NBA Great Kevin Love on Trying to Achieve His Way Out of Depression

**Morra Aarons-Mele** (0:00)
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Hi, I'm Morra Aarons-Mele, host of The Anxious Achiever. Today, I'm going to bring you one of our most downloaded and one of my most favorite episodes from our archives. It's a classic. The Anxious Achiever has been at it for a long time. We have over 300 episodes and honestly, they're all still more relevant than ever. You may hear details in this episode that remind you it's from another time, but I guarantee that the advice you get will be as crisp and meaningful and the stories as resonant as before. If you have a favorite episode of the show, let me know. I'd love to air it again or even rerecord it for you fresh. Enjoy this classic Anxious Achiever episode.
Today's guest is an idol to my kids and to many kids and adults around the world. He's an Olympic gold medalist, five-time NBA All-Star. He's one of the big three with LeBron James and Kyrie Irving, who helped the Cleveland Cavaliers reach four straight NBA finals, including a 2016 championship. Not only that, he will earn about $31 million this year.
And yet, Kevin Love is often depressed and anxious. It's in his chemistry.
Love has written eloquently about his experience, and he's been in the press talking about this. But before he started talking about it, he feared he'd be seen as weak or that he wouldn't be taken as seriously on the court. He was worried he would be shamed. Now, of course, none of that has happened. Kevin Love is a role model to so many, and he's helped spur a discussion in the National Basketball Association and in pro sports in general. Recently, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver even admitted that many players in his league are anxious and that the league needs to take action. Our heroes have depression and clinical anxiety. Remember that. So I'm thrilled to have Kevin Love join us today to talk about mental health success and the journey in between. So you've been public about your struggle with depression, and I'm curious, was that a hard decision to make to go public?

**Kevin Love** (5:03)
It was a very hard decision because I feel like it's even more heightened and even more under a microscope because as athletes, and as an athlete, we're looked at as superheroes. I know that from growing up and having these superstars in my eyes like Charles Barkley or Shaquille O'Neal or even before that with Larry Bird and Matthew Johnson, Michael Jordan. I'm looking like these guys are indestructible, nothing can hurt them. Growing up as a young man, I thought to expose that it was just going to put me in a light where people are going to look at me as weak.