This week’s conversation is with Jay Glazer, best known as a National Football League insider and TV host for FOX Sports’ award-winning NFL pregame studio show, FOX NFL Sunday.

The entire cast, including Jay, became the first sports show inducted into the Television Hall Of Fame in 2019. He is also part of FOX’s Thursday Night Football.

Jay was one of the first ever minute by minute breaking online news reporters in the NFL.

In 2014, he co-founded the Unbreakable Performance Center, a private training facility frequented by Wiz Khalifa, Chris Pratt, and Demi Lovato, as well as numerous NFL, NHL and MMA athletes.

And in 2015, Jay and former U.S. Army Green Beret Nate Boyer (a previous Finding Mastery guest) founded the charitable organization MVP, Merging Vets and Players, to assist combat veterans and former professional athletes, who often face a tough road adjusting to civilian life.

Jay has a new book out called Unbreakable, where he offers insights gleaned from his fight through depression and anxiety. It’s a relentless, unapologetic, and no-nonsense approach to overcoming self-doubts, fears, and getting to the truth – and that sets the tone for this conversation.

“Muscles aren’t true strength, vulnerability is.”

In This Episode:

Living with depression and anxiety

My earliest childhood memories are of depression and anxiety. I don’t know how to live life any other way. And, it sucks, it sucks. It’s every single day of my life, I feel that I wake up, feeling unworthy of being loved, the sky is falling, really guilty about the bad that I’ve done, if you will. And, I’ve got to work myself out of bed every day. I’ve got to get myself, where I don’t just stay in bed and let the beast beat me, but it’s been something I’ve dealt with my entire life. And again, I don’t know if it’s, I was born with or early childhood trauma, whatever it is, it’s the only memories I know. And still to this day, and yet it’s dark. And so, that character that I built up on Fox NFL Sunday, and Ballers and the world of mixed martial arts, a lot of that was a mask.

Why speak up now?

I’m talking about it now, so none of us have to hide it anymore. So we don’t have to suffer in silence, so we can be who we really are and know that we’re in the majority. It’s the cool kids now, okay and that’s what I’m trying to get us to understand and we all have it. And whether it’s, listen, I wrote this book, Unbreakable, because we all go through things now. Whether it’s my level, where it’s clinical of the anxiety, and depression and bipolar, or whether you’re just going through it because we just got through a pandemic. We were told to isolate ourselves from the world or whether we just think our lives suck now, because we compare ourselves to everybody else’s lives on social media. And of course, we feel left out. All of us go through something.

Anxiety/panic attacks

My first one was 2005 and I was actually on TV, in an empty Oakland Raiders stadium, nobody there. And, I had a big scoop to put out. So I don’t know why, I have no idea what triggered it, no clue. And when I have anxiety attacks and by the way, it’s now been every single week of my life since, it’s become part of my weekly routine, I don’t want it. I don’t want it there, but it’s every single freaking week, it sucks. This past week, woke me up at three o’clock in the morning. I normally don’t get woken up, but it kicked my ass this week. When I’m in that Raider stadium and what happens to me when I have an anxiety attack is, I feel like I’m having a heart attack. I get really short of breath, my heart starts racing like crazy. I start sweating like crazy, my eyes start dart back and forth, the walls start caving in.

The negative effects of social media on anxiety

We’re comparing ourselves to everybody else’s filtered fraction of one second in one day and we feel left out. We think our lives suck. The most famous people in the world think that their lives suck, because oh, look how much fun they’re having, look at what these people are doing, look at that person’s business, look at that person’s meal. Look at that party, how come I wasn’t invited to that party? It’s a lot more. And then, the hate we see on Twitter… when we were growing up and if you were bullied at the playground or your friend was, it did suck for the weekend, the week. And, that’s a weekend or week of your time over one bullying. We see it a thousand times per minute on Twitter. The human condition is just not meant for it.

Breaking the stigma and becoming more proactive

It’s such a stigma because people feel so, like they’re damaged or if they say they have depression, anxiety, that’s why I’d personally rather more people, even if it’s a little or a lot, jump in with it this way and then say, “Okay, at least I have a grasp of this.” Like listen, if you sprain your knee, I don’t want you hiding that, let’s at least know we have it. How do we fix it? Now’s, there’s a difference between a sprained knee and a torn ACL, totally different, but we still have to go and attack it. Same thing here. And the other part of this too, is mental health is way too reactive. We really go to a therapist when something wrong has happened, when the sky is falling. We don’t do that with physical health, we got to do the same with mental health.

Money doesn’t change the battle between the ears

I understand the broke side. When I went from broke to, let’s say, unbreakable, when I’m up here and I became the first minute by minute, breaking news person in this country, me and John Clayton and Len Len Pasquarelli on the internet – which I think is going to take off that internet thing one day – all of a sudden that was for 50 grand and all of a sudden, I started moving up and it was like this amount and this amount. And I started moving up more and more, I thought it’d be rainbows and unicorns. And, it wasn’t. Like, if you don’t know how to love yourself up from the inside out, I don’t care how much money they pay me, like it wasn’t. In fact, it made it harder on me… all our problems weigh the same between our ears. They all weigh the same.

One of his core strategies to battle this

Being of service, for me, it’s hard to feel that dark, doomy gray, when you see others happier, smile, you know you’ve done something for somebody. So again, even when I was broke, I figured out ways to be of service. And I still actually do the same thing, I would go to the 99 cents store and I would get toothbrush, toothpaste, handy wipes, bandaids, pad and pen, socks, gloves and deodorant, and put it in a bag and give out to the homeless, it’s eight bucks. And, I still do that with my son.

Go after life relentlessly

It is hard for me to get out of bed every single day. Every single morning of my life, I wake up and I feel like the sky is falling, and I feel unworthy of being loved. And I feel just, man, that the world’s against me. Mike, it’s every day, it sucks. But once I make that decision to get out of bed, because I’m going to fucking get out of bed. Once I make that decision, then I go after life relentlessly. Once I make that decision, life’s about our choices and our decisions, I might as well go for it right now. I may be listless because it’s getting to me, but I’m going for it.

Lean into your team, and be a good teammate

A teammate isn’t just having an actual team, it’s not the Seattle Seahawks. It’s not the L.A. Rams, some of it is, could be. But like for me, my dog and I are a team. My son and I are a team, God and I, the one up there, we’re a team. My fight team is a team. My Unbreakable team’s a team. My MVP charity is a team. My Fox NFL Sunday crew is certainly a team that I lean on. So there’s teams all around us, we just got to see it and realize it, okay, that person’s a teammate. My wife or husband is actually a teammate. My children are teammates, my parents are teammates, my dog’s a teammate, God is a teammate. Your work could be a teammate. We have more teams around us than we think.

Mental fitness

If our elbows hurt, we immediately go to someone and get treatment. Or if like, man, if you’re a football player, you’re 40 times not up, you’re going to get a speed coach. So same with this, we need a therapist, not just when the sky’s falling, but in other times, so I have three therapists that I constantly work with and I’ll add more, because it’s mental fitness now. I don’t want to just call it mental health, I want to call it mental fitness.

Suicide is not an option

As dark as I’ve ever gotten, suicide will not be an option for me. Like, I just won’t… And I made that decision a long time ago. You never know what lies around next Tuesday, our lives could always change next week. But, I just don’t want to be do that to anybody else. I just don’t want to be… I don’t want to put my pain on anybody else, while my pain may be gone if I do that, their pain around me will be… I put so many more, so much more pain and problems on them and I don’t want to do that. So I know I can pull myself up and out of these dark holes, that certain treatment has led me to, but I won’t stop trying.

Switching gears – in your profession, how do you build trust?

I’m authentic. Love me or hate me, I am who I am. Right, I’m authentic. Even when I’m trying to mask the depression, anxiety, there’s always an authenticity about me. Like, I’ve never hid my fucked up-ness. Again, back then, we called it crazy, now we call it mental health. But also in building relationships, I’ve never had relationships where I’m trying to have a relationship for me. Man, again, I need a team for mental health, I need a team. So on my team, I want to be the most loyal dude in the room and I hope everybody else is going to be just as loyal. But that’s the key you go, and you be loyal and you have give-give relationships, where you’re not just taking. No one wants to be around that. I will actually treat everybody. It’s going to sound a little bizarre, but I treat people like I’m going to be their pallbearer. Who’s your pallbearer? The people that, man, no matter what, they’re your ride and dies, wherever you are in life, you get in trouble. You call me, I’m that guy. I’ll be there in two seconds, whatever it is. And man, if 10 to 15 people view me the same way back, I got a good little crew around me. And luckily, I think so more than that have, because I am there and authentic, and I’m not just trying to take and use it.

Walking together

Since 93, I have been going to NFL training camp all summer. And one year, Dan Quinn was like, “What are you still doing this for?” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “You’ve moved up and on from this, haven’t you?” I said, “There is no up and on for this.” Like, “You guys are my family, this is my team.” The NFL for me is that team I talk about for me. The fight world, the mixed martial arts world is a fight team, a family for me. So there is no moving up and on, I’m not looking at people like, oh now, have I moved up and on from all you? No, we’re walking this walk together forever. That’s how I view it.

Loyalty

Loyalty is a dying art. It’s a lost art. And for me, loyalty has been my brand, and anything and everything I’ve done forever. That’s my authentic brand. And I just say brand, because it sounds cool for me to say, but loyalty is what’s put me on the path that I’ve always been on.

His legacy

I want to leave a legacy here. I want to change how mental health is talked about, I want to change the next generation of our military, where man, they come out better, they view themselves differently. They view themselves with more pride, they view themselves as you know, the heroes that they are. And it’s not being cliche. And I say heroes, because like all these vets we have in MVP, I didn’t know a single one of them before I started MVP, yet they went overseas to save, I say, save or serve people they don’t know. That’s selfless and that’s why they’re heroes. They don’t know me and my son, I would like to be somebody that is able to change. I want all our pro athletes, like right now, we’re going down a bad road here, because of where we are – mental health, life, society. And I want to be the guy that gets them to all, finish up and be proud of what they did. And they can go live long, happy, successful, fun lives based on what they’ve done. And I know it sounds cliche, but you know what? Man, I probably want people to be saying, “I’m better off because of Jay Glazer.”