“Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.”

Nelson Mandela

Tim Storey is a legendary life coach, author, and spiritual adviser. Through his humanitarian work in 75 countries, Tim has changed the lives of millions of people and helped them adopt their “Miracle Mentality.” 

Whether one-on-one or to audiences of 85,000, Tim has been able to connect on a personal level with people of all walks of life, from entertainment executives, celebrities, and professional athletes, to adults and children in neighborhoods throughout the US and in the most deprived and war-torn regions of the world.

Some of the well-known individuals who Tim has coached include Robert Downey, Jr., Sean “Diddy” Combs, Charlie Sheen, Oprah Winfrey, and Kanye West.

Tim is a regular guest and commentator on national television. He’s been interviewed on Oprah, Steve Harvey, and Good Morning America, and his story was featured in my book Think and Grow Rich: The Legacy.

Tim is currently the inspirational face of Reach TV as the host of The Daily Moment, a series of segments seen in 90 airports and thousands of hotel rooms across the US, offering travelers (and millions of streaming viewers) a roadmap to personal inspiration.

In this episode:

• What the “Miracle Mentality” is and how it can change your life
• The biggest thing stopping people from stepping into their greatness
• What Tim has learned from coaching some of the world’s most impactful people; and
• How to turn your biggest setback into your biggest comeback.

Before we begin, the right bit of inspiration can completely change the trajectory of someone’s life, so if there’s a friend or loved one who needs to hear this episode or could use some help to Win the Day, share it with them right now.

Let’s WIN THE DAY with Tim Storey!

James Whittaker:
Tim, great to see you. Thanks for coming on the Win the Day show.

Tim Storey:
It's good to be here and good to see you again.

Is there a memory from your childhood that you think about a lot today that brought you a lot of joy?

Disneyland. At seven years of age we went to Disneyland for the first time, and to see like Tomorrowland, Frontierland, and to see all the characters up close, it’s something that I reflect on many, many times in my life.

You talk a lot about how imagination is such an important thing not only to nurture in children but to help adults adopt their Miracle Mentality.

There's no doubt about it. 

That imagination, as you would agree, is innate, but it can be fostered. It could be stirred up. And so the imagination is so important because it can take you from the reality of where you are to the possibility of where you could be.

I’m sure we’ll talk at length about rising above your environment, but your environment, especially if you're in a negative place, can greatly restrict your idea of what you're capable of. So, if you can surround yourself with really interesting people who live without those barriers – like the people you and I are around – it's just so incredible how quickly that transformation and that growth can occur.

Yes, no doubt about it.

When you were 10 years old, the world was your oyster, then you found out that your father had passed away in a car accident. Two years later, your sister also tragically passed in a separate car accident. How did these events at such a young age shape the way that you saw the world and your role in the world?

When I look back, I now see them as what I call life interruptions. An interruption, if you break down the word, is like a disturbance. 

So I had such momentum when I was a kid. I was happy-go-lucky, a lot of joy, very similar to now, but my life was so innocent, it was so innocent. And then to hear that my father had passed and then now hear sounds in our house that I'd never heard before – of a very strong lady, my mother, crying … that was difficult. 

Right when we were working through that, because we weren't over my father's passing, but working through, my sister passed. My sister was super, super cool. She was only 20. Her two good friends were sitting up front. My sister was in the back and they were driving to San Francisco in the fog and the lady thought she saw an off ramp and it was just fog and they went down this hill. 

But it was a very difficult time that I did not have the tools to get through, but I somehow came through with the tools that I knew at that time.

Are they moments you try to block out? Or do you sometimes try to connect with those moments just to feel what you felt at that time?

I very much embrace them. I'm okay with pain.

In life you go through recovery and discovery at all times. So as much as I life coach people, I life coach some of my friends' children and they might even be 12 years of age, 13, and they're going through things. It could be struggling with self-esteem or being bullied at school. And then I life coach some of the biggest CEOs in the world and they're going through recovery and discovery at the same time. 

So I embrace the pain. I have never run from anything. I do believe you have to deal with things head on, no doubt about it.

We know about the importance of connection. Who was the first person to believe in you?

My sixth grade teacher made a profound impact on my life because he had me stay after class one day and he said, "Timmy, I want to talk to you." And so I went to his desk and he had this thing called a briefcase. I laugh because you don't see them around very much.

He pulled it out and put it on the desk; he had three books in this briefcase. And he said, "Because I think you are brilliant," which I'd never heard that said to me, "I want to see if you want to check out one of my books, check it out and sign for it." And he said, "This is not for extra credit. This is just to help you grow." That was a mind-boggling thing. This teacher took his extra time and branded me brilliant.

This teacher took his extra time and branded me brilliant.

One of the books that I took was a book about Michelangelo that was written by a man named Irving Stone. And I later became friends with his wife Jean Stone, when I lived in Beverly Hills. And I told her that story and she started to cry because that book did something huge to my life because I saw and read about Michelangelo who did things that were bigger than life.

You’re reading an excerpt of this interview. To access the full Win the Day episode with Tim Storey, including bonus content that doesn’t appear here, check out the YouTube or podcast version. 🚀

Mother Teresa was also a big influence for you – and of course we can get mentors through the written word. What were the biggest lessons or biggest inspirations that you took away from Mother Teresa's career that you were able to apply in your own life?

The Mother Teresa beauty is that she was on one path and that was to be a traditional nun. So the duties of a nun were the duties she had. Then she would hear these orphans talking amongst themselves, kids within this particular neighborhood. And according to her, she heard the cry of the hurt of these orphans, not just a verbal but an emotional cry, and she decided to do something about it. So she went off her traditional path because she saw that somebody else was hurting.

She decided to do something about it. So she went off her traditional path because she saw that somebody else was hurting.

It's almost like if you're going down the freeway and you see somebody struggling with their car that cannot start on the side of the road and you decide to help. And when I read about this my junior year in high school, I was already thinking in my mind I was going to USC, University of Southern California. I knew what my major was going to be. 

I read this book and I said, "Wow, this is my life," because I am that guy that loves people so much. I'm willing to go off the path to try to aid somebody else. So Mother Teresa really helped set that emotion.

It sounds like that planted the seed for you at the age of 18 to go to seminary. How did that phase and that chapter in your life help you make sense of everything else that had happened before?

Decision, as you know, is a choice or a selection. Some things you discover. Decision is very important, but I think that parents overemphasize the decision, decision, decision because sometimes a person at 16, 17, 18 doesn't know what major they want to declare in college or what exactly they want to do for the rest of their life.

You do have to make decisions or choices, but you have to pay attention to the discovery. And the discovery is a thing that has made Tim Storey, in that I had made these decisions and then I went to seminary, but while I was there, I discovered that I could create curriculums. I'm a person who loves to study and I created a curriculum on dreaming big when I was only 18, 19 years of age. I mean, who's doing that? 

Then I discovered that I had a gift to communicate. Again, that was a discovery, not a decision.

Do you feel like there's a single purpose that's carried you throughout your entire life?

I think it's a calling. I feel that God called me to aid people and I do it through different skill-sets. One is counseling, therapy. Sometimes it's through financial giving, being a humanitarian all these years, running businesses and hiring people. So I think there's a lot of different ways that I answered the call.

I got an email a few weeks ago from a 14-year old who said, "I read your books. I listen to the Win the Day podcast all the time. I'm doing everything that you tell me, but the people I'm around are negative people. I'm in a toxic environment."

How can a teenager or a young adult think positive and continue to stay positive and build that momentum when they're around toxic and negative people all the time?

You have to choose your moments. 

Let's say if you're in the fourth grade, so if school starts, let's say at 8:00 AM and it ends at 3:00 PM, you have to be in the classroom with those students for a long time Monday through Friday.

But they have something called recess and then they have lunchtime. And sometimes when you are little, you only have recess and lunchtime to make the choice to go get filled up somewhere else. And so there's a lot of people in bad marriages, you need a recess and a lunchtime. You work at a job you can't stand? You need a recess and a lunchtime. 

The recess and the lunchtime, to me, is to go in your own space that I call the holy ground. And that is a place where you can fill yourself back up. You can imagine, you can meditate, you can breathe, you can dream, you can just be your original self.

You've worked with people from the lowest lows right through to the most famous people in the world. You've traveled to 75 countries. What is the pain that people have today and what do you feel as you're observing this and talking to them?

I think the pain is in so many parts. I remember as a young guy, I used to always hear older people say, "How's your health?" I never understood that question. "How's your health?" 

So when you're like 10, 11, 12 and you hear an uncle say to another uncle, "How's your health?" I didn't understand that. But as you get older, you start to see a lot of people that have health problems.

Try to find times in your life to heal things that got injured along life's journey that you didn't even realize were injured.

You and I are both physical people. And so you have your mindset, you have your body, you have so many different parts of your body that can go wrong. So to me, it's the same thing in life. Try to find times in your life to heal things that got injured along life's journey that you didn't even realize were injured.

One of the things that I see in a lot of successful people is that they move so quickly and they become a human doing as you've heard, rather than a human being. And then it catches up with them later. They don't take time to heal.

Out of everyone you've worked with, is there a particular transformation that you are most proud of or that you're open to sharing today?

I get the privilege to work with so many types of people, like you said, whether inner city kids in South Africa, or NFL players, or NBA players. But I think dialoguing with people like Stevie Wonder for over 20-something years is fun. 

And when we talk about transformation, it's not like so-and-so had this terrible addiction and now they're so free. With Stevie, a lot of our conversations are about just life. 

I enjoy talking to Oprah Winfrey too, she's my real friend and she has really cool food at her house!

That's always good!

You could sit down with her and then it's like, "Tim, and if you don't like that, they can make you this." 

So I see what I do as a series of conversations with people. I've worked with Charlie Sheen for probably 23 years, so I never look at it as I'm the one that helped get Charlie from one place to the other. I don't see it that way because his dad was also involved or the people that were helping him with addiction were involved. 

I have a skillset and it seems to be working and I just try to help people get better.

How do you help someone whose greatest strength – perhaps hyper-creativity in the realm of genius – is also their biggest weakness. How do you help someone be free and step into their greatness without restricting that creative spirit that's made them so successful?

So, let's take Kanye West. First time I met him, I was going to Miami in 2006 and he came into first class and he sat next to me and he was on his way to Art Basel. And we just started talking and we literally talked for five and a half hours straight. We had never met each other. And he has a religious background. His mother Donda was a great friend of mine. I was at her funeral when she passed.

Kanye and I talked and he said, "I want to collaborate." So collaboration to him was me being in the studio and just being energy and us discussing. What was really cool one time is the song Stronger, all he had was the beat. He did not have the lyrics.

It was awesome to see somebody as brilliant as Kanye West lean on other people to stack up his brilliance.

To see how Timbaland came in to help with that and then Pharrell Williams added some ideas and will.i.am, and then they brought Daft Punk and they had the strings. It was awesome to see somebody as brilliant as Kanye West lean on other people to stack up his brilliance. 

But at the same time, with a personality like that, or with a John Lennon, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, or with Andy Warhol, those people need to learn to rest. There's a time to rest the mindset and just to go away to a solitary place and just rest and not always be on. When you're trying to be on for too long, it's not good.

Let's take NBA basketball. So you have LeBron James, he’s 38 years of age and he's resting a little bit more than he did when he was 23 because it's just where he's at with his body. So sometimes the coach will call a timeout, take LeBron out, and he'll only rest three minutes. But during that three minutes there's a reset and then there's a refresh, and then there's a renewal. 

Then many times, because he's LeBron, he'll just go up to the coach and go, "I'm ready." And we need this as human beings to just put ourselves on the bench sometimes and realize there's some other pretty capable guys out here in this world.

My favorite thing to watch you do is rock a stage in front of thousands of people, even in small groups as well. Do you have a ritual before you walk on stage or is there something that you say to yourself before you walk out to make sure you're delivering an amazing performance at the end?

I think that my style of being a speaker is very original and that I never watched other speakers. So when people say, "This guy was amazing, and that guy was amazing and this guy was amazing and she's amazing and did you study them?" 

No, I studied Richard Pryor, I studied George Carlin, I studied Jerry Seinfeld, Eddie Murphy, and because there's something about comedians on stage, the pause, the way they use the stage, utilize it, the storytelling. They're so much better than these motivational speakers. And so lot of my training came from just watching these guys and creating a style before the style came out.

I really believe what Steve Harvey has said to me, and Oprah Winfrey said to me that I am the pioneer in this style. I never saw another person speaking the style that I started speaking in. And what do I mean by that? I would take information and I would almost act it out. Where the other thing was like, "Let me tell you the seven steps to success. Step number one, believe in yourself." That was so not me. I was doing a doggone one-man show. I was doing a monologue.

I was laughing when you started that story because I'm exactly the same. I love watching and studying comedians. The way that they strategically place silence. I think they're the best communicators in the world, but they also bring the audience in with them. They have that sensory acuity. If there's a heckler in the crowd, they're able to get in there and respond to that.

Yeah, 100%. 

I was telling my mother this the other day, my mother is about to be 93 and she's super strong. I said, "Mum, when I started, there were only so many guys that were at the top of what we do. And now there's so many people wanting the space, it's like the Boston Marathon. It's like over 30,000 people that are just jamming for space."

Part of what's missing is that a lot of the speakers, both male and female, they're clever. But clever can only get you so far. A lot of their talks, they lack substance and meaning and weight, but they're clever. 

Oh man, they're coming up with clever stuff and they're quoting guys and saying stuff that has been around for years and been somebody else's, but acting like it's their own. So there almost needs to be a purification of this gift.

Great teachers, of course, have students – and the growth and development of the students is a sign of a great teacher. When you are on stage, you can feel the energy shift in the room. You can feel the emotion shift in the room.

Well, thank you.

And you can experience a transformation that people go through. You've got transformations all around the world, and I think people out there are busy trying to serve themselves rather than being like, "How can I get real transformation from this audience that I'm in?" 

Something you shared with me many years ago was the idea that you were born an original, don't die a copy. It's important to get inspiration from other people and to level up. It's important that we access all of these different pieces of content and inspiration that we have available, but we need to figure out how we do that in our own way that's honorable and respectful to who we are.

Well, here's something to think about. We have roughly 8 billion people on the planet, and what's happening in people's lives is they're looking for leadership, they're looking for mentoring, they're looking for tutoring. So if we value people, it's very important for us to become educated and be compassionate and understand what the people we're trying to influence might need.

Understand what the people we’re trying to influence might need.

So I never think from a position of monetization where I think so many speakers today think about, "Oh, look at that big group of people that I can possibly monetize." I think we're missing something very, very human. So I don't think of the monetization and the upsell, but I think that that's one reason I'm so blessed. Like in my life, people try to give me everything. They try to give me horses.

Literal horses we're talking about here!?

Real horses!

They try to give me boats, cars, Rolex watches, a lot of money, and it's not by accident. You reap what you sow. The horses I've turned down. A kid from Compton, I didn't know what to do with them!

Put the horse in the boat. I can see you out there in Marina del Rey!

That's funny. 

But, the monetization side, that came with the fact that big companies started saying, "Hey Tim, this is not my personal money. We're Starbucks. We can afford to pay you that amount!"

We’ve seen the rise of the internet marketing crowd that's come in. The reality is that for transformation to occur, a transaction – a commitment – needs to happen. You and I can have conversations for 30 minutes over coffee to try and help people, but they need more exposure, they need more ongoing help. So for the biggest transformation, often a transaction needs to occur. 

But I see so many people, their gold medal is getting the transaction and they don't care about the transformation. Whereas something that you do so well is identifying that as a starting point because it's the commitment from the other person. And once you receive the commitment, the transformation process can go.

Well what you said, I've never heard it said that way. That's brilliant. 

If you're not careful, you're just thinking of the transaction: “How then do I monetize this? I have rent to pay. Now I have a big house to pay for. Now I have a Ferrari to pay for.” And so really the way I look at guys like that, I'm really not that impressed to be honest. 

So somebody can be on social media and they look like a chest pounder and it could be a woman or a man. It's not just men. And someone can say, "Look how impressive this person is Tim, and they want to meet with you and they want to collaborate and they want to do something together." I don't really vibe with that because a lot of where I'm coming from is motive.

So when you got involved in Think and Grow Rich and then you were writing your book Think and Grow Rich: The Legacy and I started to get to know you, one thing I really loved about you is your motive. Your motive is to help transform people's lives. And to me, that's why you're becoming one of the best at what you do because the Universe is making a place for you.

Thank you. I really appreciate that. 

How well can you tell whether someone who is in the midst of making extremely bad decisions is going to revert straight back to their bad behaviors, even after you’ve given them everything you’ve got? Or whether they’ll be a Robert John Downey Jr., enjoy massive positive momentum, and never return to being that destructive person ever again?

I can tell almost every time.

The reason why is because when you want to have a comeback, there's certain steps. Number one, you have to become awake, conscious. Two, you have to take inventory. Most people won't do number two, and that is a realistic inventory. That's why some people are afraid to go to the doctor. They don't want a full battery of tests to find out something might be wrong with their body. I hear people say, "I'd rather not think about it."

Ignorance is bliss.

That's how they look. 

So you have to become awake to have this comeback. You have to take inventory. 

Then here's the third thing that I don't see a lot of people doing. They will not partner with the right people. The right people, in the case of you being challenged or problemed, is not someone who's just saying, “I feel sorry for you” or “You're a victim and you don't deserve this.” Sometimes it really is tough love. It is being challenged. It is being shaken. 

To gom

So if somebody is not willing to take inventory and to find the right partner, I can see that most times they're going to revert back to the beginning and then have to go through the process again.

There's a quote from Robert Downey Jr. which I think is so interesting in terms of people who are caught up in those addictive negative behaviors: "It's like I have a loaded gun in my mouth, and I like the taste of metal."

I think he might even have said that to the judge in one of the court proceedings he had a long time ago. How do you approach helping someone who is addicted to destroying themselves?

Yeah, I was all part of that. That was in Malibu, that was to the judge. And I had just been with Robert days before that. 

When he said that, I wasn't in the court that day, and when I saw it on the news, it shook me to my core because he's such a kind guy. So much so, he went to my son's basketball game. I remember him walking in and they're like, "I think that's Robert Downey Jr!" So that's Robert and I've been fortunate enough to be close to him for all these years, since 1999.

With Robert, I think that the support of his mother, the support of his family, people in his life showed him over and over and over and over, through the power of partnership that he had the support of love. And then for him, and he talks about this, he found the discipline. He found the discipline in renewing his mind, the discipline of getting deeper into spirituality, into God, but also getting into self-defense, martial arts. But what a great example. 

One of the greatest we've had in entertainment. It sounds funny, but I was talking to the late great Tony Curtis, the actor, and he was my real great buddy and he says, by far, Robert Downey is one of the top three actors of our time. He thought Robert and Johnny Depp were two of them. But it's great to see how well Robert is continuing to do and all the things he's doing in humanitarian work.

And how close we came to never being able to benefit as humanity from his amazing work.

Well, truly, but if we could take it off him for a second. There are 8 billion of us, is I honestly think that there are times that life is that frail and we don't recognize like, "Really, man, I need to get this together because whatever this thing I'm going through can really take me down the wrong path that could take decades to come back."

There are people that I've had to separate myself from. I never separate the love that I have for them, but I cannot enable them because it'll be bad for them – and really bad for me.

And this is what I see a lot of. I see a lot of young guys that will say, "Hey Tim, I got it together and this is just who I am at this age." I'm talking about people with major addictions, but man, you see some of them later, even four years later, they look like they've aged 14 years.

You do a lot of work to help people with addiction. The other side of that are the people who are impacted by that addiction. How does someone know when it's time to close the chapter of a relationship that they're in, a career they hate, even a friendship that's no longer serving them?

How do we know when it's time to close that chapter so we can create space for something amazing to happen?

You never close the love line. You always have the love line, but according to this book, Boundaries, which is such a great book, you have to reestablish boundaries with someone. 

So if you're dating someone who's abusive because of their addiction, you have to reestablish the boundaries. You may not be able to date this person. Or if you're married to someone who is struggling with addiction and they'll go through my process of becoming awake, take inventory, but not being willing to partner with the right people to get help. You might have to say, "This is not working for me now," and go through a separation, or it may not work. 

I've had to do this even in my own life, and I am a trained therapist. There are people that I've had to separate myself from. I never separate the love that I have for them, but I cannot enable them because it'll be bad for them – and really bad for me.

One of my favorite quotes of yours is, "Look for people who can handle your upgrade."

I feel like I've gone through several stages of rebirth in the different points of my life and my career, and I’m vastly different to the person that I was 10 years ago and 10 years before that. What do you mean by look for people who can handle your upgrade?

I think that you never know who's going to break out of the pack. So a friend of mine took me to Delmar, which is in Southern California to the horse races. You have all these horses that are there and the jockeys, and someone could be riding a horse that's like in fifth place and it comes out of nowhere and wins by a nose. 

It’s the same in life. A lot of people you don't expect to do well are the ones who come through.I remember I saw Kevin Hart 15 years ago at the airport and he just looked like a short guy waiting for his bag at American Airlines by himself. There was nobody around – it was at LAX 15 years ago. He was just another short guy standing with the rest of us waiting for his bag.

So there are very few people that can handle the upgrade because they think that should have been my upgrade.

Fast-forward to today, his tours have, 18,000, 20,000, people all over the country, one of the biggest stars in the world. Backing up 15 years ago, he's waiting for his bag like the rest of us. So there are very few people that can handle the upgrade because they think that should have been my upgrade, I'm smarter than her, prettier than her, better than her, better than him. 

Very few people can handle the upgrade. I know that because I coach people that live in the upgrade and see how many friendships they've lost.

In Australia we have something called tall poppy syndrome. People are happy to see you doing well on the condition that you're not doing too much better than they are. Because you're exactly right, they imagine, "Hey, I should have been that person." 

There's a Napoleon Hill quote, one of my favorites, "Action is the real measure of intelligence." If you thought that should have been you, well, why didn't you take the necessary actions, growth, and relationships to put yourself in a position to enjoy the experiences that this person's life has?

I love that quote. 

But I will say this also – life is about assignments. And my assignment at one point was to be one of the best speakers in the world, and somehow some way I became pretty doggone good. So as you said, over 75 countries, biggest crowd, 85,000. I don't think that's my assignment anymore.

The you that you see is the you that you'll be.

I'm starting to open up clinics for mind health clinics, physical clinics all over the world. I'm also in the gaming community. I'm the first person to be part of one of the largest gaming communities, XSET. I'm the mind health coach. That's pretty wild. I am a coach for a large AI company. That's unusual. 

And now I'm breaking into other spaces, helping the elderly. Now, can I still rock a stage? Yeah, but so can Mick Jagger and the guy's 72! So I think I can still do it at the same level, but that's not really my focus. I'm leaving that to guys like you now.

What's the biggest thing that's stopping people from stepping into their greatness?

One of the biggest things is self-doubt. 

If you really get into the core of a human being and get them when they're tired, get them when they're not feeling good, you find that there's a lot of self-doubt. That they think it could happen, but in their frustration, they can see their faults, flaws, and failures. 

It is the self-doubt because the you that you see is the you that you'll be. So no doubt about it, self-doubt.

The people you coach, most of them are high performers or have achieved great success already. Is there one thing in particular you do that helps them perform at their highest level?

Yes. I think that one of the things that I'm good at is helping people find their own secret sauce. Prince did not want to be Michael Jackson. Bob Dylan did not want to be Stevie Wonder. And I really help people find their secret sauce and crystallize it. 

So even with you, I have thoughts for you just by watching you. You're phenomenal already, but I think you're going to, over the next few months and years, really crystallize your authenticity, which will make you unbeatable at what you do. 

There's a guy named Richard Marx who used to sing all the time and sings sometimes now. When Richard Marx came out in the '70s and '80s, everybody was trying to sing like Richard Marx. When Luther Vandross came out, so many African American singers were trying to sing like Luther. And so we're trying to be these copies, but I'm really a pro at helping people discover their secret sauce and then crystallize it.

With the clients I work with. I like them to write down, "I am ready to win." I talk about Win the Day all the time. A day becomes a week, becomes a month, becomes your life. Just simply writing down, physically writing down, "I am ready to win." 

Even if that's a daily affirmation, just something like that to recognize that you have it. You don't need to worry about trying to mimic someone else. Focus on your own path.

Again, that's part of your signature message. So that would be put in the lane of a Stephen Covey, of a Zig Ziglar, of a John Maxwell. So now you are in that group, but as you are growing and maturing, you're going to find even more of your secret sauce crystallizing your calling and step up even to a better place. 

That's my own opinion.

You’re reading an excerpt of this interview. To access the full Win the Day episode with Tim Storey, including bonus content that doesn’t appear here, check out the YouTube or podcast version. 🚀

You have been able to help some of the most influential people in the world, as we listed in the intro. But what have you learned from them? Are there one or two lessons in particular that have come back the other way that have changed your life?

It's always, it's always a two-way street. 

From Magic Johnson, I learned resilience. From Kanye West, I learned that when you're doing a rap, it's not like it just goes down one street, because he was doing a song that became famous and I pitched him some lines. He goes, "Tim, no." He goes, "The song is not supposed to just go down the street. You got to turn the corner!" 

From Steve Perry from Journey, I learned about how to really get into a crowd and rock a stage. That was just by being around him so much and dialoguing. From Robert Downey being on sets of movies, him showing me the take on how he's going to do something before he did it. 

From Smokey Robinson to see how relaxed he is before he goes on stage. So wow, the things that I've been able to learn and can continue to learn from these people that have helped build my life. So I hope I've been able to affect them as much as people think, but they have definitely affected me in a positive way.

One thing I love about you, Tim, is your commitment to ongoing education.

I'm a learner.

There's a Ray Kroc quote, "It's better to be green and growing than ripe and rotting." What's your process of, when you watch or read something, how do you turn that into a way that you can use that to be able to try and help inspire other people?

There's so much amazing information going on that I don't want to go to the information that's necessarily just trending. So like ChatGPT, that's what a lot of people are talking about, but I needed to find out about it. So I actually have researchers, so I would ask my researchers, "Send me what you can on that subject." And so you get a plethora of things. 

For me, to make it easier on myself, I'm kind of old-fashioned. I like to print it out. So I might have 28 pages on that subject. But recently I was in an Uber and a guy was from Eritrea. And so I said, "Oh yeah, you guys are like the sistering country to Ethiopia." I always thought that Ethiopia and Eritrea were almost the same size, and he says, "No, they're like about seven, eight times larger as a country." 

I didn't know that. So you know what I did? I literally went home that night and studied both countries for two hours! I will never ever speak on that. I just wanted to know.

So if I don't know about Laird Hamilton, great surfer, I want to study more. Kelly Slater, I want to know more. I watched surfing documentaries. I'm from Compton, California, and where did that come from? That came from walking down Huntington Beach Pier one time with a very pretty girl, and we were sitting there watching these surfers and me going like, "Who's the best?" And in my private life, I just went and studied.

So yeah, I have a growth mindset.

You talk a lot about the Miracle Mentality. You've written a book about the Miracle Mentality. What is the Miracle Mentality and how important is it today?

The Miracle Mentality is who we are. 

The Miracle Mentality is innate within all of us that psychologists, psychiatrists, thought leaders have found that even within children, the power of the imagination, a miracle is something extraordinary, uncommon, unusual. That's how kids think. 

Some kids when I've spoken on this, they try to push back and they go, "No, no, no, my childhood is miserable." Or let's say if they're teenagers or in their 20s, they'll say, "When I was a child, I was miserable." I'd say, "But you dreamt about something." 

And they go, "No, I didn't." I said, "I bet you dreamt about leaving the house someday, getting out of the house." "Yeah, I dreamt about that." "I bet you dreamt about someday you're going to prove them wrong," I said, "so you use your imagination."

Most people believe in miracles, but they don't necessarily expect them.

So the Miracle Mentality is innate, but it has to be mentored, tutored and discipled. It really does. So I think it's innate in a smaller form, and you can grow your Miracle Mentality. And just quickly, you can go from believing to expecting, so you expect good things to happen in your life. 

I don't know how that happened, but from being around you, James, I just know you expect big things to happen. Most people do not. They believe in miracles, but they don't necessarily expect them.

Big difference, isn't there?

Big difference.

Your most well-known quote would be, "The bigger the setback, the bigger the comeback."

For someone who's at home watching this or listening to this podcast, if they're wallowing in their rock bottom moment right now, what would you say to them to take that first step to turn that setback into a comeback?

So I have to use somebody else's thought process first and then go to mine. Life really is a marathon and it's not a sprint. So even if somebody passes away at age 31, they were alive from birth to 31. If they pass away at age 99, from birth to 99, it's still a marathon, not a sprint. 

So to me, setbacks will always take place in one area of your life because you have so many areas of your life – the physical, the mental, the spiritual, the financial, the job, the family, the relationships. So we all have setbacks. 

To me, most people sit and settle in a setback. And so my whole thought is if I can get them to see beyond the immediate and that problem that seems so permanent, truly the bigger the setback, the greater the comeback. And even if that comeback takes them one year, two years, three years, five years, I try to prepare them for the rest of their life. And that is kind of like my strength.

Yeah, I know you're big on the underdogs. Everyone loves a good comeback story.

Almost my eyes change when I start talking about this because yeah, I have very few people that walk into my life that I can't help them in this area. What I do need is their will, because people have a free will and they can just cross their arms and say, "No, I refuse to get better." 

It's hard to cross that free will, but if somebody is willing, there's no doubt that they can get better.

What's the most important part of your daily routine? Are there some things that you do every single day as rituals that help get you in the right frame of mind?

I need to get outside. I need to breathe. 

I'm a walker. I walk five or six days a week. I have to go to the gym at least four or five times a week. And a lot of that is just for movement. Physicality helps my mindset. But I study at least two hours a day. And when you say study, I may watch your Win the Day podcast, I might read a book, I'll listen to something, I'll read it, the newspaper. So I'm studying about two hours a day.

Then my faith in God is very important. So I'm really into meditating on scriptures, and I call it feeding my faith and starving my doubt. So that's important to me. 

And then my family's super, super important. I have two children and I'm very close to my mother and my sisters.

On your best day, what's an affirmation that you would write on a flashcard that you could show yourself on your worst day?

Today's decisions are tomorrow's realities. And the reason I'm having such a good day is I made some good decisions, most likely to have the reality of having that good day. 

Sometimes when you're eating well, it doesn't feel like there's any changes, but then down the line you're like, "This is wild. I have new energy, I feel better. I'm more lean." So on my worst day, I need to look at that. Today's decisions are tomorrow's realities and say, "Hey, Tim, even though you don't feel good, make the right choices today for a better tomorrow."

Final question, what's one thing you do to Win the Day?

Plant positive seeds into other people's lives through encouragement, calls, and affirmations.

Brother, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Thank you, what a privilege.

Final steps to Win the Day...

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Resources / links mentioned:

⚡ Tim Storey website

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📚 ‘The Miracle Mentality’ by Tim Storey

📚‘Boundaries’ by Henry Cloud and John Townsend

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