Fan Favorite: Jay Glazer on Turning Anxiety Into a Superpower
Jay Glazer discusses his journey through depression and anxiety while building a successful career in sports media and MMA training, explaining how his internal struggle drove external achievement and led him to create programs helping veterans and athletes transition after their careers end.
Summary
Jay Glazer opens by discussing how being different is an asset that leads to success, and frames his early career struggles as a 10-year period of rejection and financial hardship in New York City. He reveals that his depression and anxiety motivated him to seek external validation and achievement, believing that success would eventually resolve his internal pain. Glazer describes his breakthrough at the New York Giants after four years of unpaid work, where he employed two key differentiators: outworking everyone by a significant margin and building relationships rather than pursuing scoops, going against the journalistic norms of the time.
He introduces the concept of "the gray" (depression and anxiety) versus "the blue" (peace and contentment), explaining that he wakes up every day in the gray, feeling like the sky is falling and that he's unworthy of love. Glazer describes his struggle with shame—notably, he didn't tell his best friend Michael Strahan about his mental health struggles for 30 years, despite writing about them publicly in his book. He explains that his larger-than-life personality on television is partly a mask to pull himself out of the gray.
Glazer discusses his attempts to manage mental health through various means, including trying over 30 different medications that didn't work for him, and briefly using painkillers and alcohol to cope, which created additional problems. He emphasizes that he cannot stop fighting against his depression and anxiety, as quitting is an option that presents itself every single day. He shares that opening up to close friends has created deeper bonds and that he's learned external achievements don't translate to internal peace.
The conversation pivots to his "Unbreakable" gym and philosophy, which emphasizes finding and training your breaking point repeatedly. Glazer outlines five principles for creating warriors: finding the best and doing more, being relentless, pushing breaking points, maintaining a neutral face (not showing hurt or fatigue), and fighting hurt as an honor. He explains that in athletics, showing weakness breaks mental resolve, whereas in life he advocates for open communication and vulnerability.
Glazer details his MVP (Merging Vets and Players) program, which pairs combat veterans, first responders, and professional athletes to rebuild team identity and address mental health through peer counseling. The program is free, operates in seven cities with three weekly Zooms, and has helped members who were contemplating suicide find reasons to live by realizing they could save others. He stresses that suicide is not an option for his group because it would burden those left behind.
He discusses his philosophy of loyalty and service, explaining that helping others gives him breaks from his own darkness. He describes treating his top relationships as if he would be their pallbearer, and notes that while he gets hurt when others don't reciprocate this level of loyalty, serving others is what keeps him functioning. Glazer emphasizes that laughter helps combat anxiety, especially on camera, and that building a team prevents isolation, which is dangerous for those struggling mentally.
The host highlights the apparent paradox in Glazer's approach: breaking competitors' wills in sports while simultaneously loving and protecting them as teammates, noting he uses the word "teammate" throughout the book to emphasize the reader is part of his crew. Glazer explains he cannot be alone with his struggles and needs teammates to avoid feeling isolated. He reflects that he's finally discovering his "why"—using his pain to help others through theirs—and that God may have put him through all this specifically to help people.
Glazer closes by encouraging people to be proud of their scars and adversity, defining "unbreakable" as the things that could have broken you but didn't. His book, available on HarperCollins, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble, includes a foreword by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, with an audiobook version coming January 25th that Glazer narrates himself.
About this episode
<p>If you’ve been watching Jay on camera over the years, you might find it hard to believe that, under the surface, he lives with an almost daily struggle with anxiety and depression.</p><p><br /></p><p>But he doesn’t let it keep him down or stop him dead in his tracks - instead he uses it as fuel for his relentless drive and motivation.</p><p><br /></p><p>In today’s interview, we go deep on the importance of loyalty, being of service, and the importance of learning to build yourself up from the inside out, rather than looking for validation only from the outside.</p><p><br /></p><p>If you’ve ever struggled with anxiety and depression and felt like you had to “fake it” to get through the day, this one’s for you.</p><p><br /></p><p><strong>ORIGINAL AIR DATE: 1-25-22</strong></p><p><br /></p><p>Likewise, I especially recommend that you check out Jay’s new book, Unbreakable: How I Turned My Depression and Anxiety into Motivation and You Can Too: <a href="https://amzn.to/33CWuXf" target="_blank">https://amzn.to/33CWuXf</a></p><p><br /></p><p><strong>SHOW NOTES:</strong></p><p>00:00 | Introduction</p><p>01:22 | What Drove Jay to Endure Years of Hardship</p><p>06:44 | Authenticity, Loyalty, and Helping Others</p><p>09:52 | What “The Gray” and “The Blue” Mean to Jay</p><p>19:52 | Jay’s Journey to Find Happiness</p><p>27:59 | Merging Vets and Players</p><p>34:04 | The Origins of Jay’s New Book</p><p>39:39 | Helping Others Not Feel Alone in Their Struggle</p><p>43:40 | The Balance Between Toughness and Caring</p><p><br /></p><p><strong>CHECK OUT OUR SPONSORS</strong></p><p><strong>Range Rover:</strong> Range Rover: Explore the Range Rover Sport at <a href="https://landroverusa.com" target="_blank">https://landroverUSA.com</a></p><p><strong>Audible:</strong> Sign up for a free 30 day trial at <a href="https://audible.com/IMPACTTHEORY1" target="_blank">https://audible.com/IMPACTTHEORY</a> </p><p><strong>Vital Proteins:</strong> Get 20% off by going to <a href="https://www.vitalproteins.com" target="_blank">https://www.vitalproteins.com</a> and entering promo code IMPACT at check out.</p><p><strong>Goldback</strong>: Goldbacks are currency for now, and for the future, get yours at <a href="https://alpinegold.com/shop-precious-metals/ref/impact" target="_blank">https://alpinegold.com/shop-precious-metals/ref/impact</a> </p><p><strong>RoboForm:</strong> Protect yourself and get 60% off your first year with RoboForm at <a href="https://www.roboform.com/lp?frm=promo-discount-50&affid=tbily" target="_blank">https://www.roboform.com/lp?frm=promo-discount-50&affid=tbily</a> </p><p><br /></p><p><strong>Follow Jay Glazer:</strong></p><p>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/JayGlazer" target="_blank">https://twitter.com/JayGlazer</a></p><p>Instagram: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/jayglazer/" target="_blank">https://www.instagram.com/jayglazer/</a></p><p>Support MVP (Merging Vets and Players) here: <a href="https://vetsandplayers.org/" target="_blank">https://vetsandplayers.org</a></p><p>Order your copy of Unbreakable here: <a href="https://amzn.to/3qrXhDa" target="_blank">https://amzn.to/3qrXhDa</a></p><p><br /></p><p><strong>What's up, everybody?</strong> <strong>It's Tom Bilyeu here:</strong></p><p>If you want my help...</p><ul> <li>STARTING a business:<a href="https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show" target="_blank"> join me here at ZERO TO FOUNDER</a> </li> <li>SCALING a business:<a href="https://tombilyeu.com/call" target="_blank"><strong> </strong>see if you qualify here.</a> </li> </ul><p>Get my battle-tested strategies and insights delivered weekly to your inbox:<a href="https://tombilyeu.com/" target="_blank"><strong> </strong>sign up here.</a></p><p>**********************************************************************</p><p><strong>If you're serious about leveling up your life, I urge you to check out my new podcast,</strong><a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/47VE90Cittmo6TGGFqg2xf" target="_blank"> <strong>Tom Bilyeu’s Mindset Playbook</strong></a> —a goldmine of my most impactful episodes on mindset, business, and health. 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Key Insights
- Glazer argues that his depression and anxiety motivated his relentless pursuit of external success, as he sought validation from the outside world to compensate for his inability to love himself from within.
- He claims that he maintained a strict code of conduct (refusing money from Strahan, building relationships rather than burning sources) not because he calculated it would help his career, but because it was authentically who he was.
- Glazer reveals that over 30 different psychiatric medications failed to help him manage his depression and anxiety, making him part of a population resistant to pharmaceutical interventions.
- He argues that quitting is a constant option that sits on his shoulder every day, meaning his persistence required daily active choices rather than a fixed determination.
- Glazer contends that in athletics, showing any sign of weakness (hands on hips, sitting down, facial expressions of pain) signals a broken will to competitors and invites them to increase aggression.
- He claims that opening up about mental health struggles for the first time to his best friend of 30 years created a deeper bond and provided him access to support he could have benefited from for decades.
- Glazer argues that service to others and helping people through their darkness provides him temporary relief from his own gray and is likely his life's purpose.
- He contends that combining intense competitive training that breaks mental barriers with vulnerable emotional processing in group settings creates transformation in veterans and athletes struggling with identity loss.
Topics
Transcript
You're different. Different is good. Different leads to success. Like, don't be a face of the crowd. Be the fucking crowd. Let's be our own damn crowd. So that's one of our matches. And same like our football players, we're seeing too many of them go by the wayside right now. Because when their uniform comes off, they're like, oh, man, I used to play in the NFL. I'm trying to shift that. No. Dude, you played in the NFL. And you playing in the NFL is not who you are. What's behind your ribcage? They got you to put those hours in and outwork the world, but not by a little, by a lot. And, you know, beat out…
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