A Personal Message From Mike Gillette

A PERSONAL MESSAGE FROM MIKE GILLETTE

I live an unusual life. It’s been an amazing life. I’ve dreamt big, worked hard and done my best to make strong decisions. Decisions that have helped me get to those dreams. But the truth is I never expected to have this life.

This is my story.

I had a tough childhood. I was the result of an unintended pregnancy and my parents split-up when I was three. My mother was left with me, no money and a lot of anger. She pursued bad relationships with bad men. Men who would abuse her.

Eventually she settled on one relationship. A relationship which would suck the life from her. And from me.

Growing up, I saw my mother get punched, kicked and choked. One night she was thrown down a flight of stairs. Sometimes we would leave. But we always went back.

I was often left alone. Some days there was no food in the house. I remember being eight or nine years old and putting myself to bed. Or boiling beef bouillon cubes for my dinner.

But the one thing we never seemed to lack was alcohol. It was everywhere. If you’ve ever watched that TV show Cops you’ll notice that wherever the cops go, inside every house they respond to looks the same: chaos. That was how we lived.

As I grew older the violence got worse. One night, after having her head beaten against the living room wall, my mother went to the doctor. A brain tumor was discovered. After a year of treatment, she died. I was fifteen.

My life became a mess. I descended into drugs and alcohol. As much and as often as I could. In February 1981, at the age of 18, I decided I’d had enough. I checked into a motel, consumed a ridiculous amount of booze and pain killers and lay down on the bed waiting to die. Much to my surprise, I woke up the next day, very much alive. Which led me to conclude two things.

1) I must be hard to kill

2) Since I was still alive, then maybe there was a reason that I had been given a second chance.

A few months later I reconnected with a girl I dated in high school a couple years earlier. Although we had nothing in common, I had always been drawn to her. She was a good person, the kind of person I would have liked to have been. We began doing things together. One of those things was going to church.

Later that year – the same year my life almost ended – was also the year that my life really began, as a follower of Jesus Christ (Mike’s emphasis).

Now, I’m not here to discuss religion; I’m just telling my story. And it would be dishonest if I were to leave out what I consider to be the most important part of that story.

So what happened next?

I wanted to live as differently as I possibly could from who I used to be. I wanted to help people. I was too young to become a cop and college was too expensive, so I joined the Army.

Things clicked. The harder I worked, the more I was rewarded. The Army was the first place I’d ever experienced this dynamic and it was the place where I started to dream big. Through my service, I became eligible for an ROTC scholarship, allowing me to pursue my military career as an officer. In 1984, I started college at the University of Arizona.

On the last day of my first semester, I went on a climbing trip with some friends. A day which started pleasantly enough.

We were to rappel from a railway bridge into a canyon and climb back out. The leader of the group had loaned me some rappelling gear that I had not used before so I had to rely on him to set it up for me.

As soon as I stepped off the bridge I immediately knew something was wrong. The equipment had not engaged and I was rocketing towards the canyon floor. The only thing I could do to avoid certain death was to wrap myself around my rope. I wrapped every limb around that rope…and experienced the worst pain I’d ever felt as it burned through my gloves, trousers, shirt… and skin.

It was the most intense pain I’ve ever experienced… that is, until I slammed into the canyon floor, breaking my back and ankles.

Later that day in the emergency room my orthopedic surgeon told me the ‘good’ news: I would walk again…but I would never run or jump out of airplanes any more. I had, in one day, lost the life I’d wanted and worked so
hard for.

I spent the next four and a half years working to reclaim my physical self. With more setbacks than successes, it was a dark and painful period.

What was hard for me to keep in perspective during those years of pain and frustration was that I should not have survived that fall. I had actually been given a second chance. For a second time.

So how does this story turn out?

Well, hard work got me back to where I wanted to be physically. And once that happened I was able to go back to dreaming big.

Over the years I’ve continued to work hard and my dreams have gotten bigger. Even today, I’m accomplishing goals that just a few years ago, would have seemed impossible to me.

I went from a scared person to this person.

I went from a weak person to the person I am now.

I’ve been given the strength to live an amazing life, to do amazing things, things that people who knew me way back when would never believe.

Fionn says: I think there is an old term for what Mike practices – Muscular Christianity. The principles of Strength Psychology still work!

PS: here’s another testimonial for Strength Psychology:

Unlike Anything I’ve EVER Seen or Heard Before in 15 Years

“The materials that I’ve seen from Mike were really different than those I’ve seen from other Sport Psychologists…some decent content but the substance and practical application wasn’t there.

The difference with Mike is his practical experience is just incredible and second to none, therefore adding to his credibility and he actually offers some very applicable tools to take away and use with the athletes that I train and add another dimension of performance to their game.

The #1 lesson I’ve taken from this event has been how to help athletes deal with their different emotions during competition in order to have them play at the top of their game.

It’s so common to see different anxieties, fear of failure, stress, the regular emotions that an athlete feels throughout the course of a competition come into play and can impact their performance in a positive or negative manner…I’ve definitely learned some tools that will help me help those athletes cope with those situations better and I’ll be able to use in their training in the weight room, in conditioning that hopefully carries over into their actual game day performance.”