128 | Surviving a Nightmare: John Ulsh's Journey from Tragedy to Purpose

This is Becoming Undone. Somewhere in that nursing home, I kind of realized I wasn't going to die. Now, somewhere in the nursing home, I started wishing I would have died. So it was a, you know, it was a mental hurdle. And so I am sitting in this office, I'm sitting right now, and out the window in front of me is a big front yard. And our daughter, who now is 10, a big soccer player. And so she's, when she's out of practice, she would come home from school and she'd be out there just juggling in the front yard. And so I look up and I see her out there juggling in the front yard. And then I look up and she's gone. And I hear her walk in the front door and she comes into my office and she's crying. So I'd like call her into my seat right here. And I'm like, what's wrong, honey? I just assumed she heard herself and she sits in my lap. She says, I miss my old daddy. The one who would come out and train with me. This is John Olsh and I am undone. Hey friend, welcome or welcome back. Either way, I'm glad you're here. This is another episode of Becoming Undone, the podcast for those who dare bravely risk mildly and grow relentlessly. I'm Toby Brooks, a speaker, author, professor and performance scientist. Over the last two decades, I've had the privilege of working in high performance sports and academic spaces as well. And what continues to fascinate me is this. Why is it that some people crumble under adversity while others rise? They're rebuilt, they're refined and they're more resolute than ever. Every week here on Becoming Undone, we unpack that as I sit down with high achievers. And we figure out how they move through disruption and disappointment, not around it. Because Becoming Undone is not the end of the story. It's where a new one begins. Quick reminder, this podcast is entirely separate from my role at Baylor University. It's my personal platform to explore the inner workings of identity, resilience and reinvention, and how in the middle of setback and failure, you can navigate your own purpose storm. It's a chance for me to explore deeper into what I've learned and what I'm learning. Today's guest is someone whose story hits hard in all the best ways. John Allsch is a man who's lived through a nightmare and somehow emerged from the wreckage, not just standing, but serving. After a devastating automobile accident that impacted his entire family and nearly took his life, he survived, only to have to undergo years of intensive rehab and over 45 surgeries and counting. John could have disappeared into grief and no one would have blamed him. Instead, he chose to build. Legacy, purpose and a life committed to helping others. In this conversation, we talk about the power of community, the surprising ways that healing can show up, and how John's capacity to find meaning in loss has become a mission in itself. If you've ever questioned how to keep going when life breaks your heart wide open, John's story will meet you there. This is an unforgettable episode, so I hope you'll stick around for my conversation with John Allsch in episode 128. Unbreakable. John Allsch is joining us today. He is an author, a keynote speaker and a survivor. John, thanks so much for joining me today. Toby, thank you for having me. We're only looking forward to it. Well, I was super excited. Increasingly, as the show's grown, I get more contacts. There's a lot of podcast promotion places, and some of those are great. Some of them aren't as good. So I always ask for that speaker kit, and when I saw yours, I knew right away that I wanted to have you on the show. Your story is incredible. But before we get there, I always like to start at the beginning. Start at the beginning, wherever that was for you. Yeah, so I am 53 years old. I'm a father of two children. I have a daughter who is 26. I have a son who's 21. He'll be 22 here shortly, and he's going into his senior year at Villanova here in Pennsylvania. My wife, Tanya, is a business owner as well. She owns jewelry stores here in central Pennsylvania. When I'm not doing motivational work, I run a real estate team as well here in Central PA. I was 37 years old, living a really good life with my wife, my two kids, and a car crossed the center line and hit us at 125 on impact speed, and my life was turned upside down. Yeah, on one hand, you'd say, you know, happily married two kids, real estate. That's a fairly normal life. But yet in a moment, it transformed and your purpose along with it. If we had to meet you five days before the accident, what would you say were the dreams and the goals that you would have told me you were chasing after then? Literally, that perfect family status, success. I was a marathon runner. I had been a runner in high school and ran a college, did the capital on a college. I wasn't really a distance runner until after college. A lot of people was like, I need to find a new high. Yeah, so I had a great group of friends. We weren't killing it, killing it, but we had a really nice living. We had an old pair from Europe from Germany who was helping us because my wife and I were both working 50, 60 hours a week. I wouldn't say that was hindsight, it's not the dream. I was missing, you know, swim meets. The day of our accident was a day of a swim meet that I was on a Saturday. But yeah, we were in a really good lifestyle. Our relationships were strong. Our kids were eight and four and kind of felt like we had the world, you know, exactly where we wanted it. Yeah, that's it, figuring it out, right? Just living life. And at that point in your life, what would you say had been your role with adversity and overcoming up until then? So again, being an athlete, when you understand a little bit, you know, you can, in high school, I played football, basketball. I'm in a small high school, graduated 60-some kids in a class. And so if we didn't play all three seasons, we didn't have enough kids, right? Yeah. You know, my high school added soccer after I graduated and they lost the marching band because they didn't have enough kids. So yeah, so I was a three sport guy. I was, I excelled in track. It was a decent football player because I was fast. Didn't translate the great hands. But you know, when you're, when you're average linemen or 150, 170 pound guys, you got to be, you know, fast isn't, is, is all you need. Right. But I was, I was a real good hurdler, a 300 and 110. And so, you know, I knew what it was like when I got to college, I went to division three school to run track. I had some opportunities to go to some big division one schools like Syracuse and was blown away by the fact that a kid coming from a 63 kids in their class was in Syracuse, Syracuse, New York in February in the snow. I had no idea, like literally had no experience whatsoever being there. It's like, this is not where I need to be. Yeah. And so, you know, I went to a division three program where I was MVP my freshman year and had success. But when I got to college, particularly when I started, you know, so I was a, I was a good sprinter, freshly from my high school. He's a good high jumper, good long jumper. So I actually graduated with 10 high school records. Wow. Yeah. And we ran on center track. Yeah. And so, so I knew what it was like to push yourself a little bit. Yeah. And then when I became like a marathon runner, even more, just this understanding and like nobody ever, I don't think anybody sets out to become a marathon runner. I think people start to like, I'm going to run a mile and then I'm going to run a 5k and then I'm going to run a 10k. I can run a half marathon and then it uses get the bug. Yeah. And so like literally the day of our accident, I had just knocked out 13 miles on December 1st, appearing in central Pennsylvania, a little cold morning in the dark. But yeah, I mean, so I understood adversity as it related to pushing your body. Yeah. I was also dyslexic and had a stutter. You know, I was born in 1971. There was not a lot of understanding of either of them in my little high, my little school. Yeah. I was fifth grade till I really could start to read and the stuttering, I kind of grew out of eventually, but even in a college, I was still very cognitive of the fact that, you know, I might stutter and I would talk really fast to try to avoid the stutter. So, you know, I had a little bit of that growing up being in sports helped. You know, especially in a small high school, if I was, you know, I spent all my time with a book, I probably would have had no friends. Yeah. Right. But you mentioned hands, you know what they call a wide receiver who can't catch very well. A D-DAC? That's right. Yeah, we've heard that one before. What do you think they put me when I got to college? Right. Like son, you could run real fast. That's it. Just knock somebody down. You don't have to catch anything. Yeah. Awesome. Well, I know that you've rehashed this day a million times in your mind. So let's go back to the day of the accident. Talk me through what you remember about that day that pivoted your whole life. Okay. So it was December 1st, 2007. So it's a Saturday. And our daughter was the one swimming at the time she swam for our YMCA. So indoor season up here all the time. And so we were at James Buchanan High School, which is south of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, almost at the Maryland border. It's about an hour from our house. And so again, we get in there. It's a typical old high school indoor swimming, hot and humid. Again, I remember, you know, I would show up these things and sometimes I'd have to be a timer like most parents. And so, you know, I'd be in there in a t-shirt, a pair of sweatpants, and then I would go with a pair of crocs and socks and take the socks off so I could at least get some sort of, you know, air. So the meet was over at around one o'clock in the afternoon, early meet. And I remember coming down, when we came down, we came through a town called Chambersburg, which is the next town outside of Mercerysburg, and taking this Route 16, 55 mile, undivided rig. We were pulling out of the school. And so our son James, who was four, our daughter Katie, was the one who swam. Again, she was eight. She was at the top of her age because she'd already been swimming since she was six. It was her first meet. Four blue ribbons. She swam an IM, which was a big deal for an eight-year-old girl. And so if we felt great, right, we kind of bribed our son James with, if you behave yourself through the swim meet, we'll go buy a Christmas tree on our way home, December 1st, right? So instead of turning left out of the school and going exactly the same way we came, we decided to turn right. There's a prep school called Mercerysburg Academy right there. We knew they'd kind of be decorated for Christmas. We went, well, we'd just go drive through the academy on our way home and jump on Route 81 the back way. So we did. And five minutes later, in a straightaway, a car coming the other direction at the last second crossed the center line. We went driver to driver. The police report would estimate that we were going 55 and he was doing about 70. So no skid marks on the road. They just, they're, you know, combined travel speed, you know, you hit a telephone, pull out 70, you hit it 70, two objects in the opposite directions, you combine them. So 125 mile impact speed is what the police report said, which was crazy to think about. Yeah, out of the fact. Other driver died then. He was not wearing a seatbelt. He was, you know, the cars were horrific. Again, we went driver to driver. My wife was in the front passenger seat. My daughter was in the rear passenger seat and our son was in a car seat behind me. And so I was unconscious. My wife was unconscious. Our son was unconscious. Our daughter, the eight year old was stayed conscious. I have to stop right there if for no other reason than to give you and me just a moment to process this whole thing. John shares this story matter of factly now, probably because he's had to recount this incredible moment and the story that followed hundreds of times by now. It was quite literally like the BC AD moment of his life. It was a split second where he now talks about his experiences either before or after his accident. But you know, it crossed my mind. The only reason we can say with certainty that John's story is incredible rather than just tragic is because miraculously he and his family survived a horrific accident like this is most often fatal. And sadly, while the driver of the other vehicle lost his life at the scene, each member of the Alsh family was spared. The dad and me cannot shake the thought of John, his wife Tanya and his four year old son James all critically injured and initially unconscious. But I keep going back to that thought, that picture. Katie alert. Buckle in the backseat of her mangled family SUV, the only member of the family who was aware of her surroundings. I can't even really force myself to visualize what it must have been like for her in that moment. It's heartbreaking. Even now in the weeks that have passed since our interview, I found myself thinking back to what had to be a terrifying scene. And as a dad, probably thinking and rethinking the entire scenario a million times, wondering what I could have possibly done differently. Thankfully for John and his family, help was on the way. And so actually, we're very rural area where we were a few houses here and there, but a lot of fields. And it was a gentleman who was visiting his mother, a thought his mother was was elderly and he had just pulled into the driveway when our collision happened and her day and called 911 and came down to the car to see if he could help. And he found our daughter Katie crawling between my seat, my wife's seat, trying to get a cell phone crying, Daddy, don't die. Yeah. I have no memories of any of it. I would later learn that I was in and out of consciousness. I actually talked to the to the EMT strange story. He met me a couple years later when I when I did a speaking down in Hagerstown, Maryland and it made the newspaper. He thought I had died. Yeah. So so when the sea sees me in the newspaper and he turned out to be the chief of police of a local town right by there and also an EMS. And so when he saw that I was alive, he called me through my business number and was like, yeah, you you were in and out of consciousness. You asked me if I was if my family was okay. You asked me if you were going to die. You know, so so I had no memory of it. Last thing I remember is seeing white tail ski area on the right and they were blowing snow and my wife going, oh, we can see soon. I mean, that was the last memory I have. So I came out of a coma 18 days later. But our son James was the most second most injured. Four year old sitting in a in a car seat. When Mike chair came back, he put he must have put his legs up. And so it snapped his fibula to go to his left leg. Everybody had broken collar bones for the seat belt supposed to hold you in place. And then his bow was severed by the by the lot bill. However, it never cut his skin. So he and I were already transported into in the Penn State Medical Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and his leg was already set. And all of a sudden he started throwing up and they they scanned the stomach and saw his he was septic his bow had severed itself. So so he was able to have a fortunately a section of his bow removed without a colostomy and reattached. We spent 15 days in the hospital. My wife, Tanya and our daughter were transported to Hager's Town, which was the closest non trauma. My son and I were flown to Penn State Hospital, which is a Hershey PA chocolate Hershey. And we were very fortunate to our hometown kept. They'd use these transport helicopters called lifeline Penn State, knit the line. So they they're helicopters called lifelines and they have two. One in Hershey at the hospital and one they keep in my town of Carlisle at a little airport solely for the purpose of reaching down in that area, Pennsylvania, which is pretty rural. Otherwise, we were closer to the University of Maryland's trauma hospital. But I am I mean, I arrived with less than 3 percent chance of surviving. So had I had I gone to University of Maryland, I wouldn't be here. So, you know, my wife was broken hand, broken foot, broken collarbone, lacerations, unconscious. They would move she and my daughter. So my daughter's eight. So she was awake and the EMTs are like, do you want to fly with your dad? As no matter what, she was a kid. She was going to get transported by helicopter, whether it was the Hager's Town or whether it was the Hershey and and eight year old girl. She's like, I'll go with my mom since my brother is going with my dad. So so she got to Hager's Town, which is where my wife was taken by ambulance. My daughter was flown in there. And that evening they put my wife and my daughter in an ambulance and transported them almost two hours to Hershey because I was going to die. And my wife, they wanted my wife to have the opportunity to see me. So, you know, I always say her story in my story are very different. Yeah. She had this job of having to be as beat up as she was in a lot of pain, put in a gurney with our daughter in an ambulance, who's an eight year old little girl scared out of her mind and her dad's dying. Acting like everything was going to be okay. And we're just going up there to be with your brother and your dad, knowing that chances are I was dying. And that's why she was being moved. And and then a rat in Hershey and then having to be admitted into the hospital. My my daughter threw through a fit and she's like, I don't want to be good to the children's wing. I don't want to leave my mom. So my father and mother were actually got to Hershey. My, you know, and they took my daughter and actually slept in my wife's room for a night just so she wouldn't get admitted. She was again, she wouldn't have to be admitted. She's just, but if she was, she was going into the children's part of the hospital, not anywhere close to her mom and she was scared to death. So. So horrific. Just, I mean, the thought of any one of those is horrific to a young family, to anyone really, but in this case a family, but all four of those simultaneously, just overwhelming, just not only the trauma of it all and the physical and the mental. There's just so much there. Meanwhile, you're, you're in a coma. I mean, it's not like you're able to help. So when you come to and start to understand the gravity of the situation, talk me through the emotions and the thoughts at that point. Once, once your consciousness and your cognition start to come back online, what were those initial days and weeks like? So, so I was a combination of in coma. I mean, I lose, I lost 38 units of blood in the first 24 hours. Like guys, our size, that's like bleeding out almost four times. You know, so I was all the internal injuries. So my pelvis was shattered and broken about four and a half inches apart. And then, you know, they say, doctors say, oh, your, your pelvis like a lifesaver. You can't just break it on one side. It's a circle. It's going to break. So the back of my pelvis broke. The energy traveled up my tailbone, split my tailbone and then broke my L one for L four fracturing into each other. That was just the energy coming from the collision, right? Left foot was stuck on six to the end. We were driving an accurate SUV. The engine block did what I was supposed to do, but it shattered into my feet. Those cracks I was wearing were stuck under the engine block. They pulled me out with out of my cracks. They were in the photos later from the action report. My cracks are in the photo stuck under the engine. That stuff wasn't going to kill me. My splited ruptured. My diaphragm ruptured. My left lung completely collapsed from my diaphragm rupture. My right lung partially collapsed. If it honestly, if it wasn't for the fact that I was a marathon runner at the time, man, I was probably 8% body fat. You know, I just knocked out, you know, 13 miles that morning. I would have died just from the lung collapse, right? Right. So I was unconscious and and coma from from. From all the bleeding, no idea at that point, whether I had any head trauma whatsoever. So when I got to the hospital, they just cut me from sternum to pelvis and just started to repair internal bleeding, right? Remove my spleen. Pandex, I still had it removed a lot of hollow organs that ruptured and went about for the next three days, leaving me open, just going in and repairing the internal bleeding stuff. And so after three days of this, they knew the chance of infection was high. So, but I was so swollen at that point from all the blood products and everything that was going in me, they couldn't pull my abdominal muscles shut. So they just pulled my fascia layer, my skin shut, stitched me up with big blue sutures and said, if guy survives, we're going to have to go in later and try to repair his abdominal muscles. But at this point, we can't leave them open any longer. So, so they stitched me shut. And then they go about fixing orthopedic stuff. In emergency medicine, the saying is life over limb. There's no need to worry about splitting a fractured leg for a patient who's bleeding out. So you triage, you pick the injuries that are the most urgent and you deal with the stuff that's an immediate threat to life before concerning yourself about the other stuff out in the extremities. Problem was, John had been on the receiving end of a 125 mile an hour body blow from the collision of tons of metal, glass, plastic and rubber. Paramedics and physicians gave him a 3% chance to survive. They failed to consider his elite fitness and that warrior mentality in those estimates with the initial risks of bleeding out due to ruptured organs and commonly fatal injuries like a fractured pelvis. Finally starting to stabilize and level out after those first few days, surgeons turned their attention to his mangled body. While it was uncertain if John would survive the crash, it seemed even less likely that he'd ever be able to walk again, let alone run. So in order to get my pelvis back in line, they basically put a screw through my left knee, hung weight off of it and hung my leg off the edge of my bed to pull my pelvis down over the next couple of days. You know, basically the same way I booked my lot of arms as a kid. And that's how they again, they put you in these tightest finger traps and just pull it apart. Right. Yeah. All they could do is let gravity pull my pelvis back down. And then they fastened it with six titanium screws on the plates across the front and two big titanium screws in the back. At that time, they were like, we're going to see what happens with his back. If it starts healing on its own, we're going to let it go. And we'll make a decision, you know, in the next couple of weeks, if we need to go in and fuse his back together. And so they started to keep me in in the deuce coma because I was on a ventilator. I couldn't breathe on my own and I was starting to come out of my coma. So so I spent 18 days in, in, in a coma. One of the interesting parts is with these, the drugs they use to keep you in an induced coma are pretty powerful stuff. So day 17. So my son got out of day 15. So, so my wife went back home when her son got out of the hospital and then she couldn't drive broken hand and broken foot. So we had family or friends that would drive her about 45 minutes from where we lived to the hospital. And she got a call that they were going to try to take me off the ventilator and see if I could breathe on my own. And on day 17, I could not. They put me back. They ventilated me again and put me back on on day 18. They took me off the ventilator and I started breathing. So so she got a phone call that I was coming out of my coma. And so one of my best friends, like, I'll drive you over. And so, like, and I don't have any memory of this, but my friends still love to tell this story. So I've been at coma for 18 days. I'm in and out of some consciousness that I've been off the drugs for just a few hours and I'm just starting to come come through. And I had this male nurse and he probably says, do you know who that is? And he points to the door frame door opening. And my one of my best friends and my wife are standing there in the door frame. And apparently when I say this, yeah, that's my wife. That's the bulldog. 18 days of coma. And so so my my friend John leads over to my wife. He goes, well, he has no brain trauma. So yeah, so the very first thing I said out of my coma was I called my my wife the bulldog. We'll be back after this quick message. Hey, friend, let me take a quick second to tell you about something that's been making a real difference for me lately. Bub's naturals. I've been dealing with this stubborn knee injury that I just couldn't get better. And as somebody that spent most of my life pushing my body, I know recovery doesn't happen by accident. So I started doing some research and I checked out Bub's collagen. And I got to say, I can feel the difference. It's clean, it's simple and it works. Bub's products are all about helping your body heal, move and function at its best, which is a pretty good thing for a guy my age from collagen peptides to MCT oil and now even hydration products. It's legit fuel for high performers, especially when your body's been through some things. And the best part, because you're part of the becoming undone crew, you can get 20% off your first order. Just head over to Bub's naturals.com backslash undone. That's you in D O N E to grab your discount. That's Bub's naturals.com backslash undone. Take care of your body, fuel your recovery and let's keep getting better. So over those next like four or five days, all of these drugs that kept me in coma are coming out of my system. I'm paralyzed from the waist down at this point. Took me a day probably to realize I couldn't move my legs. I mean, I'm hooked up to everything, you know, excruciating pain, taking the, at that time, you know, drip morphine is clicking the button as often as I can click it with nothing coming out. Except for when it was a time and, and all of those. So I was at that time, I was 180 pounds when I, when the accident happened, I was 245 with fluid. Right. Inside all that flu was all that drugs. So when all, you know, that were keeping me in a coma. So I just had the most crazy hallucinations of like, you know, that roofs and being in a spaceship. And at the one point I remember is like, what the hell is that noise? Why is it people screaming out in the hallway? You know, this is like a fun house. Every time I close my eyes, strobe lights would go because my brain was all, you know, still processing all the, all the drugs. And about day three, I realized that it was actually me screaming. Wow. And didn't know it. Yeah. And so, yeah. So I spent 18 days in a coma and on day 20, the 23rd of December, I left the hospital. Now I was paralyzed from the waist down, um, non weight bearing for a total of 10 weeks, so eight more weeks of not being allowed to be raised more than 15 degrees because of my back and my pelvis. So I thought I was going home. Now I don't live in a home that was handicapped, susceptible, my master suites on the second floor of my house, but in my mind, I was going home. Well, I didn't know my wife and my parents and my brother were all working behind the scenes and I ended up having to move into a nursing home. Why? So at, at, you know, 37 years of age, um, I moved into a nursing home to spend the next eight weeks laying flat on my back. Um, and the mental aspect of that has got to be at least, I mean, the physical is daunting, no doubt, but the thought of being this healthy, you know, fit, athletic machine, your competitive athlete, everything's going right. And then to wake up and not be able to wiggle your toes or what you can feel is excruciating pain. The mental aspect of that is one that, and this isn't 2025. Granted, it's not the seventies, but mental health for survivors of trauma like this, you just, you learn to deal with it, right? Just suck it up, just do your best. That was grew up in that kind of mentality in a small town also, like pool, your boot shops kind of thing. Yeah. Um, yeah. I mean, the other part of it is like, you know, again, I'm paralyzed in a bed. I was on a catheter until I got to nursing home, bed pants. I always make a joke. I had the benefit and the blessing to speak to a lot of nurse aid school programs for colleges and community colleges. And, and I look, cause uniquely a lot of them end up in nursing homes and I got the benefit of actually being in a nursing home and getting better, not going the other direction. So I always thought it was important to get that, that experience of particularly the stuff they don't teach on a textbook about how to take care of patients. And I always joke that, you know, sponge baths are overrated. I am a broken, I mean, again, till I get the nursing home, probably to like the, maybe the second or third week, cause I come in on Christmas, like ripped for Christmas, right? Yeah. Um, it's not like all the staff is there. I mean, I come in on a Friday and Christmas is like two days from there. So it's a Sunday that nobody's there. Whoever is having to work is the lowest on the total poll. Right. The administrator is not there. And so I'm not getting in at the, at the peak time. Right. And, and I can't literally keep my eyes open half the time. I'm in excruciating pain. People are trying to recognize the fact that it's Christmas. One of the nice things was with my parents and my wife were like, we have all these great rehabs. We can send you down to like an hour and a half from here, but you can't start rehab, but we can get you in. And I'm like, if I'm just going to lay on my back for eight weeks, put me in my hometown. Yeah. Right. Put me where you don't have to drive far to see me and you can come and be around me. And so that also meant a lot of people were coming in the city. I mean, I was not functioning very well at all. I was being told I might never walk again and that I would be in a wheelchair. I'm now, you know, going the opposite direction and getting smaller and skinnier. And I just remember being there going, this is, this about as bottom as you can get without being dead. So many times on this show, I've talked to high achievers about their rock bottom. I've written about it a bunch and I've experienced it myself, but not like this. Previously, a college athlete, successful real estate broker husband and a father at 37, John suddenly finds himself faced with a grueling physical recovery and a daunting psychological recovery that included a growing dependence on incredibly potent drugs. And the reality that he's now unable to move, let alone serve his family. For him, it was a pit of desperation, but thankfully he didn't give up. He realized that he was still done. And I want to show you there real quick because I've worked with athletes who've suffered catastrophic injury. And as a healthcare provider, you always worry that I don't want to communicate that I don't believe in you. I also don't want to fill you full of false hope. If I'm looking and making an informed medical decision and I'm telling you that, John, you're definitely, you're going to run marathons again and the data doesn't support you. I feel like that's disingenuous. The flip of that is if I'm over cautious and I tell you, I don't think you're ever going to walk again, then that can send somebody into a very dark place. Did you feel like that was more of a condemnation on your condition or did you take it in that moment as a challenge that you were going to shift out of survival mode into comeback mode? Yeah, I mean, I feel fortunate that one, I had some good advocates there. I always say that my experience of nursing home from my caregivers to everything, now again, I'm 37 and the next patients 70 something maybe at the youngest. You know, I mean, so, you know, I'm coming from a different mind, but I would say like that point that you made was a large part of my story throughout this, you know, the first seven, eight years, you know, within the first week or two, because again, I'm coming in holiday season, right? So we're going to get Christmas and New Year and I'm in screw shape. I would, my kids would make me little drawings. I had a pegboard there they would hang the pictures up there, right? Little Christmas pictures. I can remember just staring at a green thumbtack, just waiting for the next time that someone can come in and give me narcotics. Just, you know, people would come and talk and I wouldn't have remembered they were there. I didn't sleep. So I just doze off in the middle of nothing. However, you know, one of the things that I immediately adopted in my mindset was that if I'm going to be in a wheelchair, that my kids aren't going to push me in a wheelchair. I don't know. It happened a few times when I first got into wheelchair and it was because I couldn't push myself on carpet hard enough. And so I had side rails on my bed. Technically, that was a whole other issue. Nursing homes, you're not supposed to restrict anybody. We were able to show them that my mother used to be administrator nursing homes. She was like, no, no, no, we can put them on because I couldn't. The only way they could change sheets or move me is to roll me side to side. I couldn't be moved. But I had them tie stretchy bands to my rails and I would spend hours where I'm sitting there just pulling on stretchy bands, doing triceps. I was like, if I'm going to be in a wheelchair, I'm not going to lose all my upper body strength. I'm pushing myself. You know, they would, I would have therapists come in and use slide boards to try to help me, you know, if I flat my back, but they try to help me move my legs. Within the first few weeks, I started to use some of my right leg, but my left leg was side that was more damaged. The energy came up the left side. And so I was, you know, I couldn't move my left leg. So they were in there moving it for me just to keep atrophy from setting in, just with a slide board and a pair of socks. But yeah, the stretchy bands became a really, like, I've got to do something. You know, when I could get in a wheelchair, I was like, roll me to the therapy room and stick me on the cable machines. Right. I'll sit there, lock my, lock my friggin wheelchair between them. And I'll just there and do chest exercises, you know, until I can't move anymore. Yeah, I always say, I don't want to be a year older. I want to be a year better in your case. You're going day to day. You're not just getting a day older. You're getting a day better. And you're starting to see progress. Like you said, some function in the right returns and the left is, is kind of coming along. At what point did you feel like, I'm going to make it through this? I might not ever have life like I did before, but it's not going to be catastrophized. Like perhaps it might have been early on. So when I ended up in the nursing home for those eight weeks, I had already been through having like fluid in my lung where they had to go in. And again, they couldn't roll me in a ball because of my back work. And so I, they rolled me on a side and shoved the needle between my, my ribs to suck the fluid. I mean, it was like, I went through a lot of stuff that I, because of they being broken, I couldn't do it any other way. Like I couldn't be moved. So, you know, a lot of the testing that after I was out of my coma, just to check everything else, or again, getting the fluid in my lung was kind of, you know, how to be done a lot more violently than they probably wanted to. Somewhere in that nursing home, I kind of realized I wasn't going to die. Now somewhere in the nursing home, I started wishing I would have died. So it was a, you know, it was a mental hurdle. But when the realization, because I, again, I had to be transported back over to Hershey hospital, Penn State, in an ambulance at least once, twice a week for other follow-up, where I was just spending my time lying back in a nursing home. So, so, you know, it became obvious that this, I was going to survive. So what quality of my life was going to be was, was still, you know, to be determined. And nobody was really going to know till I got the rehab. I felt blessed that I didn't have head trauma. I mean, that was a lot of doctors, therapists were also like, for the type of injuries that I had and, you know, the amount of time that my heart stopped. Like there was a lot of issues that could have happened besides just this year, collision related to my brain, just the fact that my heart had stopped, that I was technically dead for a period of time. And there was a lot of, a lot of oxygen related concerns with the lungs collapsing. And so, I mean, my brain was as sharp as it can be for somebody taking a ton of narcotics for pain and being sleep deprived. But I think, again, back to like who believed in you, who doesn't believe in you. I told everybody, like, you know, it was a year like this past year where Thanksgiving was really close to the end of the month. So like Thanksgiving was that Thursday and the accident happened on Saturday. So it was, you know, end of, and every year I'd run this 5k Turkey truck from our YMCA hometown. I think I ran that one that year at like, like 448 mile pace. I was moving. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. It was 36 year old. And I said, Oh, I'm running next year. I'm running next year. And no one wanted to tell me you're not running next year. But nobody believed I was going to ever be able to run a year later. I wasn't going to be running. I will tell you a year later, I did it on a walker with two buddies holding me up. And it took me an hour and eight minutes. And I did stop along the way, not only because I needed to, but also there were people cheering and I posed for pictures and that's still not a bad, but that's about my 10k pace, brother. And and I have not had 45 surgeries. So no shame in that PR at all. Again, we're talking John author of upside down motivational speaker survivor. Let's pivot. We've talked a lot about the accident. Let's talk about what's come of it. You've really, you continue to work in real estate, but your story has become a big part of what you do now. Yeah. Talk me through that transition into wow, there's something people can gain from this. Maybe I need to speak to crowds of people or maybe I need to write a book. Talk me through that season of transformation for you. Yeah. So, so at about two years, well, after two years after the accident, I'm, I'm in still outpatient rehab five days a week, 10, 10 to 11 local rehab down the street. And I'm, I can walk with a cane at this point. A walker is more comfortable if I have to move stuff around. And if I have to travel any like distance, I've got to be in a wheelchair, but I'm functioning, you know, as a human, I'm working a lot of times from home and I'm taking 90 milligrams of morphine twice a day. Yeah. Now I've gone through fentanyl, I've gone 30 to 60. I mean, again, we can spend a whole day, this is pre epidemic, you know, and I couldn't find a pain doctor at the time who was going to tell me I didn't need it. And, you know, addiction is based off of tolerance as well as, you know, the physical need to have it. And so my tolerance just got to that height, that level. And, and so I am sitting in this office, I'm sitting right now and out the window in front of me is a big front yard. And our daughter who now is 10, big soccer players, you know, even as like an eight year old, so it's the next me a ham and she ended up being a very good soccer player. And so she's, when she's out of practice, she would come home from school and she'd be out there just juggling in the front yard. And so I look up and I see her out there juggling in the front yard and, and, and then I look up and she's gone. And, and I hear her walk in the front door and she comes into my office and she's crying. So I like call her into my seat right here. And I'm like, what's wrong, honey? I just assumed she hurt herself and she sits in my lap. She says, I miss my old daddy, the one who would come out and train with me. Wow. Now she's the same one who cried daddy, don't die. She's the same. I like to say, I mean, so I struggled with survivors remorse. It's legitimately a very challenging thing when someone else is in the same thing and they die and you don't. And, and so one of the few things I was ever told that I thought I resonated, I could make sense with was a friend of mine who'd taught me to be a Presbyterian pastor and he's like, maybe you just survived so your kids have a dad. And I was like, okay, that's enough reason to be here. Like I struggled with, why am I here? What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to write a book? Am I supposed to help? Like, and he's like, maybe you just here to see your kids have a dad. So, so now I'm failing at the one thing that, you know, God left me here for. Yeah. And the next day at 945, I go into rehab and I'm driving a car. Shouldn't be driving a car probably, but my tolerance is so high at this point. I walk into my physical therapist and it's probably like my second or third physical therapist at this point. So younger guy, 20s and look kind of a sin. I said, Steve, I'm done. So I said, as much as you are trying to push me in work, you'll never push me as hard as I can push myself. I was like, I was a marathon runner. I was an athlete. I spent hundreds and hundreds of hours in a gym, you know, I know and I'm not I'm in a small town. I don't have the benefit of a Toby who works with athletes, you know, at universities and professionals who know how to push somebody. I'm in a town where I'm with everyone in my physical therapy is 60 some 70 some years old with a hip replacement or knee replacement. And I don't have access to an unfortunately state college where Penn State's University is isn't the same as the hospital. And so I said, I quit. I didn't tell my wife I was quit me there. And I walk out and I drive down the street like a mile to our local YMCA. And I just happened to walk in at 10am, which is the same time they do cerebral palsy adults with special need program with trainers. Here we hear John wrestling with a number of heavy psychological weights, many who've been through trauma have to sort through themselves. The driver of the other vehicle didn't survive. So John's battling survivors remorse in the midst of a purpose storm of his own, wondering why he was spared. A pastor friend suggests that maybe he made it through so that his kids could still have a dad. But he's racked with guilt at the realization that due to his recovery that's flattened out and growing drug dependency, he's not being much help to them now either. So he decides to change course. He makes a decision in that moment. He drew a line in the sand and said, this is enough. This path isn't working. And friends, that's what we do in the middle of a purpose storm. We can either sit in it and sometimes we need to, or we can make a decision. John made a decision. He quits physical therapy goes down the road a couple of miles to a local YMCA gym. And so I might call it luck. Others might call it a divine appointment, but either way, he happens to walk in at the exact same time as a special needs fitness program is going on. It would be an encounter that would change his life forever. I walk in and all I want to do is go to the circuit machine. Again, I'm just like, can we find something? Right? So I walk up to the first machine. It's just a press machine. There's a young man with Down syndrome on it with his trainer. He gets off of it. I go and I get off my walker or I slide in and I go to push. It doesn't move. Like doesn't even budge. I'm like, all right, little, little humility. I reached out, moved that pin like four plates up. And I get a next machine and it's the shoulder press. I don't even bother because I'm not just following this 17 year old, 16 year old kid with Down syndrome through the thing. I go through four of these circuits and I'm like, this sucks. All right. I'm going over the recumbent bike. I've been on the recumbent bike plenty in physical therapy when I could finally start to use my legs before that was just a handbikes, right? And I'm like, all right, I get on this machine. I'm next to now some young lady with Down syndrome and her trainer. I'm two, three minutes in, set like a three or four setting. I look over, she's got 20 minutes in, she's got an eight and I'm dying. I'm just sweating because I'm in a long sleeve t-shirt and sweatpants because I was going from physical therapy and it wasn't planning to go to the Y. And so I just leave. I'm back home at my house at 11am and I left physical therapy at 10. So it did make it very long, right? And I was like, oh, this is terrible. Like, I don't know. I just quit physical therapy. I thought I was going to be able to work. I am so not close to where I was. And so I call my wife and I tell her and she's like, okay, this is what are you going to do? I said, I don't know. I'm not feeling great. She's like, all right, well, don't forget to pick the kids up at school, 220. I'm like, all right, that's where we are still. I have still the life, right? I still got it. You know, kids still need to get picked up from school. And so that night, this is where you'll, I think you of all people will start to appreciate this part of it. I go to sleep, never very well. I'm still in pain medicine. My back's broken. I don't sleep great. And I wake up at like four in the morning. My shoulders absolutely killing me. And I wake my wife up and I'm like, my shoulders hurt. She is okay. I'm like, yeah, they really freaking hurt. And she's like, okay, I'm like, do you understand? Like my legs aren't, I didn't wake up. My legs didn't hurt. My back didn't hurt. She's like, she's half, she's asleep, right? I'm like, no, my shoulders hurt because I went to the gym. And I get up the next morning. And I proceed for the next two years, actually for that first year, three days a week, 10 o'clock a.m. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, adults with special needs working out. And it was because I finally could control something that hurt. And the pain that I could control in the gym or pushing myself to try to run or try to do stationery. But like that became something that was in my control. And when it hurt, I was like, oh, this hurts because I cooked myself in the gym today. Yeah, voluntary muscle soreness beats the hell out of involuntary spinal fracture that won't go away. And you have zero control over that so powerful. And it just it snowballed. I mean, it really, and so, you know, you know, this is a long way to get to the question, which is how did I so because I started working out at the Y with these thoughts with special needs. And because our accident happened right at Christmas, every year, the two local newspapers and our area would want to write stories like the first year my wife did all the interview. But again, four of us, we all survived, I'm in a nursing home, but it's a generally feel good holiday story that our family is all here. And then the next year, an update in the next year, I run that Turkey Trot, which the newspaper runs with that's a YMCA event, the YMCA kind of promotes. And I end up getting like 55 people who show up and somebody ordered t-shirts. This is jogging with John 362 days and going because it was 362 days since the accident. And so, you know, that got a little bit of press on Thanksgiving Day was on Thanksgiving Day newspaper. And so that kind of momentum kind of stuck when I started showing the Y and then UCP was like, well, we should promote the fact that you're in here working and the Y should promote it. And so the local affiliated magazines for central Pennsylvania, it started the right to run articles. And then someone said, well, you know, we really like you to come speak at Penn State. We'd like you to come speak at Water Reed, the soldiers. And I was like, absolutely, I like, yeah, I'll do anything to, you know, one, get back to the places the same life. And two, this understanding of somebody can see that I can do it. Then maybe they'll find a way forward for themselves. And so that that kind of thing just started to happen organically. Right. And then it's powerful, though. I mean, so many people enter the speaking space seeking to inspire people, but they really don't have the story that backs up what they're talking. I mean, you've lived this. It wasn't like you entered into this looking for an angle. This was just your story resonated with people and it inspired people without you really being purposeful about it. And that's what makes it so powerful. And that's what I love about it. A lot of times I go to my priests and I'd be like, I need to like, am I doing this for the right reason? Because now, I mean, so it kind of starts to snowball. I get put in People Magazine for a little section. Just, just, you know, a little section of People Magazine. Then I end up in Men's Fitness Magazine on a four-part, like a four-page, full, you know, article with money from ESPN, the magazine who came and wrote the article and professional photographer out of New York who came and shot all this. And then all of a sudden, lots of organizations, corporations are like, you know, this is the middle of the recession for stock market and the housing market, right? At this point, this is like 2010, 2011, you know, they were like, come speak at this company. You'll be the keynote on the last day when we just told everybody all the numbers are bad. Nothing's great going on financially for us. But you're not this guy. Yes. The other part that really resonated with me, I was just, I'm not, I mean, as an athlete, yeah, but I wasn't like a motocross guy. I wasn't a special forces guy or first responders who were putting themselves in the line of fire. I'm just the dad leaving a swim meet with his kids. We all leave swim meets, soccer games, you know, lacrosse, whatever, right? It's just very routine. And just like that, my life was flipped upside down. And so, you know, I think for most people, like people would say, oh, you know, I got an award one time from Eagle Rare, the bourbon company. They did this rare life thing. And somehow I got nominated for it. And basically the winner got to designate $20,000 to a charity of their choice. I won and was able to buy dumbbells. Brandy said dumbbells for the YMCA. Great. They're still there. But what was interesting is that, oh, they were giving you an award for surviving. I'd be like, I didn't do anything to survive. God and incredible surgeons are the reason I'm here. I can take credit for what happened the day after I woke up from a coma going forward, but I really didn't have anything to do with my own survival. A lot of prayer, a lot of good doctors. And that got me, you know, to an opportunity. To decide what I was going to do. Yeah. Again, talking to John Olsh, author and motivational speaker, survivor, John, it's been awesome to hear your story. The thing that sticks in my craw a lot is overnight successes. These people who spring up suddenly and, you know, their stuff gets pushed out to the world. And I won't drop names, but there are some podcasters out there. There are celebrities who, there's stuff's everywhere. And then there are guys like you and Lord Willen, years behind you, hopefully I can develop some connection with people like that. Through that process, though, what a lot of people don't recognize is it's kind of, it's spiraling. You're continuing to do what you do and you're serving, and hopefully it's ascending. So you go from talking to small civic orgs to talking to Fortune 500 companies to having platforms and major magazines and TV networks. Then a book deal comes around. So I saw page proofs on your social media just today that the book's coming out. So talk me through the authorship process and what that's meant for you personally. So, you know, so 17 years since the accident, the first part of my book, I wrote 14 years ago, not when I was still on narcotics. I was losing, like I went to a wedding of friends. I have no memory of being on it. So the first part was a diary to my kids. And it was me writing my experiences as I could still remember them because I said I had an out of body experience so we could spend time. I had a lot of things going on at the time that were either hallucinations related to the drugs or they were God intervention. I liked to think it was God. But obviously, either way, I needed, my kids were too young to understand anything other than I was not the same person that I was before the accident. So I started writing for that purpose only. This is just writing on a Word document. This isn't the technology for it wasn't great. Out of that, people were like, Oh, you should write a book. And I'm like, Well, I've been writing. I'm like, I don't know. And so I had an opportunity from a company that publishes fitness magazines and books. And they're like, we want you to write that book. And I had already written at that time, 25, 30,000 words. That was just my story about my recovery in sort of where I decided to start working out on my own up through men's fitness. And I ended up doing this thing with Spartan. Or I mean, I ended up being sponsored there to do things because people were just like, I'll come do them with you. Just because if you can do them, I'll come, I can do it. Right. It's they always, that guy can do it. I have no excuses, right? So it kept, it kept, you know, snowballing a little bit on the writing. And they wanted me to write just running, they won the way a book called The Perfect Run, the pun being that I'd never have another perfect run again. Right. And I tried for like a year. And I said, I can't write what you want me to write. And now I was traveling to Vegas to speak for one hour keynote that out of Central Pennsylvania took two, sometimes three days of travel to make it happen. And I was missing now soccer tournaments and lacrosse matches and basketball games to speak. And I'm like, I'm away from my why again, like I'm losing focus. So I gave the money back to the publisher and said, I can't write this. I told my representation at the time, I will speak if it speaks to me, but I'm not going to go speak at some corporation that has no value to me at this point. You want me to be at a place where there's a bunch of people that are need to be motivated because they're injured. Sure. You need me. And by the way, I'll do that for free. Don't need to pay me. And so I just kind of that like five years after the accident said, look, I'm running a good real estate team. I'm making a difference in people. I'm writing a blog that I'm getting a lot of feedback from my publisher, like stop writing the blog, you're giving away everything. I get any podcast on exists on any level at that point. And I'm like, all right, I'm done. I'll continue to go help who I can help. And when lifeline calls me that says we're celebrating our 25th anniversary, we want you to come speak. I'm like, sure, no bill, like consider donation. I'm coming. But the rest of the time, I've just kind of backed it down. Just again, going, I mean, I had 40, I've had 45 surgeries. I've never gone a year and 17 years without at least one surgery, setback after setback. I was as high as 85% chance of losing my leg 12 years ago from circulatory problems. The last 11 surgeries I've had have been a doctor in Chapel Hill, UNC, who's top vein guy in the country, just trying to keep my leg. So I've had, you know, plenty of setbacks where I would go so far down backwards that I took me months and months to even give yourself enough grace to like, all right, time to start back up again. You know, you've, you've spent your time down there. And, you know, I went through rehab to get off narcotics. My choice went through biofeedback. I got experience with it. It saved my life from the narcotics. It also has some negative effects that I now talk about. Cause again, you talk about mental health issues, you know, when you're reprogramming your brain to knock out pain and reroute, you know, neurons in your brain for pain signals. That's also where sadness, depression, all the other ones are. I mean, it's nothing I brag about. I haven't cried in over 14 years. I just don't, but I got off narcotics. Yeah. I've heard military personnel. I mean, that's a training response. And, and I hear some lament in your voice as this process machined me to the point that my emotion has evaporated out. And that's a tough space to be. But if the alternative is addiction to narcotics, you have to make it for anybody was like, it's telling you now, you, I'd never be able to even get what I, what I got more or less, or the hoops I would jump through today would be dramatic. But to the books point, I started again, when my son, my youngest went to college saying, you know what, I have more time now. If there's a benefit to me speaking, I'll do it. I'll put myself back out there. Yeah. I said, you know what though, I ideally let me go speak to some men's groups. Let me do a retreat, right? Get to give back and forth versus me standing up on a stage and just telling you my story. I felt more value from that. I felt more connected to those men. I was at that time, finally spending some effort on my mental health. I mean, we started this podcast with the mental health effect that nobody, when it happened, you know, a couple of therapists would come see me or when I was in a wheelchair, I'd go to therapy. They're like, you should be more angry than you are. I'm like, why? I mean, there's no point in me. I mean, I've just always been my mindset like, all right, yeah, I should be, but I can only feel sad for myself for so long because these kids need a dad. And I just chose not to be that example. Again, I know that some of that is just the way I'm wired and I don't hold it against people who can't pull themselves from that. I get that as well. But to me, it was like, okay. And then it's like, all right, just going to go pull my bootstraps up and get back to work after I'm done feeling sorry for myself. And that became sort of my mantra for like 14, 15 years. And then finally, I was like, you know what, I'm missing something. My kids know that I spend a lot of time in pain. And if, you know, if dad's sitting over on the chair, he's not talking to anybody. We don't talk to them. You know, they went through high school that way. My pain talent, I could only have so many hours on the day that I can function in. And if the gym and work got some, sometimes my family didn't get it, right? And so my second part of my book, I just wrote this year, I wrote it, I had an offer again, and I was speaking and people were, I saw, I got the benefit of meeting some other keynote speakers around the country, people that I started to trust. I'm like, this is how you need to do, protect your intellectual property, you know, because that's a big thing now. Like there's people who have deals where they can't use their own intellectual property and concepts in their own speaking, because they sold it out in their book, which never thought of 15 years ago. Because I couldn't written the second part of my book. Like I wrote on these eight pillars that I kind of developed on how to overcome a setback. And they were all things that I was learning as I was going through it, but I wasn't naming it. You know, I learned a lot from working out with adults with special needs that I didn't realize, but which was really just loving the process. Like they didn't have goals that I constantly kept building myself these expectations, and then being kind of disappointed when I achieved them. And, you know, and these are just experiences that again, getting another surgery and getting set back again and saying, well, you know, so hard to go back in the gym when you're told you for the last eight weeks, you can't live more than 10 pounds. So you can barely carry your briefcase or your laptop. And now you're going to start again. And so I had a deal in October and I didn't sign the contract. And then in January, I kind of jumped on with an editor and she said to me, why are you being selfish? I'm like, okay, what do you mean? Because your story can, like I already read your first 30,000 words of just what happened to you. And I've seen your talks and you're, you're being selfish. You think you're, you're trying to, to not let your ego get in the way, but what you're doing is keeping your story from people that should hear your story. Man, I needed to hear that today. I'm like, thanks for calling me out. And I happened to be down in South Carolina at the time and it right outside of Helmhead for the month of January. And that's when all that snow and freezing rain came in and didn't melt and it stayed. And so I wrote 20,000 more words in 10 days, two years, writing 30,000 words. But I knew my eight pillars. I wrote 10 more chapters. And I knew the lessons that I had learned because I had spoken about it. And I just said, all right, well, how do we create part two of this, of this book and get it to be 50,000 words? And I'd say all the time to my family, to everybody, people who are now reading the final transcripts of it, I'm like, this would not have been my story even five years ago, seven years ago. You know, what I put myself through on, on the mental health side was really what helped me finally see what I was, you know, that it was there the whole time, but I wasn't naming it. I wasn't recognizing that the pattern of it. And so, you know, when I, when I finally forced myself in that, you know, week of snow and a fireplace in front of, in South Carolina of all places, because it was so cold and a little bourbon that, that I could, that I could write this thing. And, and the story could meld with the history of what happened to us. And then, okay, what does that mean? Yeah. What can we, how can we really physically take something from this and help people and, you know, point it out to them? Because it's a great story for our survival. And lots of people can take, have their own takeaway. And it's interesting to hear what people take away from it. When I would just tell the story without telling them about the pillars or the levels of learning. And it was always interesting, you know, what people would find in the story that resonated with them. Right. And so now I have a book that, that I, you know, it's in final edit. It comes out October 7th, through Simon and Schuster and it's on Amazon and all the places of free order. But now I'm finding, you know, as you know, this is an art, right? Writing, speaking, talking to everybody is something if you're passionate about it, but then you become a salesman. Yeah. And I want to get to that. There's two things as you're talking that I have literally been journaling and writing about just this week. And your comments are, are spot on. They're right on time. The first is the high achiever in me gets so frustrated when I can't just sit down and bang out a new chapter or a new, you know, just to create. And I hate the word writer's block. I hate creative block. Like to me, if I have it in my heart that I'm going to get something done, then by God, I'm going to find a way to get it done. But there are times when I don't, but the finished product is actually better because of it. So you spend your whole time beating the hell out of yourself because you weren't in your case 14 years, but you don't have a finished book. And I don't know about you, but in my case, mine started during COVID and I've spent entire years without writing anything, but freighted with guilt the whole time that I'm not getting this freaking thing done. If it wasn't time to get it done, you have to live, you have to experience, you have to have an opportunity to, to sit with your thoughts a little bit. So that's first of all, and second of all, you touched on it. There's kind of this tinge of narcissism that the speaking business is just, it reeks of it. And it's like, if, if I don't tell my story, who's gonna, and that's true to an extent. But then the flip of that is if I don't tell my story, and no one else does, it's selfish. If I really believe in myself and my story, whatever, whoever you are, and you keep it to yourself out of this sense of humility, then you've robbed others of the chance to learn from it. And man, that's a tough balance to strike between self-promotion and other centeredness. And I don't have an answer for it, but I love that someone that I respect as much as you has had that same thought process go through his mind. I will tell you what was told to me. And this was from a friend who's a priest. This was 15 years ago, 14 years ago, I reflect a lot of time. And I told the people, his comment was to me, in my experience, if you're coming to me and you're asking the question, you're probably okay. If you're, if you're not asking the question, then maybe you are a little bit of a narcissist, or maybe your motivation is, is wrong. But if you're constantly questioning yourself and where your motivation is, then you're probably okay, because you're least, you're aware. And I think that in the end, it's, again, now I have a book to sell. There's other people that are expecting me to sell the book. There are other people that want me to help it succeed. The only thing that I can wrap my head around that feels okay is like, you know, every one of these avenues from speaking to writing the, the old blogs to being guests on podcasts to now writing a book. If I can help one person take one thing out of it. And because of that, I made a change to the positive in their life, then, then I should feel good about the effort. Absolutely. And, and, and it's this constant, I got just battling it today, because today was a big day for me to get some stuff done book-related wise. And, and it's this battle with how much to let things pull you and how much to push it, right? Yeah. And, and when people don't respond back to your, like someone said to you in emails, I really want to get involved with this. And I want to, you know, we want to do this is, oh, we want to bring in 100 books to our company. And then a week later, you haven't heard back from them. Yeah. Do you pick up the phone or you call them and say, Hey, just touching base, or do you kind of say, well, it should come to me. Like, I know it's a, it's a challenge. It's, I got a second book in me right now that's that the only thing really holding me back is the process that I'll go to sound feels in October when, when the book comes out. You're saying, yeah, perfect. That's my next to last question here. The name of the show is becoming undone. And sometimes it can feel like we've come apart in your case, physically broken in more ways than your surgeons could count. Other times it means psychologically not knowing what's next, but then other times it means I've got a purpose left unfinished. What does that phrase mean to you? And what's left in the tank for John Olt. Yeah. I feel like I'm in this seasonal kind of shifting back into the speaking as much as I enjoy speaking, you know, in a, in a keynote type of event. If I can one, I do a little coaching right now at five clients, 10 is probably the max I can give them in or any given week, but I like the one on one experience. Like, I think I mentioned you before we jumped on here. Like I like having the ability to kind of dictate what the conversation is and keep being organic and moving it, which is hard to do for Keanu or, or Ted talk. I did Ted talk in this year and 15 minutes, like really hard to give any a message in 15 minutes, right? As you know, from books, like you get a chance and then the book kind of has its launch and then it whatever happens afterwards through sales is, you know, maybe you have a second coming, maybe the book becomes more popular 10 years after you wrote it than it was when you wrote it. But it's really just that, that season. I like the process that I have to go through writing it, like I'm a journal or as well. And so for me, until I really got into therapy, my therapy was right. It was, it was right. It was comforting for me. When I wrote the second part, I allowed myself to not be positive the whole time. You know, the first time it felt like I had to be this positive person and everything that I do. And then I started to realize that people don't need, people don't need to hear it all positive because nobody's lives are all positive, right? Everyone's, everyone's Facebook life is not as good as, you know, better than the real life. And so, you know, I think I want to find ways to either do intensive one days, two day retreats where we can make real strides with like, you know, my whole focus is every, we all have setbacks and adversity, right? We all have them in our lives. They could be health related. They could be relationship related. They can be business related. The tools that I used to get myself to the level that I'm at are the same as everybody because we're all going to have these rides up with falling down. We're going to fall down over it. We're all going to have this paralysis by analysis problem. We're just going, you know, we're just going to do nothing because we don't know how to start, right? You know, I'd always say you don't have to be perfect. You just have to be intentional. Like, if you're not intentional, you just don't move. And the really big one for me is like falling off the process. Like, anything we've ever done as athletes or anything related to some success, the goal no longer stays the goal. It really becomes the process. It's where you learn. And it's, you know, if you're an athlete and you don't love practice, you're never going to be great. Right. I mean, it's the sweat in the gym, the time with your teammates, the opportunities to really grow all come in the process. It's not in winning something, you know, and then all of a sudden you want the finish line to go farther or you want the goalpost to be farther away because you don't want to win. You just want to stay in the process. And when you find, when you can find something that brings you that kind of beauty, then, you know, you know, longer, now you have real success. Now you're really achieving. And so for me, I just don't want to fall out of that process. Like it's always easy to go backwards. Like, status quo is the hardest thing in the world. Especially as you age, right? Like, staying in status quo of anything is really hard. You're either generally going forward or backward. Right? Yeah. And, you know, I would say my only thing I never want to do is be back in the wheelchair. I can do a lot of stuff. I don't know how to deal with that. Yeah. Powerful sentiment, brother. I appreciate your transparency and your vulnerability. I think a couple of things. We gen Xers are kind of raised to keep that stuff to yourself like you don't share that. And then we men are, you know, the whole stoic and just suffering through and not, not drawing attention to yours. It kind of goes back to what we're talking about, that distinction between service and narcissist. I don't want to put all my struggles on, you know, everywhere for everyone to read, but I also don't want this fake curated version of who I am that, that never mentions my setbacks or my adversity. So, lots to think about there. Last one, I always ask this of every guest, if we were to watch a montage of your life, what song would you want playing in the background and why? Um, I do know that one. Um, Woods Brothers, luckiest man. Actually, if you own on my Instagram right now, if you, I can kind of attach a song to it. It's, it's the song that, that's there and it's, it's been out for a long time. And I can remember listening to it in the car on the way, driving my kids to school. I don't know, it resonates with me because, you know, people always, you know, say, I'm blessed. I am a lucky and I believe it. But, you know, it's, it's not all, it's not all perfect by any means. Yeah. Well, John, thanks so much for joining me. I really appreciate time and we went, we went a little over, but that's okay. That just rich discussion. I really do sincerely appreciate the chance to connect with you. This is John Olsch and I am undone. John's story is a powerful reminder that purpose can arise from pain and that service often becomes the sad for our deepest wounds. His journey from trauma to transformation, it's more than just inspiring. It's instructive. It shows us how giving back can rebuild what was broken and how we can lead not in spite of what we endured, but because of it. Whether you're navigating your own season of struggle or looking for a shot of perspective, I hope John's words offered you both some clarity and some hope. I'm incredibly thankful to John for dropping in today and I hope you enjoyed our conversation. To check out John on the web, be sure to go to johnolsch-unbreakable.com or instagram.com backslash johnolsch. His new book, The Upside of Down is available for pre-order right now on Amazon. I'll leave the links. Simply go to undonepodcast.com backslashep128 to see the notes, links and images related to today's guest, John Olsch. I know there are great stories out there to be told and I'm always on the lookout. So if you or somebody you know has a story that we can all be inspired by, I'd love for you to tell me about it. Just head on over undonepodcast.com, go to that nav bar in the top, click contact and drop me a note. Coming up on the show, I've got more conversations to dig deep at how high achievers can bounce back and build better, including my wrap up of our Multicart Docu-Series examining the life, the lessons and the legacy of Coach Dick Tomey. After that, we'll hear the story of college basketball player, turned athletic trainer and growing social media influencer, Jacqueline Emery. You may remember back when Jacqueline's husband Dustin was on the show. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a moment. This and more coming up on Becoming Undone. Becoming Undone is a Nitrohype creative production written and produced by me, Toby Brooks. Tell a friend about the show and follow along on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn at Becoming Undone and follow me at TobyJ Brooks on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Check out my link tree at linktr.ee backslash.tobyjbrooks. Listen, subscribe and leave me a review. Those help more than you know, so that would be awesome if you would. On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio or wherever the heck you get your podcasts. Until next time friend, keep getting better.