With a military career spanning 26 years, retired Col. Fellinger has become a model of resilience and fitness. He asks that you bring him the hardest problems you have because he lives to overcome them. As he explains, it’s a process and one that can be practiced but not necessarily mastered. After all, if you’re not at least a little off balance, how are you challenging yourself and growing stronger? Joe and he discuss the most vital element to fitness--building mental strength through motivation, risk taking, mental agility and mental resilience.


Lessons:

    1.    Remember the French Paratrooper’s Prayer (to paraphrase): Give me Lord what others don’t want, uncertainty, doubt, torment and battle, but also the courage, the  energy and spirit to face them.
    2.    To stay motivated take the first step and you will soon create irreversible momentum, inertia that will take on a life of it’s own.
    3.    Build mental resilience through facing challenges you didn’t anticipate and generalizing the resultant confidence throughout your life.

The “man whisperer” Mammarella-D'Cruz runs men’s groups that set them on a course to fulfillment. Clients, even billionaires, find they need help understanding how to achieve happiness. His ability was honed by the dire circumstances of his own childhood. After his family was placed on the death list in Uganda, Mammarella-D'Cruz spent a significant portion of his formative years on the run. This summoned his survival instincts, which were vital at the time, but when the threat eased were not helping him live the life he had dreamed. After a string of successful endeavours that left him wanting, he learned to live life to it’s fullest and is helping others do the same.

Lessons:

    1.    Find how your life’s “script” impedes you, to move on.
    2.    It’s more efficient to learn from other’s mistakes than to make them yourself.
    3.    If your life is entirely run by your internal protector you are surviving and not living.

Adaptive athlete Amy Winters, is so resilient she was chosen to help struggling athletes complete the brutal 60+ hour Spartan endurance event Agoge. If you ask her, she won’t credit rugged individualism for her perseverance. She relies on the strength of others to buoy her up as she does the same for them. It may be that the wellspring of grit that her loss summoned helped her to recognize and rouse that same potential in others.

Lessons:

    1.    When you see something different about a person, smile with them.
    2.    Working as a team, as a community, you bring to the fore each other’s strengths and lift each other towards completing the improbable.
    3.    To connect with people, disconnect from the screen.

LINKS:
One Step Ahead Foundation https://onestepaheadfoundation.wordpress.com/
One Step Ahead Foundation on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/OneStepAheadFoundation/

Coach of the highly successful wrestling program at Cornell, Rob Koll wasn’t an overnight success. His virtuosity was years in the making, working hard and surrounding himself with the kind of motivating people that would eventually transform the program into a powerhouse. When asked, Koll denies that his methods involve any mystique. He simply doles out his nose to the grindstone, meat and potatoes work ethic with devastating consistency. Those who don’t have the discipline to endure it fall by the wayside. Those who do, find themselves competing with the best and winning often.

Lessons:
    1.    It’s not how much you want to win that day; it’s how much you want to win on all the days leading up to that day.
    2.    Even a mildly active wrestler is going to go through more pain, hardship and sacrifice than the average person on the street.
    3.    A supportive upbringing that instills good values is crucial.

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