The 4 Truths (Episode 36)

🎧 Get ready for a jaw-dropping story of resilience and grit with Terry Tucker - former basketball player turned cancer warrior who lost his leg but never lost his spirit. In this powerful episode, Terry shares the raw truth about facing life's biggest challenges and coming out stronger on the other side.

Through captivating storytelling, Terry reveals the four core principles he discovered as a teen that helped him survive his darkest moments and could transform your life too.

This mind-blowing episode explores:

• How Terry went from dominating on the basketball court to fighting for his life
• The moment everything changed and how he faced losing his leg
• The 4 Truth principles that can help any teen overcome massive challenges
• Real strategies for staying mentally tough when life gets brutal
• How to find purpose in your pain and turn setbacks into comebacks
• Why your current struggles might be preparing you for something bigger

Perfect for: Teens dealing with major life changes, anyone facing seemingly impossible challenges, those struggling to find their path, athletes overcoming injuries, and anyone needing a massive dose of inspiration and real talk about resilience.

For more information on Terry Tucker, please click the link below.

https://www.motivationalcheck.com/

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Welcome to Mindshift Power podcast, a show for teenagers and the adults who work with them, where we have raw and honest conversations. I'm your host, Fatima Bey, the mind shifter. And welcome everyone. Today, we have with us Terry Tucker. Terry is from Colorado.

He's the founder of Motivational Check LLC. He is an international motivational speaker and an author. And how are you doing today, Terry? Fatima, I'm doing very good. How are you?

I'm I'm great. I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say, and I hope people, I hope people get infected by your energy. Now Thank you. You teach something you teach a whole lot of things, actually, and you have a lot of wisdom in you. But today, I wanted to focus on something that I I feel very strongly about, that you teach a lot on, which is something that you call the four truths.

So can you tell us what that is? Yeah. The four truths are something that I I think I've come up with throughout my life. But more importantly, I've really kinda solidified them over these last four or, eleven years now that I've had cancer. And the four truths are just one sentence, and I have them here on a post it note in my office.

So I see them multiple times during the day Oh, wow. And they constantly get reinforced in my mind. So here they are. They're one sentence each. Control your mind or your mind is going to control you.

Amen. Pardon me? I said amen. Go ahead. Amen.

Absolutely. We all need to do that. Right? Number two, embrace the pain and the difficulty that we all experience in life. Yeah.

Yes. And use that pain and difficulty to make you a stronger and more determined individual. Number three is what I look at as kind of a legacy truth. And I know for young people, dying is probably not something you even think about. I mean, you're you're busy living your life, doing your your best thing.

But it's important for all of us to think about sort of the end game of our life. And the third one is what you leave behind is what you weave in the hearts of other people. And then the fourth one, I think is pretty self explanatory. It's as long as you don't quit, you can never be defeated. And so those those are four things that I live my life by every single day.

And I've been battling cancer, like I said, for the last twelve years now. Yeah. And that is, definitely a part of your story. So you said that you have these on, which I didn't realize you had them on a piece of paper in your office, but we have talked at length about how you've applied, these principles to your life. Can you I I think it's very inspirational.

So can you tell the audience how you you have applied these things to your life, and that's why you feel so strongly about them? It's tell them how. I I do. I I mean, I call these the bedrock of my soul. They are what I believe is just a good place to try to build a quality life up.

And we want everybody wants to have a good life. Everybody wants to be successful and happy and self actualized and find their purpose in life. But how do you do that? Especially when you're young. Because I remember when I was young, I had no idea where I was going, what I was going to do.

I went to college, and my dad told me to major in business. I had no idea. Like, what should I major in, dad? Major in business. I had no idea what to do with my life, and that's okay.

Most people don't know what they wanna do with their with their lives. I mean, there are those people who's like, I'm gonna do this, or I'm gonna take over the family business, or I'm gonna work with my mom and dad, whatever. But so many people don't know, and that's okay. And don't think there's anything wrong with you because you haven't figured it out. That's what life's about.

Life is about living. Living is about figuring things out. So these four truths are really just something like I said, they're the bedrock of my soul. I know they're not moving. I know there's something I can rely on, and they're part of me.

And as a result, they help me make better decisions. Now let's go one by one. So you said control your mind or your mind will control you. Forgive me if I forwarded it incorrectly, but that's the origin of it. So control your mind or or your mind will control you, which I believe extremely strongly in.

How what made you come up with that one in your own personal life? What personal experience made you say, this is a principle that I need to teach people? So I learned this early on. I learned this when I was in high school. You can't tell this from looking at me or from my voice, but I'm six foot eight inches tall.

I actually went to college on a basketball scholarship despite having three knee surgeries in high school. But I remember when I went back playing basketball after these knee surgeries, my my brain, my mind was putting all kinds of negative thoughts into my mind. Things like, hey. You're probably a step slower since your surgeries, and college coaches aren't gonna be interested in recruiting you. Mhmm.

And I remember thinking, wait a minute. I am still playing at an elite level, and coaches are still reaching out about the possibility of coming to their college or university to play basketball. I learned early when I was probably 15 years old that I needed to change the narrative that was in my mind. And the interesting thing about that is that what really guides our mind, what really guides our decision making, what guides our our sort of social behavior is what's called our prefrontal cortex, and it's the area right behind your forehead. And that starts to mature when we're in high school, but it doesn't fully mature until we're like 25 years old.

So I was kinda surprised that I figured that out at a young age that I needed to control my mind because your mind as a young person is still developing when you're in high school. And you make bad decisions just because your brain hasn't been hasn't developed to the point where you can make better decisions for yourself. So I guess I would say don't beat yourself up. If you are if you don't understand things or you're trying to figure things out, I would tell you to find a trusted adult, somebody that you believe has your best interest in mind, and have that person help you to try to make better decisions as that prefrontal cortex in your mind is developing and maturing. Yes.

Not only is it for for me, I'm I'm focused less on the development because I have seen 16 year olds that are far more developed in that area than 50 year olds. So to me, it's more of a it's less of a, well, you're biologically. This is where you are. It's more of a you can be where you wanna be if you're willing to be. When it comes to if you don't control your mind, your mind will control you.

I'm speaking to the audience right now because I I think sometimes people, they understand the concept of what you're talking about, but sometimes they just don't know how to get there. And I think the key thing is you might not be able to get there by yourself. Right. Just like, you know, Terry was just saying, you might not be able to get there by yourself. Like, okay.

How do I stop this self sabotaging thinking? And that's what I'm gonna choose to call it right now, self sabotaging thinking. And I used to do it myself, and it is not not not easy to get out of, but it is a choice A choice. A choice. As Terry just said, it's a choice to change those thoughts one by one.

And if you need help with it, that's fine. And it doesn't have to be a professional because sometimes people don't wanna go to a professional. I get that. Get somebody who is older than you in a different area of life than you to help you with it. I think that is so important.

So go ahead. No. I was gonna say one of the jobs that I had in my life is I was a a hostage negotiator on a SWAT team. And one of the things that that we used to do is just think about the type of questions that you're that you ask yourself. If you're asking yourself why questions, why did I do that?

That sounds accusatory. That sounds like you're making an accusation against something that you have done in your life. Be be a little gentler with yourself. Ask yourself how and what questions because I can get to the same thing. Well, why did you do that?

That sounds accusatory. How did we get to this point? I can get the same information by asking the question differently. And when you ask how and what questions, you engage your brain to help you come up with better decisions for the things that you're facing. So when you when you don't know what to do, ask yourself how and what questions, and then just be quiet for a minute.

Let your brain start to talk to you. We we all talk to ourselves whether we like to to admit it or not. Yes. But see what your brain says. Your your brain will come up with some amazing things if you quiet yourself long enough and give it a chance to come up with those things and bring them to the forefront of your mind.

I do. I like the way you just said that because, I know for myself personally in the past, I don't think I've said this on the air before, but self condemnation was was a huge, huge, huge, huge thing for me. And it was one of the way I would kick my own ass all the time. And you couldn't you I didn't need you to tell me what I did wrong because nobody would beat me up better than myself. And for real, nobody would beat me up better than myself.

And I know that I'm not the only one, and I know that there are a lot of people out there listening right now who do the same thing to themselves. And you're not even self aware that you do it unless somebody else points it out. One of the ways that helped me to get out of it, and it's a it's a battle. It's not it's instant. Presto change, yo.

I just made a decision. Now it's all better. No. You it's little decisions one by one that do make it all better over time. But, you know, having other people pointed out to me.

Like, why are you saying that negative thing about yourself? Oh, and recognizing, okay. I need I'm still doing this to myself. I need to pay better attention. And I think that what you just said is so so critically important to make sure that this is for teens, but you some of y'all don't know you still teens too.

Make better decisions for yourself and and, you know, do that self assessment. And it's okay to get people who know you to answer some questions even if they're uncomfortable. So I I think that, you know, just listen to their opinion. They could be right. They could be wrong, but still listen to their perspective because they might see something that you don't.

None of us can be objective about ourselves. That's for damn sure. Absolutely. Let's talk let's talk about number number two. So what is number two again, and how did you, well, you said it, but what is number two, in terms of how you have discovered its application in your own life?

Yeah. Number two is embrace the pain and the difficulty that we all experience in life, and use that pain and difficulty to make you a stronger and more determined individual. Unfortunately, our brains are hardwired to avoid pain and discomfort and to seek pleasure. So to the brain, the status quo, the way things are right now, hey, It's comfortable. It's familiar and just leave it alone.

The problem with that is is the only way we're going to grow. The only way we're going to improve. The only way we're going to get better is if we step outside those comfort zones and do things that make us uncomfortable. And there's a very easy way to do this and I try to do this every single day of my life. Every day of your life do one thing that scares you, that makes you nervous, that makes you uncomfortable, that is potentially embarrassing.

It doesn't have to be a big thing. But if you do those small things every day when the big disasters in life hit us, and they hit all of us. We we lose somebody who's close to us. You know, if you're working, we get let go from our job. You know, you flunk a test.

All those kind of things, you'll be so much more resilient to handle those things when they present themselves. And I I wanna go back to something you you said a minute ago. You know, we're talking about finding people that will help you. If you remember nothing that I say for the rest of this podcast, remember this, The five people that you hang around with the most will determine where you go in your life. Oh my god.

With people that are smart, caring, and good people, more than likely, you'll be smart, caring, and a good person. Versus if you hang around with people that are lazy, that are negative, that think the world revolves around them, then there's a very good chance that you will end up being lazy, negative, and thinking the world revolves around you. The people you surround yourself with in your life absolutely, positively, 100% will determine where you go in your life. I have said that a million times. I'm so glad you brought that up because that is critical.

So when you say take I'm rewording it. Take your pain and accept it and deal with it. Yeah. What is what does that look like? Let's let's talk about what what's an example that is just, like, pretty typical for a high school student?

Get up in the morning and make your bed. It it is. I mean, it sounds like that that's so simple, but what that does is really it it starts your day out with a win, with a success in life because you've made your bed. So you've won. You've done something positive already.

And when you get in your bed at night, you've got a nice bed to you know, when you come home from school, you've got a nice bed to lay down in at night because it's already been made. So I know that sounds real simple, but like I said, you don't have to doesn't have to be complicated. We make life so much more complicated than it already is. So make your bed would be something, eat a good breakfast. You you know that.

I mean, are you grabbing a a soda and a, you know, and a cupcake on your on your way out the door to school? I mean, hey. I've done that. Believe me. When I was in, I I've done that.

I'm not saying I'm proud of it, but I've done that. Do you do that? Do you set time aside to study for your tests? Or do you be like, you know what? I'm really binge watching whatever you're watching on Netflix or or whatever.

I don't wanna study for that test, so I'm not gonna do it. It's uncomfortable to get off the TV and to go study for that test. And I'll I'll give you a statistic that I heard recently. Thirty three percent of Americans, so a third of the country, admits to hitting the snooze button on their alarm at least three times every morning. I've never been guilty of that.

I've never been guilty of that. Yeah. That's what I'm looking for. Think about that. A third of the people are like, no.

You know, it's comfortable here under the covers. It's warm. I feel a little bit. Yep. Yep.

Get out of the covers. Get out from under those covers and get out and do something like make your bed. It's simple stuff like that that'll help you to be more resilient. I wanna talk about a different aspect of of that same principle of number two, of taking your difficult things and turning them into good. Let's say we have, I'm gonna make up an example right now, but we have someone who somebody took a video of them doing something embarrassing, and they put it on it they put it on TikTok.

It went semi viral. Put it on IG, Instagram. It went semi viral. And now they're just totally embarrassed. Everybody's on there in the comments clowning them, making fun of them.

How can they take that? Something like that. And that's a hardship. If you're in high school in this day and age, not the way we grew up, but in this day and age, that can be a hardship for many. How can they take that and turn it into something good?

How can they just deal with it? I I I think the easiest way to do that and and and there's no there if there was a easy solution, I would have written a book about it a long time ago. But I I think the first thing you have to do is own your mistake. Yeah. I shouldn't have done that.

And then learn from that mistake. If you own it, if you try if you don't try to get away from it and stuff like that, it gives the people that are watching it or that that are making fun of you or whatever, it doesn't give them anywhere to go. Because you've already said, yeah. I shouldn't have done that. I made a mistake.

So you can laugh at me all you want. I've already owned up to it. So don't try to run away from it. Don't try to make excuses. Oh, so and so made me do that or something like that.

Just own it. When you make a mistake in life, own it because it doesn't hopefully, you you own it and you learn from it. But if you own it, it doesn't give anybody why am I gonna criticize you? You you've already said, yeah. I I made a mistake.

I shouldn't have done that. What good does it do me to criticize you? You you've already done it. So So if people are making fun of you, just own your mistakes, and pretty soon somebody else will do something stupid, and they'll put it up on, you know, TikTok or Instagram Exactly. And go beyond that person.

So And even even as fatal as you think it is. Even if it wasn't a mistake, I still agree with the principle of what you're saying in that. Own it. The sooner you face it and say, yeah. I did that.

It happened. What's next? People get over it a lot quicker. When you cower under it and you allow yourself to just cower under the pile of crap they try to put on you, it it that's when it has the biggest negative effects. Not only that, but sometimes some of the things we go through, they build resilience.

What that means is it actually makes us stronger. Not, yeah, you're gonna be stronger now. But but it actually makes you stronger so that you can handle the bigger things in life that are going to hit you whether you like it or not. Because if you cower under the smaller things like that, how are you gonna handle the bigger things? But, yeah, I agree.

Now let's talk about principle number three. K. Yeah. Principle three, again, is is a legacy truth, and and a legacy is what you leave after you're gone. And I'm sure most high school kids aren't thinking about when they die and things like that.

But it's No. But I'm gonna interrupt you right there. I'm gonna interrupt you right there. You can leave a legacy in high school. So You're absolutely.

Absolutely. You absolutely can. I look at this more as a a sort of a legacy after you're gone, but you're absolutely right. You can leave a legacy wherever you are, wherever you are. You can leave it at home.

You can leave it at school. You can leave it in the workplace, wherever it is. And that should be something you strive for. And it doesn't have to be anything more than being comfortable in your own skin. I'll give you a there's a book called do hard things.

It was written by a man by the name of Steve Magnus, and Magnus was the head track and field coach at the University of Minnesota. And he tells a story in his book, and I don't remember if it was a professor or a researcher at the University of Minnesota who did a study with young students at the university. And what he did is he put him in a room with no devices. So you can't have your cell phone, you can't have your iPads, you can't have your earbuds, you can't have any. Only thing in the room is a table and a chair.

And he's asked you to be in this room alone for twenty minutes. The only other thing in the room is a buzzer. And if you press that buzzer, you receive an electric shock. Sixty eight percent of the male male students and twenty five percent of the female students shocked themselves, including one guy who shocked himself every five seconds for twenty minutes, which what so what does that mean? It means that you're not comfortable in your own skin.

You're not comfortable with who you are. You're comfortable with what people say about you on your devices. Mhmm. What he recommends is spend five minutes, ten minutes every day just sitting alone with yourself. That's how you get comfortable with yourself.

You don't have to pray. You don't have to meditate. You don't have to do anything. Let your mind go wherever your mind goes. Think about whatever you wanna think about, but be comfortable with yourself.

Be comfortable being alone with yourself. So I'll I'll tell you a little bit about me. I I've had cancer for twelve years as I mentioned. In 02/2020, I had my left leg amputated, so I do not have a left leg. And what as as you heard, what I do is I I do podcasts.

I do speaking engagements and things like that. So when people found out after I had my leg amputated, I went with my wife to the mortuary, to the cemetery, and to the church, and I planned my funeral. And because I do these podcasts and these speaking engagements, I got some brush back from people who commented that planning my funeral was in some way defeatist. And I had to remind these people that the last time I checked, we're all going to die. Yep.

Every one of us is going to die, but not every one of us is really going to live the life that we were supposed to. That's right. And I heard a native American black foot proverb years ago that I absolutely love, and I'll share it with you. It goes like this. When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced.

Live your life in such a way so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice. Oh, I love that. That's what I want. Oh, I love that. That's a good one.

Now what about principle number four? Principle number four, as long as you don't quit, you can never be defeated. And the way this principle works for me is is I mentioned, I've been dealing with cancer. I've had my leg amputated. I'm still being treated for cancer.

Someday my pain is going to end. You know, it may end through surgery. It may end through some type of new medication that comes out. Quite frankly, it may end when I die. But if I quit, if I give up, if I give into pain, then pain will always be a part of my life.

Understand that your lives there's three important things in your life. Motivation, discipline, and good habits. If you have all three of those, you can do anything you want. If you're lacking one, think of it as a three legged stool. If one of those legs is gone, you're gonna be out of balance, and and it's gonna be very difficult to accomplish what you want.

So ask yourself every morning, am I motivated? Do I have the discipline to implement good habits to make sure that I can be successful in life? So you mean if I apply for, like, a bunch of colleges and I get three rejection letters right away that I should just quit, don't go to college, and work at McDonald's instead? No. That's exactly what I'm not saying.

Exactly. That's my point. It's not. I mean But that's a reality for some people. You know?

It absolutely is. Why would you why would you give up on your dreams? We are all we all have unique gifts and talents. And the thing that that I think about this for a minute. There has never been a human being in the history of the world that is like you, and there will never be a human being in the history of the world that will ever be like you.

That's how unique you are. That's how important you are. That's how special you are. You have unique gifts and talents. Figure out what those things are.

And how do you do that? You do things that interest you. I like doing that. There there's a a book that I have on the bookshelf behind me that was written by a man who's the editor of Entrepreneur Magazine. He gets out of college, he's got a journalism degree, goes to work for a newspaper, not happy with.

So he says, you know what? I wanna be an editor. So he goes to work for a company and learns a certain type of editing. And as soon as he learns that, he quits that company and goes to another company and learns another type of editing. And as soon as he learns that, he quits that company and goes to work for another company and learns a different type of editing.

Let me say this before I I finish my my my statement. There's no such thing as a perfect job. There's nothing perfect in in life. Nothing at all. Everything has a downside.

Relationships have a downside. School has a downside. Your job has a downside. There's no perfect thing in life. But understand that you were put on this earth for a purpose.

Figure that purpose out by doing things that you find interesting. And if you make mistakes, that's fine. Make a ton of mistakes, especially now when you're young. But don't just make mistakes for the sake of making mistakes. Make mistakes to learn things so that you can apply them to the next thing that you do.

Yes. I'm a big, big I love all four of your principles. I don't know that I think one of four are probably the ones I feel the strongest about. You don't you're not a loser until you stop trying. That's when you lose.

Until you stop trying, you haven't lost. You haven't failed. And sometimes people think that you know? And I mentioned college applications because this is, you know, for high school students, and that's a real that's a real thing. And I I've talked to high school students where they get discouraged because they really wanna go to x y z university, and they got rejected from that.

But what they don't understand sometimes, that can be disappointing and that and they're right to feel that way. But just because, you know, that's that route didn't work doesn't mean you don't go to the same destination through a different college or a different university or whatever you're trying to do. You know, sometimes if I'm I'm in New York, if I wanna go to California, there's at least there's many different ways I can get there. I don't have to go straight I 90 because I 90 goes all the way out to the West Coast. So if I wanted to, I can just go straight out to California through through I 90, or I could take a few other routes.

It's a choice. You know? And maybe I 90 is all blocked up because they're doing constructions and I can't alright. That doesn't that doesn't mean I don't go to California. It means I take a different route.

And I think sometimes we tend to, we tended to forget that just because one way didn't work doesn't mean that you can't get to the same destination through a different road. And when it comes to college, when it comes to sports, when it comes to whatever your goals are, running a business, you know, being I wanna be a CEO because I go and I teach at high schools all the time and do workshops. And one thing I hear commonly is I wanna be the CEO of a company or I wanna run my own big Fortune 500 business or something along those lines. And that's beautiful. Hey.

Great. I encourage that. What do you wanna do? Well, I don't know yet. So they're still figuring it out, which is fine.

But so one of the ways that you could figure that out, go get a job doing something that interests you and find out if it's what you wanna pursue. Go work under something somebody else. You could go work at McDonald's because you wanna own one one day. There's nothing wrong with that. Go work at Walmart because you wanna run one one day.

I wanna I wanna work at the corporate office and run all of them. Okay. So start off as a cashier and work your way up. You know? Absolutely.

It's it's just different ways of doing it. But remember this. Ask your ask yourself this question. Why would somebody hire you? And the answer to that question from your perspective needs to be, what value do I bring to this organization?

So figure out I wanna be the CEO of some company. Great. What value do you bring to that? In other words, what have you learned? What things can you apply?

Because CEOs get paid big money not to run the company from day to day to day to day. They get paid to think how things are gonna be in the future. They get paid their money when things go wrong and things are horrible. So how do you know how to do that? You have life experiences.

You get into life. You are a lifelong learner. You should die learning. You should never stop learning. And the other thing, and this is something I learned as a negotiator, always be curious.

We were taught that our biggest asset as negotiators was our voice, our curious voice. Oh, really? How did that happen? What got us to this point? Be curious about things.

If you don't understand something, ask somebody. And I know and when I was growing up, when I was 13 years old, I was six foot five. I had a size fourteen shoe, and my ears looked like Dumbo from the Disney movie. They were huge. I was teased mercilessly, but I took that and I put it into something constructive, which was basketball, which allowed me to get to college.

But I didn't wanna ask questions. I didn't wanna raise my hand on what if it's a stupid question. There is no such thing as a stupid question if you don't know the answer to it. Why are you stealing my quotes? Because that's a quote I say all the time, and I never even said it to you.

Thief, no. Great lines, big one. True. True. True.

Well, it's been so, so, so awesome talking to you, and I really mean that. For those of you who, I'll let Terry tell you his his, details in a moment. But for for those of you who have not seen Terry yet or heard of him, I strongly recommend that you go to his website and learn more about him. He's a multifaceted man. He has only talked about 3% of who he is right now.

He's very, very, very inspirational and fascinating if you the more you learn about his whole story. So, Terry, tell them how they can find you. Yeah. So I have a a blog slash website called motivational check. Every day, I put up a thought for the day with that thought.

Usually comes a question about how maybe you can apply that thought into your life. I have recommendations for books to read, videos to watch. You can leave me a message. That's all at motivationalcheck.com. Yes.

And I I seriously hope that most of you go there and and check it out. I I do daily quotes too, so I really believe in that. And you never know, you know, you never know who you're gonna help with those things. So I I love that you do that as well. And once again, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you again for coming on. Well, thank you for having me on. I enjoyed talking with you. And now for a mind shifting moment.

Terry talked about a few principles today that are really great to live by, but I wanna hone in on one of them and plan a thought saved in your head today. He talked about taking your pain, taking what you've been through, taking your experiences and doing something with them. Accepting them and then converting them into something better for yourself. George Washington Carver discovered over 300 uses for the peanuts. He didn't just look at a nut and say, Oh, that's nuts.

He discovered ways to use it to enhance the lives of his fellow men. How many nuts have been in your life? How much nuts have you been through? Learn how to turn it into peanut butter. Learn how to turn it into fuel.

What have you gone through? Make a decision today that the things that you've gone through, the pain that you've dealt with, you're going to get over it instead of staying under it so that you can use it as fuel for your future or to help others. I want you to think about how can you do that. Thank you for listening to mind shift power podcast. Please like and subscribe to my YouTube channel at the mind shifter.

If you have any comments, topic suggestions, or would like to be a guest on the show, please visit FatimaBay.com/podcast. Remember, there's power in shifting your thinking. Tune in for next week.