Jay Glazer: How to Turn Depression and Anxiety Into Motivation

Today, Commander Divine speaks with Jay Glazer, iconic NFL sports insider, mental health advocate, and founder of MVP (Merging Vets and Players). Jay’s mission is to change the narrative on anxiety, depression and self worth. In this episode, Jay shares his relentless mindset and gives us a look into his personal mental health journey that culminated in publishing his new book, Unbreakable: How I Turned My Depression and Anxiety into Motivation and You Can Too. Key Takeaways: Find your fight team. At 52, Jay spars every day because he loves the support of his fight team. Whether he wins or loses doesn’t matter; what matters is having that team around him for support. There are so many potential teams around us that can help lift us up and walk this walk together. Jay says you can develop a fight team anytime in your life (he didn’t develop his fighting mindset until he was in his 30s). Do more than the competition. The magic bullet in life is to find out who the best is in your field, and do more than them. It’s hard, but the alternative is never seeing your dreams come true. When you look at the SEALS, great athletes, and great businessmen, they all have that common thread: they outwork everybody. No trauma equals no growth. Trauma and success are intertwined. Trauma is actually an opportunity for growth; it’s what allows us to be sensitive and whole. So our trauma actually provides extreme motivation for growth, because we can’t have growth without trauma. We just rent these bodies, but our souls live on forever. Jay had a near-death experience that gave him a profound new lease on life. He chooses to believe that the physical is not all about us and that the soul lives on forever. How can you be different? When Jay started working at Fox, he decided that he wanted to be different in two different ways: A, he was going to out-work the world, and B, he was going to be different from other reporters who used their pens as weapons. Instead, Jay pledged to start “give-give” relationships with the players and coaches he covered. As a result, many of them became his biggest donors to open up more MVP chapters. Loyalty is a lost art. Jay makes a point to always be doing for other people. Too many people have relationships where they want something in return. Jay figures that if he does a lot for others and gets even 10-15% of people in his life who would do the same for him, then he’s assembled a pretty good little fight team. We create chaos because we’re afraid of calm. Jay says that he thrives in chaos, but is terrible at being calm. We create a lot of chaos for ourselves because we're afraid of the calm. Laughter is the best antidote to panic. Jay has a lot of panic attacks on TV and has tried breathwork and other techniques to handle them. But he says that laughter is often the best medicine. “The faster I laugh, the faster it gets me out of a panic attack. So if you watch me on Fox, NFL Sunday or any TV show, and you see me jamming a quick joke, it's because I'm having a panic attack.”

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