Turn Your Life Around with Former MLB Player Darryl Strawberry
#036 Meet Darryl Strawberry
Darryl Strawberry spent 17 years playing major league baseball. He played for both the Mets and the Yankees. He was an 8-time all star and 4-time world series champion.
I collected baseball cards as a kid and I was a big fan of Darryl’s signature bat twirls and home run hits.
But I knew he’d gotten in some trouble over the years with drugs and alcohol and I’d heard he’d served time in prison.
So I was thrilled to learn that he’s doing well now. He just wrote a book called ‘Turn Your Season Around” and I invited him to be on the podcast to share how he’d undergone such a major transformation.
Some of the things he talks about today are his faith in God, why he struggled with addiction, and the strategies that have helped him create a new life for himself.
Some of the things Darryl and I discuss:
- His faith in God and the role his faith plays in his ability to be mentally strong
- How to balance trusting God with personal responsibility
- Why he struggled with addiction and what helped pull him out of it
- How his pain led to his greatness and how his greatness eventually led to his downfall
- Why he thinks so many people are struggling with unhealed emotional wounds and addiction right now
- The big misconception he thinks most people have about mental strength
- How to deal with guilt, shame and insecurity
- The risk of having a big ego
- The best steps to start taking today if you’re struggling
- How to stop punishing yourself for mistakes that you’ve made
- How to get back to your faith if you’ve stepped away from it for a while
- How to set your life up in a way that helps you be mentally strong
Quotes:
“My pain led me to my greatness. But my greatness would eventually lead me to my destructive behavior.”
“I got addicted to all the lifestyle of what it was and the drinking, the party and the women, and just a whole thing. And it left me broken and empty on the inside and left me confused about who I was.”
“We need some kind of encouragement from other people who can love us and help us walk through some of the hard things that we go through in life.”
“You don’t have to punish yourself. I think so many of us do, and I think that’s been the problem.”
“Don’t worry about what anybody else is going to think. Because I do know one thing–we all have problems and we all will struggle with some things in this lifetime.”
Links:
Buy Darryl’s book – Turn Your Season Around
Follow Darryl on Instagram – @DarrylStrawberry18
Where to get help online for addiction – Monument
Resources:
If you want more information about addiction, visit VerywellMind. They offer lots of free resources about how to recognize a problem, how to get help, and how to support a loved one.