Even If You’re Broken…: Keep Moving! (Heroic +1 #1,783)
17 Dec 2025 · 4 min
Brian Johnson explores Deion Sanders' chapter on resilience, sharing Sanders' battles with blood clots and a 1997 suicide attempt, and how faith helped him rebuild. The core lesson: get back up after setbacks and use hardship to build strength.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic one. In our last one, we transitioned from chatting about wisdom from one fascinating human being to another. We went from hanging out with Tim Kennedy and his Army Special Forces operators and UFC fighters to hanging out with Deion Sanders on and off the football field. Today I want to chat about wisdom from the very first chapter in Deion's book, elevate and dominate. Chapter one is called even if you're broken, keep moving. Dion tells us, and I quote, sometimes life is not easy. Believe me, he says, I am familiar with that concept. Life will get you down, kick you while you're already down, and make you feel like you're never going to make it. But here's the thing. You can't stay down. You can't and you won't. You get back up, dust yourself off, and keep going. Period. He continues by saying, look, I know it gets hard. Maybe you just got fired from your job. Maybe you lost someone you loved. Maybe you're battling an illness that nobody knows about. Maybe your dreams have been shattered into a million pieces. And he says, whatever it may be, know that you're not alone. I've been there. I've had my share of struggles and setbacks, but I can tell you that quitting is never an option. Keep pushing, keep grinding, and keep chasing your dreams. It won't be easy, but it will be worth it. Plus, he says, some people say the strongest steel is forged in the hottest fire. That means that when you're going through a tough time, that's when you're being tempered and strengthened. That pain won't last forever. It's there to make you grow, to make you jump higher, run faster, be better. You got this. You're a champion. And champions never give up. Now, one of the aspects of this book that I love the most is how real Deion is. His authentic, iconoclastic again. We both love the use of all caps style bursts through each page. He's also very transparent about his own personal struggles. In the first chapter, he tells us about the health crisis, blood clots in his leg that almost killed him and led to the amputation of two of his toes. Slightly inconvenient for a guy who prides himself on being the living embodiment of speed and power. Later in the book, Dion tells us about a time in 1997 when he was at the absolute peak of his success, but didn't have the wisdom and faith with which he aspires to live his life now. And you know what he did? He tried to kill himself. He literally drove himself off the side of a road, plummeting a few dozen feet off a cliff. Somehow he came out of that unscathed. He took that as a very strong sign that it was time to pull his life together, found a deeper sense of purpose through his Christian faith, and transformed his life. Today's 1 Remember Rule number one of a good, noble, heroic life. It's supposed to be challenging. And remember rule number one of the science of self compassion. You're not alone. We're all suffering in one way or another at one point in time or another. We must, as Dion encourages us to remember, have compassion for ourselves and for everyone else in our lives. Then we need to step up and do what needs to get done to conquer those challenges, using them as fuel to forge our next level of antifragile confidence. Today.
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