5 Lessons that Changed My Life

Personal Take-Aways I Learned While Playing College Football

Lesson #1: Leadership takes Empathy

When I began playing sports, I thought I was a great leader. I had all the characteristics that I innately assumed built great leaders: I was confident, I articulately expressed my opinion, I made decisions quickly, I could convince people to go with my ideas, and I had lots of (what I thought were good) ideas.

Leadership sometimes can be mistaken for just being loud. The person who easily convinces others to do what she or he wants can easily con herself or himself to believe that this is leadership. The ability to convince is salesmanship, and there are a lot of people that I have run into over my athletic career that have been great salespeople but terrible leaders. I was wrong.

Great leaders don’t always speak the loudest, but they do have a powerful voice. Great leaders don’t always know the right thing to do, but they have clear direction. Great leaders are not always the tallest, but they have an impactful presence. Great leaders influence and motivate.

This is what I saw when I first met Luke Sommerlot: “This guy is short.” He was my outside linebacker in college, and he stood about 5’8”- with cleats on. His laugh was more of a high-pitched squeal than a laugh, but when he spoke, everyone on the team listened. He was encouraging and motivating, but most of all, he did this thing called “Exhorting”. You don’t run into that word much other than in church maybe, but it’s a powerful word.

“It derives from the Latin verb hortari, meaning "to incite," and it often implies the ardent urging or admonishing of an orator or preacher.” – Thanks, Merriam-Webster.

I remember this one time that I was on the field and called out this 250-pound offensive lineman for swearing at one of my teammates – when I say “call out”, I really mean that I asked him if he “kissed his mom with that mouth.” Luke didn’t stand for behavior like that.

“You’re better than that, Ben.” Luke exhorted.

Luke immediately connected to personal qualities in my life that I so desperately wanted to attain to. He expressed the fact that he expected more from me and that I was capable to meet those expectations.

This is when I learned that Luke had exhorted me because he believed in me. Maybe he would say differently now, but that’s what I took away from it. Luke was able to empathize with who I was and encourage me to become more of who I was already becoming.

"Luke was able to empathize with who I was and encourage me to become more of who I was already becoming."

It was a combination of Luke empathizing with me and believing in me that I remember most today. The impact that he had on me in that moment began an avalanche of self-reflection that has not only built me into a man with expectations of myself, but also a man who desires to exhort others as Luke exhorted me. I want to inspire people to be their best selves by empathizing with them and believing in them.

Empathy doesn’t always mean that you have to feel exactly what someone is feeling. Well, empathy is “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner” – Thanks again, Merriam-Webster.

I believe Luke was being sensitive (in a non-sensitive kind of way – he was yelling loudly and not seeming very sensitive to my feelings) to exactly who I was. This lesson continues with me today as I understand how to lead my family and my siblings and nephews and nieces. When I began to play sports, I don’t think that I was a great leader, but now as I learn more about empathy, I hope someday someone else can see me as I saw Luke Sommerlot during my first year playing football in college.

Before I thought it was crucial to be the most influential in order to lead, but now I know it is crucial to empathize with who the person is – their experience – in order to lead. In order to thrive as a leader, empathy must be one of the key elements of your practice of leadership.

Lesson #2: Pain Reveals Much

I think that my dad is larger-than-life – not in sense of size (he’s 5’10”) but he’s one of those guys that tells amazing stories, asks lots of questions, and amazes people with his great eye-contact. I love him, and he’s taught me a lot about life.

 Early in my life, he taught me a phrase, “Tape an Aspirin to it.” This phrase always made me laugh – even when I was in pain – because it seemed so silly to me. Now please don’t go walking around rubbing a bunch of aspirin on your head, that’s not how Aspirin works; you must swallow the Aspirin and let it get into your bloodstream before it makes you feel better – btw I researched this and found out that you can tape an Aspirin to it - weird. Now that I am a little older, the phrase makes a little more sense to me, but I’m not sure I quite agree with where it’s going. When I look back at this idea that the pain-is-not-actually-that-bad-get-over-it mentality, I think that there is a more important lesson to be learned when experiencing pain.

I learned this lesson from Ryan Van Maanen my last season playing football in college.

Ryan was our starting Cornerback. He’s pretty big for a cornerback, but he’s smart enough and fast enough to keep up with guys that might be quicker.

Ryan’s the youngest out of three boys (he has two younger sisters), but you’d never know it (that’s a slight dig at youngest children but stay with me). To all you youngest children out there, it is a running joke of older siblings that younger siblings get easier treatment from parents – I apologize if I have offended you. To you oldest children out there, they’re so soft aren’t they? Just kidding.

Ryan is kind, funny, and direct. He’s the type of guy that will look at you and say, “I think you’re a cool person; want to be friends?” Get the picture?

Ryan was playing in one of the biggest games of the season when he went down – he hurt his knee badly and had to sit out the rest of the season. I was shocked because I had heard him talk in ways that do not denote him as this dedicated person who would push through pain. I felt bad. The type of bad that makes your stomach turn and your heart sink in your chest. I didn’t know if he’d ever play again. It hurt terribly but it wasn’t my pain, it was his. Monday came around and everyone was relatively quiet getting ready for practice. What happened next blew my mind.

"It hurt terribly but it wasn’t my pain."

There was Ryan, sitting in the front ready to watch film (football speak for analyzing recordings of the other team playing). No, it’s not what you’re thinking. No miracle knee fixing procedure happened that saved him from the heartache of missing out on the season, but Ryan showed up despite his pain. He didn’t miss a practice the rest of the season. He encouraged his replacement. He focused in meetings. He cheered at home games, and he didn’t complain once. This is the lesson that I learned from Ryan my last season playing football in college:

Pain is going to come our way. We all experience it. It sucks. Ryan was not just showing dedication when he showed up to practice (injured people are not expected to show up, and it can be quite embarrassing for some athletes). When Ryan responded to his pain with courage, it showed me that it’s not the lack of pain that really reveals someone’s strength, but how they respond when they are in pain.

Whether it’s a loss in the family or a bad day at work, pain is real.

This brings me to the overarching question: “How will I deal with pain when it comes my way.” The reality of future pain cannot be argued. It is going to happen.

The challenge for myself in this is that when pain comes my way, will I give up and complain and blame everyone in my path or will I show up, ask questions, encourage those around me, and not complain once?

In the end, it is a choice to follow in Ryan’s footsteps and respond with courage and dedication. When people read this, I know some of you are going to say, “pain is way harder than this experience, and you will fail.” I know this, and this is why I say hope in this next sentence. I know it’s probably not that realistic to choose to respond the way that I want to respond, but I hope when the day of pain comes for me that I will choose to respond like Ryan did.

Lesson #3: Meekness is not Weakness

Meekness is a seriously underrated character quality, and I want more of it. For a long time, I forgot what the word even meant – I knew it when I was a kid (oddly enough). Meek actually means “enduring injury with patience and without resentment” – sheesh – Merriam-Webster keeps stealing the limelight. I’m taking this a little differently than Lesson #2. We need more meek people in this world, and I desire more meekness in my own life.

"We need more meek people in this world, and I desire more meekness in my own life. "

The character trait that gets the most praise in this world is “confidence.” Whether it’s a business owner, an athlete, or a speaker, the more confident (not proud but confident) that you can come across to your audience the better, but this praise is hastily given. Yes, confidence is important, and it is crucial to let your audience, following, group, etc. know that you reliable and dependable, but meekness is more important for two reasons: 1) meekness lets people know that you put the interests of other people (within reason) before your own interests; and, 2) meekness reveals that your purpose in life is not to gain power.

First, Meekness lets people know that you put the interests of other people before your own interests. In football, you don’t necessarily look up to the person who you know will always make the big play – everyone can think of their favorite all-star. Most often you look up to the person that will sacrifice their own glory and fame for the sake of the team at large.

The connection between meekness and selflessness is the self-awareness to understand that dodging pain is not the single most important aspect of life. Sometimes, you endure injury with patience (for someone else), knowing that it is more valuable to be humble than to be in control.

This type of selfless sacrifice is rare. This type of selfless sacrifice shows what it really means to put instance glory and gratification to the wayside so that true success can be attained. This is the type of person in the office that does not point out small mistakes or flaunt her own great success, but with humility comes along side those who are struggling and in quiet confidence prides herself in a selfless job done well.

Sfield]econdly, meekness reveals that your purpose in life should not be great popularity or beauty or influence. This was a big lesson that I had to learn in college. When I was young (well, younger), I thought that great popularity and beauty and influence was everything—influence, leverage, satisfaction, etc. I’m still young, but what I realize now that I am a little older and after playing college football is that a life pursuing these things will always let you down. How much is enough? More. A life of meekness and humility overflows with joy because you are not self-absorbed with self-serving desires. Someone that allows meekness to define his or her life can confidently say that they are not in constant want. Does this mean that you are passive or without motivation? By no means. Meekness and humility come from the realization that joy cannot be obtained through power but through sacrifice and service.

That being said, I loved winning in college. I loved making the big play. Being seen and known was fun. I loved whooping and hollering; however, that was not where I found my purpose. A purpose of service, meekness, and humility has a much higher rate of (true) return than that of power.

Lesson #4: Strength does not equal Success

This life lesson distinguishes between external strength (muscle-not success) and external strength (personal-success). I’ll start by explaining a little bit about my college experience. This may get a little personal (hang in there).

I did college a little different than the traditional 4-year student —shout out to my community college people.

When I graduated high school, I did not have the best relationship with my parents. I was dating a girl at the time, and my parents weren’t quite on board with the relationship (that’s all I’ll say about that). My dad thought it would be a wonderful, growing experience to send me to work on a dairy farm in the middle of Illinois to get me away from the situation. It felt like I was banished.

I did my time (yes, like Prison) on a dairy farm in the middle of nowhere in Illinois and as soon as possible moved up to live in Chicago, attending to community college at College of DuPage (another shout out). I lived there for a year, went a little crazy, and decided to move back to California and live near my parents. I’m a softy for my 3 little brothers and couldn’t stand being away from them for that long. I also probably had some unfinished business with my parents. During my time back in California, I attended Moorpark College and worked at a luxury movie theater by the school. Life was not what I had planned it would be like. During that time, I got a job at Skyline Home Loans as a mortgage officer and thought I was on the “up-n-up.” Wrong again. The relationship that I was in during high school blew up in my face, and soon I had just started a new job, got broken up with, and fell into poor spending decisions.

On the inside I felt alone, broken and hopeless. On the outside, I put on a “strong” exterior and tried to power through. I worked hard and thought I had found my niche. After a year on the job, I was doing well, closing some deals, and looking like I would have a great career in mortgage. However, that summer I broke down.

"On the inside I felt alone, broken and hopeless. On the outside, I put on a “strong” exterior and tried to power through."

By the way, throughout this whole time, my relationship with my family had grown in leaps and bounds. I was talking to my mom regularly, playing golf with my dad on a weekly basis, and spending time with my little brothers often.

Okay, back to the story – my parents invited me to go on a weekend trip to Mammoth Lakes, and, initially, I turned them down. I was at the office until late and decided to go, so I left that night, drove five hours, and arrived with my family. It was a great weekend, and I felt like I was able to get a lot of rest and regain some confidence. My sister pulled me aside while I was there and told me that everyone was worried about me and that they thought that I should go back to school. I reassured her that I was fine and that there was no reason to worry. I lied.

I woke up at 4 AM in a cold sweat and couldn’t get my mind off what she was had said to me (obsessing at this idea – “this could change everything.” In a matter of hours, I had researched a bunch of schools, picked the one that my sister went to in Minnesota (so impulsive), and applied. Five weeks later, I arrived at school.

This is where it gets fun.

Did I mention that when I was working with Skyline Home Loans that I was 185 pounds? No, why would I? Well, I was, and in the five weeks in between applying and arriving at school, I had been working out everyday to get up to a decent playing weight for football. I got to school and was 205 pounds (this isn’t part of the story, but I graduated at 240 pounds – yeesh). This was my big chance for a fresh start. No one knew my backstory, and I could be whoever I wanted to be.

This is where things started to get messy.

On the outside, I was a loud, strong, and confident guy that loved to have fun (I was a mess on the inside, but that didn’t matter). I made friends quickly and began to integrate into the football community. I loved it. Other than some petty arguments at parties, I was well-liked and appreciated, but it was all a sham. The confident and strong exterior couldn’t cover what I knew about myself. I was, to quote Buzz Lightyear, a “sad, scared little man” (Toy Story). I was crazy and bold at parties and would do anything that I wanted to do.

I quickly fell into the wrong crowd of friends and was drowning in bad decisions. My life had become so out of control, I couldn’t even hide behind my strong exterior. I began to meet with a counselor to talk through my problems and my sadness. He let me know that I most likely had moderate depression – confidence boost (not). I began to spiral and soon was considering ending it all. My life was such a facade that I didn’t even think it was worth living. That same day, one of the older football players pulled me aside and asked if I wanted to get dinner (I don’t turn down free food). I accepted his invitation and sat down with him for dinner and spilled my guts. I felt as it a big weight had been lifted from my shoulders and a veil had been lifted from my eyes.

"My life was such a facade that I didn’t even think it was worth living."

For the first time, I was able to confess to someone else about my feelings. There was something transformative about confronting these things that I was hiding from. I was spilling it all.

Over the next months, my life began to slowly change. I still struggled with self-hatred and sadness, but I began to let other people into my life little-by-little. There’s more to the story (please reach out if you have similar feelings or just want to hear more). My point in sharing this life lesson is that I learned that external strength does not always mean that internal strength is present. Assuming so can not only be incorrect but gravely dangerous. I have challenged myself ever since to care less about what people think or what I think about my external reality and begin to look inward to my inner realities and what those mean for me.

This lesson has allowed me to be more patient with others that might have previously caused me to scoff and has allowed me to be more empathetic to the problems that others are going through. It is a crucial lesson for both business and friendship.

This sensitivity to the emotions of others has been one of the most pivotal pieces to my changing mindset. I truly believe that I would not be where I am today if this had not happened in my life.

Lesson #5: Awareness > Opportunity

This last lesson is going to be much shorter than the rest, but it may just be the most important. This is an ideological lesson that has impacted almost every aspect of my life. Pay close attention.

Football, if you didn’t know, is a high-intensity, impact sport; at any time, a huge offensive-linemen (weighing upwards of 300 pounds, sometimes 400) can show up out of nowhere and send your body flying into the air. As you might imagine, this is not a fun experience (we already touched on the pain aspect of life). My coach would always tell me this key piece of information, “Keep your head on a swivel.” In simple terms, know where you are and who is around you, always.

"In simple terms, know where you are and who is around you, always. "

This type of awareness is called positional awareness. I love the definition of positional awareness in reference to poker: “A slang term in poker for when a player has a conscious knowledge of his or her position in the hand and if it is an advantage or disadvantage” (the only time PokerTerms.com has ever outplayed Merriam-Webster).

This idea of conscious knowledge fascinates me and could fill a book of its own, but it’s not necessarily where I am going with this lesson.

The type of awareness that changed my life is personal, internal awareness – knowing how I am feeling, what I am thinking, how I am coming off, etc. It influences every aspect of my daily decisions as I am able to understand when approaching a new situation why I would like to enter into that situation or why I would like to protect myself and not enter into it. I am able to articulate why and how I am doing things, and this makes me more aware of what situation I am in.

As confusing as it may seem, people are not very good at personal, internal awareness. You’d think that no one would know what you are feeling, what you are thinking, and how you are coming off better than ‘number one’; however, personal, internal awareness is really difficult. It takes hard work to really be aware of yourself.

I am still learning this lesson every day, but I will tell you what I’ve realized about why awareness is greater than opportunity.

Think about this for a second: wouldn’t it be awesome to win a million dollars? My answer would be – maybe. Why maybe? What could be more awesome than winning a million dollars?! (winning 10 million?) Giving a million dollars to a person with great personal, internal awareness would be a great thing. They probably wouldn’t become that different of a person. They probably have four or five things in their life that they were already preparing to buy, and this gift simply sped up their timeline. Their friends wouldn’t really change; their lifestyle would maybe just change a little, and their future goals would probably stay about the same. Why is this? People with personal, internal awareness already know who they are and who they want to be— separate from their circumstances and opportunities.

Why do I even think that internal self-awareness is valuable?

Although it would be nice for a million dollars to fall (gracefully) into my lap, opportunities come and go, and no one can really control when the timing of a great opportunity will enter the picture. Which is why, in the end, awareness -in fact- is great than a good opportunity.

What I’ve learned is that the best way to prepare for an opportunity to come your way is to excel at personal awareness. If you are personally aware, you will be constant even when your circumstances fluctuate.

I hope to continue learning lessons that will change my life and sharing the lessons (sometimes failures) with you in a timely manner. Hope you had a great time reading. Please share your thoughts and input.

Ben Johnson is a husband, uncle, military spouse, and Cision-guy. You can follow me if you’d like to see more content like this!