Summary

The conversation with Sam Morris elucidates the profound journey of adaptation and resilience that arises in the face of life-altering challenges. Following a catastrophic spinal cord injury that rendered him paraplegic, Sam shares his experience of navigating the complex interplay between acceptance and the instinct to fight against perceived limitations. He emphasizes that true strength lies not in battling one's circumstances, but in embracing them, a revelation that transformed his understanding of identity and capability. Sam's insights extend into his professional realm, where he now channels his experiences into coaching others through his Zen Warrior Training program, fostering adaptability and inner freedom. This episode serves as a poignant reminder of the power of mindset in overcoming adversity and achieving personal growth.

Story

Engaging in an introspective dialogue, Jothy Rosenberg and Sam Morris explore the intricate relationship between adversity and personal growth. Morris, who hails from an organic blueberry farm in mid Coast Maine, shares the life-altering event that would redefine his existence—a car accident resulting in a spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed. This moment serves as a focal point around which the conversation revolves, as Morris articulates the multifaceted emotional repercussions of this traumatic experience. The narrative reveals the profound psychological struggle inherent in navigating the identity shift that accompanies such a significant physical change; Morris reflects on the duality of fighting against perceived limitations while simultaneously seeking acceptance of a new reality.

As the discussion unfolds, Morris emphasizes the transformative power of acceptance as he recounts his journey of recovery. The initial fixation on regaining physical function gave way to deeper reflections on identity and the essence of resilience. Through the lens of adaptive sports, particularly skiing, he illustrates how these activities served as a vital means of reclaiming agency and connection to the world. The act of skiing, fundamentally an expression of freedom and movement, became a therapeutic outlet that enabled him to engage fully with life despite his circumstances. Morris's insights reveal a poignant understanding of how the pursuit of joy can transcend physical limitations, ultimately leading to a richer, more meaningful existence.

The narrative culminates in a fascinating exploration of Morris's coaching philosophy, encapsulated in the concept of 'Zen Warrior Training.' This approach blends ancient Zen principles with contemporary strategies for navigating life's challenges, underscoring the importance of mental resilience and adaptability. Morris articulates a vision of freedom that transcends physical constraints, encouraging individuals to confront their own psychological barriers and redefine their relationship with adversity. His story serves not only as a personal testament to the power of resilience but also as a universal invitation to embrace the transformative potential of life's hardships, ultimately fostering a deeper understanding of one's true self.

Takeaways

• Sam Morris shares his profound journey from a life-altering spinal cord injury to resilience through adaptive sports and coaching.
• The conversation reveals how embracing acceptance rather than resistance to limitations can lead to personal growth and self-discovery.
• Morris discusses the significance of grit and adaptability in overcoming challenges, both physical and mental, as essential traits for success.
• The importance of community and teamwork in personal and professional endeavors is emphasized, showcasing the power of collaboration and shared vision.

Links

• usa.protectivecare.com
• • Sam's LinkedIn
  • USA Protective Care
  • Jothy's TEDx talk - On why those with disabilities tend to overachieve
  • The Who Says I Can't Foundation - Jothy's non-profit that helps disabled kids get back into a sport they love to restore their self-esteem
  • Our YouTube channel
  • Designing Successful Startups — Jothy Rosenberg | Author | Speaker | Podcaster - Site with all podcasts
  • Tech Startup Toolkit book
  • Please leave us a review

Foreign.

Rosenberg, the host of Designing Successful Startups, where today's guest is Sam Morris.

As I was driving home, I remember thinking, it's really not physical paralysis.

It's my specialty.

It's the type of paralysis that exists when your mind is caught in a certain idea of who you are.

And that's the paralysis that I'm most effective because that's where paralysis really is.

The lack of function below my waist is simply, really, objectively is just nothing more than an inconvenience.

The only thing that can actually create paralysis is one's mindset.

From organic blueberry farms in Maine to the small town of Ojai, California, Sam Morris's journey took an unexpected turn when a car accident left him paralyzed from the waist down at age 24.

In today's episode, I speak with Sam Morris, a man who has now spent more of his life as a paraplegic than able bodied.

But this conversation isn't about limitation.

It's about transformation.

Sam shares how he initially made it his sole purpose to recover physical function, even moving across the country to work with a movement specialist.

But a series of complications, including a year of hospitalization, forced him to confront a deeper challenge, accepting his circumstances without letting them define his identity.

The most profound thing is not the lack of function in the paralyzed part of the body itself, Sam reveals, but the strange identity complex that festered where there was a feeling of being somewhat broken internally.

His journey from adaptive skiing instructor to executive coach to CEO offers powerful insights into resilience and grit.

Sam.

Sam explains how his coaching practice, Zen warrior training, emerged from recognizing that psychological paralysis, not physical disability, was his true area of expertise.

Join us for a conversation about redefining limitation, finding freedom through acceptance, and the warrior like discipline required to achieve true serenity in the face of life's greatest challenges.

Hello, Sam.

Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, Jonathan.

I'm happy to be here.

Thanks for the invitation.

You bet, you bet.

I like to start with something that helps, I don't know, people get some context, which is tell us where you're originally from and where you live now.

Grew up on an organic blueberry farm in mid Coast Maine and I am in Ojai, California now, just about an hour north of Los Angeles and not far from Ventura and Santa Barbara.

It's a little town, right?

Oh, yeah.

It's fewer than 8,000 people, which is rare in Southern California to be in such a small town, which is part of what I love about it so much.

But yeah, before I moved here, someone said, you know, Ojai is a bit of a one horse town.

And I said, well, I only need half a horse, so that's great.

There was a pivotal life experience that you had and I'd love for you to tell us what that was and how it's shaped how you see yourself in the world.

Yeah.

Shortly after that, about two and a half months after we completed that trip, I was riding in the backseat of a car driven by a guy who'd been drinking and was driving a bit irresponsibly and lost control of the car on a dirt road.

And we went off the road and hit a tree.

And this was in western Massachusetts, outside of Amherst.

Hit a tree, broke my back, and had a spinal cord injury at the level of the T12 vertebra, which is about the level of my navel, and became paralyzed from that point down when that happened.

So that was, did you say that was 99?

99.

So 25 and a half years ago this year I'll turn 50.

So it's, it's.

I've just gone past the half year, half life mark just a few months ago, where I have now spent more of my life paraplegic than I was able bodied prior to the injury.

Tell us about your.

I always call it sort of fighting back against limitations because as you know, I have had my own physical challenges.

So anyway, I call it fighting back because there are at least you perceive a lot of limitations when something like this first happens to you.

Um, how did you navigate through that?

What, what was that like?

Initially, I made it my sole purpose in life for that time period to recover function in my body.

And I, I was working with a movement therapist who, her name was Emily Conrad.

She created a program called Continuum Movement and she was in her 70s at the time.

She lived in Los Angeles.

I would fly out from the east coast to work with her periodically.

And I was fully believing that this was possible and did what I could to try to recover function in my body.

And our work that we were doing together was derailed by the first of many pressure ulcers that I developed like Bedsores that hospitalized me for close to a year.

And my body atrophied a tremendous amount during that time.

And afterwards I was in this space of kind of listlessness, listlessness or something about going through that particular traumatic experience which was actually far greater than the spinal cord injury itself.

The, the being bedridden and hospitalized for that duration of time was far, far more traumatic than just the spinal cord injury.

And that put me in a state of really not knowing, not really having a strong grasp of what I wanted.

And the beginning, I think, of a long period of time around acceptance of my circumstances versus fighting against my circumstances.

And ultimately it was that acceptance of my circumstance, that surrender to the circumstances, which ultimately really in many respects was the greatest fight, because the greatest.

It wasn't about being sort of in an adversarial dynamic with my circumstances, but being more in an adversarial dynamic with my own sense of what I believed I needed to be versus what I was.

And that is an interesting battle to fight.

So it was really the most challenging part, I suppose, was really, really not just conceptually and intellectually, but really really embodying a full state of acceptance around what my circumstances were and not having that impact my sense of identity which in the, in the.

With a paralysis, I.

The most profound thing is not the lack of function in the paralyzed part of the body itself, but for me it was the strange identity complex that it.

That festered where there was a feeling of being somewhat broken internally.

That all I think is kind of story I've heard for a number of people.

You know, one of the things that I do is get adaptive equipment for people who've got some sort of a physical disability to get back or to get into, not necessarily back, a sport or some sort of high challenge activity that they want to do because.

And that's what I meant by fighting back.

It's not fighting back against the.

The disability, it's fighting back against the perceived limitations that it places on you.

So for example, you might have decided that you wanted to play wheelchair basketball, and maybe you do, whether or not you.

You do now, you could, and that's sort of the point.

And then you can start feeling better about yourself.

Everybody's got a different journey and you clearly had one where you got sort of whacked twice.

If you just as you just described and seemed to have come out the other side of that, having better self esteem, the acceptance probably translates into feeling better.

Feel, feeling better about yourself.

Yeah, well, you may, you mentioned a good point around athletics because prior to my spinal cord injury, I was a real athlete.

I not only, like I mentioned, cycled across the US But I was an avid snowboarder and skier and hiker.

And that became an incredible medicine for the fight back because it was, it was allowing me, even though I had to start really from scratch with skiing.

Fortunately, I was able to apply a lot of what I had previously known about edge control and that kind of thing.

But it was a totally different beast when I learned how to sit ski.

So I spent a lot of time on the ground and there was frustration when anytime I would compare my skill level on a sit ski versus where I had been on a snowboarder skiing prior to my spinal cord injury, it was, it would be frustrating.

But if I could drop that comparison and then just get back on the ski and gradually get better at it, that became really powerful medicine for my soul, learning how to ski again.

And it was a tremendous help with restoring my sense of self and certainly my connection with nature as well.

We shared that because for me, the secret elixir to get me back was to learn how to ski effectively on one ski.

Because you know, in skiing you steer with your big toe, not your little toe.

And so for me, because I, I have a left leg, the right turn felt okay even after I was on one ski.

Ah, the left turn didn't.

I can totally see that.

And by the way, when I was first an amputee, they hadn't yet invented outriggers.

So I was trying it with pointy poles first.

Nope, didn't work.

Which didn't work.

Oh my gosh.

But I was going to say that where I finally conquered it was Alta, Utah.

And where you finally conquered it was Telluride.

Both mountains I know extremely well, and neither of them is easy.

You know, Alta specializes in powder and, and Telluride specializes in bumps.

I think they have the record because they have 2,000 vertical feet of non stop bumps.

Did you ski those bumps in a sit ski?

I didn't ski those ones.

I'm trying to remember some of the bump trails that I skied.

And I'm not a huge bump.

I used to be a huge bump skier and snowboarder when I was able bodied.

What I discovered with the sit Ski that I use was.

It was really.

It was designed to go fast.

It was not designed to be agile in the way that a bump that you really require where the bumps keep.

So it was really designed for.

For GS turns, essentially.

It's heavy.

It's heavy and it's.

And it's.

Shock absorption is minimal versus maximal.

So I've always kind of wanted to.

At some point, I'm going to update and get a new, much lighter ski with much better compression, because I feel like it would be a better ski for being in the bumps.

But, you know, we could have a whole conversation about the dynamics of bump skiing and so forth, but I.

I cannot say I ever got to be a good bump skier.

Partly part of it is just my own skill set, but part of it was also the equipment itself.

It was challenging because it would throw off my center of gravity when it didn't compress properly, the way that one's knees and legs are really meant to compress properly.

And with the additional weight of the ski itself, it was kind of clunky between bumps, and so it was really challenging.

So I did do some bump skiing at Telluride, but I never became really an avid bump ski.

There's a famous T shirt that they sell at all the shops in.

In the town of Telluride, and it's a picture of.

Of a series of bumps on the mountain, except they're all made out of Volkswagens.

So it's.

It's bumps the size of Volkswagen Beetles.

Size of Volkswagens.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And, and also probably very apropos, given Telluride's sort of hippie identity as well, or its former hippie identity.

Hi.

The podcast you are listening to is a companion to my recent book, Tech Startup Toolkit, how to Launch Strong and Exit Big.

This is the book I wish I'd had.

As I was founding and running eight startups over 35 years, I tell the unvarnished truth about what went right and especially about what went wrong.

You could get it from all the usual booksellers.

I hope you like it.

It's a true labor of love.

Now, back to the show.

Okay, so.

So clearly what happened with.

With you like it, Hap.

But like so many people who go through a really tough experience with getting disabled in some way, that's the epitome of the kind of adversity that develops in one.

Grit, resilience, toughness, stick to itedness.

A whole bunch of adjectives that make up the word, you know, the concept of.

Of grit.

There's no doubt in my mind I'm talking to somebody who's made of grit.

Besides the sport, things that you then took on and, you know, just sitting here and looking at you in a T shirt, you've.

You've redeveloped your upper body since then.

So you're doing stuff, you're staying in shape, you're.

Did you find that when you needed to apply, you know, the toughness, the resilience in your professional career, that you had a reservoir of grit to help you then, too?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I suppose grit is a big part of why I got into doing my coaching practice in the first place.

And grit was something that I didn't have to really discover as much as something that I, I think, was cultivated early on in my life, long before the spinal cord injury.

There's part of the culture that one grows up in very much informs the way that one perceives themselves.

And fortunately, Maine is just about as gritty as it comes.

So if anyone has been to Maine, you know that Mainers tend to be full of grit for the most part.

And so that was a natural disposition that I possessed.

They would tell me that anytime they're facing some type of big challenge in their lives, they would sometimes think about me and be inspired by my own approach.

And then that happened so frequently, it was happening practically on a daily basis.

And I thought, well, I better start getting paid for this.

And so that's when I started my.

My Zen warrior training Coaching practice was recognizing that how I was living my life had value to other people.

And if I could sort of reverse engineer the mindset of resilience and adaptability, which I think is the beauty of going through something so severely challenging, as you well know from your personal experience, is that it makes you an expert on adaptability.

And adaptability can be applied universally across the board.

And it's one of the things that maybe the thing that people need more than anything else is the ability to adapt, adapt to what is happening now and to leave behind anything from their life prior that is encumbering their ability to move into the future and be fully present.

That is the key to a successful life, in my estimation, is knowing how to adapt, knowing how to move with circumstances, knowing how to not identify with, with the circumstances that you've previously experienced so that you can keep adapting to what is occurring now and moving into the future in a more graceful manner.

Did you Feel like you had or needed any kind of formal training?

Yeah.

So I came in with the right preparation, I suppose.

But then from there I started working with master coaches from.

For years my, I didn't start coaching myself until I had had a lot of regular coaching from master coaches.

One of my, my first real coach in my life.

I worked, I studied with her 40 to 50 hours a month for about six and a half years in a regular intensive training program.

And so I, I did not, it was not some kind of weekend certification that I took.

I would do private sessions, I would do sessions with my then wife, I would do group sessions, I would do everything that I possibly could to accelerate my own development, my own capacity to work with others.

So part, part of something that I find interesting about the world of coaching in this modern world that we live in is it can span from anything from someone who has an interest in giving people advice, who hasn't had any formal training, all the way to people who are real masters of the craft, who have spent years both with their own mentors and coaches and developing their own practice.

That's, that's something that I find is both an advantage of the, of that particular career and it's also, it presents its own challenge because you don't really know who's out there and what their actual level of expertise and personal embodiment of what they're talking about really is.

Help clarify for me the seek the timing.

So this, these calls that were coming in daily, asking your advice, this was casual interactions.

So this was something that I had heard periodically for quite a while.

And I'm not in a wheelchair.

And I would hear that over and over and over and over and over.

So that daily occurrence of that, was that happening before or after you'd done this, you know, intensive coaching training?

That it coincided with the, probably the first year or two that I was doing the intensive coaching, coaching training.

So you'd already decided you wanted to do coaching?

Yeah, so.

So I started getting coaching.

And my then fiance, who then became my wife, we're now divorced and we have been for the past seven years.

But the dynamics inside of our relationship, we were two very different people with very different ways of approaching life and the world.

And as much love as we had for each other, it was creating a lot of conflicting perspectives inside of our relationship.

And we knew we needed some help in how to navigate our relationship with one another.

So we initially started getting coaching, training primarily to try to have a more functional relationship with one another.

But then the more time went on, the more that extended beyond just the relationship itself.

And I realized, huh, this is really valuable stuff.

Like, this is.

I'm really learning a lot about myself and I'm learning a lot about other people, and I'm learning a lot about the nature of the mind and presence, and there's just so much valuable stuff I'm getting out of this experience.

So then that naturally just kind of grew into my own practice from that point.

It was also something where I was at a pivotal time in my own life too.

So part of it was the inspiration that hearing from other people suggesting that I had this sort of, I guess what was a rare mindset around resilience and so forth.

But it was also at another.

There was a time where I was between jobs.

I was working as a researcher for Russell Brand's TV show that he had for a while on the FX network.

I was living in Hollywood and working with Russell Brand.

After that show was canceled, I was in this position where I was looking for a new job.

I got hired in theory.

This is the only time I've ever been hired in theory.

I was hired, in theory to be a producer at HuffPost Live.

I got the job verbally and then some time went on and I never heard from them.

And then I checked in with the person who had hired me and who is an executive producer there at HuffPost Live, and they had recently been acquired by AOL.

And AOL decided to let go of their LA office and move all their operations to New York.

So she said, well, you can still have the job, but you'll just have to be in New York.

I'm not about to pick up and go to New York for a job, thank you very much, unless it's a really lucrative job.

So I was in this position where I was, what do I do now?

And it was the perfect timing, given the coaching that I was receiving and giving, the getting the input that I was receiving from others.

And initially I thought that I would work with people who had had spinal cord injuries to help them to navigate life post injury, because it was something that I was so deeply familiar with with my own personal experience.

But then I, after starting Doing that for a short period of time.

I remember driving home from a rehab facility where I was working with a private client who had had a spinal cord injury.

As I was driving home, I remember thinking, it's really not physical paralysis.

It's my specialty.

It's the type of paralysis that exists when your mind is caught in a certain idea of who you are.

And that's the paralysis that I'm most effective because that's where paralysis really is.

The lack of function below my waist is simply, really, objectively, is just nothing more than an inconvenience.

The only thing that can actually create paralysis is one's mindset.

So I realized there's a whole lot more people and a whole lot more demand out there for people who are suffering from a type of psychological paralysis than for people who are dealing with actual physical paralysis.

So that psychological paralysis really became a sort of the, a first principle sort of approach to everything that I did from there on out.

And that's when formed the Zen Warrior training coaching program.

So why Zen warrior?

I've always had an appreciation for the very profound clarity and insight of the ancient teachers of Zen.

It's, it's really about familiarizing oneself with that space of the void and letting go of finding a sense of freedom from egoic projections.

And to do so, you know, that, that, that, that indicates a certain sort of peace or serenity.

When we think of Zen, it's like that, that serenity that is the absence of unnecessary mental chatter, let's say.

But they're peaceful.

So what's the warrior part of it then?

So in order to live like that, in the context of the chaos of society and all of the mimetic notions and familial patterning and cultural conditioning that we receive, in order to actually live like that, one must take on a warrior like approach to finding that serenity.

So there's, there appears to be a paradox between the serenity and the warrior.

But really they go hand in hand because we must go to battle with the internal notions that we've internalized that are not our own, that are picked up by family and culture which impede that serenity.

We have to have that warrior like disposition in order to do so.

So we can look at it from the vantage point of like the, the Shogun warriors, before going to battle, they had to go through a process where they would essentially let themselves internally die prior to entering the battlefield to find that inner peace where nothing could harm them because they had already dealt with anything that would be in opposition to any circumstance that could happen.

So they'd found a level of a peace of mind to be able to enter the battlefield with total serenity.

And I think that that way of approaching life has such an extraordinary translation to anyone's life, you know, especially in high pressure situations such as business leadership which we haven't even really discussed.

I'm now CEO of U USA Protective Care.

But all of the years that I've had practicing this and coaching in this sort of first principles, thinking around the Zen warrior mindset has translated beautifully to being the CEO of a business now.

Okay, good, tell us about that.

Yeah, so USA Protective Care is something that came out of really, it came out of nowhere it seems.

It just kind of found me.

It was like the, the.

What do you call it?

Like the X Men team or the.

Whatever it is.

There's my, my network of relationships naturally congealed around an opportunity to build a business called USA Protective Care.

And we are a marketing technology company that utilizes brand protection to safeguard American based brands and their products and customers while also giving them the ability to market through their own product packag to build revenue and sales with a.

So the combination of brand protection and marketing technology and data and so we are in launch phase right now and lots of amazing things are happening.

And is this based in Ojai or is this.

We don't have a physical location, but that's where the mail comes to is my house in Ojai.

So many people are nearby in Santa Barbara and I have a partner in Palm Springs.

I have a partner in Boise and I have a partner in Los Angeles.

Angeles.

So we are, we work remotely with one another over zoom calls.

But that's the beauty of this modern age is that we can, we don't necessarily have to have a physical location and turn the lights on so people.

Can look that up.

Because you've got a website, don't you?

That is correct, yeah.

USA.com you know, it takes grit to.

Do a startup and you've got plenty of that and you probably got enough to share with all your partners too.

Well, fortunately I have a whole team with grit, which is important.

You know, it's we, we want to have and.

But more importantly, more importantly than grit even, or maybe, maybe not more importantly, but complementary to that is that everyone on my team operates from our.

The notion of ego freedom.

So it's not about proving our worth.

It's not about receiving disproportionate benefits for any particular idea or accomplishment or whatever.

It's really like what can we accomplish through really focusing on the team as the primary sort of hive mind for ideas and strategies and without any kind of, oh, good for you, good for you.

You know this, you know, like there's zero competition happening amongst us.

It's only bringing together the, the aggregate of our collective creative vision.

And now we all understand that we all have specific roles inside of the team as well.

It's important to recognize that one has a role.

But we're operating more from the place of being like a band, like a jazz band, than being like a traditional business, like a jazz band.

You know your role as the musician.

If you're the guitar player, you're not playing the drums or if you're the bass player, you're not playing the piano.

So you know your role.

But the primary thing that you're paying attention to is what is happening between the members of the band.

Your, your contributions are not focused on what you individually can contribute as much as what is the right thing that I can add to make this music function as a whole in the most effective way possible.

So I, being a musician myself, that's naturally the way I orient.

And so this is a fun way for me to take all of the things that I love the most about music and apply them to a business format.

It sounds like a very, a management style.

That's very Zen.

It is, it is, it totally is.

Which also makes it more fun too because Zen also, it's spontaneous.

It's very.

Everything is, is coming from that space of spontaneity, you know, the.

And it's.

And curiosity and eschewing certainty in favor of curiosity and spontaneity.

Are you all self funded or are you, have you had to raise money?

No, so far we've been bootstrapping and we are now at a place where we are looking at getting some investors.

So that's.

This is.

This is actually happening like right now.

We've been booted down to this moment and we are working on putting together our ppm.

Are you going to continue with the coaching business as well?

Yeah, that will always have some part of my life.

Right now I, in fact earlier this morning I have a weekly session that I do for a group called Metal.

Metal is a global men's entrepreneurial group.

Stands for media, entertainment, technology, artists and leadership.

And it was.

It started out of LA and it's now grown to around the world.

We have people in Bangkok, we have people in Dubai, we have people in Germany and London and Toronto and Mexico and.

And so every Monday morning I Lead a Zen warrior, what I call the Zen Warrior Dojo.

And it's a practice of bringing the principles and the wisdom and the embodiment of Zen principles into a business landscape with working with how to apply the wisdom of the ancient sages and bring Find that wisdom inside of ourselves versus read about it in books.

What do we need to do to find that inside of ourselves and navigate our lives from a more graceful and fluid and dynamic manner and apply that both in our personal and professional lives.

I love doing that work and it's something that, gosh, I've been doing.

I suppose I'm probably up to doing about 250 of those group facilitations at this point.

And, and I'll probably.

I may always work with people on a private basis or a group basis as well.

Most of my attention will of course be focused on USA Protective care because it just has to be.

But I, I will always leave room for doing coaching and mentoring.

Startups tend to be that way.

They tend to consume you when they're fun.

It doesn't feel like you're being consumed by it though.

That's right.

I just worked all weekend long and it was like I, I feel great now.

You know, it's like, you know, I take time where I need to.

It's important to.

You don't want to be totally, yeah, you don't want to be consumed.

But when it's.

When you're with the right team and you've got the right approach and you're operating from that place of ego freedom, it really is, you know, it's one of the things that I most enjoy doing.

It's fun to hear all this from you and I think nice messages for the people that are listening and watching this episode.

But thank you.

This has been fun.

Thank you for doing this.

Thank you.

I feel like I've been doing all the talking, but I suppose that's part of the format.

That's a wrap.

Thanks for tuning in.

Today's takeaways about Sam Morris are true.

Paralysis exists in the mind, not the body.

As Sam puts it, the only thing that can actually create paralysis is with one's mindset.

Adaptability is the key to resilience, in Sam's words.

The beauty of going through something so severely challenging is that it makes you an expert on adaptability.

And adaptability can be applied universally.

Finding peace often requires a warrior like approach.

The seeming paradox of Zen warrior reflects the battle we must fight against limiting beliefs to achieve true serenity.

Success comes from focusing on collective harmony rather than individual achievement.

Sam's jazz band analogy shows how a team thrives when members ask, what can I add to make this function as a whole?

Rather than how can I stand out?

Acceptance isn't surrender, it's transformation.

As Sam describes, the greatest fight wasn't against his circumstances, but against my own sense of what I believed I needed to be versus what I was.

The show notes contain useful resources and links.

Please follow and rate us@podchaser.com designingsuccessful startups.

Also, please share and like us on your social media channels.

This is Jothi Rosenberg saying TTFN Tata for now.