Exhausting Every Moment | NFL Legend, Ronnie Lott

Ronnie Lott (0:00)

You are who you are. It's a reflection of what you see yourself as, and it's a reflection of what you think you are capable of.

And so you gotta dare at moments to see that you can do certain things. And sometimes you fail, and sometimes you win. But the question is, which I think is the most important part of it is, did you try?

Michael Gervais (0:38)

All right, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais, and by trade in training, a sport and performance psychologist, as well as the co-founder Compete to Crate, and I have a massive frog in my throat. I'm not sure what happened, but I've been ripping and running lately, and I think that my vocal systems just have become compromised. So if you can bear with the voice here for a little bit on the intro, I just want to make sure that we get this podcast up because it's fantastic. And I can't wait to introduce the guests that we have this week. And the whole idea, if you're new to this podcast, is to explore the inner world of people that have done the extraordinary. And we want to understand what they're searching for. We want to understand their psychological framework. And we also want to dig to understand the mental skills they use to build and refine their craft. Now, this week's conversation is with NFL Hall of Famer Ronnie Lott. And Ronnie has been a champion and a leader his entire life. After graduating high school in 1977, Ronnie went on to the University of Southern California where he helped his team win the 1978 National Championship. One year out of high school, how about it? He was a unanimous all-American and team captain in 1980, graduated in 81 with a degree in public administration. Shortly after that, he became the first round draft pick in the NFL for the San Francisco 49ers. And his legendary football career included four Super Bowl titles and 10 Pro Bowl appearances. And he's one of the only five 49ers to play on all the teams in the 1980s where the team had multiple Super Bowl wins. And then he retired his professional football career in 1994 and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2000 So illustrious career. And then post football, he's also found success in entrepreneurship as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley and also has a long history in philanthropic involvement.

So what has allowed Ronnie to be successful at pretty much everything he's done in his life?

It starts with a commitment to excellence and he talks about what that really means and a real determination to be great and a relentless pursuit to keep trying, even when it doesn't work out. And for Ronnie, it really comes down to exhausting every moment.

What I hope you pick up in this conversation is that Ronnie's thoughts and his actions reflect a man who's had the courage to go for it. A man who has not feared the consequences of coming up short.

And one last thing before we get into this conversation, if you love this podcast as much as I do, I hope that you can do two things to help out. One is tell two friends, tell two about Finding Mastery and then show them, grab their phone, show them how to listen, how to subscribe. This would be a massive accelerant to our community.

And the other way is to support our sponsors. And you can find all the information and discounts currently available at findingmastery.net forward slash partners using the codes that we provide and the links that our sponsors know that you found them through our community, through Finding Mastery. So with that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with Ronnie Lott. Ronnie, how are you?

Ronnie Lott (4:05)

I'm doing great, man. This is really special.

I'm ready for it.

Michael Gervais (4:09)

Okay, good. Because we can make an easy argument that you have defined the position in your field of being the greatest defensive back safety to play the game.

And I'm not so interested in that. Okay, I'm much more interested in how you have organized your life to think. Like how you've organized your life to do just that. And I'm also interested in transitions. So you came into the league, transitions right away, Pro Bowl, you transitioned out of the league, high success, two franchises, a capital business.

Can you talk to me about early life and how you learned how to transition?

Ronnie Lott (4:52)

Well, that's a great question. I think one of the fascinating things about being a military kid is that you learn how to get along with people. And the reason you learn is that you're moving. And so when you're moving every three or four years, we moved from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Washington, DC. And when we moved from Albuquerque to Washington, DC and I was about four or five years old, in that four or five years old, you start to realize that you got to go to school.