High Performance With Physical Challenges: Thriving Is a Choice

When I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, I was told I might not live to be 60, and that if I did, I'd probably be in a wheelchair. My answer was "All right. Game on." I'm 61 now. I've lived with MS for about 30 years, and I weigh about 225 pounds at roughly 9% body fat.

MS isn't the only thing my body has been through. I've nearly died twice: a coral snake bite at 26 that paralyzed me within minutes, and, almost exactly 20 years later, a 50-mile-an-hour ski crash that broke 13 bones and collapsed a lung. I've rebuilt from 171 pounds and sleeping all day.

This guide is for the man over 45 who is carrying something physical: a chronic condition, an old injury, a diagnosis, a body that isn't doing what it used to. He's still leading, still building, and he wants to keep performing. I'm writing about what I do and what I've learned, framed broadly, because the principles hold whatever the challenge is.

One rail, first and always: I am a coach, not a clinician. Nothing here is medical advice or a treatment plan. Your physician, your specialist, and your physical therapist run the medical side. This guide is about everything around it.

What does it mean to perform with a physical challenge?

It means separating what your condition decides from what you decide.

Your diagnosis or injury sets your conditions. Your medical team helps you manage them. Everything else is yours: how you sleep, how you eat, how you train, who you spend time with, and how you respond when your body has a bad day. That's a lot of territory, and most of the difference in how a man lives with a physical challenge comes from it.

"Game on" was never a treatment plan. It was an attitude. I took the medical guidance seriously, and I decided the prophecy wasn't going to write the rest of my life. That decision is available to anyone.

How do I respond when my body takes a hit?

I teach a through-line called Respond, Don't React. In the first half of life, most of us live in action mode: something happens and we react. Battle-tested, you learn to take a breath and think first. Is this emotion and fight-or-flight, or is this the right action? Play it like chess. Understand what's actually happening before you move.

The near-deaths gave me something that makes the breath possible: perspective. In my twenties, building a deck for my parents, I was bitten by a coral snake. I was paralyzed within about seven minutes. Antivenom flown in from Miami saved my life. Twenty years later, almost to the month, I hit a snowmaker at Breckenridge and woke up paralyzed in Denver after a helicopter flight. In the hospital, people were talking about retrofitting my house for a wheelchair. One nurse challenged me to walk instead, and I walked out.

When you've been that close to the edge, a hard diagnosis or a setback doesn't land the same way. It's still hard. It just isn't the end of the world, because you've seen what that looks like.

How do I come back from a setback?

My comeback sequence is called How Winners Lose, and it runs in three steps: Accept, Assess, Advance.

The idea underneath it carries the weight: a setback is something that happened, not something you are. Your body got hurt. Your diagnosis changed. You are still the same man.

• Accept. It happened. Accepting it isn't giving up. It's refusing to make the loss part of your identity.
• Assess. What can I learn so I'm better for it? Own your part, find the lesson, and find a better way.
• Advance. Back on your toes, leaning forward. It's a fresh day, and the past is the one thing you can't change.

There are four things people do with a loss: stuff it, dismiss it, suffer with it, or reframe it. Only the reframe moves you forward. The other three are just different ways of carrying it with you.

Accepting isn't always instant. With a big loss there's terrain to cross first, from denial and anger through to acceptance and growth. Acceptance is the door to abundance, and you get there by walking the whole way.

How do I keep climbing once I'm back on my feet?

If you're not growing, you're dying; there's no standing still. Thriving is a choice: movement toward the top, not a destination. Here's the ladder I use to climb back after any knockdown:

1. Guard your thoughts. You become what you think.
2. Take in uplifting people. The people closest to you shape where you're headed.
3. Help others. It's hard to feel sorry for yourself while you're investing in someone else. I try to make someone smile or laugh every day.
4. Keep body and mind rituals. Routines set you free.
5. Pursue your passions. Life's too short to spend on what you don't love.
6. Sleep. Required, every night.
7. Get out of your normal spaces. Drive a different way, talk to someone new, make your body and brain think.
8. Stretch your circles. Go where you're a little uncomfortable, and ignore the voice that says you don't belong.
9. Try new things, even if they scare you. Most of the risk is made up in your head.
10. Celebrate the wins. Mark them before you move on to the next fight.

Why does a goal matter so much in recovery?

After the ski crash I had a split sternum, broken ribs, and 13 broken bones in all. My friend Andre came to visit and told me I needed a goal: a Tough Mudder, together. Four months later I was on the start line at 9,500 feet, barely functional and terrified.

A goal changes what recovery is. Without one, you're waiting to get better. With one, you're training for something. If you're coming back from an injury or living with a condition, pick a goal your medical team agrees is safe, put it on the calendar, and let it pull you forward.

Which daily basics matter most?

The basics I teach to everyone matter even more when your body is carrying something: fuel, sleep, and space, plus consistent training.

• Sleep. You can't out-train, out-eat, or out-work bad sleep. Eight or more hours is my floor. For me the stakes are specific: if I'm run down for even two days, old MS symptoms from damage done years ago start to come back. I track my sleep closely so I can catch the slide before it crosses that line.
• Fuel. Food is fuel or it's poison. Eat to power recovery and energy, and work with your physician if your condition affects what you can eat.
• Training. Muscle is what keeps you independent as you age, and it's worth building whatever you're carrying. Train around pain, not through it: if a shoulder hurts, stop loading the shoulder and keep training everything else. Your physician or physical therapist tells you what's safe.
• Space. Disconnect on purpose. Quiet time lets your system reset.

Today I manage my MS through sleep, nutrition, and training, and that's my experience with my own body. Yours will be different. Build your plan with your physician.

Can I choose to be happy when my body, or someone I love, is struggling?

Yes, and I learned that most clearly from my wife. In 2025, my partner, now wife, Julie went through chemo. At the end of it, she went to The Sphere in Las Vegas with no hair and pure joy, and by the end of the show strangers wanted to know her. Julie wears that story proudly and uses it to help others.

Watching her taught me that thriving isn't something you achieve when conditions are good. You choose it when they're hard. Happiness is a choice, and it's contagious. What you bring into a room changes the room, whatever your body is going through.

Why I say life is a gift

The day before my ski crash, USA Today ran a piece on how near-death experiences change entrepreneurs. My closing line in it was: "Life is a gift. It's meant to be pursued, shared, and savored." The next day I was lying paralyzed on a mountain. I still believe every word of it, maybe more than I did then.

A physical challenge can shrink your life if you let it. It can also make you clear about what matters, faster than anything else. You don't need a coral snake or a ski crash to get that clarity. You do need to decide to live the life you'd choose, starting today.

Where this fits in the three legs

I coach three legs: Body, Business, and Being. This guide lives where Body and Being meet. Your body sets the conditions; how you respond is the Being leg, and it's the part that's always yours.

If you want to know which leg is your weakest right now, take the diagnostic. It takes a few minutes and tells you where to start.