How to Be Successful by Being You
The following is adapted from Silver Spoon by Bennie Fowler.
No matter who you are, every part of what you do well, every part of what you’re passionate about, requires the will, determination, and mental fortitude honed by great athletes in moments of immense pressure.
Rick Perea was an NFL linebacker before he became a sports psychologist. Julius Thomas was a Denver tight end and is now working on his doctorate in psychology. Seth Minter, aka “The Foot Doctor,” made a name for himself as a genius-level footwork trainer for some of the best running backs and wide receivers in the NFL.
Each of these people has a mind like tempered steel and has helped me forge my own resilience. They helped me realize that habits and attitudes contribute as much to a person’s success as weight training and drills.
Athletes are not superhuman, but many do have profound ideas and approaches to mental strength. The best players work to get better every day, regardless of the obstacles they encounter. What sets them apart is their determination and resilience — their ability to bounce back and see past the day-to-day setbacks we all encounter.
I want my story to inspire you to say: I’m going to do what I want to do. I’m going to achieve what I want to achieve.
Sports is a business — no one knows this better than an NFL player — but it’s also a game. We play sports for fun, right? That’s the way it should be. Fun should be your life, my mom always said. But my mother also had other things to say about fun and games.
“Work before you play and all your life you will thrive,” she always told my brother and me. “You can’t just go out there and have fun all the time. You have to put in the work. The work is what makes fun and games so enjoyable.”
I want to debunk the notion that well-to-do people don’t face discouraging setbacks or adversity. They do. I grew up in a suburb of Detroit, the son of an attorney and an auto executive, and I went to a private prep school before heading to Michigan State on a football scholarship.
We were able to pay our bills and live well. It’s not the typical rags-to-riches narrative that’s often celebrated in our society, nor is it the story of a trust fund kid out of Beverly Hills, but that doesn’t make what I have to share any less important, or, for that matter, any less thrilling. Nor does it mean that my parents coddled my brother, Chris, and me, or that we’ve never faced daunting challenges. Far from it.
Our parents never suggested we could afford to back down or take an easier path. They’ve always challenged us to be better — better people, better learners, better athletes. When at age ten, my brother tore the ACL in his right leg, my mother did not indulge his disappointment. Instead, she told him that he needed to learn how to drive to his left and develop new strengths. I was a basketball player too, but when I ran a 10.9 in the hundred meters in high school, my mother told me that kind of speed would help me more on a football field than on a basketball court.
That’s my mom. She was never harsh, but she was always honest. She told you things you didn’t necessarily want to hear, but they were things you needed to know. Neither she nor my dad felt the need to make Chris and me improved versions of themselves. Instead, they wanted us to be improved versions of ourselves.
“I gave myself the freedom to see who you boys were as opposed to seeing myself or your dad in you,” she told me recently. “I insisted that you be the best at what you are best at.”
And now I’m insisting that you do the same thing.
For more advice on success, you can find Silver Spoon: The Imperfect Guide to Success on Amazon.
Bennie Fowler is a six-year veteran of the NFL. He began his career as an undrafted free agent signed by the Broncos in 2014. He spent four years with the Broncos and was a member of the Super Bowl 50 championship team in 2016. Bennie played college football at Michigan State University, where he was a member of the 2014 Rose Bowl championship team. Bennie holds the annual Bennie Fowler youth football camp in Detroit, Michigan, is an in-demand speaker trained through the NFL Speakers Bureau, and lives in Denver during the offseason.
