David Vobora on the Journey of Being

David Vobora joins us on this week’s episode of the podcast. Since 2014, David has painstakingly built a business and a dream around training elite and adaptive athletes. Many of the athletes are wounded warriors, and his adaptive training environment gym provides free 9-week bootcamps to people with amputations, spinal cord injuries, and other disabilities. He’ll say in this conversation a lot of those people are veterans, but not all of them are. He has a ton of respect for veterans, and his foundation is about serving those who are adaptive athletes.

David has appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres show, he’s been to the White House where he shook hands with President Obama, he has had President Bush accompany him, House Speaker Paul Ryan visited the foundation, and they presented him with a set of cuff links with the Presidential seal. Also, when David was 10 years old, a teenage neighbor sexually abused him, and we jump into this in the conversation. He will talk about how that shaped his life and his career. He played professional football for 4.5 years, and he had concussions, a major shoulder injury that ended his career, and he has been through a lot including getting addicted to opioids and his experience with suicide. David will share his journey, his mindset, and what he’s learned about emotion and building emotional strength in this deep conversation.

In this episode, they discuss what his childhood was like (6:00), the tools he used to get him in the space to be a linebacker (9:20), how being sexually assaulted drove him on the football (11:30), what allowed him to be successful when the lights came on in college (14:00), if we’re better served focusing on the becoming or the being (17:00), the earning of wisdom (22:30), what his football career would’ve looked like if he had the emotional strength he has now (24:30), the inner work he did emotionally (26:05), where his mental capacity came from (30:00), how his mental models have changed (32:00), how he dealt with his suicidal thoughts (37:20), if he had family members that dealt with similar addictive issues (43:10), if there’s someone that is doing an amazing job of becoming and being (45:10), the habits/tools he does to optimize his human experience (48:20), when he feels most alive (51:00), a word he would use to describe himself (54:10), if he has a religious or spiritual framework (55:20), why he’s going to climb Mount Kilimanjaro (58:30), the qualities super heroes have (1:00:00), what he does to make sure he’s becoming his own super hero (1:01:00), what he’s up to now (1:02:20), and where he hopes he is in ten years (1:08:20)

Thank you to David for coming on the podcast. We encourage you to follow the Adaptive Training Foundation on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Go to http://adaptivetrainingfoundation.org/ to check out their site that shows the rosters of the people that are training, and we encourage you to help this incredible mission.

Lastly, if you liked this episode and/or any others, please support us at Patreon or follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers.

Thanks for listening.

-Brian