Game Changer Mindset

Rodney Flowers, author of the life-affirming and highly-inspiring Amazon bestselling book, Get Up, joins Justin Recla to talk about the game changer mindset. He has contributed more than 14 years of his life to governmental service with the Department of Defense (DoD) United States NAVY (USN). He works for NAVAIR at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station as a Contracting Officer. There he leads a team of seven to 10 contract specialists responsible for executing and managing contract performance of all sustainment contracting actions for the P-3C Orion program, and the P-8A program. As a result of Rodney’s quality of service and outstanding support provided as an individual with a disability, he has been featured in the United States Government’s, Careers and the Disabled magazine. Listen in as he shares his deep wisdom about having a game changer mindset.

Welcome to the In the Clear Podcast. I am your host, Justin Recla. Today, we are talking to one of the most powerful men that I’ve ever met. He has an absolutely, absolutely amazing story. We met at CEO Space a couple of years ago. First off, you can see this guy across the road, because he is typically the best-dressed man in the entire room. I’m honored to call him a friend and a business associate. Today, we’re talking with Rodney Flowers and the Game Changer Mentality. Rodney had got an amazing story. He’s out there changing the world. Helping people get through stuff and their process, and so forth. He is just an amazing guy. He’s got a book called Get Up, but I’m gonna let him tell you a little bit about that first.

Rodney, thank you for joining us on the show today.

Justin, how you doing, brother? Thank you for having me, man. It’s an honor and a privilege to be here, man. I mean I’m very excited about being here, man. Love the work that you’re doing in the world also. Thank you for that introduction, and thank you again for having me here, brother.

Yeah, I appreciate it. We’ve been wanting to connect for some time, so I’m really looking forward to this conversation. You are an inspiration, not only for myself but for so many other people. The people that you would get in front of, that you talk, that you have an impact on. You have such an amazing, powerful story of overcoming diversity. You’ve taken that, and I’ve seen you at work. I’ve seen the impact that you have on others. You have such a powerful, powerful message that helps people overcome their challenges. And helping them process through … just things that come up in life and business and so forth. Can you share a little bit about your background and what you’re doing in the world?

Yeah sure, man. It all started from a long time ago. I was playing football as a young teenager, and I suffered an accident, man. I was lined up on the right side of the field getting ready to make a play. I wanted to make a play. I was running down as fast as I could. I made a tackle, and I hit this guy. Boom! I went down. He went down. But I couldn’t get back up. Doctors and trainers and everyone, they ran out to check on me and see how I was doing.

They rushed me to the hospital. They did some test, and they found out that I was paralyzed from the neck down. They told me that I wasn’t gonna be able to walk again, for the rest of my life. That was something that I accepted for a period of time, and I thought my life was over. Then I realized that with the power of my mind that I could overcome. I could be someone successful. Be someone that could make a difference in the world. I started on this journey of really just transforming my life, transforming my mind.

I created a book. I’ve written a book, and done a lot of tremendous things, and helped a lot of people. My life had just turned out way beyond what I thought it was gonna turn out to be when I was lying there on that field, man. So, here I am.

You overcame that. You’ve walked again, and you’re walking again. The name of your book is what? Stand Up, right?

It’s called Get Up.

Get Up, that’s right. Get Up, and you sure as heck got up. You’ve shared the stage with some amazing people, so what is really the message behind your story?

Well, Get Up is really about getting up, and facing and overcoming the adversity that we all face in life. It tells my story in the book, but it also inspires and motivates others to get up from whatever they’re facing in life. We all go through challenges and tribulation. We all face adversity from time to time.

So what I did was really package my story and added some principles and strategies that I’ve learned, that I’ve used that have helped me overcome resistance. Overcome adversity, and be resilient in the face of whatever comes my way. And realizing that there’s really nothing that can truly stop me if I have the right mindset. So that’s really my message to everyone, is to really get up and go through it, because you can’t avoid it. It’s something that happens to all of us in life. So it’s really making that decision and sticking with it to get up and move on through life.

Yeah, I absolutely love that. In the business world, the entrepreneurial world, if you’ve been in business long enough you know there is the challenges that come with running your own business from taking a leap from employee to the entrepreneur to business owner is … It comes with its own challenges. I’ve been on this journey myself for the last seven, eight years. There were multiple times in that timeframe that I wanted to quit, that I wanted to stop. It’s that mindset that’s so powerful.

I’ve heard you talk at CEO Space. Your message is so powerful. What kind of insight, what kind of motivation would you give to somebody that is struggling right now in their life? Whether it be in business or just in life in general.

Well, I love that question because of a lot of times when we are struggling, or we are facing challenges, the first thing we do is get this woe is me the type of mentality. It’s like, oh this sucks, and we hate it. We want to avoid it. We want everything to come to an end, so we don’t have to deal with it, right?

What I found that, is that if you can create the mindset to look for the good in your situation, to look for the good in the challenge, and I’m not saying accept it. I’m just saying realizing that it can be a positive thing. It’s all about that attitude, right? Because it’s gonna cause you to look at the situation a little bit differently if you’re just thinking, woe it to me, or I hate this situation.

The thing that happened to me is I began to see that this was a gift. Because it began to pull things out of me that I wouldn’t have been able to tap into had I not had that mindset, right? So I started to see the challenge as a gift. I started to see the challenge as an opportunity. I began to relate as such and it really motivated me. It made me want to be better because I realized that challenges are gonna come in life. It’s the person that we’ve become, and the skills that we’ve developed, that’s what allows us to overcome it.

I wanted to develop those skills. I have seen that as a challenge, as an opportunity for me to grow to become better, right? And to rise above. What difference would that make, not only for myself but for other people, right? I realized that what I was doing, where I wanted to go, the goal that I wanted to reach, was so big to me. And it would make such an impact on the world of ours to reach that, that it just made it so much more of a reason for me to overcome this challenge, and not just accept it.

So when you talk about entrepreneurship, you’re talking about business, all of those things presents the challenge. It presents obstacles. It presents adversity from time to time. What we have to realize is that it’s just a stepping stone. It’s just a bump in the road. It’s just something that’s there that we have to really overcome. It’s like lifting weights, man.

If you’re in the gym, and you haven’t lifted 100 pounds, just because things get heavy at 25, doesn’t mean you’re not gonna be able to get to 100. It just means that you’re gonna have to develop. You’re gonna have to grow. You have to get someplace where 100 pounds isn’t too heavy for you. That’s something that you can overcome. I really look at life that way, honestly. I look at everything that I do that way.

Some things that you’re not familiar with that you haven’t dealt with before, they may seem challenging. They may seem debilitating at times. But, as a human being, your mind … with the mindset that we have and the ability to overcome, and to adjust, and to learn and to grown, we can overcome any challenge that really comes our way. But it takes the right approach and the right mindset to be able to do that.

I absolutely love that. To me, you are the epitome of that, because you went from the doctors telling you that you’re never gonna be able to walk again, to you are now … you are mobile. You are walking again. You overcame that challenge. That power of the mind to be able to do that. I can only imagine that that wasn’t an easy journey. And that, that took time, and it took patience, and it took dedication. It took the willingness to overcome that. What kept you moving? What kept you going forward? Then how can somebody that is struggling right now, whether it be in business or in life, how can you use that mindset?

Well Justin, what kept me going was that … I went from a guy that was very active and independent, so to speak, from a physical standpoint, I was only 15, so it was only so much independence it had at 15, living with my parents. But, I didn’t need a lot of assistance from anybody to do what I wanted. I was free. I could do whatever I wanted to do. So when I got hurt everything was taken away, I didn’t have that, and I wanted that back more than anything.

So what kept me going was the idea of one day getting that back. Then I began to realize that my battle wasn’t a physical battle, it really wasn’t. I was very competitive, playing football, but this was a different type of game, right? It was like, I had to really dig deeper into the emotional and mental side of myself, and the spiritual side of myself in order to overcome this injury. Because it wasn’t like you could go to therapy and you just keep going to therapy and you get better. There were mental roadblocks. There were emotional roadblocks if you could imagine. I mean my confidence had plummeted because I went … all of these things. My psychology was all messed up because I was young, so I was going through all of this stuff.

As I began to overcome I began to become awake. I began to wake up something inside of me that I really … I was in tune with it, but it was a different discovery. I was discovering new things about myself. I was discovering new strengths. Then new possibilities and opportunities were presenting themselves as well about me. So I was really getting to know me from a deeper spiritual level, and that motivated me. Then I began to see how I can help other people. I mean I wanted to play football and everything, and I thought that was great. But then I began to see the impact that I could have on someone else, who may be going through a challenge.

I was having an impact on people who weren’t even dealing with a challenge as debilitating as I was. That was so rewarding for me, and I really began to feed off that. I wanted more of that, right? I wanted to be that example, right? So it just made achieving a goal much more important to me, and I just kept going, man. I felt like if it takes me the rest of my life to do this, this is what I’m gonna do because this is great. My competitive nature wouldn’t let me quit. It wouldn’t let me quit. It was something that I felt I wanted to overcome in my lifetime. I wasn’t competing with anyone. I was competing with myself. I knew that I would only get better by staying in the game. So I just kept going.

Then another thing was, I had no other alternative in my mind because quitting just didn’t make sense to me. I mean why would I do that. So those were the things that kept me going. I think for someone else who’s going through a challenge … I always ask a person who’s dealing with adversity, that they’re struggling with it and feeling like they want to quit. I always ask, “If you quit, what is your alternative to continuing on? If you quit, what does that bring you? What does that give you if you quit? What life are you gonna live? What is that life like if you quit?” I believe that even if you continue to go on, and even if it’s a struggle, and even if it’s difficult for this limited period of time, it’s probably a lot better than quitting.

Because quitting assures you that you’re gonna stay in the same spot that you are. There is no hope. There is an opportunity in quitting. So you might as well continue on, at least there’s the possibility of you reaching your goal. I always believe something that Les Brown says all the time. He says, “You reach for the moon, and if you don’t make it, at least you’ll be among the stars.” So for me, as long as I don’t quit I’m always progressing forward. I’m always moving closer and closer to my goal, to my dream. I’m becoming better as I do that.

So for me that makes it worthwhile, Justin. I don’t see a reason why I wouldn’t want that at the very least. Even if I don’t make my goal. Even if I don’t reach my destination, right? Where I am right now, I will be somewhere different than that. I can move off this position into a something different, and for me, that’s worth it.

I absolutely love that. With the adage, “You never lose. The only way you can lose is if you quit.” It’s such a powerful message for anybody that’s going through anything in life. Whether it be business, or family, or anything, one foot in front of the other. Even if you slip back three or four, one foot in front of another is what gets you there.

If you’re just joining us, we are talking to Rodney Flowers about the game changer mindset.

Rodney, before we go on break, can you tell us where they can find you?

Sure. Absolutely. You could reach me at www.rodneyflowers.com. I’m on all social media platforms. You can reach me on Facebook, on Rodney Flowers Fans. You can reach me on Twitter, Rodney Flowers 22. I’m also on LinkedIn and Instagram. You can reach me on Instagram on, as the GetUp Guy.

Absolute. Love it.

Stay tuned. We’ll be right back because we’re gonna get into the game changer mindset right after this.

To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the In the Clear podcast on iTunes.