May 14, 2024
Amputate Your Fear w/ John Register
“If we’re going to overcome anything, it’s our mindset around it. It is how fast we come to grips that life is not going to return to a previous state of existence.” Do you have a desire and/or need to overcome adversity in your life? John Register helps individuals overcome their fears and attack life’s obstacles in his motivational and inspirational speeches through a three-step process of reckoning, revision and renewal. Host Chris Meek welcomes John back to the program to illuminate the three step process of overcoming and to share more about his definition of “new normal” and how to come to terms with exactly what that means. A two-time Paralympian, Paralympic Games silver medalist and Persian Gulf War veteran, John learned how to amputate his own fears. Now he guides others as they begin to do the same, by encouraging them to discover the stories that reside within them and unlearn or relearn the things they already know. Catch up with John Register and better position yourself to amputate your fears!
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[music]
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Narrator: There are few things that make people successful. Taking a step forward to change their lives is one successful trait, but it takes some time to get there. How do you move forward to greet the success that awaits you? Welcome to Next Steps Forward with host Chris Meek. Each week, Chris brings on another guest who has successfully taken the next steps forward. Now here is Chris Meek.
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Chris Meek: Welcome to this week's episode of Next Steps Forward. I'm your host, Chris Meek. It's my pleasure to welcome back a guest whose first conversation with us was in January 2022. I can't believe it's been two-and-a-half years. As I said then, John Register is more than an inspirational speaker. His life story is an inspiration to all who strive to achieve their full potential, no matter what adversity we may face.
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John is a four-time track and field All-American at the University of Arkansas and a Paralympic Games silver medalist. He's a US Army veteran of the Persian Gulf War, a TEDx motivational speaker. He embraced a new normal in becoming an amputee following a misstep over hurdle while training for the 1996 Olympic Games after qualifying in the Olympic trials in 1988 and again in 1992. An Oak Park, Illinois native, John discovered how to "amputate" his fear of disability and founded the US Olympic Committee Military Support Program in the early 2000s. He's the author of 10 Power Stories to Impact Any Leader: Journal Your Way to Leadership Success. John Register, welcome back to Next Steps Forward.
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John Register: Chris, thank you so much for having me back on the show. I can't believe it's been that long as well. That's why I'm wearing the hat so you can't see all my gray.
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Chris: I should say, I think I had more hair up here and you had less gray down here. That's okay. You look great. Great to have you here. As you mentioned, it's been almost two-and-a-half years since you've been with us here in Next Steps Forward. Bring us up to speed on what you've been doing since then.
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John: Yes, thank you. Thanks for having me back again. One of the things I've been really working on is this model around Amputate to Amplify. It's an action model which begins with a reckoning moment, hurdling a revision, and then a renewal. As the acting CEO of the Amputee Coalition as well, I took on that role for about seven months to really look at how this action model worked in real life. I didn't take the job to do that. I just used the action model to see if it actually worked. A lot of times with professional speakers, we say a lot of stuff, but we don't know if it will work in business life or business practice.
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What this model really begins is, Chris, is talking about the reckoning moment is realizing that we do not give back what we desire to have back after some type of trauma incident has happened in our life. Once we realize this, then we're free to create something that's new, a new parallel path, a new vision can come up, so to speak. We have to then commit to that vision, and that's very difficult because there's some forces that hold us back from that commitment. Then finally, it goes into the renewal, and the renewal moment is all about beginning with this rebirth. Can we give ourselves space and grace to grow in the new?
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When I was with the Amputee Coalition as their acting CEO, we were going through some challenging times, and I just used this model to say, "Okay, this is where we are, folks. We're at a reckoning, and we have to do what we want to do, what we want this organization to be, who do we want to serve at the end of the day, and how are we going to get there? Let's cast a new vision on how we're going to do this. Is there a parallel path that we can see?"
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It's getting the right people in place, the right folks on the bus, right seats on the bus, and then seeing which way-- make sure the bus is headed in the right direction. Then finally, in the renewal piece of let's think about how we can actually make this run from this rebirth standpoint where everything is carte blanche, it's a new slate, and we can run it as we choose to do it through our new staff.
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That's one big thing that I have really been doing, and that worked out well until we got our new CEO in. I never wanted that position, so we have a new CEO. She's absolutely fantastic. We prepped the runway for the new person that's going to take over. The second thing I did was I was asked by the State Department, the US State Department, to represent the United States at the World Expo Dubai, which did not happen in 2020. It actually happened in 2021.
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My family and I went over to Dubai, and it was amazing to see all these countries and the new sustainable things that they were thinking about from a global perspective. It was an honor to represent the United States in talking about disability, disability employment, and the business case for disability, as well as some veteran programs as well. Then three is trying to determine what I want to do with the business of Inspired Communications International. That's always on the forefront of my mind. That's what's been up since the last time we spoke.
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Chris: Nothing much.
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John: Nothing much.
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[laughter]
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Chris: Unbelievable. I don't know how you do it all. One thing I have to ask, because I don't remember it from the last time you were on. This is for our viewers and our listeners. Is that a cello over your shoulder?
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John: It is a cello, yes.
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Chris: Is it just for looks, or do you play?
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John: Sort of both right now.
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[laughter]
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John: I played in high school. Actually, junior high school and high school, and my mother sold it to help me get through college. Then I bought another one. It was a going out of business sale, and I said, "I'm going to buy that cello," and I did. I take it down every once in a while and just scrub the strings a little bit. It's fun. I only play it by myself because no one else would want to hear me.
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Chris: [laughs] It's like me singing in the shower. I totally understand. John, many people have no idea or appreciation for their family history, while others respect, value, and learn from it in an effort to continue to carry that torch. I put you in the second group. Your dad was jailed in Hattiesburg, Mississippi in the 1960s to exercise his right to vote. An uncle, the Reverend Gloster Current, was the Deputy Executive Director of the NAACP. He played a key role in organizing the March in Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, and was the last person to speak to Medgar Evans before Evans was murdered by a white supremacist. As far as you're concerned, where does the John Register story begin?
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John: Oh, wow. Good question. Deep question. I don't know if I know where my story begins outside of activism in that sense. Those stories are so profound to me, because I really didn't understand or realize how profound they were at that time. I often will say to individuals when we're talking about voter registration, anybody that's trying to take a vote away from you is afraid that you will get the vote. We look at our amendments to the United States Constitution, and we talk about the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, and this really talks about that this was a time that African Americans in our country were given the right to vote, but we just were not able to exercise the right to vote after Reconstruction started happening.
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When I look at my dad and going to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and being jailed there with nine other white clergy, this is something that was important enough to sacrifice beyond yourself. When we look at leadership, and I call myself an inspirational business leader, what do we put on the table? What do we put on the plate that is greater than ourselves that we want to advance forward? That's one thing I'm learning from him.
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Then you can see in Hattiesburg now, he has a proclamation that was done by a judge who's a woman, African American, at the same place where he was jailed. We see progress coming up when people are able to exercise their authoritative right to vote. My uncle Gloster, I remember around the dinner table in Thanksgiving, and I'm a little tike. I don't really know all this stuff, but I'm processing it now. No one could talk around the table to argue a point unless they were able to argue the counterpoint. You had to know positions that people were taking, and then you could make a good case or an argument.
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In today's society, Chris, we have a lot of bubbles that are around. In other words, we just stay in our own little bubble, and we think that we're getting all the information, all the news from our own little ecosystem, and we're not. We have to do our best to be able to argue another person's point of view to actually understand their point of view. I think that's the biggest thing of what I begin to learn.
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My advocacy journey really is around disability. All groups, whatever they're trying to fight for, some type of civil rights, it really comes out of the African-American experience. While African Americans were trying to sit anywhere on the bus, people with disabilities were just trying to get on the bus. That's a different conversation, because that takes not just moving around a seat, but actually technology to let a bus lower itself to get a person with a wheelchair on or a person that might be blind or visually impaired. They might have a sound system to tell you what stops that you're coming up on so that everybody can add value to society, economic value to society. It's a rarity to find a person able to go in these days beyond a binary choice.
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We have to get out of our lazy thinking, having others think for us, and really help ourselves by going deeper into what we know. If I can use one more example, I'm a veteran as well, a disabled veteran, and a lot of people say to me, Chris, "Hey, thank you for your service." I love that because those are [unintelligible 00:10:28] uniform we served. I think a lot of times, because we don't do a lot of civics anymore, we have forgotten what that means. It means-- When I explain it to the person, when I ask them, "What do you mean by thank you for your service?" Most people say, "I want to thank you for going to war, protecting our freedoms."
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Our freedoms are really inside of a document. What I did my service for, what everybody did their service for, was to protect and defend the United States Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and I would bear true faith and allegiance to the same. The question I ask is, "When is the last time any of us has read the United States Constitution?" Why does it begin with, we the people of the United States, in the preamble, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote general welfare, all these things that we see in the preamble of the Constitution.
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We the people means that the power is supposed to lie with the people. That is what I think about, is how we can educate and bring people forward to exercise their rights inside of that document that is a living document. We have seven articles. Why is article number five the most important article, which leads us to the amendments? When you hear somebody saying out there, "You can't amend the Constitution."
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Well, actually, article five says you can. The ratification of it in article seven, and how many amendments do we have? What, we have 27 amendments. I think it's very important for us to know that the first 10 are known as the Bill of Rights. What does that mean? I won't go through the whole civics lessons on it, but it's important if we're going to argue a point to actually know the points that we are actually arguing. That's what I've learned from them as I continue that legacy forward from my dad and from my uncle.
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Chris: What a novel idea of understanding the other person's side of an argument.
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John: Novel.
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Chris: What a crazy idea. We need more of that out there in today's world, unfortunately.
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John: Absolutely.
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Chris: John, you went to the University of Arkansas on a track and field scholarship, so I'm guessing you've been an athlete for a while.
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John: Yes.
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Chris: When did you start running?
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John: Not anymore.
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Chris: Once an athlete, always an athlete.
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John: I'm a short jumper.
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[laughter]
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Chris: When did you start running and what drew you to the sport and its competitive nature?
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John: When did I start running? I started running in high school, and it was not of my own accord, I found out later. I was a very good baseball player, Chris. I was an exceptional baseball player. I played in the Junior PONY League because they wouldn't select me to the PONY because they already had the team selected. All they wanted people to do was just try out so they could raise revenue for the PONY League teams. The teams were already pre-selected. When I got to high school, I thought it would be my shot because I batted over 800 in the Junior PONY League, stole every base, stole home twice, and fielded every ball, threw a guy out from center field when I was playing center field, and I was playing first base. It wasn't on the same play, though. I did not play the ball.
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[laughter]
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Chris: You could, though.
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John: I could not run the ball. I got thrown into [unintelligible 00:14:03] base. Jack Kaiser was the baseball coach, brilliant baseball coach. Coming down the hallway my freshman year, he says, "Are you John Register?" I met him over in the hall way, and I said, "Yes, I am. Yes, Coach Kaiser." He said, "You're going to try out for the baseball team?" I said, "Oh, I'm going to try out this. I'm going to try out for the freshman team." He says, "I just want to let I'm not going to pick you."
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I was like, "What?" I'm like, "You haven't even seen me play. Why would you not even give me a chance to try out?" Now I'm processing all this stuff. This is after the fact. He went into all this stuff about you've got to be able to field and hit and run and all that. I'm like, "What is he talking about?" I found out later that he and the track and field coach had gotten together because I was so fast on the football field that they wanted me to run track. They moved me over to track and field instead of what I wanted to do, which was baseball.
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Now looking, going back on that harsh experience, whether I'm coaching somebody in sports, in the hurdles or I'm coaching somebody in business, I'm never forcing people to do what they don't want to do. I'm going to let them make their own decision, allow them to pick the sport, pick their path, pick their business, whatever they are looking for. I'm just there to support whatever choice that they that they want to make. That's when I started. I started out in track and I was a hurdler, went to the state championships in Illinois and wound up winning the state championship. That earned me a partial scholarship to the University of Arkansas.
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Chris: I mentioned earlier in the show, you're a four-time All-American. I don't imagine there are many four-time All-Americans in any sport, are there?
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John: I don't know. I can't really tell you. I know that there are more, way more than I was at Arkansas. We have the Michael Conley Sr. is one of the ones that recruited me to Arkansas. He was a multiple. I think he had nine NCAA, probably more than that.
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Chris: You all know each other? Do you have to wear a fancy jacket like the Masters or Super Bowl or the Hall of Fame?
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John: I got a ring.
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Chris: There you go.
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John: We're a part of a team, this is a great one for leadership is, we're a part of a team where John McDonnell, our coach, who passed away last year or a couple years ago, he was the most winningest coach in NCAA history in any sport with 42 national championships.
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Chris: Wow.
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John: Arguably, you can win the cross-country, indoor and outdoor track and field season. That's three. That's called a triple crown, winning them all in one year. He did that like three times. That's nine championships right there [unintelligible 00:17:05]. I was on the 1985 triple crown team where I earned two of my All-American honors that year. Mike was an individual who demonstrated, showcased excellence for me for what we could do in the coup de grace of track and field, which is the Olympic Games. We had at least three people, members of our team were on the staff who had just competed in the 1984 Olympic Games.
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Think about all that excellence that is around an individual, the standard, the benchmark. Just the right to show up is excellence. That's the starting place of where my mindset is when I talk about champion's mindset. It's not something that you just gain. You have to surround yourself with it because it's very difficult. It's easy to win the first one, but we're talking 42, which means that is a lifestyle of winning. That is a mindset when people are coming after you that you are so far innovating ahead of everyone else that you continue to win despite everybody coming after you.
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I think that's what we as, what I call myself as inspirational business leader, need to focus on is ensuring that the people you have around you on your teams are so good that second is never a question. This is how you're going to be a better first and win the contract again and again and again and again because you're providing such great service. Where we begin to lose it is when we start diluting ourselves of that first taste of that success. We want to make sure that we are always innovating and seeing what the new thing might be and how can that impact our business lines. Arkansas, being a four-time All-American was really about having a great source and great people surrounding me, and then later on as I could surround other individuals that were coming in after me to keep that success of tradition going.
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Chris: You mentioned that lifestyle of living. Did that just put pressure on you, or were those expectations push you to motivate you even more?
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John: I think the pressure, it comes from you don't want to let that environment down. Again, when you're living in that environment, you don't realize that's what you're doing. You're just executing at the highest level. It's just who you are. It's how you show up every day. It's not braggadocio, it's just your standard. I'll give you an example from a little bit later on in track and field to becoming a professional speaker.
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In track and field, when I started running the 400 meter hurdles, I knew pretty much what time I was going to run at the end of the day, at the end of the race. It was going to be probably between 49.8 and 50 seconds. [unintelligible 00:20:47] about 2.2 seconds of time differentiation. When I started speaking professionally, I was all over the map. I could knock it out of the park one day and the next day I was flatline, I bombed.
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I began asking myself, how can I put myself at an Arkansas level as a professional speaker? I began working on the craft and surrounding myself with people who were at exceptional levels. Once I had hired Les Brown, now I'm speaking on the stage with Les Brown. These are the people I want to surround myself with. I'm always thanking excellence, not for me, but for how I support and honor my client, because that's what I'm really trying to impress upon the most.
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Not even the client, it's the person that's brought me in because their job might be on the line if I succeed or not, because they're spending a lot of money to bring me in to shift the thinking possibly in an atmosphere so they can survive in their environment. I think we always just need to elevate on who are around. That means not being the smartest one in the room, having somebody cover our blind spots so that we can aggregately lift together.
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Chris: Let's go off the topic here for a second. You mentioned shifting the mindset when you go into an organization. That person or that group or that team has to understand and know that something's wrong if they're bringing in an outside coach, expert, whatever you want to call it, leader. If the situation is tense, how do you diffuse the situation with them trying to be defensive and saying, "I'm not doing anything wrong. We're doing is perfectly fine. I don't need this guy or this person telling me what to or not to do." How do you engage with an individual or team like that?
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John: That's a great question. The reason it's so good is-- I'm going to answer in two ways. One way is I won't go into an organization like that, because they're not ready to make the change. I work with business professionals who are ready to hurdle adversity, who are ready to amputate the fear. There's a distinction. They are what I call what you have set up in the reckoning moment. They still don't even know they got a problem. I can't help you until you find that you got a problem. That's one.
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If I'm there and I discover it, how I generally show up, I have a methodology of delivering a keynote or a training session that begins with a story, my story, a point to my story, my point to the story, and then the application to the audience. How do I flip it to their vernacular? Then when I flip it to their vernacular, we do an activity inside of that really quick off the bat so that they can see their blind spots. I'm never going to tell you the blind spot that you have. You need to discover it. My presentations are always for you to self-discover what's going on through my journey.
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I want to go deep and expose my failings, my shortcomings, so that you can see your failings and shortcomings faster. That's the only way that we can get through my contextual model is if you actually know that you got a problem. If not, we're going to have a gap between the solution and the problem. The gap is going to be your failure to see that you have a problem. That's, to me, that's not an environment that lends itself to success at the end of the day. It's just platitudes. I try my best not to get into the platitudes.
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Chris: I hope I didn't have you give too much of your secret sauce away there.
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John: No, it's all good. I teach it.
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Chris: [chuckles] Let's switch over to your military service. You didn't grow up wanting to serve in the Army or have a burning desire to become a soldier. In fact, I understand you were going to take a job in Mississippi after graduation when you saw a poster at an Army recruiter's office in a mall. What was so persuasive about that single poster that changed the course of your life?
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John: Nothing.
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[laughter]
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Chris: Uncle Sam, I want you.
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John: I saw the post, I want you. Go on, sign up. Nothing. I think it's all about what are the means to an end? We're in a volunteer service, right? We're in a volunteer Army. It's not that you have a 1A like in Vietnam that you get pulled for service and drafted in. The means to an end for me was to continue to run track and field. The job I had in Mississippi was-- it was going to be an entry-level position for a television station. I earned my degree as a graduate in the School of Communications in radio, television, programming and production.
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If I didn't find a way, I was going to give up my dream of trying to make the Olympic team and start working for this local NBC or ABC whatever affiliate in Mississippi. Walking through the mall that day, I saw the Air Force. The only other thing that would take me away from track and field was to fly aircraft. That's what I wanted to do. I took all the spatial testing for the Air Force and pass with flying colors until they gave me that dot test to see colors. I found out I was colorblind. I was like, "Oh man." Then I was dejected and walking through again.
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The Army said, "Hey, we don't care whether you're colorblind or not. I want to know if you lift a rifle up." The poster I saw was a world-class athlete program, Army sports poster and track and field. The recruiter said, "Yes, this is how you make that team. You can make this world-class athlete program team and train for two to three years prior to the next Olympic games." That caught my attention, because it became a means to an end.
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My girl for the time, Alice, who became my wife and I were pregnant with our son, John Jr. I said, "Oh, twofer, if I'm in the military, they'll pay for my kid to get here." I joined the Army for very selfish reasons. It wasn't until in South Carolina, Fort Jackson, I'm walking across the parade field, eyes right, and I'm looking at the military officers, and it dawned on me how many people had walked this same path that I was walking to protect and defend the United States Constitution. That's when I got it. That's when it hit me. That's when I wanted to be a lifer. Before I left that parade field, I knew I wanted to do 20 years in the military. I want to be a part of that legacy.
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It was like a ton of bricks that just bowled me over. I just got very, not just nostalgic about it, but I just understood, even though I was counted as three-fifths of a human when the Constitution began, the 15th, 16th, if that thing could be amended [chuckles] people, it could be amended. Now I can show up as my full authentic self, earn rank. I could see a pathway. I wanted to become a military officer. Before I joined, I didn't know if I would just want to even do four years. Operation Desert Shield, Desert Storm came up, and I served over there, as I said earlier. Even now, I'm supporting my niece, who is in right now. She's a parachute rigger in the Navy. She's just in under one year.
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The reason for joining is to understand that there's a purpose that is higher than oneself. It's to test one's mettle, to show your mettle. I call it showing your mettle. That's what we talk about as amputees. Don't hide who you are, show who you are, show up, so that you can learn that there's more in you than you actually think. To show you restraint on why war should always be a last resort. It's too easy for politicians these days to send troops into battle without anting up any of their children.
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Chris: I think you have to tell us your next book, my full authentic self.
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John: The full authentic self. There you go.
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Chris: I love that. Then also, you talk about showing your mettle, so I love that analogy. Then you mentioned about don't hide. I want to introduce you to, who's now a friend, but also a past guest, Ruth Rathblott who was born without a limb, and she's doing this whole unhiding as her thing. I just love this mindset.
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John: I know Ruth.
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Chris: Of course you do. Everyone knows Ruth, right? Everyone knows you.
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John: She's awesome.
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Chris: John, you served in active duty almost 30 years ago. Would you encourage young people to join the military today, and depending on your opinion, why or why not?
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John: Absolutely. I think I said a little bit earlier. I think there is a purpose higher than ourselves. I think that's the first reason. It's to test who you are, because a lot of times as we're coming out of high school or even college, we think we know who we are, but we really don't know who we are. We don't know our character until it's actually tested, until there's actually some stress on our character. If a person has received in high school all A's and they've never had a failure in their life, I'm really leery about those type of individuals, because the first time they have a failure, what are they going to do? How are they going to respond to it? Are they going to freak out and burn out? We don't know because there's no test that's been on it.
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In the military, you're always going to have some type of failure. You're going to have a failure in basic training because they're going to switch leaderships and they're going to fire you from a job so that at least you get a chance to fail. Even if you were doing a great job, you're going to fail. I think it's really good to understand your limitations, and understand that you can press beyond your limits. It's great to understand that not everybody gets a medal. Those things are earned. I use this analogy a lot now because I went to my first rodeo last year. They have this thing called mutton busting. Have you ever seen that, Chris? Mutton busting.
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They get these little tykes with these helmets on, and they dig their claws, their hands into these sheep. They hit the sheep on the hindquarters and they take off. Usually, after about 10 meters, the kid falls off. They just roll one side, they roll the other side and they fall off this thing. There's one little gal, she gets on, digs her hands into the sheep wool, and they hit the hindquarters, and they have to have the clowns or whatever the folks are to go chase after her because she goes all the way across the arena. She can't get off the thing. She's just floating off [unintelligible 00:32:31]. She's going all the way across the arena.
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I stood up. I'm applauding. I'm cheering because everybody else, all these little kids, these guys and girls falling off. When they came at the end of it for the awards, they all got the same award. I was like, "No, she gets the best award. She won." She went across the whole arena where everybody else-- How is it fair that she went across the whole arena and these other kids fell off at 5 meters, 10 meters and they get the same thing for the same effort? No, I disagree with that. I think the military teaches us that there is more to us and that we can be rewarded for what we have coming up next. That's how we make our rank. It's how well we are positioned in our potential for the next level of service that we have.
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Chris: I've been to one rodeo, it was the Houston rodeo about a decade or so ago. Similar to that, one thing I remember was they had kids ages probably 10 to 13, 14, and there were calves in there. You basically chased the calf, you roped it and you tied it up and that's what you took home that day. Everyone got the same prize, just a different calf.
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John: Different calf, right? If you caught the calf.
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Chris: If, exactly. Exactly.
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John: That's good. You can do that, right? You can get the calf, but you got to catch it. You got to catch your dinner. You didn't catch the calf, you don't get your dinner home.
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Chris: No dinner. No.
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John: You don't eat.
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Chris: John, just as we did in January of 2022, let's take some time to talk about a very difficult day. Your hurtling accident was absolutely horrific. You landed wrong and severed an artery that resulted in the amputation of your leg. I've never heard of an accident of that severity happening in track and field. Did you realize the severity of injury right away?
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John: Yes. I knew it was a severe injury on that day. To paint the picture, the gravity of the situation is because I was a world-class athlete. I had twice been to the Olympic trials, a four-time All-American. I've been to Operation Desert Shield, Desert Storm. I'm on my way to Officer Candidate School. USA Track and Field News has picked me as the one to watch for the 1996 Olympic game in the 400-meter hurdles, which is one time around the track over 10 obstacles spaced 35 meters apart.
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With the wind blowing hard that day, I'm having trouble with my steps. My right leg is coming up and my left leg is coming up. I'm ambidextrous. I can take the hurdle with either leg. It really doesn't matter. On this one particular pass, I go over the hurdle with my left leg leading, and when I come down, I just hear like this oak snap. It's like a mighty [makes sound]. As I fall forward, I see my left shin-- As I'm falling, I'm falling towards my right shoulder. I see my left shin pass in front of my face, and I hit the ground and I bounce to a halt. When I saw my leg dangling, looking like an elbow at the knee, crossing over my right leg, touching the surface of the black track, before the pain hit, I knew everything.
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I knew my Olympic dreams were over. I knew Officer Candidate School was over, and then that's when the pain hit. It was not just devastating from the standpoint of losing that, but it was more-- I think it was more just in the devastation of you got to do something else now. What's the next thing? The mind does some crazy stuff when you're in a situation like that. The pain's there, but I'm very coherent in my predicament. My military training kicked in. Don't give me water. Water might induce shock. I'm thirsty because I've been working out. I'm thinking about the next time I can actually get some water to not put me in shock.
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I was very conscious. I was conscious enough to know my wife's telephone number for Sergeant Swindell to give her a call to let her know what's happened, tell her I'm all right, I'm going to get to the hospital, but get my wife to me. Until the ambulance came about 90 minutes later, I was on that track with my team members singing songs and hymns to keep me calm on the track. That was the day. We're coming up on the anniversary, 30-year anniversary of it, which is May 17th, this year. It's 30 years ago. That was the new beginning. That could be looked at as a commitment, if we're talking that language, but I think the commitment more was in actually amputating the leg later on. In that moment, I knew I wasn't going to get up and start running again.
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Chris: In addition to knowing you weren't going to the Olympics, you began to question who you were. You mentioned what your future is going to be like now, whether you still have a job and whether your family would stay with you. You've mentioned your wife, Alice, a few times. She lifted you up during that time of doubt. How did she do that, and what did her support mean to you?
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John: Her support was-- It was another redefining moment for both of us. The military is very hard on families. In Presidio, San Francisco, when I was training the second time trying to make the Olympic team, she stood in food lines, bread lines, so that we'd have enough food because my E4 salary didn't cover enough for us to make it on the economy. They had a food pantry on base for service members. She would get that, and that would help us to get over the next week.
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With Operation Desert Shield, me going to all Army sports camps, and I think probably in our six years of marriage, we've probably been together three of those six. That was very difficult on a new couple. We didn't even know if we were going to make it as a couple at that time. For her to say in that moment that we're going to get through this together. Even at that time, we were geographically separated. I was stationed in Germany without command sponsorship, so I couldn't even bring my family with me, and she's working a job in West Memphis, Arkansas.
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Her saying that came on the same day that the job she was working in West Memphis, Arkansas at a nursing home, had called to fire her for being gone too long taking care of me with this injury I had. I found that out later. That company's like, "Thank you for your service, ma'am." Family serve. That was like another rebirth for us as well. I understood at that point in time who I had in a spouse. A lot of times in marriage we like the for better, we really don't want the for worse. We like the health, yes, I'm good with the sickness. We keep that. We want the richer, we don't really want the poor.
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Who do you have? Who do you say that you wanted? What do you want in a spouse? That really was the impetus for us rebirthing our marriage. Yes, it's not those gravy and rainbows and everything afterwards, we're married. We're two trying to become one, it's very difficult. Now we're at 35 years with this person who said, "It's just our new normal, we're going to get through this together." Everything has become our mantra, it's become our cry for every disagreement, every argument that we have, every time we don't see eye to eye on something, we'll get through this together, it's just our new normal. We can make it. I think that's been our rallying cry for our lives.
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Chris: Love that. You've shared the story about a conversation you had with someone who was telling you how you "overcame the loss of your leg." You replied that you didn't overcome the loss of your leg. You've had success as an athlete, a speaker, and an author since then. You've obviously shown extraordinary courage throughout all of this. You've lived a great life with Alice, since May 17th, as you mentioned, 1994, 30 years ago this Friday. Explain what you mean when you said you haven't overcome the loss of your leg and why that's an important distinction.
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John: Yes, that's profound. That was another defining, like, "Oh, right." One of these moments that was an aha moment, because I could not articulate when I first started speaking what the difference was, because I didn't know a difference. I was just saying what everybody else was saying. We just got to overcome the adversity. You just have to have grit. You just got to pull yourself up. You just got to move up. I was like, "There's something else." Yes, those things are necessary. Yes, we have to have resilience and grit and all this, but there's something else. There's an honoring that we don't really overcome what we've overcome.
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I said to my friend that day, I was about to do a TEDx speech, and he was trying to talk me into staying in the TEDx, because I was about to pull myself out, because I wasn't saying anything else, I wasn't saying anything. I was saying platitudes, like, "How'd you overcome the adversity, John? It was my faith, it was my family, it was my freedom." No, it was my faith, my family, my friendships that equaled my freedom.
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[laughter]
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John: What are you talking about? I need help here, what are you talking about? You just got to have grit, you just got to grit through it. What are you saying? How do this? I realized when we were having this heated discussion, and I blurted out after he said, "But you overcame so much, you overcame the amputation of your leg. I said, "I didn't, because had I overcome my amputation, I'd have my leg back." I was like, "Oh." We both sat back, right. We were like, "Oh, right." It was so obvious, but not, because we think, and people were saying to me, "You've overcome the amputation," and I had not overcome the amputation, because if I did, I'd have my leg back.
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What was it then that I overcame? It was my mindset that told me that is what I overcame. It was my mindset that said, who told me that this was something to be overcome? Who told me that my wife might leave me because of this amputation? Who told me that? Who told me that I'm now looked upon differently because of my disability? Why am I believing this? What's going on? Why am I believing this? It's our mindset around the things that people tell us, and it's other people who believe for us what we can or cannot do, which is often based upon what they believe they could or could not do if they were in our situation. That's what we overcome.
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We overcome the person that tells us that you'll never run again because of you're now using an artificial leg. We overcome society. Who told me in society that I was less than? I watched the Walt Disney movie Captain Hook, and Peter Pan, he's the villain, he's the antagonist. He's the man above the wrist amputee, had his arm bit off by Tick-Tock the crocodile. He's scaring the Lost Boys in the movie. Disney and other movies have showed us that people with disfigurements are the villain. I have to overcome my mindset of what society has dictated to me is now I'm a villain. Even in my own skin as a person of color, black man and living in America.
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Everyone that sees on television at night on the news or in the media or in the movie theaters, what's the nomenclature that comes up? What's my stereotype? What's my archetype that people see of me? That's what I have to overcome. Despite what others are saying, what other people think, I know how I can show up. That's the commitment to the new vision that I talk about. The commitment that despite what society says, despite what other people say, I can still show up as my full authentic self, and I'm okay with that. Once I make that commitment, I'm now in the rebirth of the renewal process, which is exceptionally. It's very hard to be there.
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Most people can't get there. They think they're there when they're actually in the reckoning moment, because they think they can go back to the way it used to be. When the doctor, Chris, took my leg off, I don't get my leg back. That's a commitment. That's the commitment. Answering your question, that encompasses this whole thought process of what I now teach to business leaders who are ready to commit to that thinking that, yes, it's not really about what happened in 2019 and going back to those levels.
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Can you honor where we are right now? Can you honor that someone had to watch their loved one die behind a plexiglass window during the pandemic? Can you honor the space in the global economy that there was a whole country that was wiped out during this? Can we honor that? Is that really affecting our supply chain? Can we honor the fact that so many pilots quit and left their jobs? Now when you're trying to run for your flight and your flight's delayed or canceled because they didn't have enough pilots to backfill, can we honor that space so that we are in a new environment? I think that's what we have to look at when we're talking about this new and the new normal environment.
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Chris: Your book is titled 10 Power Stories to Impact Any Leader: Journal Your Way to Leadership Success. Is this book just for people who run groups or businesses, or should we consider that all leaders or can be a leader?
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John: I'll tell you why the book was written, and then I'll let you all answer that question. It was written-- Secretary Mike Pompeo asked me right before the pandemic, I think it was on February 27th, to come speak at the chief of missions dinner for all of our United States ambassadors. If anything about our ambassadors, half of them are career people and half are appointees. We're in a space where the pandemic is spreading around the world. The career ambassadors are being asked to leave their post and take the expats with them back home because the countries are shutting down. We, in America, don't know if it's going to happen yet. We've got to follow the policies of the administration.
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They can't get their expats back to countries like Germany or France or England because those countries are shut down and they're not allowing people to travel through. Now it's shelter in place in those locations and they're seeing death at their doorstep. While in America, we're trying to figure out, is Florida going to shut down or is Texas going to stay open, and all these things. How do you-- The book was written as a leadership book. It doesn't matter if you're right or left. How do you lead in that environment? That's what I saw. I saw we're about to shut down in America. How do you lead?
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I gave 10 of my own stories that I usually don't share from the stage and the lesson I learned from each one of those stories, the lesson I learned. Then at the end of each chapter is a challenge, for whatever you heard in that story, write that down for your own story, so that you will have, at the end of the book, 10 stories, power stories of your own, that you can now use to lead when crisis comes up. That's why I wrote the book. That's why I put it really quick on Amazon, and did it myself, and just to get it into their hands. Whether it would help or not, this was my offering to try to help in that space.
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Now, it's in a paperback. You can do the same thing. You can read the stories. It's not a hard read. It's very simple. It's very simplistic. I wrote it really fast, so don't judge the book like that. Just look at the stories that are there, and does it help you? That's what I want to do. It can be for folks. I just did a whole thing on it right now. I went through chapter by chapter, what I was thinking about the book, and we have other things that you can get involved with now in a leadership group that we are running to help you individually or as a collective.
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Chris: John, we have just a few minutes left. How can people in the audience find your book, and how can they reach you for speaking events?
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John: The best way for both of those is go to my website, johnregister.com, common spelling J-O-H-N, cash register, R-E-G-I-S-T-E-R, johnregister.com, and you'll find that's on there as well. I did say, Chris, that we do have the 90-day leadership sprints that are going on. We just started it based upon the community that I was interacting with. During my keynote speeches, they said they wanted to stay connected, and so around the globe, we are starting to build a community. It's very small right now, very nominal fee to get into it, but I think we always have to have some skin in the game.
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I learned this in the BOSS program, Better Opportunity for Single Soldiers program, that we had one night, free hot dogs. No one came. We said, hot dogs, $1. Everybody came, bought all the hot dogs. There has to be some type of value and skin in the game, I believe, all the time when we really try to learn. I put it at this very light fee. Come on into that group. It's an amazing community. Like I said, it's very small right now, but we're growing.
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Chris: John Register, as always, thank you so much for being with us today. It was a real pleasure and honor seeing you again.
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John: Thanks, Chris, enjoyed it.
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Chris: Thank you to our audience, which now includes people in over 50 countries, for joining us for another episode of Next Steps Forward. I'm Chris Meek. For more details on upcoming shows and guests, please follow me on Facebook at facebook.com/ChrisMeekPublicFigure and an X at ChrisMeek_USA. We'll be back next Tuesday, same time, same place, with another leader from the world of business, politics, public policy, sports, or entertainment. Until then, stay safe and keep taking your next steps forward.
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Narrator: Thanks for tuning in to Next Steps Forward. Be sure to join Chris Meek for another great show next Tuesday at 10:00 AM Pacific Time and 1:00 PM Eastern Time on the Voice America Empowerment Channel. This week, make things happen in your life.
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Narrator: There are few things that make people successful. Taking a step forward to change their lives is one successful trait, but it takes some time to get there. How do you move forward to greet the success that awaits you? Welcome to Next Steps Forward with host Chris Meek. Each week, Chris brings on another guest who has successfully taken the next steps forward. Now here is Chris Meek.
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Chris Meek: Welcome to this week's episode of Next Steps Forward. I'm your host, Chris Meek. It's my pleasure to welcome back a guest whose first conversation with us was in January 2022. I can't believe it's been two-and-a-half years. As I said then, John Register is more than an inspirational speaker. His life story is an inspiration to all who strive to achieve their full potential, no matter what adversity we may face.
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John is a four-time track and field All-American at the University of Arkansas and a Paralympic Games silver medalist. He's a US Army veteran of the Persian Gulf War, a TEDx motivational speaker. He embraced a new normal in becoming an amputee following a misstep over hurdle while training for the 1996 Olympic Games after qualifying in the Olympic trials in 1988 and again in 1992. An Oak Park, Illinois native, John discovered how to "amputate" his fear of disability and founded the US Olympic Committee Military Support Program in the early 2000s. He's the author of 10 Power Stories to Impact Any Leader: Journal Your Way to Leadership Success. John Register, welcome back to Next Steps Forward.
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John Register: Chris, thank you so much for having me back on the show. I can't believe it's been that long as well. That's why I'm wearing the hat so you can't see all my gray.
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Chris: I should say, I think I had more hair up here and you had less gray down here. That's okay. You look great. Great to have you here. As you mentioned, it's been almost two-and-a-half years since you've been with us here in Next Steps Forward. Bring us up to speed on what you've been doing since then.
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John: Yes, thank you. Thanks for having me back again. One of the things I've been really working on is this model around Amputate to Amplify. It's an action model which begins with a reckoning moment, hurdling a revision, and then a renewal. As the acting CEO of the Amputee Coalition as well, I took on that role for about seven months to really look at how this action model worked in real life. I didn't take the job to do that. I just used the action model to see if it actually worked. A lot of times with professional speakers, we say a lot of stuff, but we don't know if it will work in business life or business practice.
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What this model really begins is, Chris, is talking about the reckoning moment is realizing that we do not give back what we desire to have back after some type of trauma incident has happened in our life. Once we realize this, then we're free to create something that's new, a new parallel path, a new vision can come up, so to speak. We have to then commit to that vision, and that's very difficult because there's some forces that hold us back from that commitment. Then finally, it goes into the renewal, and the renewal moment is all about beginning with this rebirth. Can we give ourselves space and grace to grow in the new?
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When I was with the Amputee Coalition as their acting CEO, we were going through some challenging times, and I just used this model to say, "Okay, this is where we are, folks. We're at a reckoning, and we have to do what we want to do, what we want this organization to be, who do we want to serve at the end of the day, and how are we going to get there? Let's cast a new vision on how we're going to do this. Is there a parallel path that we can see?"
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It's getting the right people in place, the right folks on the bus, right seats on the bus, and then seeing which way-- make sure the bus is headed in the right direction. Then finally, in the renewal piece of let's think about how we can actually make this run from this rebirth standpoint where everything is carte blanche, it's a new slate, and we can run it as we choose to do it through our new staff.
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That's one big thing that I have really been doing, and that worked out well until we got our new CEO in. I never wanted that position, so we have a new CEO. She's absolutely fantastic. We prepped the runway for the new person that's going to take over. The second thing I did was I was asked by the State Department, the US State Department, to represent the United States at the World Expo Dubai, which did not happen in 2020. It actually happened in 2021.
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My family and I went over to Dubai, and it was amazing to see all these countries and the new sustainable things that they were thinking about from a global perspective. It was an honor to represent the United States in talking about disability, disability employment, and the business case for disability, as well as some veteran programs as well. Then three is trying to determine what I want to do with the business of Inspired Communications International. That's always on the forefront of my mind. That's what's been up since the last time we spoke.
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Chris: Nothing much.
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John: Nothing much.
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[laughter]
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Chris: Unbelievable. I don't know how you do it all. One thing I have to ask, because I don't remember it from the last time you were on. This is for our viewers and our listeners. Is that a cello over your shoulder?
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John: It is a cello, yes.
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Chris: Is it just for looks, or do you play?
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John: Sort of both right now.
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[laughter]
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John: I played in high school. Actually, junior high school and high school, and my mother sold it to help me get through college. Then I bought another one. It was a going out of business sale, and I said, "I'm going to buy that cello," and I did. I take it down every once in a while and just scrub the strings a little bit. It's fun. I only play it by myself because no one else would want to hear me.
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Chris: [laughs] It's like me singing in the shower. I totally understand. John, many people have no idea or appreciation for their family history, while others respect, value, and learn from it in an effort to continue to carry that torch. I put you in the second group. Your dad was jailed in Hattiesburg, Mississippi in the 1960s to exercise his right to vote. An uncle, the Reverend Gloster Current, was the Deputy Executive Director of the NAACP. He played a key role in organizing the March in Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, and was the last person to speak to Medgar Evans before Evans was murdered by a white supremacist. As far as you're concerned, where does the John Register story begin?
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John: Oh, wow. Good question. Deep question. I don't know if I know where my story begins outside of activism in that sense. Those stories are so profound to me, because I really didn't understand or realize how profound they were at that time. I often will say to individuals when we're talking about voter registration, anybody that's trying to take a vote away from you is afraid that you will get the vote. We look at our amendments to the United States Constitution, and we talk about the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, and this really talks about that this was a time that African Americans in our country were given the right to vote, but we just were not able to exercise the right to vote after Reconstruction started happening.
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When I look at my dad and going to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and being jailed there with nine other white clergy, this is something that was important enough to sacrifice beyond yourself. When we look at leadership, and I call myself an inspirational business leader, what do we put on the table? What do we put on the plate that is greater than ourselves that we want to advance forward? That's one thing I'm learning from him.
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Then you can see in Hattiesburg now, he has a proclamation that was done by a judge who's a woman, African American, at the same place where he was jailed. We see progress coming up when people are able to exercise their authoritative right to vote. My uncle Gloster, I remember around the dinner table in Thanksgiving, and I'm a little tike. I don't really know all this stuff, but I'm processing it now. No one could talk around the table to argue a point unless they were able to argue the counterpoint. You had to know positions that people were taking, and then you could make a good case or an argument.
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In today's society, Chris, we have a lot of bubbles that are around. In other words, we just stay in our own little bubble, and we think that we're getting all the information, all the news from our own little ecosystem, and we're not. We have to do our best to be able to argue another person's point of view to actually understand their point of view. I think that's the biggest thing of what I begin to learn.
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My advocacy journey really is around disability. All groups, whatever they're trying to fight for, some type of civil rights, it really comes out of the African-American experience. While African Americans were trying to sit anywhere on the bus, people with disabilities were just trying to get on the bus. That's a different conversation, because that takes not just moving around a seat, but actually technology to let a bus lower itself to get a person with a wheelchair on or a person that might be blind or visually impaired. They might have a sound system to tell you what stops that you're coming up on so that everybody can add value to society, economic value to society. It's a rarity to find a person able to go in these days beyond a binary choice.
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We have to get out of our lazy thinking, having others think for us, and really help ourselves by going deeper into what we know. If I can use one more example, I'm a veteran as well, a disabled veteran, and a lot of people say to me, Chris, "Hey, thank you for your service." I love that because those are [unintelligible 00:10:28] uniform we served. I think a lot of times, because we don't do a lot of civics anymore, we have forgotten what that means. It means-- When I explain it to the person, when I ask them, "What do you mean by thank you for your service?" Most people say, "I want to thank you for going to war, protecting our freedoms."
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Our freedoms are really inside of a document. What I did my service for, what everybody did their service for, was to protect and defend the United States Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and I would bear true faith and allegiance to the same. The question I ask is, "When is the last time any of us has read the United States Constitution?" Why does it begin with, we the people of the United States, in the preamble, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote general welfare, all these things that we see in the preamble of the Constitution.
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We the people means that the power is supposed to lie with the people. That is what I think about, is how we can educate and bring people forward to exercise their rights inside of that document that is a living document. We have seven articles. Why is article number five the most important article, which leads us to the amendments? When you hear somebody saying out there, "You can't amend the Constitution."
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Well, actually, article five says you can. The ratification of it in article seven, and how many amendments do we have? What, we have 27 amendments. I think it's very important for us to know that the first 10 are known as the Bill of Rights. What does that mean? I won't go through the whole civics lessons on it, but it's important if we're going to argue a point to actually know the points that we are actually arguing. That's what I've learned from them as I continue that legacy forward from my dad and from my uncle.
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Chris: What a novel idea of understanding the other person's side of an argument.
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John: Novel.
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Chris: What a crazy idea. We need more of that out there in today's world, unfortunately.
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John: Absolutely.
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Chris: John, you went to the University of Arkansas on a track and field scholarship, so I'm guessing you've been an athlete for a while.
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John: Yes.
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Chris: When did you start running?
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John: Not anymore.
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Chris: Once an athlete, always an athlete.
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John: I'm a short jumper.
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[laughter]
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Chris: When did you start running and what drew you to the sport and its competitive nature?
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John: When did I start running? I started running in high school, and it was not of my own accord, I found out later. I was a very good baseball player, Chris. I was an exceptional baseball player. I played in the Junior PONY League because they wouldn't select me to the PONY because they already had the team selected. All they wanted people to do was just try out so they could raise revenue for the PONY League teams. The teams were already pre-selected. When I got to high school, I thought it would be my shot because I batted over 800 in the Junior PONY League, stole every base, stole home twice, and fielded every ball, threw a guy out from center field when I was playing center field, and I was playing first base. It wasn't on the same play, though. I did not play the ball.
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[laughter]
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Chris: You could, though.
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John: I could not run the ball. I got thrown into [unintelligible 00:14:03] base. Jack Kaiser was the baseball coach, brilliant baseball coach. Coming down the hallway my freshman year, he says, "Are you John Register?" I met him over in the hall way, and I said, "Yes, I am. Yes, Coach Kaiser." He said, "You're going to try out for the baseball team?" I said, "Oh, I'm going to try out this. I'm going to try out for the freshman team." He says, "I just want to let I'm not going to pick you."
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I was like, "What?" I'm like, "You haven't even seen me play. Why would you not even give me a chance to try out?" Now I'm processing all this stuff. This is after the fact. He went into all this stuff about you've got to be able to field and hit and run and all that. I'm like, "What is he talking about?" I found out later that he and the track and field coach had gotten together because I was so fast on the football field that they wanted me to run track. They moved me over to track and field instead of what I wanted to do, which was baseball.
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Now looking, going back on that harsh experience, whether I'm coaching somebody in sports, in the hurdles or I'm coaching somebody in business, I'm never forcing people to do what they don't want to do. I'm going to let them make their own decision, allow them to pick the sport, pick their path, pick their business, whatever they are looking for. I'm just there to support whatever choice that they that they want to make. That's when I started. I started out in track and I was a hurdler, went to the state championships in Illinois and wound up winning the state championship. That earned me a partial scholarship to the University of Arkansas.
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Chris: I mentioned earlier in the show, you're a four-time All-American. I don't imagine there are many four-time All-Americans in any sport, are there?
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John: I don't know. I can't really tell you. I know that there are more, way more than I was at Arkansas. We have the Michael Conley Sr. is one of the ones that recruited me to Arkansas. He was a multiple. I think he had nine NCAA, probably more than that.
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Chris: You all know each other? Do you have to wear a fancy jacket like the Masters or Super Bowl or the Hall of Fame?
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John: I got a ring.
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Chris: There you go.
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John: We're a part of a team, this is a great one for leadership is, we're a part of a team where John McDonnell, our coach, who passed away last year or a couple years ago, he was the most winningest coach in NCAA history in any sport with 42 national championships.
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Chris: Wow.
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John: Arguably, you can win the cross-country, indoor and outdoor track and field season. That's three. That's called a triple crown, winning them all in one year. He did that like three times. That's nine championships right there [unintelligible 00:17:05]. I was on the 1985 triple crown team where I earned two of my All-American honors that year. Mike was an individual who demonstrated, showcased excellence for me for what we could do in the coup de grace of track and field, which is the Olympic Games. We had at least three people, members of our team were on the staff who had just competed in the 1984 Olympic Games.
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Think about all that excellence that is around an individual, the standard, the benchmark. Just the right to show up is excellence. That's the starting place of where my mindset is when I talk about champion's mindset. It's not something that you just gain. You have to surround yourself with it because it's very difficult. It's easy to win the first one, but we're talking 42, which means that is a lifestyle of winning. That is a mindset when people are coming after you that you are so far innovating ahead of everyone else that you continue to win despite everybody coming after you.
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I think that's what we as, what I call myself as inspirational business leader, need to focus on is ensuring that the people you have around you on your teams are so good that second is never a question. This is how you're going to be a better first and win the contract again and again and again and again because you're providing such great service. Where we begin to lose it is when we start diluting ourselves of that first taste of that success. We want to make sure that we are always innovating and seeing what the new thing might be and how can that impact our business lines. Arkansas, being a four-time All-American was really about having a great source and great people surrounding me, and then later on as I could surround other individuals that were coming in after me to keep that success of tradition going.
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Chris: You mentioned that lifestyle of living. Did that just put pressure on you, or were those expectations push you to motivate you even more?
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John: I think the pressure, it comes from you don't want to let that environment down. Again, when you're living in that environment, you don't realize that's what you're doing. You're just executing at the highest level. It's just who you are. It's how you show up every day. It's not braggadocio, it's just your standard. I'll give you an example from a little bit later on in track and field to becoming a professional speaker.
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In track and field, when I started running the 400 meter hurdles, I knew pretty much what time I was going to run at the end of the day, at the end of the race. It was going to be probably between 49.8 and 50 seconds. [unintelligible 00:20:47] about 2.2 seconds of time differentiation. When I started speaking professionally, I was all over the map. I could knock it out of the park one day and the next day I was flatline, I bombed.
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I began asking myself, how can I put myself at an Arkansas level as a professional speaker? I began working on the craft and surrounding myself with people who were at exceptional levels. Once I had hired Les Brown, now I'm speaking on the stage with Les Brown. These are the people I want to surround myself with. I'm always thanking excellence, not for me, but for how I support and honor my client, because that's what I'm really trying to impress upon the most.
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Not even the client, it's the person that's brought me in because their job might be on the line if I succeed or not, because they're spending a lot of money to bring me in to shift the thinking possibly in an atmosphere so they can survive in their environment. I think we always just need to elevate on who are around. That means not being the smartest one in the room, having somebody cover our blind spots so that we can aggregately lift together.
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Chris: Let's go off the topic here for a second. You mentioned shifting the mindset when you go into an organization. That person or that group or that team has to understand and know that something's wrong if they're bringing in an outside coach, expert, whatever you want to call it, leader. If the situation is tense, how do you diffuse the situation with them trying to be defensive and saying, "I'm not doing anything wrong. We're doing is perfectly fine. I don't need this guy or this person telling me what to or not to do." How do you engage with an individual or team like that?
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John: That's a great question. The reason it's so good is-- I'm going to answer in two ways. One way is I won't go into an organization like that, because they're not ready to make the change. I work with business professionals who are ready to hurdle adversity, who are ready to amputate the fear. There's a distinction. They are what I call what you have set up in the reckoning moment. They still don't even know they got a problem. I can't help you until you find that you got a problem. That's one.
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If I'm there and I discover it, how I generally show up, I have a methodology of delivering a keynote or a training session that begins with a story, my story, a point to my story, my point to the story, and then the application to the audience. How do I flip it to their vernacular? Then when I flip it to their vernacular, we do an activity inside of that really quick off the bat so that they can see their blind spots. I'm never going to tell you the blind spot that you have. You need to discover it. My presentations are always for you to self-discover what's going on through my journey.
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I want to go deep and expose my failings, my shortcomings, so that you can see your failings and shortcomings faster. That's the only way that we can get through my contextual model is if you actually know that you got a problem. If not, we're going to have a gap between the solution and the problem. The gap is going to be your failure to see that you have a problem. That's, to me, that's not an environment that lends itself to success at the end of the day. It's just platitudes. I try my best not to get into the platitudes.
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Chris: I hope I didn't have you give too much of your secret sauce away there.
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John: No, it's all good. I teach it.
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Chris: [chuckles] Let's switch over to your military service. You didn't grow up wanting to serve in the Army or have a burning desire to become a soldier. In fact, I understand you were going to take a job in Mississippi after graduation when you saw a poster at an Army recruiter's office in a mall. What was so persuasive about that single poster that changed the course of your life?
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John: Nothing.
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[laughter]
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Chris: Uncle Sam, I want you.
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John: I saw the post, I want you. Go on, sign up. Nothing. I think it's all about what are the means to an end? We're in a volunteer service, right? We're in a volunteer Army. It's not that you have a 1A like in Vietnam that you get pulled for service and drafted in. The means to an end for me was to continue to run track and field. The job I had in Mississippi was-- it was going to be an entry-level position for a television station. I earned my degree as a graduate in the School of Communications in radio, television, programming and production.
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If I didn't find a way, I was going to give up my dream of trying to make the Olympic team and start working for this local NBC or ABC whatever affiliate in Mississippi. Walking through the mall that day, I saw the Air Force. The only other thing that would take me away from track and field was to fly aircraft. That's what I wanted to do. I took all the spatial testing for the Air Force and pass with flying colors until they gave me that dot test to see colors. I found out I was colorblind. I was like, "Oh man." Then I was dejected and walking through again.
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The Army said, "Hey, we don't care whether you're colorblind or not. I want to know if you lift a rifle up." The poster I saw was a world-class athlete program, Army sports poster and track and field. The recruiter said, "Yes, this is how you make that team. You can make this world-class athlete program team and train for two to three years prior to the next Olympic games." That caught my attention, because it became a means to an end.
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My girl for the time, Alice, who became my wife and I were pregnant with our son, John Jr. I said, "Oh, twofer, if I'm in the military, they'll pay for my kid to get here." I joined the Army for very selfish reasons. It wasn't until in South Carolina, Fort Jackson, I'm walking across the parade field, eyes right, and I'm looking at the military officers, and it dawned on me how many people had walked this same path that I was walking to protect and defend the United States Constitution. That's when I got it. That's when it hit me. That's when I wanted to be a lifer. Before I left that parade field, I knew I wanted to do 20 years in the military. I want to be a part of that legacy.
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It was like a ton of bricks that just bowled me over. I just got very, not just nostalgic about it, but I just understood, even though I was counted as three-fifths of a human when the Constitution began, the 15th, 16th, if that thing could be amended [chuckles] people, it could be amended. Now I can show up as my full authentic self, earn rank. I could see a pathway. I wanted to become a military officer. Before I joined, I didn't know if I would just want to even do four years. Operation Desert Shield, Desert Storm came up, and I served over there, as I said earlier. Even now, I'm supporting my niece, who is in right now. She's a parachute rigger in the Navy. She's just in under one year.
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The reason for joining is to understand that there's a purpose that is higher than oneself. It's to test one's mettle, to show your mettle. I call it showing your mettle. That's what we talk about as amputees. Don't hide who you are, show who you are, show up, so that you can learn that there's more in you than you actually think. To show you restraint on why war should always be a last resort. It's too easy for politicians these days to send troops into battle without anting up any of their children.
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Chris: I think you have to tell us your next book, my full authentic self.
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John: The full authentic self. There you go.
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Chris: I love that. Then also, you talk about showing your mettle, so I love that analogy. Then you mentioned about don't hide. I want to introduce you to, who's now a friend, but also a past guest, Ruth Rathblott who was born without a limb, and she's doing this whole unhiding as her thing. I just love this mindset.
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John: I know Ruth.
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Chris: Of course you do. Everyone knows Ruth, right? Everyone knows you.
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John: She's awesome.
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Chris: John, you served in active duty almost 30 years ago. Would you encourage young people to join the military today, and depending on your opinion, why or why not?
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John: Absolutely. I think I said a little bit earlier. I think there is a purpose higher than ourselves. I think that's the first reason. It's to test who you are, because a lot of times as we're coming out of high school or even college, we think we know who we are, but we really don't know who we are. We don't know our character until it's actually tested, until there's actually some stress on our character. If a person has received in high school all A's and they've never had a failure in their life, I'm really leery about those type of individuals, because the first time they have a failure, what are they going to do? How are they going to respond to it? Are they going to freak out and burn out? We don't know because there's no test that's been on it.
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In the military, you're always going to have some type of failure. You're going to have a failure in basic training because they're going to switch leaderships and they're going to fire you from a job so that at least you get a chance to fail. Even if you were doing a great job, you're going to fail. I think it's really good to understand your limitations, and understand that you can press beyond your limits. It's great to understand that not everybody gets a medal. Those things are earned. I use this analogy a lot now because I went to my first rodeo last year. They have this thing called mutton busting. Have you ever seen that, Chris? Mutton busting.
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They get these little tykes with these helmets on, and they dig their claws, their hands into these sheep. They hit the sheep on the hindquarters and they take off. Usually, after about 10 meters, the kid falls off. They just roll one side, they roll the other side and they fall off this thing. There's one little gal, she gets on, digs her hands into the sheep wool, and they hit the hindquarters, and they have to have the clowns or whatever the folks are to go chase after her because she goes all the way across the arena. She can't get off the thing. She's just floating off [unintelligible 00:32:31]. She's going all the way across the arena.
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I stood up. I'm applauding. I'm cheering because everybody else, all these little kids, these guys and girls falling off. When they came at the end of it for the awards, they all got the same award. I was like, "No, she gets the best award. She won." She went across the whole arena where everybody else-- How is it fair that she went across the whole arena and these other kids fell off at 5 meters, 10 meters and they get the same thing for the same effort? No, I disagree with that. I think the military teaches us that there is more to us and that we can be rewarded for what we have coming up next. That's how we make our rank. It's how well we are positioned in our potential for the next level of service that we have.
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Chris: I've been to one rodeo, it was the Houston rodeo about a decade or so ago. Similar to that, one thing I remember was they had kids ages probably 10 to 13, 14, and there were calves in there. You basically chased the calf, you roped it and you tied it up and that's what you took home that day. Everyone got the same prize, just a different calf.
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John: Different calf, right? If you caught the calf.
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Chris: If, exactly. Exactly.
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John: That's good. You can do that, right? You can get the calf, but you got to catch it. You got to catch your dinner. You didn't catch the calf, you don't get your dinner home.
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Chris: No dinner. No.
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John: You don't eat.
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Chris: John, just as we did in January of 2022, let's take some time to talk about a very difficult day. Your hurtling accident was absolutely horrific. You landed wrong and severed an artery that resulted in the amputation of your leg. I've never heard of an accident of that severity happening in track and field. Did you realize the severity of injury right away?
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John: Yes. I knew it was a severe injury on that day. To paint the picture, the gravity of the situation is because I was a world-class athlete. I had twice been to the Olympic trials, a four-time All-American. I've been to Operation Desert Shield, Desert Storm. I'm on my way to Officer Candidate School. USA Track and Field News has picked me as the one to watch for the 1996 Olympic game in the 400-meter hurdles, which is one time around the track over 10 obstacles spaced 35 meters apart.
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With the wind blowing hard that day, I'm having trouble with my steps. My right leg is coming up and my left leg is coming up. I'm ambidextrous. I can take the hurdle with either leg. It really doesn't matter. On this one particular pass, I go over the hurdle with my left leg leading, and when I come down, I just hear like this oak snap. It's like a mighty [makes sound]. As I fall forward, I see my left shin-- As I'm falling, I'm falling towards my right shoulder. I see my left shin pass in front of my face, and I hit the ground and I bounce to a halt. When I saw my leg dangling, looking like an elbow at the knee, crossing over my right leg, touching the surface of the black track, before the pain hit, I knew everything.
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I knew my Olympic dreams were over. I knew Officer Candidate School was over, and then that's when the pain hit. It was not just devastating from the standpoint of losing that, but it was more-- I think it was more just in the devastation of you got to do something else now. What's the next thing? The mind does some crazy stuff when you're in a situation like that. The pain's there, but I'm very coherent in my predicament. My military training kicked in. Don't give me water. Water might induce shock. I'm thirsty because I've been working out. I'm thinking about the next time I can actually get some water to not put me in shock.
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I was very conscious. I was conscious enough to know my wife's telephone number for Sergeant Swindell to give her a call to let her know what's happened, tell her I'm all right, I'm going to get to the hospital, but get my wife to me. Until the ambulance came about 90 minutes later, I was on that track with my team members singing songs and hymns to keep me calm on the track. That was the day. We're coming up on the anniversary, 30-year anniversary of it, which is May 17th, this year. It's 30 years ago. That was the new beginning. That could be looked at as a commitment, if we're talking that language, but I think the commitment more was in actually amputating the leg later on. In that moment, I knew I wasn't going to get up and start running again.
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Chris: In addition to knowing you weren't going to the Olympics, you began to question who you were. You mentioned what your future is going to be like now, whether you still have a job and whether your family would stay with you. You've mentioned your wife, Alice, a few times. She lifted you up during that time of doubt. How did she do that, and what did her support mean to you?
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John: Her support was-- It was another redefining moment for both of us. The military is very hard on families. In Presidio, San Francisco, when I was training the second time trying to make the Olympic team, she stood in food lines, bread lines, so that we'd have enough food because my E4 salary didn't cover enough for us to make it on the economy. They had a food pantry on base for service members. She would get that, and that would help us to get over the next week.
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With Operation Desert Shield, me going to all Army sports camps, and I think probably in our six years of marriage, we've probably been together three of those six. That was very difficult on a new couple. We didn't even know if we were going to make it as a couple at that time. For her to say in that moment that we're going to get through this together. Even at that time, we were geographically separated. I was stationed in Germany without command sponsorship, so I couldn't even bring my family with me, and she's working a job in West Memphis, Arkansas.
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Her saying that came on the same day that the job she was working in West Memphis, Arkansas at a nursing home, had called to fire her for being gone too long taking care of me with this injury I had. I found that out later. That company's like, "Thank you for your service, ma'am." Family serve. That was like another rebirth for us as well. I understood at that point in time who I had in a spouse. A lot of times in marriage we like the for better, we really don't want the for worse. We like the health, yes, I'm good with the sickness. We keep that. We want the richer, we don't really want the poor.
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Who do you have? Who do you say that you wanted? What do you want in a spouse? That really was the impetus for us rebirthing our marriage. Yes, it's not those gravy and rainbows and everything afterwards, we're married. We're two trying to become one, it's very difficult. Now we're at 35 years with this person who said, "It's just our new normal, we're going to get through this together." Everything has become our mantra, it's become our cry for every disagreement, every argument that we have, every time we don't see eye to eye on something, we'll get through this together, it's just our new normal. We can make it. I think that's been our rallying cry for our lives.
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Chris: Love that. You've shared the story about a conversation you had with someone who was telling you how you "overcame the loss of your leg." You replied that you didn't overcome the loss of your leg. You've had success as an athlete, a speaker, and an author since then. You've obviously shown extraordinary courage throughout all of this. You've lived a great life with Alice, since May 17th, as you mentioned, 1994, 30 years ago this Friday. Explain what you mean when you said you haven't overcome the loss of your leg and why that's an important distinction.
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John: Yes, that's profound. That was another defining, like, "Oh, right." One of these moments that was an aha moment, because I could not articulate when I first started speaking what the difference was, because I didn't know a difference. I was just saying what everybody else was saying. We just got to overcome the adversity. You just have to have grit. You just got to pull yourself up. You just got to move up. I was like, "There's something else." Yes, those things are necessary. Yes, we have to have resilience and grit and all this, but there's something else. There's an honoring that we don't really overcome what we've overcome.
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I said to my friend that day, I was about to do a TEDx speech, and he was trying to talk me into staying in the TEDx, because I was about to pull myself out, because I wasn't saying anything else, I wasn't saying anything. I was saying platitudes, like, "How'd you overcome the adversity, John? It was my faith, it was my family, it was my freedom." No, it was my faith, my family, my friendships that equaled my freedom.
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[laughter]
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John: What are you talking about? I need help here, what are you talking about? You just got to have grit, you just got to grit through it. What are you saying? How do this? I realized when we were having this heated discussion, and I blurted out after he said, "But you overcame so much, you overcame the amputation of your leg. I said, "I didn't, because had I overcome my amputation, I'd have my leg back." I was like, "Oh." We both sat back, right. We were like, "Oh, right." It was so obvious, but not, because we think, and people were saying to me, "You've overcome the amputation," and I had not overcome the amputation, because if I did, I'd have my leg back.
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What was it then that I overcame? It was my mindset that told me that is what I overcame. It was my mindset that said, who told me that this was something to be overcome? Who told me that my wife might leave me because of this amputation? Who told me that? Who told me that I'm now looked upon differently because of my disability? Why am I believing this? What's going on? Why am I believing this? It's our mindset around the things that people tell us, and it's other people who believe for us what we can or cannot do, which is often based upon what they believe they could or could not do if they were in our situation. That's what we overcome.
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We overcome the person that tells us that you'll never run again because of you're now using an artificial leg. We overcome society. Who told me in society that I was less than? I watched the Walt Disney movie Captain Hook, and Peter Pan, he's the villain, he's the antagonist. He's the man above the wrist amputee, had his arm bit off by Tick-Tock the crocodile. He's scaring the Lost Boys in the movie. Disney and other movies have showed us that people with disfigurements are the villain. I have to overcome my mindset of what society has dictated to me is now I'm a villain. Even in my own skin as a person of color, black man and living in America.
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Everyone that sees on television at night on the news or in the media or in the movie theaters, what's the nomenclature that comes up? What's my stereotype? What's my archetype that people see of me? That's what I have to overcome. Despite what others are saying, what other people think, I know how I can show up. That's the commitment to the new vision that I talk about. The commitment that despite what society says, despite what other people say, I can still show up as my full authentic self, and I'm okay with that. Once I make that commitment, I'm now in the rebirth of the renewal process, which is exceptionally. It's very hard to be there.
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Most people can't get there. They think they're there when they're actually in the reckoning moment, because they think they can go back to the way it used to be. When the doctor, Chris, took my leg off, I don't get my leg back. That's a commitment. That's the commitment. Answering your question, that encompasses this whole thought process of what I now teach to business leaders who are ready to commit to that thinking that, yes, it's not really about what happened in 2019 and going back to those levels.
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Can you honor where we are right now? Can you honor that someone had to watch their loved one die behind a plexiglass window during the pandemic? Can you honor the space in the global economy that there was a whole country that was wiped out during this? Can we honor that? Is that really affecting our supply chain? Can we honor the fact that so many pilots quit and left their jobs? Now when you're trying to run for your flight and your flight's delayed or canceled because they didn't have enough pilots to backfill, can we honor that space so that we are in a new environment? I think that's what we have to look at when we're talking about this new and the new normal environment.
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Chris: Your book is titled 10 Power Stories to Impact Any Leader: Journal Your Way to Leadership Success. Is this book just for people who run groups or businesses, or should we consider that all leaders or can be a leader?
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John: I'll tell you why the book was written, and then I'll let you all answer that question. It was written-- Secretary Mike Pompeo asked me right before the pandemic, I think it was on February 27th, to come speak at the chief of missions dinner for all of our United States ambassadors. If anything about our ambassadors, half of them are career people and half are appointees. We're in a space where the pandemic is spreading around the world. The career ambassadors are being asked to leave their post and take the expats with them back home because the countries are shutting down. We, in America, don't know if it's going to happen yet. We've got to follow the policies of the administration.
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They can't get their expats back to countries like Germany or France or England because those countries are shut down and they're not allowing people to travel through. Now it's shelter in place in those locations and they're seeing death at their doorstep. While in America, we're trying to figure out, is Florida going to shut down or is Texas going to stay open, and all these things. How do you-- The book was written as a leadership book. It doesn't matter if you're right or left. How do you lead in that environment? That's what I saw. I saw we're about to shut down in America. How do you lead?
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I gave 10 of my own stories that I usually don't share from the stage and the lesson I learned from each one of those stories, the lesson I learned. Then at the end of each chapter is a challenge, for whatever you heard in that story, write that down for your own story, so that you will have, at the end of the book, 10 stories, power stories of your own, that you can now use to lead when crisis comes up. That's why I wrote the book. That's why I put it really quick on Amazon, and did it myself, and just to get it into their hands. Whether it would help or not, this was my offering to try to help in that space.
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Now, it's in a paperback. You can do the same thing. You can read the stories. It's not a hard read. It's very simple. It's very simplistic. I wrote it really fast, so don't judge the book like that. Just look at the stories that are there, and does it help you? That's what I want to do. It can be for folks. I just did a whole thing on it right now. I went through chapter by chapter, what I was thinking about the book, and we have other things that you can get involved with now in a leadership group that we are running to help you individually or as a collective.
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Chris: John, we have just a few minutes left. How can people in the audience find your book, and how can they reach you for speaking events?
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John: The best way for both of those is go to my website, johnregister.com, common spelling J-O-H-N, cash register, R-E-G-I-S-T-E-R, johnregister.com, and you'll find that's on there as well. I did say, Chris, that we do have the 90-day leadership sprints that are going on. We just started it based upon the community that I was interacting with. During my keynote speeches, they said they wanted to stay connected, and so around the globe, we are starting to build a community. It's very small right now, very nominal fee to get into it, but I think we always have to have some skin in the game.
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I learned this in the BOSS program, Better Opportunity for Single Soldiers program, that we had one night, free hot dogs. No one came. We said, hot dogs, $1. Everybody came, bought all the hot dogs. There has to be some type of value and skin in the game, I believe, all the time when we really try to learn. I put it at this very light fee. Come on into that group. It's an amazing community. Like I said, it's very small right now, but we're growing.
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Chris: John Register, as always, thank you so much for being with us today. It was a real pleasure and honor seeing you again.
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John: Thanks, Chris, enjoyed it.
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Chris: Thank you to our audience, which now includes people in over 50 countries, for joining us for another episode of Next Steps Forward. I'm Chris Meek. For more details on upcoming shows and guests, please follow me on Facebook at facebook.com/ChrisMeekPublicFigure and an X at ChrisMeek_USA. We'll be back next Tuesday, same time, same place, with another leader from the world of business, politics, public policy, sports, or entertainment. Until then, stay safe and keep taking your next steps forward.
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Narrator: Thanks for tuning in to Next Steps Forward. Be sure to join Chris Meek for another great show next Tuesday at 10:00 AM Pacific Time and 1:00 PM Eastern Time on the Voice America Empowerment Channel. This week, make things happen in your life.
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[00:53:30] [END OF AUDIO]