The Inspiring Gamers Who Play With Their Mouths | Ep 122

People seem to forget if you change today, today will change your life. For a limited time only. For those of you enjoying the podcast, I'm offering a free coaching session. That's right, a free coaching session for those of you who want to improve in their performance or their business or their relationships, or any other area where confidence is a key ingredient. Then on the Self Belief Chief site on the podcast page self beliefs.com podcast underneath the episodes, you'll be able to book your own coaching session for free with me or wherever you're listening to the podcast in the description. There'll also be a link to be able to book your session. I look forward to speaking to you soon.

And let's get on with the podcast. This story starts with a skydive gone wrong and this is a story I read in BBC. I couldn't help but not share it so Chris Scott was falling towards the ground above Long Island, New York when he realized something was wrong. Now he was an experienced instructor, 6,000 plus jumps, and strapped to his chest was a tandem jumper for whom the jump was an annual birthday tradition. What happened though, was when the men reached an altitude of 175ft, that parachute that had been slowing their descent suddenly collapsed. Maybe been caught by some sort of small unpredictable tornado, some dust devil, a real bane of skydivers. Now the the man who was strapped to Chris's chest, Gary Messina, a prison officer who was due to turn 26 the next day, died on impact with the ground. Now Gary was a experienced skydiver as well. Remarkably, however, Chris Scott survived, although he soon blacked out. And he talks about he remembers staring at the ground and then that was it. He was airlifted to hospital and when he woke up 11 days later, he found out that he'd broken his neck and he was paralyzed from the shoulders down and lucky to be alive. Now Chris Scott went to a specialist rehab center in Atlanta before moving back to New York, and he used a mouth operated joystick to move his wheelchair and regularly went to Mount Sinai Hospital. It was there he met he met a man named Dr. David Petrino in 2019, and his role as the director of the rehab facility was to explore different ways of improving the patient health. He used training methods associated with high performance athletes as well as some technological solutions like virtual reality. Now here's the interesting part. So Dr. David Petrino asked Chris Scott what is it that he would like to be able to do more of? And Chris Scott said, well, you know what? I'd love to be playing more video games. So with the doctor's help, they created a device, a gamepad. It could be operated through the mouth, just like Chris had been doing with his wheelchair. And Dr. David Petrino saw how skilled Chris was at these video games playing with his mouth, and that he was easily beating him at games like NBA 2K and various other things. And together they had an idea. And that idea was, maybe there are other people who are paralyzed who would enjoy playing video games as well. They created the quad Gods, and with that, they introduced more paralyzed people to be able to play video games. And these people will be playing video games online. The person they're playing against doesn't know that these people are paralyzed. And. And they're getting absolutely destroyed. You know, these guys are great at these games. Allow them to take another step further. Of course, esports is a huge, growing industry, gaming, where a lot of money can be made, A lot of money can be made. And now there was all of a sudden a career path, profession. Not just a career path of profession, but a chance to make a very good amount of money because these were talented, talented gamers. And they started going to gaming championships and world championships. And the Olympics are considering bringing esports to the next Olympics very seriously, of which the quad Gods, as they call themselves, would likely be a part of, from a very tragic situation. It's a really quite inspiring story of people who find a way to enjoy themselves more. And these people have said video games really have genuinely saved their life. It's a way to use their time to practice skills, to hone their sort of mental ability, to find enjoyment. It's a great story. I wanted to mention this on the podcast, this story, and there's more of it on the BBC online, because for the very obvious reasons, just how inspiring it was to read that a lot.

Of people, when they go through tough.

Moments, tough things in life, especially if it physically compromises them, is the ability to do more, to be more than other human beings, actually to find that they have a lot. You know, they can provide a lot more value than most human beings. And really what it is, is for all of us to understand how much more value we could provide, how much more we could be doing, what opportunities we could create for people. It's tough at the moment. For a lot of people, it's tough. But the ability to be innovative, creative, to step out of your space, to look at the problem, for a different angle, to see opportunities, it requires a really strong mindset. For the Quad Gods, as they call themselves, that mindset is incredibly strong. And they've seen some absolutely fantastic results, doing stuff that they enjoy doing and getting paid to do. So I promise you have the ability to find a way to enjoy your passions and to potentially monetize them. But what these. The main thing in this situation is, as difficult as it must have been, they didn't continue to focus on what they don't want. I don't want to feel like this. I don't want this to happen. I don't want to have to go through life like this. They started asking a different question. What do I want? And if Dr. David Petrino had never asked, Chris Scott, what is it that you'd like to be doing? Maybe the cog gods would have never been set up. Providing opportunities for others who are paralyzed to find a new way to enjoy themselves and make money without someone like Dr. David Petrino. Asking that question doesn't bring so many joys to people, so much joy to people's lives. Without you asking that type of question of yourself, are you missing out on something wonderful, a new opportunity, something special? If you're not asking, what do you want? How will you ever find it? How will you ever reach it? If you decide today to ask, what do I want? You may just get it. My name is David Holman. If you change today, today will change your life. So enjoy the rest of your day. Enjoy the rest of your life, and I'll speak to you on the next episode.