George Mumford shares the wisdom he has learned during his life as a coach to some of the highest performing athletes in history, and what he learned from his personal struggle with addiction and pain that nearly cost him everything.
Michael Jordan credits George Mumford with the transformation of on-court leadership of the Chicago Bulls that led to 11 NBA National Championships. He has worked with a number of world-class athletes and helped them achieve at some of the highest levels of their sport.
His coaching method is focused on the whole being approach and treating athletes as people instead of a performer.
Principles are universal and timeless. They allow you to make choices that are aligned with the feedback that you get and let you live in recovery.
George was one child of thirteen and remembers the theme of his childhood being “be seen, not heard”. He learned how to cope by living in his own personal world and holding his sensitivity within. He was injury-prone in school while playing sports because of the stress placed on his life.
He found himself in a strange place where he had to mature quickly and know a lot about life, but without knowing what to do with them.
In college, George realized that he could be more social when he was taking pain medication which led to an addiction to painkillers. That developed into alcoholism and drug abuse until his spiritual rock bottom.
He went into a 21-day detox program and realized that the person that comes out of the program has to be different than the person that went in or nothing was going to change.
One of George’s memories of pain involves his father humiliating him before his sister’s wedding. This experience made George feel like he couldn’t ever ask for what he needed and led to him becoming self-reliant. Trauma can take many subtle forms and understanding that is the only way to heal. In many ways, George’s father was just acting in the way that he was taught.
People are doing the best they can with what they have. Seek to understand rather than be understood, and the best way to help yourself is to help others.
George’s first real teacher was his grandmother. She would give him a card on his birthday and call him Master George, rather than simply George. At the time George didn’t understand what she meant she was trying to impart that he was equal to other people and beneath others.
He also found a number of mentors growing up in the athletes he knew like Muhammad Ali and Jim Brown.
In terms of comeback stories, George admires Frederick Douglas, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, and Harriet Tubman.
We all have a masterpiece. Our job is to break through our shell and share our divinity with the world.
The spirit is the life, the mind is the builder, and the physical is the result. George allowed the world to be his teacher because great men are open to new experiences and continued learning and growing.
George encountered a number of struggles growing up, especially being injury prone and getting injured enough to lose his place on his sports team. It was a real challenge to be in school and not be an athlete because he didn’t know who he was at that point. He struggled considerably once his addiction got to the point where he realized that no matter how many drugs he was too much and not enough at the same time.
After getting clean, George’s doctor explained to him that his nervous system never dealt with the world on the world’s terms. Once George was off the drugs he had to find an alternative solution to dealing with his pain which led him to meditation, mindfulness, yoga, and taichi.
Instead of a curse, it was an opportunity to learn how to be with himself.
George began listening to that small sensitive voice within himself while meditating and he realised that one of the things he was missing was being intellectually stimulated. For the past 36 years, George has read a book a week and began sharing the wisdom he’s learned. He wanted to learn as much as he could to h