intense, I feel like over here.

As far as the athletic side, but I saw the, the regiment side over there was just a little different and, uh, it, it added to me because I was able to bring the attributes from here in America and also pick up on things over there.

So it, it helped me to become a melting pot of, of, you know, some great tools.

That's

good.

And probably those people in Ireland that never met a guy from North Philly.

Never.

No,

never.

That was the funny thing, man.

Just, just relating to one another.

It was, it was a challenge at first, I'll admit.

Um, but I mean, we, we loved each.

After.

While it was a huge culture shock for me, it was my first time in being over there and number one, the environment was a culture shock.

It rained every, my first four months there.

It rained every day and uh, I mean literally not in, I'm not exaggerating, it rained at some point every single day.

I said, okay, now wonder's.

So green over here.

It's just everything they water

. Dan Moore: Well, a couple things I wanted to ask you about.

You have a philosophy that the fund doesn't come first.

We need to stop looking at the struggle as something that's a negative.

Could you expand on that for us?

Absolutely.

You know, for me the struggle is truly that's where the fruit is.

You know, we, we don't always realize it cuz it hurts.

The struggle is usually painful.

The strength, the struggle is difficult.

There's always something on the other side, and usually on the other side of a struggle, it's something good because it can't go any worse, you know?

So it's like when people could have had the proper, Perspective and vantage point and see a struggle as, okay, I'm going get, I'm not, when I'm in it, I'm gonna get through it, because on the other side, it has to be something better.

You're already at the bottom.

That's how I look at a struggle, like, okay, I'm in it.

It's tough, it's difficult.

It is.

It's a challenge.

But man, if I just continue to persist, If I just dare myself to keep moving forward in some form, in some fashion, it's a guarantee.

I dare.

It's a guarantee of something good coming up if I continue to move forward.

If I don't move forward, I may be stuck in this bad place for a really long time.

The fun not coming first.

That's what it's about.

I lean into the process of, I fully embraced the process of, of whatever it takes to get.

The greater side of the greater good little things.

You know, me waking up, perfect example.

Me waking up at, you know, 5:00 AM to work out.

That's not fun.

You know, uh, that's not an enjoyable thing.

I, I will be the first to say like, I enjoy, you know, I feel like I'm in pretty good shape.

I enjoy the results of training and working out more than I do working out, and I want to enjoy the results of it.

That side is fun for.

But the fun doesn't come first.

The fun comes through working hard, getting in the gym and doing X, Y, Z, so that you know, you can enjoy the, the fruitful and fun side after the fact.

Yeah.

You know, one thing I'm really impressed with what you just said, Joel, is when you spoke about why not keep going in the struggle, cuz it can't get me worse.

It can only get better, but if I stop, it may stay worse.

Exactly.

It's like the old saying, when you're going through, hell keep.

Amazing.

Exactly.

Funny, you also have a, a statement.

You say, real life makes an impact.

Stop living through false narratives.

There's so many false narratives out there.

We're, we're, we're in a day and age, you know, with social media, and I dare say so many false certs, you know, to where things appear perfect.

You know, we, we wanna live the perfect life.

We wanna be perfect individuals.

Don't try to be perfect.

You know what I mean?

The real side of things includes imperfection.

Embrace your imperfections, embrace your insec.

And I can speak on this now cause I lived it.

I've been very insecure.

I have had anxieties as a result of my insecurity.

So that's like just doubling up took me a while to finally say, you know what, dude, being imperfect, it's okay.

You're human.

And it didn't, I didn't realize that until I began finally expressing my imperfections.

It's expressing my insecurities to other.

And that was exactly the moment when I began to see, oh, other people are also imperfect in this area, also insecure in that area.

And I began embracing my insecurities.

I say, okay, I'm not perfect here.

You know what?

Now I, I start to realize every imperfection or every insecurity is nothing but grounds and the foundation for every improvement.

So it was like every improvement starts somewhere.

It usually starts with the insecurity of some sort, or starts with the imper.

Embrace 'em and just build upon 'em if you actually have to or just accept those things.

You know, so many people, I think particularly young people are caught up in their image because they look at somebody else's social media posts where their image looks so glamorous, their life looks so much fun, and inevitably we make comparisons and we end up feeling a little bit short, which makes us feel worse, doesn't get any better.

We're

put here to be us.

You know, you're put here just to be you.

You know?

I'm put here just to be me, and obviously us being.

We're put here to help influence and impact other people.

We're not just put here for ourselves, but we are put here to be ourselves.

When we're trying to be everyone else or everything else, we can tell inside our, our heart, our, our conviction tells us we're not being truly who we are.

I'll be honest.

I, I have to remind myself of this date, you know, often no be.

Say what you would say, do what you would do and uh, you know, I have the most comfort at that point,

which I guess is another benefit of staying busy.

Cuz when you have a lot on you, there's just not enough energy to be somebody else and be yourself,

That's, you're speaking the truth.

I mean, that's, that's man, I mean, yeah, you don't have the time to, to fake it.

You don't have time to be, you know, outside of who you naturally are.

And that's, that's so.

Yeah.

Well,

I, I dig that, that makes a lot of sense.

Sure.

One other quick question.

You, you talk about how you can train our brains to default to something instead of making excuses to default to some different pattern there.

What, what do you mean by train our brain into different default mode?

I mean that, that's the key thing.

You know, that's something I've had to work on, I still work on as far as training myself to, to have my, my most ideal reaction by default, I've had talks with people to where it's like, you wanna respond instead of reacting, right?

So you wanna have a greater response because a reaction is literally an action based off of what someone else made you do.

Mm-hmm.

. So that means they're in essence, controlling what you do.

Mm-hmm.

, and I don't like that.

I don't like always reacting because now I'm not in full control of my actions.

So I choose and prefer to respond cause I feel like that's coming from me and that comes by way of me training myself.

You know, going through different situations to where I say, okay, take a quick second before you even have a response of any sort.

That way won't come out as an impulsive reaction.

Training your default is not easy.

It's not an easy thing to do.

It takes you taking a moment before even acting any way, just breathing, stopping and thinking for a.

We can think over 30 thoughts every second.

You know, every minute.

Rather we can think up, you know, if we just take a minute, we can have so many thoughts, but we choose not to have to take a minute just to kind of process things to breathe.

And for me that was one of the main ways I trained.

My default response to my default thinking was, okay, when something happens, take a moment for yourself to just process it.

Literally take a minute, take, you know, 30.

and see what you can come up with before you get back to the other person, before you react.

That way you'll have a better

response.

Mm-hmm.

, because that react is kind of a primitive reaction to, to whatever's going on the fight or flight triggers, and we just absolutely, later on usually regret when we

when.

Absolutely.

And I know because I, you know, I, I've had plenty of regrets based off of, you know, negative reactions.

So I said, man, I have to stop

that.

Oh, I think that's f.

Joel, one of the kind of big category things I hope you could touch on is some words of encouragement.

You know, we, we've got listeners from all around the world, some of whom are just trucking through life.

Things are just going brilliantly for them.

They're happy with everything.

On the other end of the spectrum, we got some people right now that are really struggling.

They're just really down, really discouraged.

What advice would you give to somebody that just doesn't know what to do?

Next?

Question.

The situation, you know, as opposed to just questioning why me or why God, or if they're religious, you know, whatever the case.

Question the situation, but when painful circumstances come my way, I don't always just question the surface of what's going on.

I try, it's not always easy, but I try to, to ask myself, what can I get from this?

I know this is, you know, Happening to me, but can I change my vantage point to see if it's happening for me?

And that's a big thing because when we're emotional, where we're in our feelings for too long, we forget that there's another side to what we're going through or potentially another side if it doesn't seem that way.

But when you begin to question the situation, As opposed to just questioning the surface of it, oh, why did they do that to me?

Or why is this dawn?

Or Why did my boss do the things like that?

That's the surface.

If you start to hold yourself accountable a little bit more and say, okay, what can I do to change right now that can help influence a change within what I'm going through?

When we change the things around us change.

So if you lean into the situation and question the situation and say, okay, how can I change right now to help potentially better this situation?

I, I, I know you'll come up with great answers.

You'll come up with different people to reach out to, you'll start to realize that you have help because you'll start to come up, you'll start to brainstorm.

That's what truly what's taking place.

That's what filtering is.

Filtering is a creative brainstorming process to where you, again, you break the situation down, you question the situation so that you begin to really draw out.

Their fruits from that situation, you start to have things revealed to you like, oh, wow, I didn't think about that.

You know what?

I met that person three months ago that I could actually, they gave me their card.

I could reach out to them.

Now they, they're a therapist or, okay, they're in that business.

I'm struggling in my business right now on this facet, but they can help fill that void.

But it takes us leaning into the situation and questioning how can we become better right then and there while everything feels.

Woo man, that is so great.

Cuz what it's saying is if people to treat themselves like they're a victim of a circumstance, they're never gonna get past it Absolut.

But if instead they ask the question, what can I change about me?

Cause I think about how many times I personally have kind of shaken my fist at the world and said, this isn't fair.

Was is this happening?

Shouldn't be, but that doesn't get us anywhere.

That's the main thing I never forget.

And this.

In my mind, awful.

When I was 17 years old, I lost my, tragically lost one of my older brothers.

I, I was mad at the world.

I was mad at . Just life for a moment.

I, I dare say I was mad at God, you know, and I'm a religious person and I never questioned God like that.

I never questioned the world like that.

I never questioned myself, like, why, why is this going on?

But there were things that he used to tell me to.

I wasn't doing them at the moment.

Do better as fool.

Do better at, you know, if you say you're serious and you want a scholarship to college, you have to do X, Y, and Z.

He'd been around, he played basketball before me.

He had a, he had a name for him, something and things like that, so he knew what he was talking about.

But I took things easy.

I was a teenager, but when he, when he passed away, I said, okay, after a while, this wasn't immediate, but what can I do, number one, to take my mind off of these things.

Like I said, I used to set goals as distractions for.

What can I do to help improve this, this situation that I'm going through that can help alleviate this pain a little bit in the moment?

I questioned the situation and put myself in the forefront of the change.

That's when things changed, and I began studying more, and I made the honor roll for the first time in my life.

This is my senior year of high school.

It took me 12 years to finally make the honor.

And I made it two months after he passed away for the first time ever.

And then I also earned multiple Division one scholarship offers two months later.

So the moment I held myself accountable for the change that I wanted to see, that's when a change

came.

Fantastic.

Joel.

Time with you.

Flies my friend.

This is just terrific conversation.

I want to thank you for everything you've shared.

It's inspired me.

I know it's inspired our listen.

Uh, thanks so much.

I, I really, truly appreciate it.