Helping Athletes Design a Fulfilled Life After Sports | Ep. 52 Steven Davis Jr.

The jersey comes off. The identity crisis begins.

For most athletes, leaving the game isn't just a career transition — it's a loss of self. The structure, the team, the purpose, the identity — all of it changes at once. Most people aren't talking about that. Steven Davis Jr. is.

Steven Davis Jr. is a Master Certified Life Coach, 3X author, athlete transition coach, facilitator, and host of the Transition Talks podcast. He is the founder of Strive Higher After Sports — built from his own experience navigating life after athletics — and serves as an Alumni Engagement Director, bringing a connector's heart to everything he builds.

His personal mantra is S.H.E.D. — Striving Higher Every Day — a daily commitment to grow, take action, and embrace failure as a stepping stone to success. His mission is helping athletes rediscover who they are beyond the jersey and design a life filled with joy, purpose, and resilience.

In this episode, Erin Sarles and Thomas Roe sit down with Steven to talk about what athlete transition really looks like — the identity shift that nobody prepares athletes for, what it takes to rebuild a sense of self beyond the sport, and why the athletes who thrive after the game are the ones who do the inner work first.

In this episode: — The biggest lie culture tells athletes about life after sports — Why leaving the game is an identity crisis, not just a career change — What S.H.E.D. means and how it became the foundation of Steven's life and work — How design thinking applies to building a life after athletics — What athletes need to understand about purpose, identity, and transition — What coaches, parents, and athletic departments can do to better prepare athletes for life beyond the game

This one is for every athlete who has ever felt lost after the final whistle. Every parent wondering how to prepare their kid for life after sports. Every coach who knows their job is bigger than wins and losses.

Connect with Steven: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/stevedav Podcast: Transition Talks

The Standard Podcast™ — Raise the bar. Rebuild the culture. Become the standard.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Excellent. Good afternoon, team. Welcome to the Standard Podcast, where we raise the bar, rebuild the culture, and call out the lies or misconception that nobody else will. This isn't motivation, this is a movement. I'm Thomas Rowe. Today I'm sitting down with Aaron Charles, my co-host, and we're sitting down with Steve Davis Jr., servant leader, former All Big Ten football and senior captain of the University of Minnesota and founder of Strive Higher After Sports. Steve's story is one of so many athletes quietly live without rarely talking about it. The pursuit of the dream and the identity crisis that could follow when the game ends before they expect it to. God, I can relate to that. Instead of letting that break him, he built something from it. A mantra, strive higher every day, a mission helping athletes realize they're more than their sport. Now, as an athlete transition coach, Steve works with Olympic professional, collegiate, and high school athletes to design lives of purpose, identity and fulfillment well beyond the game. Today we're diving into the truth about identity transition and what it really means to build a life that lives long outside of the jersey. Awesome. Steve, thank you so much for joining us. Tell us a little bit about you, where you came up from, and then we'll get into some questions.

SPEAKER_03 1:25

Yeah, well, thanks for having me on this platform and always love the opportunity to share with other people and you know be the messenger that I feel like God has ordained me to be in this life at the sports. I'm originally from St. Louis, Missouri, and made the trek to go up to the University of Minnesota, played football there, and had an amazing experience, you know, playing in the Big Ten, getting a chance to start as a freshman and taking it four years straight of playing and impacting, becoming a senior captain, and like many, pursuing that dream of making it to the NFL. And it didn't work out the way that I wanted to. I'll just say that. And we I know we're gonna go a little bit deeper on that, but that was the wide awakening for me in my life to understand that I had poured a lot of my time and effort up until that point into football, and I had to figure out who I was outside of that. So definitely part of my journey and part of the reason why I'm doing the work that I'm doing today.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

I love it. I love it. That's awesome. And you're right, we are gonna get into more of your story and we're excited about it. You were an all-10 big uh, I'm sorry, you were an all big 10 player and senior captain in Minnesota. You live the athlete identity at a very high level. What does raising the standard mean to you now, especially in the work you're doing with athletes in transition?

SPEAKER_03 2:57

No, that's a great question. I think, you know, from a standpoint of excellence, like when you're an athlete, you have a lot of self-determined goals to be the best, especially if you make it to an elite level where you're playing on the college level or you're playing professionally. That doesn't happen by accident. Right. Um, you've poured a lot of time and a lot of energy into developing yourself, strengthening your body, strengthening your mind, having this clear-cut focus on the things that you're doing, and really being super intentional about your time management in order to level up to the next next stage. And I think when it comes to how that translates in the real world, it's like you're already wired to be a successful person because sports really just birthed that out of you. But I think the environment of sports makes it so failure and making mistakes is not like in a in an environment that feels like it's super risky. Yes, you are having a lot of uh eyes and validation and and space for folks to actually see you make those mistakes, but you learn from them quickly. You watch film, you get better. It's part of the journey, it's part of the process. And when you go into the real world, sometimes we forget that we're already built to get back up and keep fighting and keep keep climbing because it's it's more of a risk in our eyes to go out there and fail and be seen as a failure and try to try something where we don't really know what the results are going to look like because we're not in that bubble anymore. You know, so that that's part of the process that I think like sometimes we get caught up in our head and forget about when we get out into the real world.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

No doubt. You you nailed it. And what do you think is the biggest lie that you believe athletes are sold about success, identity, and what life really looks like after sports?

SPEAKER_03 5:01

Yeah, I think you know, from a standpoint of when you are in sports, you get a lot of validation um around your success based upon your performance. Like if you if you do good, you guys win, you can easily see on the scoreboard what that success is. You know, you can pick compare your stats, compare your standing, see the awards. Like you can you can immediately get that gratification. In the real world, when those cheers are no longer there, that bubble, that that you know, validation from the crowd, that validation from the conference, all that stuff is no longer there. I think the hardest thing that you know folks have to realize is that that validation doesn't come externally anymore. Like you are your biggest critic, and you're also having to be your biggest cheerleader to really kind of figure out how to redefine what success is, because it's not about the X's and O's and wins anymore. Like, yeah, you can think about it as climbing the ladder, but if you do it based upon performance, and this is where the identity piece comes in, if you focus just on performance in that second part of your life, you're still seeking that external validation of what that success is. Is it that I made it to the CEO role, have a certain uh amount of money where people are looking at me and saying, like, yeah, you're successful, you know, versus defining like what progress looks like. Like being able to take a step, being in an environment, have the right conversation, have a family, have these other things that define what success can truly be in your life. That's the hardest part because our ego gets in the way of being able to let go of that performance identity that we've been so stuck on in our whole life. And trying to move forward without feeling like you're some sort of failure or some sort of, I'm behind the ball, I need to be more successful, I need to be like this person, is hard because we've never been trained to do that. And now that you're in this new phase of life and you're trying to seek who you are in your own identity, defining success in a different way takes practice. And it allows you to, I think, to a certain extent, open up your mind to be present and really define success in a term of things that you're taking from life versus things that you get from life. So that's the way I think about it.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

No question. No question. And then you had a dream of going pro. And like many athletes, the path didn't unfold the way you expected. Uh, feel free to get into that if you want to just move on. That's fine too. But what I'm curious about is what did that moment, that transition, what did that teach you about your identity?

SPEAKER_03 8:02

Yeah, I mean, you know, I had poured a lot of my time and energy, like I mentioned, into the sport. Uh, I had played football for a long time. I played sports since I was like five years old. So I knew at some point I was gonna be a professional athlete. I just felt it, like I poured a lot of time into it. My family threw a draft party after I got through my collegiate career and went through my training in pro day. And I was hearing at the time that I was gonna get drafted sometime in the second day later rounds. But my name was not called. And for me, that was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life because I have all my family and friends around me. They've been asking questions, they're sitting there celebrating, they're talking, and my name doesn't get called, and they're asking me, like, what's up? Why your name getting didn't get called? Like, what's what's gonna happen? And me not really knowing what the answer was, I just tried to hold face and you know, keep them appraised, like, hey, you know, maybe I didn't hear my name called, but I'm gonna keep fighting and we're gonna figure this out. I just need a shot, right? That went on for about a year. And for that for that year of me trying to figure out like how to get on a team, you know, what what it would look like to play in different leagues, and in my mind, I was like, I'm supposed to be in the NFL, so my ego got in the way of me trying to do anything else, like Arena or Canada. It was like NFL a buzz. And I had a tryout with the Rams for a day, and it was kind of like the tables were stacked against me because they had the persons they wanted. And next thing I know, I'm like, okay, well, I can either keep fighting for this, or maybe I have to come to terms that the reality of my football career could be over, and I gotta move forward. Right. That was the hardest decision I had to make. But I made the decision in the light that I had my degree and I wanted to get out of this feeling of being a failure, and everybody asking me what I'm doing next. But I didn't want to be around the environment to help answer those questions truly at that point. So I left. I moved to Atlanta and lived down there with a friend of mine just to kind of figure out what was next. But I did that not really understanding how hard it would be for me to let go of the identity around it. The fact that I have poured a lot of time of my life and the way that I categorize success based upon my athletic abilities. They always open doors for me. And now all of a sudden it's closed the door, and I don't know what next is gonna look like. And I'm gonna try to talk about myself as being an athlete and see if that works, but then that wasn't working. So it's just like, okay, it just hit me even further in my ego and humbling me as a person to kind of figure out, like, okay, what am I actually doing on this earth? What do I need to do to move forward? I didn't realize how hard that would be when I said, okay, I'm just gonna move forward and try to get a job. Like, I couldn't get a job for a year, so it was hard.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Yeah, you know, I'm almost speechless because it this isn't an isolated story. You know, we've heard this so many times, and I know you have too, and you're in the line of work that you're doing. You know, we we talked briefly off camera before we started. Uh my my career ended my second year with a neck injury, and that's another story. Is this isn't about me? And I told you about my brothers, and they were left and right tackles, they were 6'6, you know, the and the NFL called, you know, their agent said, Hey, look, you know, these two teams want to know where you're gonna be on draft day. And both of them are like, We're done. I'm done. I don't I don't want to do this anymore. Because the their agent said the best thing they could probably do right now is get you on a practice squad, and then you're gonna have to earn a spot. And they're like, I don't want it, and I don't want it that bad. And you know, every athlete at some point, whether it's high school, college, or even you know, a pro-veteran, has to come to terms that you got to step to step away from the game. Some of us, some of them can do it on their terms, others can't. And you're a prime example of turning that around and making it definitely a positive. And that one, uh, I'm gonna turn it over to Aaron, which is segment two, and she's gonna ask you and talk to you about identity and legacy. Aaron, take it away.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

Okay, thank you for sharing that story. And I'm excited to get to my questions. I want you to tell our audience, beyond all the accolades that Thomas has shared, who is Steve? Who is Steve at the heart of all of this?

SPEAKER_03 12:42

Yeah, love this question because I always lead with this answer when I talk to athletes now. Um, I describe myself as uh first I'm a husband, proud husband, been married almost 13 years, met my wife at the University of Minnesota. She's a former track and field athlete. Rikita, give her a shout out. Yeah. I'm a father. I say I'm a servant leader, I'm a design thinker, creative champion, connector, author, and athlete transition coach. And I describe myself as these multiple things because I know I'm multifaceted now. I don't have to just identify as one thing. And I show up in multiple ways, just depending on the setting, depending on what's needed. There's a lot of different intrinsic values that I have that I like to show and I like to present in different spaces. And it took me a while to figure that out. But when I talk about identity and really helping athletes to find identity, I live it. Like it took me a while to build these different things and understand there's multiple ways that I show up every day. But using that as my way forward, it helps me to not associate to a role or a specific performance metric. It's uh really allowing me to showcase all the things that are important to me that I provide to the world and how I can come and impact the world. And this is it's important to me, is the things that I love.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

I love that. I love it. It is amazing how it takes us a while, I think, as we grow up and become adults to really understand like there's more to us than I think just the one thing that we identify with. And so I love that. I think that's so multifaceted, and I think it's so important that we I think really work to find that within all each of us. And you created, so you created Strive Higher After Sports out of your own experience. What was the moment that you realized this isn't just my story? This is something athletes everywhere need.

SPEAKER_03 14:53

Yeah. So when I was down in Atlanta trying to figure out life and trying to figure out who I was, there's a key moment that kind of turned things around for me. I had a conversation with a former uh player from the University of Minnesota. And at that period of time, I had been applying to jobs, I was getting knows, I was interviewing, but it just wasn't working out. So I was depressed. I was down and out, just trying to figure out like, what am I supposed to do? I had a conversation, and initially I was trying to be transaction, but I just kind of opened up and just laid out what was on my mind, what I was going through. And he told me this is a well-off, very successful man at that point in time. He told me that he had experienced something very similar through his own transition. And that for the first time was me understanding that I wasn't the only one going through it or had gone through it. At that moment, I thought I was the only one, but he kind of opened my eyes to realize that. And we talked more about that and talked more about the experience of what he did and how he continued to move forward to get to where he was now. And after that conversation, he gave me my first job, and that was like a light bulb moment for me to really understand like this power and networking and having these conversations. So I started to lean into more of that after that. I started putting myself out there in different spaces and networking, not really knowing what I was doing, but I was just being vulnerable at that point now, just telling my story because that's that's what worked for me at that stage in my life. And something surprising happened. As I'm doing that, I'm running into more and more athletes, and they're telling me their own story of struggle. They're in roles where they're still not happy. They don't really know what they want to do next, they don't know who they are. There's some people who are trying to network and find different things, but they're staying in pockets, but they don't really know how to do it. And it just hit me like there, there's a theme here. There's a lot of us who are done playing, who are now out in the real world trying to assimilate into a different culture, into a different environment without much guidance, without much knowledge, and a little uh a little bit lost, you know, just trying to navigate the identity piece. And that that to me, like, it hurt. It also made me think about like the schools and the teams that all said that they were going to take care of us and they weren't. And it really pushed me to figure out how we can change that. When I saw a lot of my teammates, you know, go back to the places where you know they came from the inner city of a different place, and they're back in that after graduating, even after having a master's degree, being stuck in those environments, it just made me sick. So I wanted to go back to Minnesota because that was a place where it started for me, and try to figure out how I can be a helpful ear. I wasn't going back to create anything, I was coming back to be a bridge and try to be a resource. And as I started to do that, it started connecting more dots to eventually like the thought process of doing more, trying to be more in the space started to evolve to where it is where I'm at at now, which strive higher at the sports. But my goal was initially just to come back and help people, be a resource, point them in the right direction, find where all these jobs are that they told us about, find where all these resources are where the what we didn't know, and go to the community and give it to them versus you know letting people suffer in silence. That was my biggest goal.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

That's amazing. I love that. I love just the vulnerability of like putting yourself out there and what that created for you, which I think is so important. And you were just talking about it, but I would love for you to expand on what's the real cost of the identity gap with these athletes.

SPEAKER_03 18:47

Yeah, I mean, it I see it often where an athlete will transition. And the first thing that's on their mind was on my mind was like, I need to find a job, I need to find something to make money, I need to quickly get on my feet and feel this uh performance success come come my way. And you can easily jump into a sales role because plenty of organizations love to hire athletes in sales, or you can go into coaching because if you are done with the sport and you can't play the sport, a lot of us will like, I just want to be around it because this is the one thing that I know that I'm passionate about. But when you skip the step of using the moment to really grow and build on your identity beyond the game, you lose out on an opportunity to really find things that are in alignment with the person that you want to become. And when we talk about identity foreclosure, you're going through a grieving process when you get done. And part of us tries to ignore the fact that sports is over for us. Like we have this regurgitation of thought of, well, I can still play, or I don't want to watch the game because these guys are still in the league and I know I'm better than them, or you know, damn, I wish I still was out there on the on the field with my guys. Like having that thought process while you're still working, you're always fighting against yourself. And that's part of your identity because you're always thinking, like, this was the main thing that made me me. And if I can't let go of that chapter of my life, it's gonna always rear its ugly head in other things that I'm doing in the world. It may lead me down bad habits, it may have have me thinking dark thoughts because I feel like I'm worthless without this, right? So when we when we focus on the identity and helping to build on the thought process that, hey, sports were just a part of your life. Yeah, it was a big part of your life, but it's not everything about you. There are other things that make you you, that made you even successful in sports. It makes you successful as a person, it makes you show up as a brother, as a as a as a sister, father, husband, friend, whatever that may be. There are different values, there are different skills that you bring to the world, and there's more that you have left to give is in the world moving forward. Because if you really think about sports, it sets you up in an environment where you're only gonna be able to play if you're rare of the rare till you're 40. Most of us get done in 20s if you make it to that elite level. And just think about how much life you have left to live. If you're holding on to that identity of that first third of your life for the rest of your life and not being able to move on past that, that's a hard thing to like navigate because you're always feeling like I let something go that I wish I would have seen the potential, what that looks like, right? Versus, yeah, that chapter is closed. It was a big part of who I was, but it's not everything. It just informs more things that I'm going to explore in this next chapter, more things that are going to help me build my story, build my narrative. And that's one thing that I try to focus on a lot because I understand once you have that information and know, like at the core, who you are, you're able to show up with more joy, with more fulfillment. You can be more intentional about all the experiences that you go through, knowing what it does and how it informs the person that you're becoming, versus latching on to the performance of I have to do this and be the best at this in order to feel successful and in order to feel validated. Like, no, once you understand your identity and you understand, you know, the pathway where you're trying to grow and the person you're becoming through that, everything that you experience is just a piece of the puzzle that helps inform like the narrative and pretty much like the different chapters of your life that you're you're forming. So it's a big piece, it's a huge piece, and it really helps in your mental health moving forward. It really helps in, like I say, your joy, how you show up, how you are able to just appreciate the days and give yourself grace. Because when you focus on performance and the lack of performance, if you don't have that in your life, you're always gonna feel like ups and downs and this failure mentality that comes in because athletes are hard, hard on themselves, very, very much the biggest critics that I see in the world. And it's not a bad thing, but I think when you have these limiting beliefs out in the real world and you're not able to give yourself grace and find this alignment to the person that you're becoming, and just knowing like it's part of the process, like you did in sports, then you're missing out on everyday experiences and moments that are important that you're gonna look back at at the end of your world and your life and be like, man, I should have done z and I should have paid attention when I was at my son's game, or I should have paid attention to my wife when she was talking about that. You know, those things are important in your life.

SPEAKER_01 24:14

You're that's so spot on. I love that. That is so true. And you talk about helping athletes design a fulfilled life. So, what does fulfillment actually look like beyond the game, especially for the athletes who are so wired to perform their entire life?

SPEAKER_03 24:33

Yeah, so there's there's a number of different ways to create this, but I think at the core, first you have to understand like the things that make you take, the things that help you understand more about your joy, more about your passion. It doesn't come just by thought, it comes by action. So when you have a thought and you want to create something, you want to try something, going out there and trying and testing out those things to kind of see basically how your body responds. I'm a big person about like data. I mean, when you're in sports, you you're used to looking at data, you're watching film, you're you're going through the analytics and just kind of understanding like the trends, the tendencies. Well, you got that with your life too, if you're intentional about like the experiences that you're going through and using that information to help inform your growth. When it comes to fulfillment, though, is giving you a different perspective. So you don't just pour it all in one area. When an athlete is feeling fulfilled right now, it's really like because of the environment of sports. Like sports is my main driver. I love it. It's the main thing that I love to do. Often challenge people to think about like, what are your other passions? What are your other hobbies? Who are the people in your life, the relationships that you hold that help you stay accountable, that you that you love, and they they support you, you know. And then the bigger other thing that I also consider and just like driving toward fulfillment is your health. Like for most athletes, we've been working out our whole life. And I'm gonna tell you this when I got done playing, I said I'm not going to the gym and just weightlifting because I'm tired of doing that. But I had to find a different routine to stay healthy, but do it in a fun way. I found how I found that I started playing basketball, I started running, I started boxing, just something to keep me active. But it allowed me to find new people, build relationships, and keep that joy part of me going. Because I think when you're driving towards fulfillment in your life, you're looking for things that help you feel fully alive. And it's it does, like I said, it doesn't come by just writing it down and just hoping and wishing. You got to actually go experience those things. And once you experience those things, your body and your mind will tell you if that's something that you want to stick with or not. And it's okay. You know, as you get older, things may evolve, you may change some of your hobbies, some of your habits. But as long as you understand what's resonating with you, that's when you'll start to figure out what's fulfilling for you.

SPEAKER_01 27:10

I love that. I think that's so powerful. So I'm gonna turn it back over to Thomas for segment three advice across all stages.

SPEAKER_00 27:19

Awesome. Steve, we're sitting down for transition and truth. If you could sit down with a younger version of yourself, Steve the athlete, chase him the dream, what would you tell him about the identity and life behind football?

SPEAKER_03 27:33

Yeah, I'll have to have this conversation with myself and it just being able being able to reflect. I always say to myself that, you know, obviously, for one, you have more to offer the world than just what you're performing on this field. You know, you're born for a reason, for one, and your impact is not measured in X's and O's and scoreboards. But having the confidence to be able to be in the space, learn from the space, and impact the space is part of your narrative and it's part of the story that you're gonna continue to tell. That's one thing I would tell myself for one. The second thing that I would definitely like incentivize and encourage is the people around you will be the most important thing that you will be able to connect with in later stages of life. So being intentional about building the right relationships and connecting with the folks who value you and want to support you is more important than getting the the A on the test to getting the best accolade on the field, because those people are gonna open more doors for you than any knowledge that you have. So when I talk to athletes now, I often tell them like, take advantage of the student athlete support staff that's there. Take advantage of the mentors, the advisors. Don't just talk to them in a transactional way, like I need something from you. No, if you have something that you're curious about, have a conversation with them. They may have resources, they may know people, they they're gonna remember the folks who lean in versus the folks who just showed up. Right.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

What would you say? What do athletes get wrong about the transition out of sports? And what do you think they struggle the most?

SPEAKER_03 29:40

Ego. I think you know, being an athlete, a high performer, you made it to the elite of the elite. If you made it to pro levels, like, hey, it's only like 1% of people in this world that can do that, and being validated on that. And then the thought process with transition is that because I made it to this level, going into life should be easy. You know, I should be able to walk into a building, people know my name, and I should get the executive suite. I should get the executive role. It's kind of funny. Alex Rodriguez, who's now the owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves, he said this at this recent uh symposium that I was at. He said, athletes sometimes think that you go from the penthouse of athletics to the penthouse of life. But the reality is we have to humble ourselves and be willing to fight for ourselves in life like we did in athletics, because more than likely you're gonna start start at the basement. You're not gonna start at the penthouse. And that's a that's a harsh reality for a lot of people to face. Being a pro athlete, and especially now these college athletes that are making NIL money, they're they're making all this stuff now, and just think if they don't make it to the pros and they had you know six, seven figures in college, and they're not understanding how to manage that to keep it going and make it last, then they got to go find a job that is not gonna pay nowhere near that. How do you as a person humble yourself to understand how to push forward in that? Or humble yourself to a point where I'm gonna try to build a business, but it's not gonna just take off like that. You know, there the ego is the biggest thing that gets in the way.

SPEAKER_00 31:25

Always. And that's it, and that's a call across all uh professions, right? Not just sports, the ego will always get in the way. You now work with Olympic pro college and high school athletes. What separates the ones who successfully transition from the ones who stay stuck?

SPEAKER_03 31:43

Yeah, so that's a great question. One thing that I also will harping on is, you know, once you figure out the identity piece and as you get started, it's like anything with coaching. As you get started in the beginning phase, like you start to see growth, you start to feel confident. But when you go to and navigate it on your own, like once I'm done working with people and then tell them to go, like now you have the formula, go move forward. The biggest thing that I always just caution and kind of help them to navigate is having the resilience to keep pushing through on the failure side, because it's not gonna work out all the way. Like there's gonna be things that you make mistakes on and things that are not gonna happen the way that you want it, to flip the narrative on that, to use that as data, but also pushing back on the limited in belief. So we talked a little bit about ego, ego is a big part of it, but in order to keep going in that resilience, like I mentioned, we are our biggest critic. And a lot of the ones who are able to successfully continue to move forward have learned how to quiet that critic. It doesn't go away, but learn how to quiet that critic and tell themselves a new narrative about things and possibilities and having that optimism and that positivity moving forward about you know what happens if it does work out. And if it doesn't work out, what am I learning from this? Like taking all the positive notes to stay resilient in the moments where life is just gonna turn this, turn left, turn right, and not go the direction that you want it to go. The folks who have those limiting beliefs and will continue to put themselves back into that shell, it makes it harder to move forward. You you kind of repeat the patterns to get stuck, and then you may use different devices to try to get unstuck, and that's not the healthy way to move forward. So it's really the training of the mind to fight back against, I call them saboteurs. There's another term for them, too. These limiting beliefs that come into your head as you go out and navigate the real world, because once again, you're gonna be your worst critic, but you can also be your biggest cheerleader if you train your mind and practice and continue to push through even the things that don't go the way you want it to go.

SPEAKER_00 34:11

No doubt. The imposter syndrome is is real. It's real. We'll we'll uh we all deal with that. How about for athletes listening right now, the ones who are scared of what's next? What's the first step they need to take?

SPEAKER_03 34:26

Oh man, yeah. So I I would advise for the athletes that are in that space and and uh getting ready to transition to first, you know, why don't you just reflect? Like if you've if you've made it to that level where you know you've had an opportunity in sports of taking you a lot of different places, I want you to just reflect on that, appreciate all the things that it has provided you, but also reflect on how you have been able to be successful with this. Like what has made up all those different things? The person that you are, the skills that you showcase, the values that you care about, the people who have supported you, because understanding a little bit of the narrative up to date will help you pull out more of the information that you can use to keep repeating that same level of feeling out in whatever is going to be next. Because in order to move forward and kind of figure out a game plan in your life, my biggest thing is you have to first really drive deep on the person that you are and the person that you've become up until that point. And if you skip the step and just only think about, I'm just a great athlete, you're missing an opportunity to really like close a chapter in an appropriate way where you can kind of write a story. You can you can write a letter to the end of the of your sports career, but appreciating everything that you've gained from it with a new lens of the deeper values, emotions, successes, failures, people, all the things that made up the reality of your world. Because you gotta start where you are first before you can start to move forward. And when you understand more of you, trust me, if you understand more of you, it will help you think about like things that will continue to speak to you and resonate with you and whatever's gonna be next, versus you know, thinking about your major or just thinking about this job that you have an eye on that you think that you want to uh pursue. For me, I had to accept the reality that football is over, but also sit in it and just reflect on man, I had a really good run. And these are some of the things that I'm super proud of about myself, proud of about my journey, things that I feel like are important to me and how I show up. Like understanding that is a huge step. And I always encourage any athlete that's going to that point to take a moment because sports doesn't allow you to pause a lot. You're on a schedule, you're just moving fast. But take that moment to really intentionally just sit in it, be still and reflect because you're gonna pull out some information about yourself that's gonna be super, super valuable for you moving forward.

SPEAKER_00 37:37

Steve, you're in a good place now, and it's taking you a lot of a long time to get there with a lot of hard work. Are you in a good place now to watch football, whether it's pro or college ball?

SPEAKER_03 37:48

Oh, yeah, I definitely I definitely watch the sports now, man. But I'll tell you, for like the first five years, I couldn't because I was bitter. I was like, man, I should be out there. That guy wasn't better than me. I had better numbers than him. I it it it hurt me. I had to mature and understand that like football was just a piece of me before I started to really get myself back into it. It also was helpful because you know, I was just watching my guys at the University of Minnesota, and then I just start slowly opening it that door back open. So I love it.

SPEAKER_00 38:20

With that, we're gonna turn it over to Aaron segment four, which is the rapid fire round. Aaron, take it away.

SPEAKER_01 38:28

Okay, so I'm gonna start the a sentence, and you're just gonna finish it for me, okay, Steve? Okay, discipline equals, identity equals fulfillment. Success equals, legacy equals knowledge. What's one thing you would never compromise on?

SPEAKER_02 39:00

My values.

SPEAKER_01 39:02

And if you could put a message on a billboard for athletes about life after sports, what would that message be?

SPEAKER_03 39:10

You are built to impact more than just sports.

SPEAKER_01 39:14

Oh, I like that. That's so good. Okay, that's how quick I am. It's back to Thomas now.

SPEAKER_02 39:20

I did good on that.

SPEAKER_01 39:21

You did, you were fast, yeah. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 39:25

I nailed it. Steve, before we wrap up, I just got a few more questions for you. But at this point, we'd just like to turn the floor over to you and tell us is there anything that you feel like we haven't touched on today that the athletes that are in transition or about to be in transition need to know?

SPEAKER_03 39:42

Yeah, I always encourage this. Like, so if you think about athletics and anything in the world, but mostly athletics, you have been in an environment where there have been people helping and supporting and training alongside in your journey, specifically with coaches. And oh, I don't say this just because I am a coach, but I'm saying this more so from the standpoint of support. Because when I got done, I wasn't necessarily looking for like mental health support or like a coach to help me navigate. I wish that I did intentionally do that, but in my head, I was like, I'm gonna figure it out by myself. I don't need any support. I don't really know who to talk to anyway. So I just got to move forward on my own. I push back against that because I feel like in life, the most successful people, if you look them up, if you have somebody that you admire, I guarantee you they have a team of people, supporters, or coaches around them to help them be that level of success that you view. So up until this point as an athlete, you've had those things that made you know accountable, that made you grow, that that made you the best version of yourself. It's important to keep that type of energy with you in your life. Whether you talk to somebody as a mentor, you have relationships that you confine in, having somebody that can support you in this transition space, having somebody that can support you from a mental standpoint, talk to somebody because when you try to isolate yourself and shut yourself away from the world because you feel some type of way about your own life and your own transition, it becomes dangerous, man. You you have dark thoughts, you you you kind of get stuck in your own ways, you don't feel like you know you're contributing anything to the world. It's important to find your people and find that connection and have a conversation and be vulnerable. I guarantee you there's a lot of people in this world that want to help you, not just myself. And it often starts with a conversation. It started with a conversation for me, it took me a long time to do it, and I'm trying to help people to say, do it immediately, find the people immediately so you know you don't have to navigate that journey by yourself.

SPEAKER_00 42:14

Right on. So you went from the rapid fire to the hot seat. Art imitating life. What are Steve's top three sports movies of all time?

SPEAKER_03 42:24

Ooh, okay. Remember the Titans. That's my favorite all time. Any given Sunday. Okay. And I like Major League because I was a baseball fan, my whole life up until my junior year high school. And Willie Mays say, Hey, Willie Mays on Major League was my guy. I mean, the real me Willie Mays was my guy too. But that movie, that movie stuck to me.

SPEAKER_00 42:50

I love it. I love it. You know, it's so funny. My brothers and I, we all talk about it now, you know, after we've played football. If we had to do it over again, I say I would play baseball in a hot second. I mean, you know, we were you you'll love this because one year for Christmas, my brothers and I were like, How many concussions do you think you had? And he's like, confirmed, you know. I mean, it's just you don't see that in baseball too much, and you have such a longer career. Steve, where before we wrap up, where can people connect with you and learn more about Strive Hire After Sports? Whether that's a website, your social media, or an email, let the let the crowd and audience know how to get a hold of you.

SPEAKER_03 43:26

Absolutely. You can find me on my website, which is strivehireaftersports.com. On there, you will see some of services I offer, which are transition coaching. I do workshops and work with different teams and organizations to help, you know, talk about transition and identity at an early stage. Um, I'm also a speaker, do some work in that space, and there's some other resources that I have on that website. You can also find me on Instagram at shed s-h-ed-d underscore A-V-E shed F. I'm always posting on that. And then LinkedIn is the main channel that you'll probably see a lot of activity from me if you join connect with me on there. Just find me, Steve Davis Jr. But yeah, I'm accessible. I always tell people like Prime, I ain't hard to find. So if you're looking for an opportunity to connect, I'm willing to at least have a conversation.

SPEAKER_00 44:16

So we know that quote well. We're both out here in Denver, so we know about Prime right up the street. Steve, thank you for sharing your story and your truth with us. Team, if this conversation hit you, if it's challenged to you the way you see identity success or life beyond sports, don't keep it to yourself. Share it and do two things for us. One, share it with an athlete who needs to hear this truth about identity and life well beyond the game. And two, connect with Steve and learn more about Strive Higher After Sports. And if you're ready to rebuild your career as an athlete, but as a but not just a leader rooted in character in integrity and discipline, check us out at blueprintbluechip.com, where we raise athletes to a new standard. This is the standard podcast, and this movement only grows when we raise the standard together. Truth fades, truth doesn't, let's become a standard. Team, thanks so much. We'll see you next time. Steve, Aaron, thank you guys both for joining us. We really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 45:18

Yeah, thank you.