Eric McAlister

My job is to know what people are thinking and feeling without knowing them. I have going into cardiac arrest and collapsing in the middle of a game to thank for that. I spent ten years as a professional athlete, getting paid to travel the world to play a game but collapsed in my fourth season. Five doctors told me I would never play again, despite no two doctors having the same diagnosis. I chose not to subscribe to that belief.

Two years prior to collapsing, my mother was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer and a year later, she lost her battle. I put everything into what I was and nothing into who I was. There was nothing wrong with my heart physically, I was under immense emotional stress which almost cost me my career, and more importantly, my life.

After a spiral of personal mental health battles, I began to learn more about myself—how I thought, what I felt and the greatest mystery of all, why? Using widely accepted principles, I developed unique tools based on my journey to not only help others improve performance and measure the impact an individual has on the collective, but also to build sustainability and avoid the mental and emotion walls we all tend to hit.

I have worked with athletes and organizations ranging from the NBA, Olympians, PGA and various others around the world helping to educate, prevent and help others overcome what I have before they hit the proverbial wall. To do so, you have to ditch the blanket approach and treat each person, team and audience uniquely.

I truly am thankful for the "hard stuff" along the way because it was the catalyst for something much greater than I could have ever imagined.