Playing Injured
Playing Injured reminds us that life challenges us all—athletes aren’t the only ones who play hurt. Whether it’s setbacks or unexpected curveballs, our response defines who we are and how we grow. This podcast explores the universal journey of resilience and perseverance, inspiring listeners to face adversity head-on.
Ranked in the top 2.5% of podcasts globally, hosts Josh Dillingham and Mason Eddy—entrepreneurs and former collegiate athletes—deliver over 100 episodes featuring diverse voices. They explore mindsets, uncover strategies, and motivate listeners to thrive and play through anything.
Playing Injured
Wrestling with Adversity: Turning Pain into Purpose with Ryan Gonzales (EP 121)
When life throws a curveball, it's the strength within us that determines our next move. Ryan Gonzales, a wrestling coach grappling with stage four pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer, joins us to share his remarkable story of resilience and the profound lessons learned through his struggle. With the heart of a fighter and the soul of a dedicated father, Ryan's journey encapsulates the very ethos of what it means to wrestle with life's toughest challenges, both on the mat and off.
Our conversation with Ryan is a powerful one, exploring how the principles of wrestling—toughness, determination, and facing exhaustion with courage—become pivotal when life presents its most daunting battles. His ability to maintain a positive outlook in the midst of cancer treatment is a testament to his incredible spirit, and his commitment to living in the present moment, with family at the forefront, offers inspiration to us all. Ryan's story is a poignant reminder of the importance of mindset, the value of cherishing every moment, and the strength that comes from a support system rooted in love and faith.
As Ryan opens up about his journey, he brings to light the transformative power of vulnerability and the impact of community support during our darkest times. He discusses how his experience has not only been an educational journey for his family, teaching them about empathy, service, and the importance of making a positive impact, but also how it has served as a rallying call for change and empowerment. Join us in this deeply moving episode as we uncover the human capacity to inspire and empower through personal adversity, and how one man's fight can ignite a fire within us all to face our own challenges with unwavering determination.
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Instagram Pages:
- @bowhunteroutdoor
- @headlock_pnc
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Welcome to another episode of Playing Injured. I'm really excited about today's episode. I have a really good friend of the show, ryan Gonzalez, all the way out in Utah Me and Ryan. We got a chance to chat over the phone a few weeks ago, right, ryan?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, roughly Yep two weeks.
Speaker 1:Yep two weeks ago and obviously you got kind of your contact for Mason, who is a big inspiration in my life and a big influence in my life, and so I took it with a high regard. I had to get on the phone with you and the conversation that we had we probably talked for about an hour so that could have been the podcast right there. So that could have been the podcast right there. But, man, your story was so inspiring I walked away from that conversation feeling really refreshed and I could not wait to get you on the show.
Speaker 2:So I appreciate you for joining us man.
Speaker 1:Oh, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Well, I always start the show with who is Ryan and how does he spend his time today, what does that look?
Speaker 2:like, who is Ryan? Oh man, that's a good question. If you ask my wife on a given day, it'd be different, Right? But as far as Ryan, I am a father of four. I have four kids. Ages vary all the way from eight down to 18 months old. So crazy, there, just a father, and I just do a lot with sports wrestling.
Speaker 1:I love going on a regular daily basis with my son a couple of times a week helping him in wrestling and then, as well as coaching him on the phone. You've always been a big wrestler, right. You've always kind of instilled that into your family as well, right. But also, too, you've had challenges in your life currently going through challenges, right, and the wrestler's mentality, right. Whenever I've thought about wrestlers, they were crazy, they were nuts, right, starving themselves to make weight, you know just the fact of fighting and wrestling to exhaustion, the cauliflower ears, everything. I've always thought about wrestlers as being kind of nuts, kind of crazy, but it was something that I admired. Talk about that the wrestler's mentality, and then how you've used it in your life and what you're currently going through today yeah, no, uh, I agree with you, we are kind of crazy.
Speaker 2:um, if you meet us right, we might have that cauliflower ear that you're talking about, which I did have at one point but drained it all out, so looks somewhat normal there. Um, no, but uh know, the mentality of a wrestler, I'll tell you, is something that you kind of train yourself to be different in the mindset of how about you go with things in life Right, and I didn't? I didn't understand that when I was actually wrestling as a young then had not only a knee issue but other issues arise that didn't allow me to wrestle in the college platform or stage, you would say. But you know, I didn't realize that there was more to that sport on the mental side than there was when I was wrestling. What I mean by that is, uh, as we kind of discussed a little bit, uh, I battled, I've been well, I am currently still battling pancreatic cancer stage four that I was diagnosed with in 2002.
Speaker 2:I was sorry to to that, not 2002. That'd been a long time ago, uh, 2022, where, you know, I received right before Christmas the information from my doctor saying hey, you're you, you have stage four pancreatic cancer, which came as a shock to me and to my family. It was a good Christmas, but a very sad Christmas at the same time. But you know, as that, like how, I told you how and I'm going to circle back to how this mindset all kind of comes in here. But it came, you know, all of a sudden, you know saying, hey, this is what, it is this what we're gonna have to do. We're gonna have to do emergency surgery.
Speaker 2:However, they can't do, essentially, emergency surgeries on individuals, uh, like open surgery, like they were gonna do on me. Uh, they have to like immediately, uh, at that given point in time, right, they got to prep your body and make it so you're good to go. Uh, so when they get in there, your body can actually handle, um, the surgery that they're going to be performing, right, so they had to go in um and give me a lot of different, uh, you know, medications, injections, shot, wise, um, and prep my body for it. So that took about a month and on February 2nd they rolled me in to have the surgery. I had three, fourths.
Speaker 1:And this is February 2023?.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and they pulled out three fourths of my pancreas, my spleen, my gallbladder and then two thirds of one of the lobes of my liver, because it was all infected with everything. And anyway, after that they took me back to my room and I woke up and spent about a week or so there and then I ended up going, you know, home and then six weeks later I started doing oral chemo, uh on a clinical trial, uh study here at the university of utah huntsman cancer center people are very aware of um anyway, basically, I'm kind of giving. That whole context is because I, you know, we speak of the mentality of wrestlers and, and you know what that has done for me in my life is one I never knew I was going to ever come up against the battle against cancer, never thought I was right. I mean, I provided before all this I was supporting other cancer individuals saying, hey, let me help you, let me do fundraisers. I had an old wrestling coach I actually helped out as well, him and his daughters, who ended up all eventually passing away from cancer, but never thought I'd be in those shoes.
Speaker 2:And so now I'm in this position where I'm staring down the barrel uh, you know, staring down the barrel with a shotgun, saying, wow, like we don't know how much time I have, we don't know if I'm gonna live. What's going on? Uh, just a lot of different things. And so, uh, you can kind of understand how the mental game would kind of come into play there. Right, you start thinking of multiple things and in ways that you're like what, what's the end all be all gonna be here? Uh, we don't like the unknowns, right, we like to know what's gonna happen, what's gonna take place.
Speaker 1:Uh, I'm a very you know engaged person yeah, it's you know, you lose control, right? Oh yeah, you don't have control yes, yes and yeah.
Speaker 2:When you don't have control, man, it's not a good feeling at all. Um and uh, and it was very hard for me to grasp that, but I kind of started taking it back to the mentality of how I was wrestling and how I was, you know, in the sport prior to this and what I did and how I trained effectively and putting my mind to like, hey, I'm going to beat my next opponent, I don't care who it is who I come up against, I'm going to beat this individual, I don't care what his track record is, nothing, right. That's kind of my mindset when I was wrestling. And so then also, I started positioning it to the same situation with the cancer that I was having, and that was, you know, this is probably not going to be my biggest match, ryan, talking to myself of, hey, I got to take this on. I got to find a way to win this. I got to find a way to battle through and to make sure that I win, because I have a full family waiting for me. As you asked the beginning of this call. Who's? Ryan, father of four, wife, right? Um, I need to win this match for my kids and for my wife. And so I just uh put my head down in a in a good way, uh, you know, battling it as far as like, hey, you know, mentality, positive positivity, thinking, hey, I'm gonna win this, no matter what, I don't care what the odds are, I don't care people are saying about, hey, this is your chances. Um, all those things I. I just kind of left those things aside and just focused on it heavily and again had that positive attitude of I'm going to win this.
Speaker 2:And then, what was kind of interesting when it comes down to it, josh, I went into my oncologist a few weeks after I started chemo and so forth, and as I was actually doing really well, uh, she was, she was shocked Really. She kind of. She told me that straight forward. She's like man, right, I'm like you're doing, you're doing great, this is, this is crazy. I didn't expect to see this type of progress Like you're. You're going way beyond what my expectations were.
Speaker 2:And prior to this conversation, some context she knows about my wrestling background, she knows about my beliefs, she knows about everything, and so she brought up a couple of different things. She's like Ryan, I know why you're doing good. And she's like one is you have, you know, positive thinking. You have the mentality to overcome everything, even though when I told you things may not be looking very good, you were still very, no, like it's going to be OK. And she's like you got that from wrestling I can tell that you have a wrestler's type of mindset. And then, uh, the other thing is too. She didn't really address, um, you know, uh, god or anything, but she did bring up the context of there has to be some other hand at play, right, yeah and um, and I was like, absolutely that that's 100. You know what? What was my thinking too at that moment?
Speaker 1:yeah, 100 and so few things you mentioned, right, we talked about losing control, right, and so you let go let God right, we hear that all the time. Let go, let God right.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:And so, having another hand at play, you had no other choice, right? I mean you had to let go, you had to kind of, you didn't have control of the situation anymore.
Speaker 1:And so that's a piece of it, right? That's the thing. You can't control. Whatever you can't control, you give it to God and then you have this piece that you are in control of, which is your mindset, your mentality that you talked about. Obviously, having another hand at play definitely helps with the mindset, definitely helps you keep going forward.
Speaker 1:But you talked about staying positive, and then not only not only staying positive. What I heard was like you staying like in the moment, just hey, next opponent, this is what we're doing, Next opponent this is what we're doing. We're going to continue to battle and just focus at what's at hand. And you know, I think a lot of times, right, it's very hard to sit there, you know, with cancer, and be positive 24-7. I mean, even in life period. It's just hard to be positive 24-7.
Speaker 1:It is a choice, right, and at some point in time, you know you're probably going through a lot of pain it's hard for you to sit there like I got it, it's all good, you know, I'm fine. You know, when it's not, for you to sit there like I got it, it's all good, you know, I'm fine. You know when it's not right. But what you can do is not be negative, right, um, and just stay in the moment, stay present, and that's what it sounds like you've done, and those are the two things at play of how you're sitting here on this call, you know, smiling with me and sharing your story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely. I mean, you nailed it straight down from, on the other hand, being involved right to remaining on the positive side of things. It's definitely. I can tell you.
Speaker 2:I have had the experience of talking with other individuals who have decided not to have a positive outlook on and I can't speak for everybody.
Speaker 2:You know, every form of cancer I've seen is different, right, it goes different ways, meaning one person might have X, Y, z, and anyway they're all different, and so I can't speak for everybody, saying like, hey, you have to have a positive mindset, you have to have a positive mindset, right, but I can tell you, the people that did meet, though, that did have positive mindsets, uh, they either came out on top of it or they went out fighting it with a smile, right, and that's kind of like how I want to be too, and that aspect of I won't want to be battling it, showing my kids like, hey, don't let cancer stop you, don't let it bring you know, slow you down, uh, really, like you know, progress forward and make sure that you know you're doing everything that you want to do in life.
Speaker 2:Don't let something else like control you and and bog you down, right, um, and so I think it's a key. That's a key concept is keeping your mind focused in those areas of positivity and making sure that you're drumming up, you know the good things in life because, again, you and I both on this call today, one of us could not even be here tomorrow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's important to kind of keep that positive mindset even if you're not battling something. Yeah, 100 percent. And you and I talked about that on the phone, right, you like, hey, it's unknown. You like I don't know if I got five years, 10 years, 15 years, and I was like, hey, a lot of people don't know. Yeah, right, that's why you talked about kind of living every day Like it's your last and you and I we talked about it.
Speaker 1:You know, not taking a rain check on the things you value most. Right, yeah, you know whether it's. You know you talked about family. You say, hey, family, I never rain check family anymore, never, right, you know you talked about God. You never, right, you know you talked about God. Never rain check on that. And it sounds like you know, hey, like, the things that you value most, the things that you prioritize now, are the things that you value the most. A lot of other things you kind of said, hey, you know, that's great, but I need to make sure that the things that are most important to me, I don't miss out on it, and I think a lot of folks, even folks who don't have a cancer diagnosis, who are living this life, a lot of things we can't control A lot of things are unknown and so we can't continue to rain check on the things that matter the most.
Speaker 2:When you said there is definitely, you know exactly like how I felt. I, I mentioned to you at that time frame too, there was I can't remember the country singer, but I'd heard that song and it says um, how's it go? Uh, you can always take a rain check until you can't, right, and I kind of came up with that in my cancer fighting battle, because I had moments, man, where I was sitting there looking at my kids, like, being like, am I going to, am I going to see my kids, like here in a, in a week or two, or is tomorrow my last? You know, I, I, I was consumed by the thoughts of this could be the end of me, um, and so I started reflecting back on life, thinking of everything that I, I, I've done and and and, uh, and you know, I, I thought is is myself. I thought I was being a great father, um, and my wife said I was, I was being a great father, but there was some little areas where I kind of started to realize that I needed to tweak a little bit, and that was making it to.
Speaker 2:You know, the small things in life, uh, with family, uh, making it to you know, my, uh, my daughter had like a school lunch thing today at at her school. Um, it's kind of prior to them, you know, being let out for school. Uh, easily, probably in the past I'd say, hey, I'm too busy, I can't make that Um, but you know I get I'll catch up on other things, uh, but now it's more or less like no, like I have to be at that thing, right, and um, I can't tell you, man, like she, she gave me a big hug and looked up at me and just said dad, I love you, thank you for being here. And I look at that and I think to myself like, wow, what if something were to happen? My daughter's going to remember this moment, though, right. And so I look at that from the perspective of that rain check situation. Right, like you said, don't take a rain check on family.
Speaker 2:Always be there for family, even if it is like for me missing out on something at work that I got to do, or I have to stay late at work, or I have to, or there's there's hunting, fishing. Everything that I did do now is this kind of to the side, um and uh, and that's even, you know, with God, the same thing. I I've made sure that I have always put him in my life first too, and I thought to myself was I truly putting him first in everything that I do as well? And I found out that that wasn't the case. Doing you know that. So I can tell you, though, it's changed me, though, by having that type of concept and putting family first. Well, family and God first, before anything else.
Speaker 2:And don't take those rain checks, because, man, you know, you see this smile on my face. It's not. It's not because, like you know, that I'm on this podcast today. The smile is because, truly, I'm living kind of the best life that I'm living right now, because something that changed me a while back in cancer, right, I'm now having moments with my family, with my friends, with God, and it's creating a smile, man Like, and it's just something that I wish everybody could kind of do themselves, just kind of understand that if they were to kind of put those things first in life in general, it just creates a happy type of situation for you, happy environment, right, um, you know the uh, uh, the concept I brought up to you at one moment, um, looking down through like a spyglass, right, and uh, or you say like a spotting scope, uh, for hunters like myself, uh, we'll look down those scopes and uh, obviously it's a very like small, like driven line, uh that you can see.
Speaker 2:But then it opens up to like a huge big picture right as you're looking down into like a canyon or hunt you know hunting wise and um, I kind of was able to kind of look down my own like spyglass or my own spotting scope per se, to kind of see like how narrow it was before, and then having it open up to that bigger picture once I started living life this way, right, and I wish, like, the only way that I was actually able to look down my own is because I was looking at the you know, the battle against cancer, like, and so I saw that and I acknowledged it and I started looking at, hey, what can I change, what can I do?
Speaker 2:And it definitely changed everything, um, and and like I told you, I wouldn't want you, josh, uh, to ever have cancer. I would never wish cancer on anybody, never, ever, um, but I would love it if there was somehow some way in the world today, in society, that people could just have that little glimpse, to look down their own spyglass or spying scope, whichever it may be, and see that bigger picture at the end, man dude, the world would be just a better place. I think everybody would find their own happiness somewhere. Some shape, some way, some way, some form, um, and. But I just wish it didn't have to kind of end up this way, for for me and, you know, possibly others down the road that have to actually have a bad situation happen to, to look through it, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:No 100%. And you know what. You're on the phone with me you're like hey, I'm in some cases I'm glad that I, that I had, that I have cancer. And you know, obviously I've I've done over a hundred episodes of folks who have told me their story of different things that have happened to them and so I understood where you were coming from. But most folks they would say, like, what do you mean by that? Right, so what do you mean by that? Like, what do you mean by hey, and you know you're glad that you have cancer, like how has that kind of changed?
Speaker 1:You talk about that outlook. How has it changed you? You know we talked about it a little bit. But like, if you could share with folks how it's kind of changed your perspective, you know, obviously outside of not rain, checking on family, obviously on yourself, um, you know, uh, you know actually taking action on different things that you probably wouldn't have done, getting out of your comfort zone, like probably you didn't do before. But what else can you think of? That is kind of like change your perspective on life period and reason why you would say, hey, I'm actually glad in some cases that I do have cancer.
Speaker 2:That's a heavy loaded question there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because you know, and as you think about that, it's this phrase that the Stoics came up with and obviously I heard about it a few years ago. It's called a more faulty right, meaning lover of fate, right, challenges or the adversity that you meet in life, but actually embracing it, understanding that like, yes, I'm actually glad this happened to me, and because you know it's going to be a reward. Obviously you can't see it yet. Obviously, um, you can't um understand why this has happened to you in life and don't wait for the reward. Understand that it's something here, on the opposite end of it, that's going to be a great reward. And so embrace the challenge, embrace the season, embrace the darkness that you are in life currently, or whatever adversity and challenges, because you know something great is gonna come out of it. So embracing it right. And so it sounds like that's kind of the mindset that you've taken is embracing it and not, um, having a negative attitude towards it yeah, no, yeah, that that's 100.
Speaker 2:Um, josh, it's uh, you know it, it was. It was hard to embrace, like, yeah, very, very, very beginning, um, I mean, they're, um, you know, embracing it like, uh, it took it wasn't just a couple of days, wasn't a couple of weeks, it was, it was months, I think. Even still today, I kind of run into the embracing moments of like, how has it? You know, how am I still embracing this today? And you know, one thing that I can reflect back on that with the embracing portion that I would heavily kind of just mention, is one, by embracing everything, I've kind of gone through and seen and done and seeing other people's lives in a whole different shape, way or form. Meaning, you know, when you see somebody that you're talking to or you're, you're associating with, and they might be somewhat different or they might be a person that, uh, how would you say this? You just don't understand them that well, right, or they have issues in life and you just don't, you don't, you don't, you don't, you don't comprehend why they are the way that they are Right. And that is something that has definitely changed kind of with me on the embracing part of the situation that I'm going through because it's helping me understand a lot other, a lot of other individuals and and what they're taking on in their lives and how their lives are being affected, right, and me kind of being able to, you know, step in there and be like, okay, hey, you know, like there's a situation here that I don't fully understand, but I want to be able to help understand and for some reason I don't know I don't know how to explain or wrap this up to what I'm meaning essentially, but it just gives you some context around how to understand other people more and I think that I'm doing a lot more with other individuals and helping them out in different ways than I ever have before, because there's something that's kind of been built within me to do that. Right, yeah, so that embracing it has definitely changed me on that that.
Speaker 2:And then, man dude, trying to get over those day-to-day of not the unknowns and all that, and people coming back and saying, hey, we're gonna do xyz scan on you now and we're gonna see if you know, possibly there was one moment I was laying in the band. They were like, hey, is your? There's a possibility you may have passed this on to your kids. I mean, what? What do you do? Your jaw drops right, you go, what, like I could have possibly passed this on to my kids.
Speaker 2:So things just went from possible dire situations I'm dying to now my kids might have this, and so you know, in those moments like that you just kind of have to choose how you're going to accept it and how you're going to go about it. And that was one of those most challenging times was kind of hearing that from a doctor. But now when I hear these things, I just say, okay, well, how are we going to beat this opponent right? How are we going to go about charging down the wall? How are we going to make sure that we win this battle? And it it isn't.
Speaker 2:You know, josh, it isn't winning it by saying I'm the guy that comes out on top right.
Speaker 2:It's not saying that every single thing that I'm going to go through from now until this or something else ends up taking my life.
Speaker 2:It's not about saying that I'm going to beat that all the time right, that's not the case.
Speaker 2:We can't prove that that's going to actually be what the time right.
Speaker 2:That's not the case. We can't prove that that's going to actually be what happens here in the future. But I can tell you this though you are winning the way that you approach it, with the mindset and how you embrace it, of understanding. Okay, this is what I have to deal with, so I'm going to take the best out of it and apply that to my life and I'm going to live life the way that I want to live it, and if I continue to do that, I'm going to be a happy guy. If I decide to let that over, control me and run with my life and control me and make me decide I'm going to do X, y, z versus doing other things, then yeah, it's not going to be a happy run and go right, you're going to end up losing that match versus winning it, and so it's just important to kind of always embrace those moments that, even with difficulties, there is light there, right, and you got to find that light and you got to apply it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know you said something about not understanding or comprehending why somebody is the way they are. And you know, until you go through things on your own, until you experience your own pain, then you sit back and you realize, realize, oh, that's why this person is the way they are, right. And then you talk about, you know, serving, being able to actually serve people because of the pain you went through right, um, and, and that's how you've been able to kind of take the eyes off of yourself and the issues and that you've gone through, right, being able to serve others. Through this newfound perspective, you're able to serve more people. This story now, right, that you're able to share, obviously it's affected me, you know, after we got off the phone, right, and I was like, well, okay, and folks are going to hear his story and now it's going to be able to affect them as well and then they might be able to spread this.
Speaker 1:You know, a lot of people share knowledge that has come from people that they don't even realize it came from, um, and so spreads, and the things that you're sharing here is going to be able to help folks have a more fulfilled life without going through the same issues.
Speaker 1:And then also to the folks who are going through the things that you're going through, folks who are going through the things that you're going through. You're giving them the tools, the inspiration to be able to grow and face their challenges with a better mindset and equip them with better tools. And so it's something about you going through your own issues and how you can help serve others. That actually kind of is healing for your own diagnosis, for your own situation that you go through right. Talk about that, because you and I talked about that on the phone too and I was like man, when folks go through a hard time and you take the eyes off yourself and you don't really necessarily focus on your own pain, you actually help alleviate others pain. For some reason, the pain is is healed on your end as well. Talk about that.
Speaker 2:No, I fully agree with you. I don't know, I mean, I've been brought up as a kid in a religious belief where it's about serving others, right, and I didn't fully comprehend all that until you know, with all this, and it's kind of like when, when you're in the service of others, you're in the service of your own God, right, yeah, and um, and I kind of look, uh, you know whether people are religious or not? Uh, you know, there you look at Christ. Right, christ was a man who went around and he healed the sick, he healed the blind, he, he, he did different things, but you know, whether you're a believer or not, jesus Christ was a man who was here on the earth at one given time, correct, and what he was always doing was serving others, serving, serving, serving, serving. And then you know he knew what his kind of objective was was to, uh, you know, go to the garden of Gethsemane and then he was hung on the cross for the sins of the world, right, and so if you think about it, if you take a glance at his life and you think, man, I mean, this isn't scriptural doctrine or anything but you look at it and you go, okay, what he did in his life and his service? Did it make his burden, what he was going to carry out in life, easier or not? Right? Was he able to reflect on those moments when it was going to be more challenging and more hard to go through? Was he reflecting on those, at those times of need, that he was suffering as well? Right, and then he was able to go through that a lot easier.
Speaker 2:And, honestly, as I've kind of applied that little portion of my life again, that's not scripture, but this is kind of something that I've thought of a lot and as I've applied that to my life, when I get in the darkest hours of my situations and trust me, they still happen, and trust me, they still happen I reflect back about things I did to help others. But then also, when I was serving to help others, though, helped me understand even more about myself, but then it made me also build happy memories, happy thoughts right, so I can reflect back and then put a smile on, because I'm like man dude, I don't have it as bad as the other individuals do, right. Right, there's something everybody, I think, tends to hone in and harness their own emotions and think that they have it the worst, when you actually don't have it the worst Like you don't. And if you, just if you try to look through that, find that it's going to make a huge difference in your own life. And what I found out.
Speaker 2:Josh, I'm just one of those guys I don't know, I kind of sit behind the scenes. I'm a guy that I mean I'll get out there and I'll talk with people. I'll you know, I'll do all that. I work in sales, so I have to do it on a regular basis, but I'm not one that I'm like hey, put the spotlight on me, check me out, right, right, that's not like what I'm doing and why I'm saying that is because I I learned that by my actions and what I'm doing. On the side of things like how I'm living out my life and going about things, people are watching, people are knowing and noticing what I'm doing as an individual and I can reference back to individual and, uh, I can, you know, reference back to the moment I told you about the wrestling tournament, right, um it just to kind of lay it out. Uh, for everybody to kind of know, uh, there's open tournaments where you can, you can go and you can compete on your own as a, as an adult, uh, uh. So when they open it up, it's ages. It could range from these, you know, 20 to actually 18, out of high school, all the way up to however old you want to Um.
Speaker 2:And, and I was honestly with my wrestling career, I w I was done, especially at the end of, like cancer. I was not going to try and pursue anything and uh, my son begged me. He said hey, dad, please, please, please, come wrestle this tournament with me. This is an open tournament, dad, you can do it. And you know, and he's talking to me about like, uh, hey, they have your, your weight class, they have, um, your age too, because they have, like you, uh, you six, you six is what he wrestles. So he's six years old. And uh, one of them they said, uh, uh, you um 35 and above. And he's like dad, it's perfect, you're 36, you can make it, you're good. And so, anyway, I I called up my oncologist and I said hey, I think I'm making a dumb move here, but I think I'm going to do this. And she's like well, you're going to feel afterwards, it's not going to feel good, but she's like I'll clear you, you go, do what you want.
Speaker 2:And so I went to this open tournament and man not in shape, basically chemo all the way to the top, right Injured already knee issues, ankle issues, anyway, I went out there and I did it, and did I win every match? No. Did I come out the way that I wanted to come out? No, like, obviously we all want to win, right, josh? That's how we are. We want to be winners, but it wasn't that. Uh, at the end of the tournament I was kind of a little bit bummed, but then I realized, though, that I was being an actual true champion, though at that moment, because one my son was so excited to see me actually compete that he was so stoked that that smile wouldn't leave his face, right, he's like my dad's wrestling with me, and so I realized from him that he was seeing me overcome obstacles in my way of having, um, you know, a challenge like cancer in front of me that I was still saying you know what, screw it, I'm going to do this. And I show them that I could. I could beat that Right.
Speaker 2:But then it came an influx of people were reaching out to me and saying, ryan, like thank you for competing. That's so inspiring. Um, Ryan, thank you for doing X, Y, z, and I'm like no seeing all these people everywhere saying these things. And I'm like no, seeing all these people everywhere saying these things. I'm like gosh, I didn't even know how many people are actually even paying attention to this thing. Right, I think I know I have a guy that's from down that area hitting me up about a newspaper article. I mean people, folks can go online and see it, but all these people were watching man and it was all about the way that I just went in there just to help, just to do it for not only kind of maybe build some. You know some, you know little. Hey, I'm an old guy, I can still do this, but it it changed a lot of people's perspective on different things and I mean there's a lot of cool messages that came out of that.
Speaker 2:But I'm just saying you know, make sure you're always doing. You know like people are always watching you and what you do with your life and how you take it. If you're a type of a role model or an example, you just got to be doing the right things at all times. Like when you talk about people that inspire you, do you watch them all the time, right, yeah, and they roll out things to where you're like, hey, I want to be like them, and so you're always paying attention, somebody's always watching. But uh, just to kind of finish up just this, this portion.
Speaker 2:I think the most important thing, though, that I can tie this into is I just proved to my kids that, whatever happens, dad never gave up, right?
Speaker 2:Dad was always a person that would and I'm kind of getting a little teary eyed because this is kind of the emotional part is dad was always saying never give up.
Speaker 2:You know, grit grinds, stay in the fight. As you've seen across my shirts, it's kind of what I put out there, and if you tie this to you know, I want them to look back at this and put this into their lives and understand that, no matter what comes up if it's a health-related issue issue, if it's a position that you might just not be good at something, I don't know any roadblocks that come up if you just grit grind, stay in the fight, you're going to find some way to overcome that objection and you're going to find a way to win in life. And you know, and that that's kind of like, my message is always want to get that out to people now, of just saying, hey, you can overcome anything, but again, especially for my kids and my wife, right, yeah, yeah, and honestly, that was like the last note that I had written down was being strong for your, for your kids, your wife, and being an example.
Speaker 1:I promise, you promise, that's the last note on my iPad and I didn't. You took it there, I didn't show you this at all. And so, yeah, being an example, right, and you know they talk about I was just, you know, respect, having respect for yourself. We, like people, don't want fame, they just want respect. And then most people don't even want respect, they just want self-respect.
Speaker 1:And it's living to your standard and when you have standards for yourself and that is not giving up and the fact that not only your kids being inspired by your story, it's people out there who are inspired by the standards that you set for yourself in the life that you live. And I can't wait for people to understand the fact that, hey, you are a leader and people are watching you, no matter what you are doing. It's somebody out there watching you, and I even try to tell myself that it's people out there, that they see every little thing you do, and even the leaders in my life. I'm looking at everything they do, from the way they dress to the way they walk, talk, what they eat, what they don't eat, how they operate, and you just notice everything. And so, no, you hit it right on the head.
Speaker 1:And, ryan, you know you share so much value here and I know that you, you know we talk about serving others, we talk about being an example. I know you and your wife, you guys are in the works of of getting a fundraiser up and running. I want to give you a little bit of opportunity to share a little bit about that. And then how can folks kind of connect with you, find you and and and continue to uh, see you and your journey in life?
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, no, yeah, yeah. So my wife and I, we've learned over this course, this big trial that we've been going through by experiencing it, the challenges that come up with it, right, that we know that there's a lot of heartache involved, there's a lot of financial situations that occur, there are multiple things that arise, and my wife and I thought to ourselves like, and I thought to ourselves like, hey, how can we give back? What can we actually do to help other individuals out? What can we do to change the world? Essentially, right, and as we've talked you know, on this podcast, we've brought it up multiple times about, like, how cancer can change people's lives in a dramatic fashion. And so, as we thought to ourselves, was it we can do? We started, we started pinpointing a lot of areas, and that is, there's as small as things as going and giving donations to certain individuals, setting up scholarships. Giving donations to certain individuals, setting up scholarships, giving what I think is the most important thing is an opportunity for people to live a moment with the individual who's ever suffering from cancer, or even a person who's already lost their you know, to cancer, whichever it may be. Provide them with something that's going to be kind of a memorable act, memorable aspect to them to help them hold on to for life. Right, and and this actually kind of came to me from a situation that I had that I went through myself is somebody wrote in a letter to me saying, hey, use this for your, not for bills, but to make a memory with your family, to have them live with it for the rest of their lives, right? And so, anyway, I know I'm kind of going off a little bit, I have a lot of ambition around this, but so my wife and I ended up, we ended up making these shirts. I can't't, I don't know, great grind, stay in the fight, um, and uh, on the back as survivor, um, and so we were.
Speaker 2:We made these shirts that we're selling now, um, online. Uh, we are getting a website all put together and everything. But for right now, people have been really happy to contribute to to this movement, and so what they're doing is they're sending us, uh, they're just reaching out to me and saying, hey, can I purchase a shirt? Uh, they're DMing me on Facebook, whichever it may be, and for now that's kind of how I'm getting them out there is through my own Facebook page, um, linkedin, stuff like that. So, um, that's kind of how I'm getting them out. There is through my own Facebook page, linkedin, stuff like that.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of what we're doing now and taking some of the you know, paying for, obviously, the cost of what the shirt's being made, taking some of the funds and putting those. You know taking the funds, we're making off of it and applying that to give back to somebody Right of it and applying that to to give back to somebody right. And we have people that we are getting in contact with that have special connections in the cancer industry I want to say industry, but the cancer area, cancer world, right, that they know of families that we can go back and we can give back to and create these type of memorable moments with individuals and create these type of memorable moments with individuals. And so that's what we're doing essentially right now. And so if people want to purchase products, I'm going to have a website up and running at some point here soon.
Speaker 2:I'm not the tech savvy guy, Josh, maybe you are. We can chat after this, but I will have something up and running. But for now, facebook Messenger, whatever it may be, you can hit me up, I would say for the biggest context around all of this, josh, is really hop on my Facebook page. It starts from when it started, all the way up till now, and I will continue to keep that going. I'm not a big social media guy, honestly, that's all right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I actually am now because I realize how much I can influence another person by doing it, by social media, right, and so that's why I'm doing it. My friend and dude, I'm ready to change a lot of things here, man, and I just ask everybody to kind of help, pitch in, help out and do anything they can. If there's people out there that know of other ways how to do this, like reach out to me, like I want to be a part of something big, I felt like God put me you know, not put me but left me here for another reason, and that's to help out with. You know other individuals and their struggles, and so I want to make the most of it. So I'm here, I'm ready to fight, I'm ready to battle, I'm ready to take things on.
Speaker 2:And you know the other side of things too, josh. You know, if you reflect on something I told my wife today before we got on this call, I said, honey, you know what's? Another cool aspect about what we're doing is not the fact that we're giving back, but the opportunity that we're teaching our kids what we're doing and we're making the world a better place. But the other concept is there are going to be dark times for us, very dark times, very dark times. And as long as I stay in this and doing what I'm doing right now, it's going to help me get through those hard times, and I'm going to have to have folks like that already do have cancer probably be lifting me up, man, I mean just be honest. And so this is going to benefit everybody on so many levels and I hope people will really take the initiative reaching out to me or supporting me in any way possible to help us get off the ground.
Speaker 1:One hundred percent. Yeah and hey, we got we're going to get some real good content from this episode here to get get you up and running All right. So, man, I appreciate you, ryan, for, first of all, being vulnerable, because this is not easy. To kind of share your heart and be vulnerable, it is tough, and I really appreciate you being willing to open up your heart and allow folks to get value from you, from your vulnerability. So I appreciate you and I know this is going to add a lot of value to folks.
Speaker 2:Oh, man. Well, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it as well. Man, You're good. You're a good man, Josh.
Speaker 1:I appreciate it.
