You have to stand in court, look at your biological mom, and tell her, I no longer want you to be my mom anymore.
Really difficult to do at 14 years old.
So I did that.
And I just remember this piece of, like, I know that the place that I woke up today, for sure, I'm going to bed here.
14 years of my life, I'd never known that because in foster care, you can get picked up and moved, the drop of a dime.
So it was a really interesting settling in moment for me.
Hey, so my guest today, Anthony Trux, he entered the foster system along with his two siblings when he was just three years, and then spent years enduring a series of pretty brutal experiences until he found a home where, after eight years of legal battles, he became emancipated from his mom and was adopted by his then longtime foster parents.
But still a young black man, now a part of a white family, who also struggled with poverty.
He really struggled to belong not so much to his family, but to the broader culture around him.
And he turned to football, working to rise up in the sport, and years later, accomplished his dream of being drafted and playing for the NFL.
But not long into his time with the Pittsburgh Steelers, a career ending injury would bring it all tumbling down and leave him stripped not only of his career, but of his very identity.
And that led to a sense of deep struggle, the demise of his family in a season where Anthony found himself having to completely rediscover and redefine his own sense of who he was, his identity, who he was as a human being, a partner, a father, a friend, and someone driven to inspire and change others.
And that journey, it led him back into the world of wellness, personal growth, speaking, training, and even eventually competing in american ninja warrior and as a speaker and identity shift coach.
Now Anthony teaches people how to design and build better lives and businesses by learning how to access the power of their identity to tap into their full potential.
A methodology that he shares in his book identity shift.
So excited to share this conversation with you.
I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is good life project.
I want to start out.
I want to dive into just sort of like your personal journey for a little bit, because I think it really informs so much of the work that you've been doing recently.
And then let's dive into a lot of the work that you've been doing around identity.