“Certain things catch your eye, but pursue only those that capture your heart.”

Native American proverb

Our guest today is an NFL legend, but what you’ll find most impactful about him is how committed he is to making our world a better place, while helping those who need it most.

The best part? He leads by example EVERY step of the way.

Nick Lowery is a Hall of Fame athlete who became the all-time leading points scorer for the Kansas City Chiefs, but his entry into the NFL was anything but smooth. After being released or rejected 11 times by eight NFL teams, Nick was finally given a chance by the Chiefs who, as history proves, made a hell of a return on their investment.

Retiring after 18 seasons in the NFL (where he was selected to the Pro Bowl three times), Nick is widely regarded as the most valuable kicker of all time, achieving records for: most field goals in NFL history; most accurate field-goal kicker in NFL history – despite kicking, on average, from farther away; and all-time leading point scorer for the Chiefs.

Nick is far from the athlete stereotype you might imagine. He attended Harvard University where he graduated with a Masters degree from the Kennedy School of Government. Among his extraordinary list of accomplishments, Nick has:

• Served three US Presidents (Regan, Bush, Clinton) as an advisor on youth and drug policy in the White House;
• Received the most prestigious humanitarian award an NFL player can receive; and
• Worked tirelessly to equip the next generation with everything they need to thrive.

Among his philanthropic endeavors, Nick is founder of Champions for the Homeless, the Nick Lowery Youth Foundation, and has run leadership programs for Native American youth for 20+ years. In addition, Nick is the national spokesman for Kannaway, which is one of the foremost CBD companies in the world and is undertaking extensive research on how CBD can improve neuroplasticity for dementia, trauma, and athletes with brain damage.

In recognition of his efforts, Nick has been featured in The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, and on David Letterman (twice!), and in two feature films including Think and Grow Rich: The Legacy.

Check out the YouTube or podcast version where Nick Lowery does the Win the Day Rocket Round, answering questions about his favorite quote, what advice he’d give his 18-year-old self, the one thing on his bucket list, and more 🚀

We’re going to cover a lot of ground in this episode. Nick will share:

• His secret process to becoming the most accurate kicker in NFL history;
• How we can help underserved populations, including Native American communities and the homeless;
• The exciting research on how CBD can restore brain function; 
• How to quickly dust yourself off from failure; and
• And a whole lot more!

Let’s WIN THE DAY with Nick Lowery.

James Whittaker:
Great to see you my friend! Thanks for coming on Win the Day show.

Nick Lowery:
Thank you. You know how much I love your accent!

Well to kick things off, no pun intended, I want you to take us right into a moment in your NFL career when everything's on the line, win or lose, it's all on your shoulders. There are tens of thousands of people cheering and screaming at the ground. There's millions of people watching on TV. What's going through your head? And what are you saying internally to give yourself the best opportunity of kicking that game winning goal?

"Oh my god" or "I don't believe this!" I mean, this is not a question of whether there's a voice. There are many voices. There's the voice of fear. There's the voice that this is the single most ridiculously pressured position in sport — maybe with the exception of a goalkeeper, or players in the shootout in soccer — but the kicker has 1.25 seconds and the ball is actually caught after being snapped back 24 feet, eight yards, caught, put down, and the laces are spun (if they have time), and kicked in 1.25 seconds. The ball's not spinning for under two hundredths of a second.

At the same time, you have 11 very large, very talented, highly trained athletes who are paid millions of dollar a year to block your kick. So it's managing all those things.

What it comes down to, which my friend Dr. John Eliot wrote in a book, Overachievement, it's preparation. When you break it down, it's the opposite of what you think nerves are. When you're giving your book report in second grade and Betty Sue's in the front row, and you're nervous and you don't do well, you think it's because of the nerves when it was really because you'd never given a book report before, let alone had something in front of Betty Sue. It's about maturation and polishing of your skills, combined with preparation.

It's about maturation and polishing of your skills, combined with preparation.

When that happens, you can override those voices saying, "Oh my god, I can't believe this is my job." And you trust it, so you have to trust yourself. In the end, it's really a very powerful character-building litmus test for anyone, because you have to in the end, believe in yourself.

You have to believe that you deserve to be that focal point, which is essentially what I call my office: 8 yards x 4 yards. That's my office. If I control that area, which is really only four yards square between me and the holder, in front of 80,000 people, maybe 20-30 million people watching on television, if I can control my thoughts, my emotions, and my focus, I can achieve great things.

That was learned through 11 rejections by eight NFL teams. It was learned by made field goals and it was absolutely improved by making mistakes and missing field goals. As with any skill, it's about learning earning how to manage yourself.

That preparation piece is so important, but our instinct for anything that we suck at or fail at is to say that we're simply not good at that activity, when all it comes back to are those elements you mentioned. It's not just the will to win. It's the will to prepare to win.

Since you've done the work and you're in that intense environment during the game, how jittery are you feeling? Are you actually calm and focusing on just your body and mind doing what it's been prepared to do for so long?

You know, the truth is every single day of our lives and every single game we play has its own unique qualities. The preparation helps it become more consistent, but every day is a little bit different. I'll never forget being "in the flow", one of the great terms that we use today — "in the zone" is another concept — in Joe Montana's first game for us on national TV, a Monday Night game in September 1993, and it's against John Elway on the Broncos, two legends, and in the end, I kicked all our points, we were up 15-0 on a 52 yarder, 45 yarder, 41 yarder, 38 yarder and 25 yarder, something like that.

I'm running back to the sidelines and there is Joe Montana's friend, Huey Lewis the singer, standing next to the net where I'm kicking and as I'm coming back after my fourth field goal, Huey looks at me like, "Man, this is easy for you."

And I love that because that's a performer who has to get on stage and hit his notes. The difference is there's a natural flow because there's a melody, there's a bass line, there's a combination of instruments that sort of bring you into that flow, even if you don't want to, in music. But you have to create your own music as an athlete. So you had to rehearse that music in the cacophony, in the chaos of practice.

You have to create chaos in practice. What I call pressure, but not neurotic pressure. So that when you get to the game, you literally say, "I'm just back at practice. I'm back in James Whittaker's living room having tea." And practicing that so that you can bring it back, so then it comes back to, in essence, being a life actor and in the practice and rehearsal, bringing in all the components and dimensions. Literally, your smell, your sight, your hearing, your touch and using those references to project yourself into those moments when you have to kick the game winning field goal.

You have to create chaos in practice.

And by the way, the game winning field goal might be the 25 yard gimme field goal in the first quarter and you win by three points because you were focused, even though some people might have said, "Of course I'm going to make that." That's what I love is the preparation and if you come to love the preparation, what I noticed today James, when I train, I get the same sort of intensity.

The role of the ego versus the role of the spirit is everything. But in those workouts today, I still get pumped up. I still bring myself into that place of battle, that intensity. So when I try to train others, I have to de-crescendo that because they feel it and it's not their level of commitment yet perhaps. Some of them love it. Some of them are a little bit disconcerted by it, but that's a lifelong skill.

It's about believing that you're here, that God has put you here with unique gifts. [Points to shirt] This stands for GG2G, god given. My friend Todd, who's from Hawaii, is one of the top scouts for the Texas Rangers. When they evaluate a player, they say, "James Whittaker has two G. He's got god given ability to throw the ball, to hit the ball, he's an athlete." But guess what? That's the beginning. Our will takes us to another level of polish and skill.

The next significant piece is to be able to manage your success by divorcing your achievements from your ego and focusing on "What are those things from this stage that are building my soul as well?"

You look at the greatest athletes of all time, they did that internal work. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar evolved deeply into a man of soul. Russell Wilson, whose father was my teammate at Dartmouth College, wonderful human being who founded the African American Sports Hall of Fame; Russell was the NFL Man of the Year this year. Steve Largent, ironically hall of famer also with the Seattle Seahawks, a soulful human being.

That means that I can have a tremendous will, but I also know that I can prevent it from dominating me so much that I think I'm all that. Then I stop being motivated. I stop being consistent. I stop being responsible to others. I stop being empathetic to my teammates.

Yeah, there's so much good stuff there and so many parallels to just every other aspect of life.

One thing I wanted to quickly mention while we're still here on the football side is that football is a great metaphor for life. We all go through failure. The nature of life and the nature of field goals is that you can never get 100%. You can never win 100% every single day, even though you retired as the most accurate field goal kicker in NFL history, so I feel like you've got that better than most!

Do you have a process to move on from failure without letting it affect the rest of your game?

As we learn psychology, we know that everybody is either enabled by their references to trauma or, more commonly, held back by them. I remember missing a 44 yard field goal that just went over the left upright and they called it no good in a windy Arrowhead Stadium. I was just devastated. I remember waking up 10-20 times that night literally dreaming the ball through: "Please go through, please go through."

It's a little bit like a death, you know? If you care about what you do, if you care about the person you've lost, you're going to feel pain. But the beauty of pain is that it can motivate you to dig deeper, to stimulate that will, to lift up your spirit to say, "I can be even better." And use those unique gifts you've been given.

But the beauty of pain is that it can motivate you to dig deeper, to stimulate that will, to lift up your spirit to say, "I can be even better." And use those unique gifts you've been given.

So there's no process initially. I will say there's a great process Tony Robbins once shared with me, which I'd like to share with you because I know you know him well. I had my worst game against the Cleveland Browns and there's an irony to it because you don't make excuses. But I made a 41 yarder to tie the game and it was the worst field conditions ever, but nobody cares, right? But I made it, it was an ugly kick but it went through and then I missed a 45 yarder at the end of regulation.

They were offside, so that meant I got another shot from 40. It didn't go through again. It was weird, they both hooked left and then in overtime, I had a 48 yarder and that was the worst kick in history. The next day, half page ad in the Kansas City Star with a picture of my head in a clown box spring exploding out of my head.

What a lesson from the most accurate kicker in NFL history to become a laughing stock, at least temporarily. Now that season, I came back and kicked a 41 yard field goal with Joe Namath announcing the game against the Miami Dolphins, which probably kept my job. That probably would have ended my career in Kansas City, if I hadn't made that.

So now in the off season, I'm thinking through all these things and I just dedicated myself to get better. Tony Robbins gave me something I'd like to share, which is how you essentially scratch up the old plastic records. Essentially, you visualize the worst thing that's ever traumatized you: perhaps you've been assaulted, given a bad speech, a time when you were badly hurt. It could be a missed field goal. And Tony said, "Visualize that." So I did.

He said, "Now, get the most ridiculous sound in your head." Because music is always our ally in grounded the cellular memory, or reprogramming it. He said, "Play Looney Tunes music." And play that memory, not forwards, but backwards. So suddenly I had to envision the field goal, not going from my kick, but from missing the goal post, all the way back in slow motion with the music playing, to when I kicked it. And do that over and over again, and what that does and what that did was interrupt my memory.

You see the smile come on my face! It's just impossible to think of it quite the same way. Does it still bother me? Yes. But guess what? The next year, I led the NFL in scoring. I was first team All Pro, I had 24 field goals in a row. I set a team record with the best percentage ever and, the next year after that, I had 21 more field goals in a row. The next year after that, I was All Pro.

I just made the decision that I was never going to allow that feeling to happen ever again. After that, I kicked it 86% the rest of my career. So all of us can take the worst parts of our careers and turn them into something that takes us to a new level.

We never stop making mistakes. We're human. And the more we seek to be great, and I like think, continuing with that theme of will, ego, achievement and then spiritual development, what I call the art of being soulfish, it's not like we stop making mistakes. It's that we are still eager and young in spirit to keep learning and keep growing, and making more and more of a contribution.

You and I surround ourselves with great people because it raises our game and our consciousness. It's essentially the art of mentoring ourselves and taking our game to a new level.

I just made the decision that I was never going to allow that feeling to happen ever again.

I look at you that way my friend. You put out such good energy in the midst of all the insanity we've gone through the past year.

You've worked with and continue to work with a lot of kids and young adults who come from difficult backgrounds. What has American Football, or sports more broadly, given those individuals off the field who may have come from some very difficult backgrounds?

Football has given them structure. It's given them attention. People look at them. They follow them. They give them feedback. It's given them the challenge to manage their success.

Football enables them to deal with loss. To have worked your tail off and still lost. To have done everything you thought you could and still miss the field goal, still made a mistake, still lost. To have done your job and be part of that team and live with the loss, even though you did your job. To still be part of that team and own that loss together.

It's something that's missing today. We have these wars fought in Afghanistan and Iraq and no one knows what sacrifices were made by those soldiers. But in World War II, everybody had to pitch in against the common enemy. Everyone was doing something and it was a clear cause. Maybe today's causes are more difficult, but in the end, everybody knew what sacrifice was.

Going back to football, it's about teaching you to be part of a team, to care about the team and also recognize that you represent a community. Football, perhaps unlike some other individual sports, requires you to represent Kansas City. To represent the National Football League, yes, but also unlike some sports and certainly with actors who I... I love actors and I love musicians, but they don't tend to always be connected with a particular city.

So football teaches you there's a responsibility that comes with being part of a team and it's sacrifice, it's conflict resolution skills. Working with somebody on the team or a coach that you don't like, or that doesn't like you.

It's a reminder to control what you do. That office in our lives all of us have that we can take control of, our emotions, what we perceive and just take care of this, because in the end, all we can do is do our best. That's it.

You've done a lot of work with Native American communities. When did you realize for the first time that you were able to make such a big impact in those communities specifically?

First of all, you're really good at this! Everybody watching or listening, tell people about this Win the Day podcast because James is really good. I've done a lot of these and you are really good.

Life is often not a straight road, so here's the interesting thing. I went to Dartmouth College, originally the Eleazar Wheelock School for Native Americans that was founded with him and the Earl of Dartmouth, very British Native American school. Nothing, I had no real significant role or awareness of what to do, or what I could do to help Native Americans.

The Kansas City Chiefs obviously has Native American symbology, nothing. Then my best friend from college, Steve, became Dr. Steve at Johns Hopkins and a world leading expert on prostate cancer and his wife, Allison Barlow, who had been an athlete of the year 10 years after we'd gone there at Dartmouth had begun as the program director for Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health. And at their wedding night, sitting next to them at their wedding table, she said, "Would you start a football camp for Native Americans?"

I remember getting off the bus in Chinle, Arizona on the Navajo Reservation and it was definitely... it was a god moment. It was like there are no trees here. It's all sand. It's all red rock and there are these 90 kids from 10 tribes and I got 10 of my NFL friends to join us. I just knew I had to do this. I felt this resonance with being an orphan. Being an orphan, being ripped out of your family and your community.

You can see, I feel it now. I love the work I do because it's been reaffirmed 10,000 times, but I'm so glad I had that reference. So I just knew I had to do that work and went back to Harvard and after four years, because you know this with tribes, there's so many issues with teenage suicide and really, two to three times worse than any of the worst ghettos in America, teenage pregnancy, alcoholism and drug abuse, et cetera, gangs and yet, there are answers that are there that they know, but why aren't they finding a way to turn this around?

So at Harvard, I studied the idea of how do we rebuild social capital? Which is the deepest values that go way beyond words. How do we rebuild that in a land and in a culture where it has been raped. When they have had their history torn from them.

Even Abraham Lincoln... I watched the movie Lincoln with Daniel Day Lewis just last week. An incredible man, incredible performance, one of the people kept our union together. Yet that man, who was fighting literally every day he could to keep the union together because of this commitment for equality of all human beings, sent battle-hardened union troops to wipe out the Plains Indians so that our railroad and our westward expansion could continue.

So it's never a clear thing. The heroes out there, guess what? They're human too. I'm human, you're human and... but I just love this work James, because in the end, all of us have had some sense of disability in our lives, whether it's cerebral palsy or whether it's spiritual, inability to see and feel.

This work, Native American kids are the same as any kids. Structure, consistency, love, encouragement and preparation, right? They are the same. If they have those tools and those mentors to surround them and encourage them, they know they're loved and beautiful things happen. It is without question, the most unfinished chapter in American history.

Yeah, it gives me chills just listening to you talk about that. There's something I wanted to mention here for people who don't know. The Native American youth living on reservations today suffer the poorest health, socioeconomic, and educational status of any racial or ethnic group in the US — with the highest rates of suicide, obesity, diabetes, high school drop out, substance abuse, and poverty.

So I wanted to just acknowledge you my friend for all the work you do because, as I've mentioned several times already, it's quite extraordinary.

There are people who clearly need a lot of help, and I think it's a reminder for all of us that we all have an opportunity, and I believe an obligation, to be able to help those less fortunate, whether it's awareness or being able to understand the story, or start to make some proactive change to help these people.

Thank you, brother. Well the other point of that is in the work and you see the poverty, and you see the pain and you see the suffering, but you also begin to see people that have found a way out and that appreciate and know. I have people come back 10-20 years later, out of nowhere and they thank me. It's so beautiful.

All the kids who were 16 when we started it in 1996, they're 41 now. They have one, two, three, four, five, six kids. They have their own careers — and maybe, just maybe, one or two of them are more confident, more able to believe in themselves, just like that first question you had when I'm running on the field, the fear. What's going through my head. They've created that new music and conversation going through their head. That they matter, that they can make a difference and that they are making a difference.

So I love this, and I get these tears in my eyes all the time because I just know it's because, back to Think and Grow Rich, I'm doing what I was intended to do. I'm doing what god made me here to do and it's beautiful because my intuition, my skills, my ability to do it, as we'll do on Sunday with our Champions for the Homeless. Our 54th Champions for the Homeless at St. Vincent de Paul on Sunday.

It just gets better and better, and to see somebody who's homeless, another example, who's been told or just ignored for year upon year, day after day and to see it in their eyes that they feel better about themselves. Gosh, that makes Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter and we're doing it eight times this year, not our normal five because we want to do more during COVID. It's a beautiful thing, so I'm rewarded all the time and I get to meet great people like you.

What initially drew you to the homeless situation and what can be done to both get people back on their feet and stop the steady rise of homelessness?

Well first of all, there's more than a 22% increase in shelterless homelessness in this country, and so I see it firsthand. In Phoenix, what they've had to do, for instance, just to get specific because the angels are also in the details, not just the devil. When you see at St. Vincent de Paul that there used to be 225 beds and now there are only 75. So they've put tape around a six feet by four feet area and then they've spaced everybody out. So now two-thirds of the people or more, can't be housed. So there are all these tent looking like refugee cities downtown within a couple of blocks of St. Vincent de Paul.

Why do I do it? It all connects. They're all human. We are all human and the interesting thing also is the humanity means you see a real person. So you don't see just a drug addict, because there aren't nearly as many drug addicts as they say there are. They are there, absolutely. Mentally ill, there's a percentage that are mentally ill, but not nearly... you can reach that real person inside the person that's encaged themselves, to protect themselves with some form of mental illness. You see that in there if you look deeply enough.

Now there's some that it takes longer to do that, but for the most part, just the humanity. And once again, it's me learning because we come from such a narcissistic culture and it's getting worse with professional athletes, frankly. That doesn't mean there aren't great professional athletes, I'm just saying the social media climate and all the "You're great, you're great, you're great" it becomes such an enabling culture.

Now you're seeing with one of the most popular players in the NFL, Deshaun Watson being accused by 19 women of sexual abuse of some form. I don't know how much of that, or any of that, is true, but that's the climate that you're in. Where if you're not aware of how you conduct yourselves and you think you're all that and more, the pied piper will come back and he will visit you.

You're doing a lot of work on the CBD side at the moment. More and more research has come out on that CBD side talking about how it improves neuroplasticity. Is CBD really the thing that could help stop brain damage in athletes? And what most excites you about some of this research that's coming out?

Well it just continues. In fact, in your neck of the woods, right there in the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Dr. David Schubert, there's all this research they're doing just by themselves about neuroplasticity and about the ability of neurons to regenerate. We did not know that 25 years ago. Now we're pretty clear that we can do that.

We can also help others work through their traumas, so there are ways to heal that we didn't realize was possible before. The beta amyloids in the brain, which are these clumps of neurons that have collapsed and lost their definition and their robust qualities, and have collapsed into each other, those clumps of cells can be ameliorated with CBD. It's really important to make the distinction: quality, pure CBD with really carefully calibrated volume.

In fact, there's another product now coming out with Kannaway that we open literally tomorrow in Mexico, ironically, and it's called CBG. CBG binds to the neural receptors. Stanford University has done research on where they identified a CB1 and a CB2 receptor in the body. CB1 being neural receptors all the way down the brain stem. CB2 in your gut and CBG binds with those neural receptors more effectively than CBD. So that's a new development as well, but there are more than 30,000 papers out there. We have created echoconnection.org and under 'Education' we list 200+ conditions, from arthritis to dementia to cancer, and on and on.

There are many papers with cancer, there are probably 50 that you can read about. These are the real legitimate white papers, medical white papers. Over the last five years, I've enjoyed being interviewed by journalists who were not negative but healthy in their skepticism for the first 2-3 years. Now, they're just giving more and more. Because you can quote real research, for instance, UCLA Torrance study, 446 traffic accident victims with traumatic brain injuries, of those that had any CBD in their system, they were five times less likely to die of a traumatic brain injury.

So one of my passions is because I've seen with CTE or chronic traumatic encephalopathy with Dr. Bennett Omalu's work, which is featured by Will Smith in the movie Concussion. We're seeing tremendous impact in the ability to turn these neurons to give them five or even 10 times the ability to be neural plastic. That means that they can withstand impact. That's much more important than any helmet. The helmets can reduce things. They've been proved. They can reduce the chances of a concussion by 10, 20, 30, 40, 50%. But what if you can improve it by 500%?

So that's really important and by the way, for those of you that still don't know this, the US government patent 6630507, by Dr. Julius Axelrod, Nobel Prize winner, and it's called cannabinoids as neural protectants and antioxidants. So yes, CBD absolutely should be part of the daily diet. For people under 40, probably 40 to 50 milligrams, 30 to 50 milligrams or more. And the people over 40, I'd recommend 75 and then if you have a serious condition, somewhere 100 and up.

You've worked with three separate US presidents on drug policy. You've also been in the trenches with people who have got the drug abuse challenges that we mentioned earlier through homelessness work. Now you're the national spokesperson for this company Kannaway.

Can you clear up any misconceptions that there might be around general drug abuse? Or drug abuse versus CBD? What misconceptions need to be cleared up?

Well number one, marijuana's really good for fighting pain, chronic pain, absolutely. And THC is very powerful. But please, there is a distinction between hemp and marijuana. They're two different plants. Hemp is 15 to 20 feet tall and literally 100 days, it will grow 15 to 20 feet. Not a lot of leaves and by law, the most THC that can be a hemp based product is 0.3% or less. That is barely 1% of a marijuana cigarette. Barely 1%, that means barely 100, maybe one sixtieth, one seventieth and it may be raised to 1% THC. That means that the government finally has realized that THC below 1% is not a significant factor.

THC has great benefits. I believe there are some things that need to be looked at, in terms of addiction, in terms of motivation, in terms of all the other potential side effects. But THC, when managed can be very good for you and when you compare it to opioids, it's a joke that we even have this discussion anymore. Opioids kill 100,000 people each of the last two years. 500,000 in the last seven to eight years and with COVID, with all due respect to COVID and it's seriousness, here we've got something we can control and do something about and people go to sleep at night raking in dollars for prescribing opioids, which have killed and maimed thousands and thousands of veterans.

I hosted, James, the first... one of the first two town halls on veteran suicide with Dr. Barbara Van Dahlen, who was President Trump's director of the PREVENTS task force. Wonderful woman who oversaw this cabinet level task force to reduce suicide among veterans, which most people know now officially it's 22 suicides a day.

Well in September of 2019, we had this event here, the Franciscan Renewal Center, we had so many experts, the Arizona Coalition for Military Families is extraordinary. A lot of the answers are out there, but it's not 22. Back then, it was probably more like 27. Suicide has raised another 20% or more in the country and maybe 30%. This is on I think ABC News about three months ago, among Army veterans. So it's about 30 suicides a day now. 30 suicides a day, not three.

So for those who even think about opioids anymore as the only choice, we are in deep illusion if we're allowing others that are supposedly healers, that have sworn by the Hippocratic Oath, to actually convince us that there aren't other options we should first, second and third try before we go to the opioids.

Lately, a lot of people have lost their jobs, marriages, even loved ones as a result of what's happened in the pandemic. How can people find the inspiration to move forward when they feel like all hope is lost?

Well, I'm very proud to say that my foundation made Phoenix the first city in the country in late April to provide free COVID rapid tests, and we provided free tests for the homeless. I'm very proud of that.

But how to stay positive? Well the ingenuity of the American people. The most important thing is I'm not very positive about network news because none of them ever, ever, ever seem to want to do anything about immunity and do stories about natural and basic and human immunity like D3, elderberry, nitrous oxide, zinc, about 100 milligrams a day of zinc, copper, and moderate exercise, sunlight, fresh air.

So the way to stay positive is that 90% - 95% of all of this is based on a healthy immune system. If you have a healthy immune system, you're not going to need to go to the hospital most of the time. Getting back to Native Americans, diabetes and obesity, I was talking with the head of the fire department and EMTs from Tombstone, Arizona, Wyatt Earp's country and they said 90% of the people that they're getting on ventilators and they're close to death, if they don't die are obese and have diabetes. The Salt River Tribe and Gila River Tribe right here in Arizona, right in the Phoenix area have the two highest rates of diabetes in the world. So those people are vulnerable. Let's be intelligent about who's vulnerable and make sure we provide extra sources for them.

Let's be intelligent about who's vulnerable and make sure we provide extra sources for them.

The elderly, those with lung issues, heart issues, etc., but there are lots of things now. There is information. Unfortunately, you tend to have to look for it because our wonderful friends in the news want to tell us who's dying, how many cases there are, but not so much about immunity.

So when those numbers get thrown at you, we have to, like Think and Grow Rich, take control of our minds, be rational, get more information, and be able to hold two truths: one, it's dangerous and potentially fatal; and two, it's not dangerous and fatal to the great majority of people if we take care of ourselves and don't do stupid things.

Check out the YouTube or podcast version where Nick Lowery does the Win the Day Rocket Round, answering questions about his favorite quote, what advice he’d give his 18-year-old self, the one thing on his bucket list, and more 🚀

Final question: what's one thing you do to win the day?

Get up, get your butt up and just get moving because every day above ground is a day to make ourselves better. How do we define better? Better is growing in heart, mind, and spirit. So keep filling that up and that's what I call being soulfish. Don't let people guilt you into thinking because I was being devoted to my podcast, to my book, to this or that, somehow that was selfish. If it means you abandoned relationships and commitments to your loved ones and your marriage, et cetera, there's a way to find the balance.

But always expanding your capacity to be soulful, to be able to help others, to be more aware of others, to be more aware of yourself first and to have those values align so clearly. You can get away from those guilt trips that people put you on and love the idea of expanding every day.

Nick Lowery, thanks so much for coming on the show!

Listen, if you haven't noticed it, James Whittaker has a pure soul. He has a great quality about him and it's not normal. he has a rare quality about him and that's why I had to come on this show, because he's a good man and he has balance in his life, and we can learn from him. I'm so honored to be your friend.

I appreciate it my friend, likewise.

Resources / links mentioned:

⚡ Nick Lowery website.

📷 Nick Lowery Instagram.

📙 A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle.

🚀 Think & Grow Rich: The Legacy by James Whittaker.

🗝️ Think & Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

🧭 The Rassias Method.

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