008 Using your athletic mentality and identity to face challenges beyond sports

Ep.008 Athlete Story Podcast

Life After Sports. Using Athlete Mentality to Repurpose Yourself. Athlete Story ft Matthew Wetschler Worldwide

Using your athletic mindset

How can you use your athletic mindset to face challenges beyond sports?

In this episode Adventure athlete, Matthew Harlow Wetschler shares his incredible story and how he has managed to find himself and thrive in a life where most of what he cherished was taken away in an instant. How what saved him was: Knowing his core values and his athletic mindset.

We start with a flashback to his life with sports before his deadly accident. He says his athletic mindset was the foundation that made him find himself “surprisingly well equipped to meet the most intense challenge of my life which is having my entire body taken from me, and my life briefly taken from me. I was able to really meet the challenge head on.”

You will hear Matt’s experience and tips on….

→ the benefits of the athletic mindset that go beyond sports

→ the shadow side to the athletic mentality

→ why it’s better to have a vision than a goal

→ how art has been Matt’s way of expressing himself

→ and a whole lot more

The episode on brainspotting that I mentioned can be seen here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z56NOgo8wPc&t=80s

Once again thank you to Scott Fitzloff for letting me use clips from his video portrait of Matt.

Drone footage by Tylor Norwood. In-hospital footage by Dane Wetschler.

You can watch Scott Fitzloff’s full video here: https://vimeo.com/279760575

You can also watch a video version of this interview here.

READ the transcript of full interview by clicking here.

Anja INTRO:

Hi, you are in for an inspirational Athlete Story about pivoting into life after sports – when you have no choice but to do so !

You can say that it is about seeing opportunities in challenges – only that is a ridiculous understatement n this case.

Today’s Athlete Story comes from adventure athlete Matt Wetschler who woke up to a very different reality to say the least, than what his life had been based on until then, when he woke up from a deathly accident that he had while body surfing.

It actually took his life for ten minutes – his mobility from the neck down for quite a bit longer – and today it has changed his perspective and circumstances in a way that has transformed his life – but NOT who he is.

And I think that is the essential message that we can all learn from Matt’s story.

As you will hear, he did not let outside circumstances, his sports awards, his Powder Award, his Stanford education or his work as a medical doctor, -nor his paralysis – define who he is.

This is very relevant for anyone who stands in the middle of – or in front of – a big transition in life.

Because those circumstances can change and they will change – and in particular for an athlete, since your athletic career can only last for so long and you know this, right ?,

Matt’s story is an inspiration on how there are so many different ways to express yourself – as long as you know who you are and what you stand for – even if you can no longer do what it is that has fulfilled you in your life up intil now. .

This is athlete story and I’m your host Anja Bolbjerg. If you want to get notified whenever I upload a new show, do go ahead and subscribe. I will be posting lots more athlete stories, interviews with world class sports insiders and valuable tips for athletes.

If there were such as thing as a gold medal at winning in life – Matt Wetschler would be having one. So, let’s welcome the multi-talented, life winner