 I was rolling back to my truck in a parking lot, and all of a sudden I just hear, Hey! Hey! And I look over and I see this giant Spartan dude running over at me and I'm thinking, oh my god, you're gonna get robbed, Brian. You're gonna get robbed. Brian looked rough. I just felt like I needed to stop. And so I slammed on my brakes and I whipped it next to him and I jumped out of the car. And he's just like, hey, I'm David Vibora, a retired NFL player. What happened? This is Buckshot. He was one of the IED Detective Dogs, our unit head. It was April 18th, 2011. I'm walking in the boot prints of the men in front of me and I'm like, all right, Buckshot, we're gonna jump. And right as I'm pushing off with my right foot, my left foot's off the ground and kaboom. And everything goes black from all the smoke and dirt flying in the air and I've had over 30 surgeries. I can't even describe how much that stuff hurt. And you go and you tell them, hey, this still hurts. And they're like, well, I think you're abusing your meds. And I'm like, okay, well, I'm gonna go buy heroin. The time when I stopped in that parking lot, he was severely addicted to heroin, had just gotten out of a second detox and he was going to bed every single night with a pistol next to his body. He felt like he couldn't be the Marine that he was when he left our country to go serve. He was broken. Completely broken. A place that I was familiar with. Told him I used to play football. You know, I had a gym downtown and I'd love it if he joined me. The following morning, he showed up and we trained and we started to explore different things and the way he could do things. And for the next three months, he came every day. So we just hit it off. The life come back to his eyes. We just experimented with all different kinds of exercises and from there, we just built a program around it. After going there regularly, getting stronger, getting healthier, my body pain decreased tremendously. My confidence levels changed. It all became a lot more feasible. It was like, man, yeah, this is... I can do this. This isn't possible. Pick number 252. Last pick in the 2008 draft making me Mr. Irrelevant. It was the St. Louis Rams. Selected me that last pick and started my rookie year. In 2011, I suffered a traumatic shoulder injury and it led to a very aggressive pain medication addiction. It started with prescriptions and it quickly manifest itself and it was anything but dealing with pain. It was the first time in my life I had to look myself in the mirror and ask, who's David without football? It just took a year to rehabilitate my mind and my body. So I said, what if we started a gym in Texas? And so we moved here and I launched the performance vault, training for elite athletes. I was having success, man. NFL athletes, Olympic athletes, making good money, finding the groove and then it all changed. Staff Sergeant Travis Mills. He was one of five living veteran quadruple amputees. He was blown up, serving our great country in Afghanistan, stepped on an IED, lost all four limbs. I was way across the room and I just... I saw him walk in and I was just drawn to him and I looked at him and I said, when was the last time you worked out? He looked at me and looked out at his prosthetics and said, I'm sorry, I don't want to make you feel like an idiot but I don't have arms and legs. I said, Travis, I want to train you. And he said, well, do you have any experience? And the first day we trained, I asked him, I said, what are you most afraid of? He said, well, remember, no arms, no legs, gravity wins, so falling. Then I realized, wait a second, if Travis is in this position that he can't really go to a typical gym, I said, wow, all of these people, veterans, civilians, there's people with physical disabilities, they've sort of been sidelined. They've fallen into the rehabilitation process, but eventually insurance ran out, cash ran out, and where do they go, right? Where do they go to be a part of a collective group that has this community and this ability to push each other? As they graduate this nine-week course and they continue to train as alumni, they recognize that they have this ability to train new people like them. All the world-class medical care out there, the great prosthetics, frequently there isn't a kick in the ass, something that just pushes you to get going. Something like that would never show up in hospital rehab. There's no tire flips, there's no sledge hammers, there's no sled pulls, none of that stuff. You don't do medicine, ball, slams. They make you stronger, they instill some insane confidence and self-worth back into you. Not just that, they're giving you something to do, a place to be, a little sense of community with everybody. David's program, it's invaluable. What's up, Portland? It's come to that final hour. Look, do me a favor, get up out your seats really quick. Stand up if you can. Stand up, stand up, stand up. Reach your hands over your head, take a huge breath in and blow it out on a five-count. One more time, we're breathing in all that staleness, all the stuff that we've been worried about all weekend, and we're going to be right in the present. We're breathing in. Greatness, sit down. Sit down, sit down, sit down. I want to anchor us first with our breath because that oxygen is so critical, right? And I'm really fired up to be in front of all you guys because this is my people. That float thing is amazing, is it not? And people that are open to things like this, those are the type of people I want to be around. They challenge status quo, they push back on the way that we've done things in the past to try to revolutionize industries and solve real-world problems in real-time. Today, my speech is entitled Accessing the Supreme Self. What is the Supreme Self? People, I just spoke in lunch a little bit with a group around our table. Those food carts were awesome, by the way. And I said, look, people talk about their peak self, their best self. And to me, the peak is a brilliant view, right? Mountain Hood is a great example of this, right? But nothing grows up at the summit because the environment's not primed for that, the valley, right? The part that we like to avoid, the discomfort that we know grows us is the part that we kind of avoid. And in fact, our brain is wired to create safety survival mechanisms, right? Because back in the day, there's saber-toothed tigers running after us and all that. Now, somebody cuts us off in the freeway. We're like, I've got my whole day now, right? There it goes. And that's the part of the thing that we deal with around a lot of our veterans in post-traumatic stress. Now, regardless of where the stress came, how it came, could have been an IED, could have been that person cutting you off, our brain in our head wants to revert, wants to take a certain path based on prior belief systems and other things that they've adopted for that safety or the identity in self. But in stillness, we begin to wake up something else, right? We can get medical and talk about parasympathetic nervous system and whatnot, but we're waking up the gut, right? Now, my grandma used to call it the spiritual speed dial. She'd talk about the holy ghost bumps. But without really aligning in any specific religion, let's just say this, it's intuitive, is it not? You probably had experienced some time when you knew right here what you were supposed to do or what was happening, but you couldn't really describe it. Any moms, if your mom raised your hand? Yeah, you all know what your kids are doing at all time because of this thing, right? She's like, I know right now what they're doing. But for me, when I was at the peak of my career in football, I had to have tunnel vision to create success, right? And I did that, became a starter to check some of those boxes, but I had silenced this. And there's a beautiful harmony, right? There has to be, because if not, you guys, anybody got one of these in their hands? These crazy little fidget spinners, right? These things are crazy, man. They're everywhere now. See kids, they're just... But when I look at this, symmetry is critical, right? That's how it spins on the axis and can continue. So if this looked like Mickey Mouse ears, big on two sides and small on one, it wouldn't spin right, right? It wouldn't maintain the momentum. And life is about momentum. I'm going to get back to that gut. But for me, I consider a Venn diagram. It's a perfect example. The supreme self is where mind, body, and spirit overlap, right? They're all seeing eye in the middle. They're all knowing where it's very much automatic where I don't believe it's about intellect because the battle between the two brains is between intellect and instinct. And when we do something like floating, my own experience, and Ray, Ray, where's your hand? Yeah, Ray, Tomo, what's up, brother? I go into Frisco and he meets me and he sees me and I'm bouncing off the walls all this energy and I just found this out today. He had a bet as I went in, like, that guy's not going to last two minutes. No way, no way. But one of the speakers earlier was talking about discomfort. I'm a little bit of a, I guess, a masochist in this way that I like pain. I feel alive. You know, one of our combat injured veterans at the Foundation, he often says that physical pain reminds you that you're alive, but mental pain will test your will to stay that way. And I think there's a lot of truth in that. And so, in floating, in stillness, we are an actual human being, not a human doer. We're really quick to try and do and work and position and angle and get and get and get and then we get and we're like, oh, I gotta get the next thing. Right, because it's like lust, it's good to the touch and it's never enough. Even if it's success, even if it's for good purpose, you might find that vocation that's your why, but you make it your entire identity and then what happens when it gets pulled from underneath you? You know, when I was playing for the Seahawks, my life didn't look like this. Body was big, right? Playing in the NFL had to be focused on that part and the mind was really just specific to how I could engage in success in football. And the spirit was kind of like, I can leave that out or whatever. You know, praise God after the game, pray God that we win the game, that's that. But eventually you heard the drug addiction piece, right? It was the fear inside me, the fear of vulnerability for sure, the fear of staring back at a person in the mirror that had achieved greatness or had earned his way to becoming elite at a craft and I thought that my greatness would outweigh the imbalance of the Venn diagram, but it didn't. So it was January 12th, excuse me, January 15th, 2012, and I laid in a hospital bed. It was day three of seven in drug detox and my body was bearing legit physical war waged against itself, shutting itself down. I didn't know day from night, I couldn't control either end. I had two seizures, lost 34 pounds and in the midst of this, I kind of came to my senses and I woke up and there was a cold-played tuna casserole sitting on the table next to me. I don't know about you guys, but nobody likes tuna casserole much less hospital tuna casserole, right? It's out of a drug detox unit. You can imagine what that would have tasted like warm, much less sitting there, for God knows how long. But I knew if I could feed my body some sustenance, some nourishment that maybe I could find relief. I could calm my torture, the pain that I was in. So when I reached out to grab the food, my hands barely willing to open and I took the plate and I went to take it to the microwave to try to heat it up and that's when the tremor short-circuited and I fell. Powerless. Crash. Plate explodes. Tuna casserole everywhere. Two weeks prior I was playing for the Seattle Seahawks. Now I'm on the floor of a detox unit. Embarrassed, ashamed. Spirit completely crushed. Tears streaming down my face. When the nurses rushed in, they grabbed me and restrained me because they thought I was going to use the broken plate to try to kill myself. So you tell me where you think your power, your source, your identity lives and I'm going to tell you that's the quickest way to wreck the identity, the ego, the self. But floating, the first time I floated, I felt something and it's cliche to say out of body, but I felt something that was so significant that it ignited what you all, what's brought you here today. And maybe it's curiosity. But there's something so unique about your own experience that is your experience and some of the meditation stuff that I do, people are always like, but am I doing it right? Well, just like floating, you're not doing it right, you're not doing it wrong, you're doing it. And part of that ability to sit and be still is when you wake this up. So what led me to the floor of detox? Well, it was imbalance, you know? And to me, that imbalance was something that I took great pride in especially, so it made the fall that much more painful. And as I got out of the league, I rehabilitated my mind, my body had a few different shoulder surgeries and foot surgeries, and I was planning on going back to the league. But I took my time to actually wake this up. And as I did, when I got the call to return, something shifted in me. And you're not in the NFL because you're one foot in, one foot out. I mean, you're dealing with monstrosities of men running down the field. And I just knew something shifted and I decided to retire. I actually listened to this. And the crazy thing is when you listen, it strengthens, right? You become more in tune to it. Almost like a sixth sense to begin to understand where your gifts are calling you. And in a way that, yes, is your true north, but also in a way that is authentic to realize that the gift is made to benefit others as well. Call it service, call it the spiritual component of that spinner, the Venn diagram. For me, as I began to look at what my attributes were that made me great at football, I saw that they transferred over to life. And the gift of that detox floor was what ignited compassion. You see, when I stopped for Brian in that parking lot, what did my brain do versus my gut? You know, my brain said, you don't have time. Your wife's pissed at you. You cured the kids in the background. They're screaming. You're hungry. All very justifiable, very rational, right? But I chose to listen to this instead. When I hammered the brakes and jumped out, it was very clear that there was something greater at work in that moment. And to me, it wasn't even about me being the reason. It was about just obedience to the call. And so as I start to unpack what I'm doing in my own life and my own awareness, my own introspection, my personality to try to drive out conclusions working with these athletes that make profound visuals every single day. You got to imagine, these athletes have gulped pain at a degree you and I could never fathom, right? But they no longer suffer. Why is that? Why is that? A perspective shift. And at times when we look objectively at ourselves, what we are facing, whatever that is, we pause in stillness, right? Because we're human beings, not human doers. When we allow that space, call it the God source, call it the universe, call it your intuition, call it whatever you want. It comes in. You're here because you felt it. You're listening because you know. This is a call for you to be qualified, to listen to what that is, and then act. Don't let this interrupt it. Maybe you're in a relationship right now, right? And you, on paper, they got everything that you want. They'd say, I'm a kibble, it's fine, it's nice. But you know in your gut that that's not the person. But you haven't split that off because you don't want to hurt them. But you know what's coming, right? Maybe you see someone, you know, I spoke in a younger group, and it was like high school kids, and I said, you see someone at a party, take that girl who's obviously intoxicated into a room, and you know something's not right, what do you do? Do you act? Because my favorite definition of leader, or leadership, is actually by Napoleon Bonaparte. And I wouldn't recommend quoting Napoleon a whole lot. That's not a real good one. But in this case, he said that a leader is a dealer of hope. Hope. To me, hope is a priceless currency, right? It's like water. You'll die without hope. Like a baby that's born, and if it's not held, it'll die. We're meant to have this interwoven interpersonal connection with other humans and being able to deal hope, hope dealing, all hopped up on hope, right? That's a message that I think we can all learn from the pain that I endured. So how do you repurpose the scar that you were dealt, or maybe that you dealt to yourself? How do you repurpose that to help alleviate some suffering in somebody else? How do you do that? Well, it has to start with what excites you. Because I mentioned compassion earlier, and I wholeheartedly believe this, you can serve without compassion, but you can't offer compassion, not true compassion without service. Let me say it again, you can serve without compassion, but you can't offer true compassion without service. And why is that? Because true compassion interrupts. It stops you. It's not convenient. But you listen to something else, because you know your gifts match someone's needs. And yeah, you can buy somebody, you know, the coffee behind you at Starbucks, or, you know, do random acts of kindness and such. But how are you invested in your personal story? You know, the thing that you mostly overt on your resume, or maybe in your own personal story, around your faith, that is actually the key contributing factor that is not only going to save somebody else's life potentially, but save your own. You cannot give what you do not have. You know, I recently started talking about this, but I was sexually abused as a kid. I was 10 years old. And, you know, when that happened, I felt less than. What I did was, I created external validation and achievement, right? So people wouldn't know what was really going on inside. I created a void that actually didn't exist in myself, but it was from my pain. And the belief system that was created led to me being a shark in the water, and if I stopped swimming, I was going to get eaten, so I had to push and go and go and go. And yes, you can achieve success, but what's your definition of success? Mine is dealing hope. And you're called to. Nobody can do it for you, so I ask you, if not you, then who? Don't marginalize your capabilities as a leader and just put them conveniently out of arms reach, right? Like, oh, somebody else is built for that. Leaders can be first followers. Leaders can be people who just pause and act in compassion. I'm walking into a 7-Eleven one night to buy a Red Bull or something healthy, I'm sure. And with a combat engine marine, a good buddy of mine, and a homeless guy comes running up, and he said, hey, can I get some money? And I'll be completely honest. I sort of blew him off and was going inside. And my buddy reaches into his pocket, he pulls out a $5 bill, and he goes to hand it to the man. But when he hands it to him, he doesn't let go. So the homeless guy grabs it and starts to pull, but then doubles back and looks at my buddy in his eyes. My buddy looks at him and says, you're worth it. Let's go to the bill. Homeless guy turns, starts to walk into 7-Eleven, but circles back and says, hey, man, what did you say to me? My buddy really casually reaches down in his pant leg, lifts up to reveal a prosthetic leg. He lost serving our great nation in Iraq. And he looked at the man and he said, what I did for this country, I did for you. And you're worth it and you're worth that money. Nothing small happened in this moment, because this man turned and walked, not into 7-Eleven, but down the sidewalk and out of sight. I wish I could tell you that I knew the outcome of where that man is today, and somehow that was that turning point effect in his life. And doesn't that feel good? Doesn't our ego want that clarity, that certainty, that definition? But I don't know the answer. I do know, though, that no small thing happened for him and not for me. Because I watched hope being dealt in a way that was so significant. My wife, one of the greatest compliments she's ever given me is that when I pull up to homeless guys, instead of just giving them a couple bucks, and this is post this event, she says, man, you look them in their eyes, you ask them their name and where they're from and what their last job was and what they're interested in and what they're passionate about and literally people behind you will be honking. And this isn't about me, this is being humane to humanity. Because if you treat somebody broken, they act broken. If you look them in your eye and treat them as a whole person, then they're gonna rise up. That's how empowerment works. And community done well is agnostic. Race, gender, sexual preference, I don't care, a veteran civilian. And that's why the gym is a really great conduit for us. Because if you want to use sweat to find out about yourself, I call it sweat psychology. Good pain to push out bad pain. My background is in psychology. The human performance stuff, that's just because I was a white guy in the NFL. Had to know all that stuff to last. But for me, how did I offer a unique perspective toward physical training? Because the physical attributes that we offer these athletes in our nine-week program, that's a no-brainer. If you come and you come to work and give effort, you're going to improve. But the mental side is everything. So with this group, we started to weave in meditation, mindfulness. We call it portion recharge. Because yes, we want to turn off the fight or flight and turn on that parasympathetic nervous system. And what we're watching with our athletes is their cup suddenly doesn't run over in a negative way when the littlest things trigger and happen. They can make it through an MRI machine without drugs. They can look to holistic methods. They understand what it is to feel again. Because I don't care if you suffer from post-traumatic stress or not. You're going to suffer, period, if you live between the past and the future. And I don't mean the present. You're bouncing between those two. The present is all you got now. That one's gone now. But we're so quick to let this hold us captive. You know, I floated a couple of weeks ago over at Reyes. And as I'm working through a lot of this stuff with my past and different things, the music that came on while I was in the float, it triggered the piano. And piano reminded me of my sister. And suddenly I was back in our house that we grew up in. And it was 18 years I lived in this house. She was playing the piano. And I could see the dust on the table and the carpet and the ugly popcorn ceilings and the way this smelled and my golden retriever out back. And I was literally moving through my house with such vivid clarity that there's no chance that my conscious mind could have ever resurrected any of this memory or perception. As I moved through in places I used to hide as a kid and this and the way the floor felt. I mean, I had all of these sensory responses. And then I felt my body move to the next door neighbor's house, which is where I was sexually abused. But you know what? I wasn't panicked. There was no emotion. It was a completely objective, aerial view over this experience. And the same thing was true to the exact room where things took place, to the texture of the couch, to the this, to the light, to the... And I got to experience that in a way that had no real connection to what my spirit is. So I realized in this moment what I've sought this whole time has been inside of me. I've been resistant to it as a result of being addicted to my pain and really being addicted to my brain. So, do I love what I'm doing? Yes. Does it call to me? Does it feed my soul? Yes. But if I think that God needs me to do this, I'm wrong. And if I think I'm that important, I'm wrong. What I do realize is that I'm going to be present, and when I hear this call, I go. I go. You know, the story I didn't tell you to paint a bigger picture was years with the Rams. I think it was 2009. Now, a witness is really gruesome motorcycle accident. That sweet wood panel convertible that you guys saw? A woody. I bought that for $1,500 on Craigslist. We've been shipping around the country. My wife's so pissed at me right now. Everything breaks down all the time. But it broke down on the side of the road. Surprise, surprise. And the steam's pouring out of the hood and we witnessed the most gruesome and horrific motorcycle accident. A car in the innermost lane ran into this bike. It had a dad and a 14-year-old boy. And the impact that 70 miles an hour caused the father to fling over the handlebars and the bike to lay down and pin the young boy. They were sliding across the pavement, right? Everything slowed down. It was like slow motion, watching this thing unfold. No sound existed. Then a car in the innermost lane ran over to the boy and the bike immediately causing a burst into flames. And in this moment, in this high pressure situation, I reached over to grab my cell phone to dial 911. And as I looked up, I see my girlfriend running out into traffic on I-70, stopping speeding cars. She's wearing only a swimsuit cover-up and flip-flops. Because we were going to a barbecue. She's the one running toward two mango bodies and one still pinned under a burning motorcycle. And this is when Dave Vabor is a modern-day gladiator, right? Starting NFL linebacker. How could I apply Valor on the football field every single day? But then when it came time for a life-and-death decision to serve and to help somebody in that instance, I did nothing. And it shook me. It shook me hard because when I went to my girlfriend, I asked her, I said, why did you not hesitate? She said, look, if that was my dad or my brother, I would expect somebody to do the same. I just trusted my gut. It wasn't even a choice. So then it really shook me up. But I realized two things. The first, I was going to marry this incredible woman. And I did. She's my wife. I've got two little girls now. But beyond that, I realized that I froze. And that was three years before ending up in drug detox, the Seahawks. So if you think about it, I didn't even pause during that moment to do the deep introspection to why I didn't act. Yes, somebody had to dial 911, okay? But how many other drivers already had their hand on their phone to do this very necessary but very uninspiring move? The truth was, it wasn't convenient for David. There was no compassion. And you don't offer something that you don't have. So now what I've done, what I've learned, and what I've rested in is the compassion that I have owed myself. And that float, I'll try not to get choked up by that float and that experience, it's funny, I actually left and I didn't even, it didn't register. I was shaving like two hours later and it started coming up and I was like, I got to write on something, you know, I got to get this out because it was so, so poignant and real. So to me, you guys are solid earth. You are truly the people holding a torch up on a hilltop right now. And look, we can talk about the marketing strategy. We can talk about what it is to understand our market to partner, to create new products. But if it doesn't come from a heart of compassion, if it doesn't come from really the necessity of learning about yourself through this component and then being able to allow others to discover it for themselves and you're positioning that in a way, monetization can happen. We can make money. Things work, they work, right? Nothing real can be threatened, nothing unreal exists. Of course, a miracle. So know that for us today, I want you to leave with this empowered feeling or this challenge for me, either way you want to look at it. I do believe that every single person in here is built for one unique, specific opportunity that they will see the divine in you. And it has nothing to do with why you're qualified by man or by yourself or by the facts or by your schooling or by how much money you have in your wallet. It has everything to do with whether you have something for yourself that you've struggled that you can offer to somebody else. That's dealing hope. So I'd encourage you to tap into this gut instinct, right? They found that these operating systems, right, the central nervous system runs the brain, but the enteric nervous system runs the gut. You can sever the nerve that connects the two and this one will continue to operate. So, yes, there's two brains. Different executive functioning and we need harmony between the two. So I challenge you, please find it what it is that excites you. You can go and do soup at a soup kitchen. But if you're excited about basket weaving, you go and freaking basket weave in the hood and you pull kids out that like basket weaving too. If you are about animals, right, don't continue to pass the buck because tomorrow's not what you have is now. Listen to now, discern now and deal hope. Thank you guys.