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Rock Bottom to Record Breaker | A Journey of Resilience with Tia Banks (Part 1)

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🎧 Episode 147: Rock Bottom to Record Breaker | A Journey of Resilience with Tia Banks

In this powerful episode, we explore the transformative journey of Tia Banks, an award-winning motivational speaker, certified resilience expert, and mountaineer. From scoring a devastating 5 on her first college test to becoming one of the second Black women to summit Pico de Orizaba, Tia shares how she transformed her moments of profound failure into catalysts for extraordinary change.

We dive deep into:

  • The evolution of identity beyond athletics
  • Navigating depression and finding purpose after career-ending injuries
  • The power of asking for help and building supportive communities
  • The relationship between mental and physical resilience
  • Breaking cultural barriers in mountaineering
  • Transforming personal struggles into tools for helping others

🔑 Key takeaways:

  1. Success often requires letting go of the fear of looking unknowledgeable
  2. Valley moments are natural parts of any journey - there's no straight path to the peak
  3. Grief and acceptance are crucial steps in personal transformation
  4. Your mind can expand beyond what you believe you're physically capable of
  5. Resilience isn't about never failing - it's about keeping your original decision despite setbacks
  6. True growth often comes from exploring spaces outside your normal perspective

💡 Quotes to remember: "On any mountain, there's always a valley. You never just go straight to the top." - Tia Banks

"How can you be yourself if you've never known who you were?" - Tia Banks

"Just because I reached adversity, does that mean the decision changes? Or do we try to figure out, let's get some air, let's do some self-affirmations, let's hype yourself up?" - Tia Banks

📚 Resources:
https://www.tiabanks.com/

https://www.instagram.com/thetiabanks/?hl=en

🏔️ Milestone Achievement: Tia became one of the second Black women to summit Pico de Orizaba, the highest volcano in North America, demonstrating that setbacks are often setups for comebacks.

A rising tide raises all ships, and I invite you along on this journey to Evoke Greatness!

Check out my website: www.evokegreatness.com

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Evoke Greatness. We are officially entering year three of this podcast and I am filled with so much gratitude for each and every one of you who've joined me on this incredible journey of growth and self-discovery. I'm Sunny, your host and fellow traveler on this path of personal evolution. This podcast is a sanctuary for the curious, the ambitious and the introspective. It's for those of you who, like me, are captivated by the champion mindset and driven by an insatiable hunger for growth and knowledge. Whether you're just beginning your journey or you're well along your path, you're going to find stories here that resonate with your experiences and aspirations. Over the last two years, we've shared countless stories of triumph and challenge, of resilience and transformation. We've laughed, we've reflected and we've grown together. And as we've evolved, so too has this podcast. Remember, no matter what chapter you're on in your own story, you belong here. This community we've built together is a place of support, inspiration and shared growth. Where intention goes, energy flows, and the energy you bring to this space elevates us all. So, whether you're listening while commuting, working out or enjoying your morning coffee, perhaps from one of those motivational mugs I'm so fond of, know that you're a part of something special. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your curiosity, your openness and your commitment to personal growth. As we embark on year three, I invite you to lean in, to listen deeply and to let these stories resonate with your soul. I believe that a rising tide raises all ships, and I invite you along in this journey to evoke greatness.

Speaker 1:

Welcome back to another episode of Evoke Greatness. Imagine failing your first college test with a score of 5. Not 50, but 5, and then transforming that moment into a catalyst for extraordinary change. My guest today did exactly that, and it's just one chapter in her remarkable story. She has climbed some of the world's most challenging peaks, played professional flag football for 13 years and turned her own battles with depression and anxiety into a mission that's impacting thousands of students and educators across the country.

Speaker 1:

Get ready to meet Tia Banks, an award-winning motivational speaker, certified resilience expert and mountaineer who's currently on a mission to conquer all seven volcanic summits across the globe. But what makes Tia's story truly extraordinary isn't just where she's been. It's how she got there. From being redshirted in college due to poor grades to earning both her bachelor's and master's degrees. From facing a career-ending knee injury to discovering her true calling, tia knows firsthand what it means to navigate life's valleys and emerge stronger on the other side. Today, we're going to explore how those experiences shaped her into a leading voice in resilience and mental health, and why her message is more relevant than ever in our current landscape of rising anxiety and depression rates among students.

Speaker 2:

Tia, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, sunny, for having me.

Speaker 1:

Man glad to have you on Glad for your grace. We had a little bit of a challenge and man Tia has showed up with some grace today. That's I will share. That it's all today. That's I will tell you that it's all good.

Speaker 2:

It's all about adapting. We can adapt to change, and that's exactly what we were able to do.

Speaker 1:

Well, I want to dig into your story, but even before we do that, like, let's get a little bit of the backstory. What is it that led to you know, along the way, we all have these journeys and these evolutions and we kind of become new iterations of ourself what led you to the current version of Tia that you are today?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So, growing up, I grew up in Lincoln, nebraska, and started out family two parent home. And you look at me, you're like Lincoln. Yes, there are Black people in Lincoln, nebraska. Granted, I was one of like 500 in my elementary school. But no, kids, kids don't care about race, they're just like are we going to play like soccer or what? But growing up in a two-parent household, and then my parents got divorced and when they divorced, my mom moved me and my siblings to Fort Worth, texas, and at that time that was probably the first time I actually experienced racism or colorism, because the way that I spoke people would say, oh, you sound like an Oreo, so an Oreo. You sound like an Oreo, so an Oreo black on the outside, white on the inside.

Speaker 2:

And so, making that move, I realized maybe I need to change who I am to fit in, and I feel like I've always kind of had that mentality change who you are so that you can fit in. And meanwhile I'm not discovering who the true person, the true Tia Banks, is. And then, growing up, my father we have this thing like it's the Banks thing, suck it up If you're an athlete, like everything is. Suck it up, like I'm sorry, dad, my nose is bleeding Like you just threw the ball at my face. But everything was suck it up. And so I took that mentality, that Banks mentality of sucking everything up. As a college athlete, my coaches would say you got to be mentally tough. And so I married those two things together and I'm like suck it up, be mentally tough. Maybe it just means I don't share my emotions. So here I am not sharing how I truly feel, sweeping everything under the rug, not being able to be who I truly am, not understanding my own identity.

Speaker 2:

And so I led into a pit I call it the valley of depression as a young adult. And as a young adult I experienced bankruptcy financially, spiritually, emotionally, not knowing my purpose, financially, spiritually, emotionally, not knowing my purpose. And from there I'm just like who am I? I played, as you mentioned, I played professional flag football and I've always known myself. My only identity is an athlete. But when I experienced a massive knee injury that took me out of the game at the peak of my career, now I'm really like who am I? Who am I without this sport? Who am I without sports?

Speaker 2:

And so I had to do some self-discovery and I used some holistic strategies, sunny, some journaling outside meditation, and I was like, let me try hiking and that's something that you don't see a lot of people of color doing, in to the capacity. So I started to hike and I'm getting out in nature and then I'm like let me climb the highest freestanding mountain in the world. Where does that come from? Cause I had hiking. But I'm going to show you something really cool. On the side of my face I have a birthmark and people say it looks like Africa, it's in the shape of Africa, it's my African birthmark, and who would have thought that the highest freestanding mountain in the world is in Tanzania, africa? So it was like always in me to do something more.

Speaker 1:

And that probably paved the way for a number of things right. To get through a lot of things is just that the grittiness, the unwillingness to give up or unwillingness to push boundaries, yeah absolutely it's that.

Speaker 2:

It's that resilience factor is is bouncing back from difficult times. So the difficult time was depression, and then the difficult time was well, who am I? I don't know my identity and kids struggle with this all the time, like trying to discover who they are, and they're being told by people like me and teachers and educators you just got to be yourself. But how can you be yourself if you've never known who you were? So, being resilient to say I'm going to try something different, I'm going to explore something new, hiking, journaling, actually expressing how I feel because before I'm not able to do that, Acknowledging my emotions. Now I'm becoming emotionally intelligent. Yeah, it is definitely that resilience factor and that's what took me from being in the valley to getting to some of the toppest peaks, the highest peaks in the world.

Speaker 1:

There's a powerful moment in your story earlier on, in your story of getting a five on that college test, and I think there are probably a lot of people listening who they're facing their own moments of what they feel like in the moment, which is profound failure. Right, how am I going to survive this? Psychologically, emotionally, socially, all of those things? Can you take us to what your mind was going through during that time, what shifted inside of you to turn that crushing moment into like the start of a transformation?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. So you couldn't tell me that I wasn't going to be an athlete forever. I just knew I was going to be an athlete forever. But when I went from high school into college, my coach said Tia, you're going to have to be a red shirt freshman because your grades aren't good enough in math. And my grades weren't good enough in math because in high school I was always believing that I'm not good at this.

Speaker 2:

My parents. I would ask them for help. Mom, can you help me? I'd call my dad on the phone Dad, can you help me? I'm not good at math. My mom's like I'm not good at math. Their parents weren't good at math. So I'm like, how am I supposed to be good at math? But it takes being willing to ask for help.

Speaker 2:

So I read one of my teammates. She was amazing at math. She majored in mathematics. I said, hey, her name's Val. I'm like Val, can you tutor me? Can you tutor me after practice in study hall, would you help me? And she was like, yeah, she loves math.

Speaker 2:

And I think if you're in a space where maybe there's a goal that you're after and you don't know where to start, ask, ask, ask the people around you, ask a community that you're a part of and if you're not a part of a community, get a part of a community, meet up groups, get into spaces that are outside of your normal perspective. And that's what I was able to do, and Val helped me. She helped me after class. She helped me late nights after practice we're doing two days of practice but I grinded it out and my confidence got bigger because she was helping me and I started to understand these problems Algebra Okay.

Speaker 2:

I'm starting to understand this and as my confidence is growing, I'm like hey, give me any math problem and I can do it. I get to. After I made that five not ashamed to say it after I made that five because I was resilient enough to get help and ask for help and get a community I ended up making a B in the class. Now it's not an A, but it was better than a failure. So I think sometimes people don't want to ask because they're afraid to look like they don't know it all. But we're not supposed to know it all and if you do want to improve, you got to start somewhere. So getting a community was the best thing that I can do to help me climb higher in the math department.

Speaker 1:

Well, and it's like being confident in knowing what you know, but in knowing what you don't know, and I think oftentimes it's the fear piece, right? Fear of looking dumb, fear of whatever, of why we don't ask or we don't say I don't know this. I need to get some help on this.

Speaker 1:

And if we let that stay in the way, then that becomes our own self-imposed limitation. Yeah, yeah, you've talked about your. You talked about them earlier. Those valley moments, right, those dark periods where there's depression, where there's anxiety, there's that weight of all of the things that those feelings create in us. So for folks who are listening, who might be in their own valley, of whatever sort, they're feeling stuck, they're feeling hopeless, what truth do you wish somebody shared with you during those times?

Speaker 2:

Well, the truth is, on any mountain there's always a valley, like you never just go straight to the top. There's always like a dipping period. It can go up and down. There's even what they call false summits, where you think you're at the top but you're really not. You have to go down again to go up.

Speaker 2:

So I think if there's somebody on this call that is in a valley moment, depression, maybe they're struggling with a financial hardship. Maybe they're struggling with their teenage kids, like once upon a time they used to love me and now it feels like they hate me. That low part that's really your indicator to know that it's not going to stay that way. My mom, she used to always say the sun is still shining on the other side, and so I think you just have to stay in the pocket like a quarterback and wait for the situation to change, but also re-strategize. Are there different ways for me to connect with my kid, with my teen, or are there different people financial advisors that I need to help me with my budget? If you're in a valley, it's really about not giving up, because you'll never get out of it if you don't try to find different ways to press forward and keep climbing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and nothing is forever. Nothing is forever. Like it's that old saying right, this too shall pass. It doesn't feel like it in the moment, it feels like it's swallowing you up in the moment, but this too shall pass. The darkness does come to an end. You know, it may not be a bright light, but it's like a little bit more light than you had before, a little bit more of a view. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. One thing that fascinates me about your journey is how you've repeatedly redefined yourself, from athlete to scholar to mountaineer to speaker. When your knee injury ended your football career something many would see as an ending like you flip that around, you flip that on its head and you're like this is the beginning. How do we, we listeners, how do we learn to see those apparent dead ends as like it's just another doorway?

Speaker 2:

I think the first thing is to understand that it's okay to feel the feeling that you're feeling. In that moment I was very depressed. I was sad because I was actually about to make the most money I could make playing flag football. I've dedicated years and years into this sport, sometimes on my own dime, and now I'm actually able to represent the United States and travel the world. So I'm not gonna just say, oh well, let me try to find something different, like no, I'm going to acknowledge the fact that hurt, this hurts, this moment hurts.

Speaker 2:

But I think when you do allow yourself to feel the feels, then find a way maybe to get extra counseling, maybe to talk to somebody, somebody that you trust to help you get to a whole different step and say, all right, what else can I do? I was able to get to a place where I said, okay, my knees hurt, I got to accept this, I can't change it. I can't change that. I had a grade five cartilage tear. But what else can I do? Who else am I besides an athlete? So sometimes we have to feel the feelings before we can actually start to think logically. The goal is to try to think logically and then evolve. And so, yeah, I was able to feel the feelings, then get to a space where I accepted what was happening. It's like grief. You know the stages of grief. I accepted it, finally got to acceptance. Now, how can I move forward?

Speaker 1:

Was part of that ever like football was such a part of your identity that then not doing that felt like did you, did it feel like confusing to your identity Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

It really felt like an experience of grief. I grieved the person that I was, my teammates. I literally had a job at the time. It was just a job, but my passion was sports. After work we'd go play football, we'd practice football. I'd go to my teammates' house, we'd watch football on TV and play in the pool and just chalk it up, laugh it up. So I lost a sense of my identity. I can't say I talk to those people anymore because I'm not at the football field and I'm not at practice. So I grieved. I grieved the loss of friendships. I grieved the loss of a lifestyle. So it was difficult to create that change and continue to persevere past that change. But you just find new communities and you just embrace the newness.

Speaker 1:

And I think that's such an important part of your story is the part of you acknowledging the grief, because I think sometimes we want to skip past that, like that part sucks if we're honest, right, and you didn't. You went through it, like you said, like you felt the feels, like you felt what you were feeling in the moment and it didn't make it any easier or like less painful, but you acknowledge the grief and I think when people skip past the grief there's a lot of value, though hard in the moment, when we're going through the grief, absolutely 100%.

Speaker 1:

You've stood at the bottom of academic failure. You've topped the peaks of mountains. What have those extremes in between taught you about human potential that most of us may not get to learn?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it taught me that our minds can expand beyond our physical capability. Your mind can expand beyond what you think you're physically capable of. In climbing the first mountain I ever climbed, which was the highest freestanding mountain in the world. Why I did that? We have a saying in Texas go big or go home. I want to go big, I'm going all the way.

Speaker 2:

But when I climbed that mountain, before I even got to the top, I got extremely sick. So I'm experiencing a high level of sickness, covid-like symptoms, sweating bullets, cold and freezing. At the same time, meanwhile I'm coughing and then, on a mountain, you're at 50% less oxygen. So they had to administer oxygen to me on day one on a seven-day hike, and there were. So I wanted to give up on day one.

Speaker 2:

But I made a decision years before I made a decision to train. I made a decision to invest my money and I made a decision years before I made a decision to train. I made a decision to invest my money and I made a decision to take the flight, go through customs. I made a decision to show up on this mountain and so just because I reached adversity, does that mean the decision changes or do we try to figure out. Let's get some air. Let's do some self-affirmations, let's hype yourself up. Tia, you didn't come this far to come this far. You know how to persevere. You're an athlete. Go ahead and activate that. And so I think when people say like don't give up, it means that just keep deciding the original decision that you made to reach the goal. Keep deciding to do that, no matter what.

Speaker 1:

Yeah Well, and resilience, you know, is as much of a buzzword as that is like the real. That's the real gritty truth that you have walked through. And so when you're, when you're on the mountains, I imagine, like you shared on day one, you had to do that and the most important part to getting to day two is like you got to get yourself in check. You got to get your mind in check to be able to face that. Have you ever been on a mountain where you're like I don't know if I can get my mind right?

Speaker 2:

That's such a good question. Yes, two years ago I climbed a mountain, two mountains. The first mountain was called La Malinche in Mexico, and I took a group of other indigenous women of color and we climbed La Malinche and this is about a 14,000 foot mountain in Mexico. And then days later, two days later, we were supposed to climb Pico de Orizaba. This is the highest volcano in North America. And after climbing La Malinche, it took a lot out of us and mentally like I'm thinking this other mountain is 18,000 feet, it's a lot higher, and we're talking you have to have ice axe. We're talking about you need the harnesses. So it takes a lot more physical and mental energy.

Speaker 2:

So when we woke up at two o'clock in the morning and it's freezing and we're bundled up and we're in pitch blackness getting ready to climb this mountain, the highest volcano in North America, I was mentally like I'm like I don't know if we can do this. And I think, as I started to see my teammates disappear, some of them turned back around. One of them turned around within the first two hours. So now it's three of us. We're still hiking. Now, a few hours go by the other one. Now it's just two of us. We get to the base of almost the peak of the mountain it's called High Camp and this is the hardest part of the mountain, where it's seven o'clock in the morning, it's freezing cold. Our guide turns around and says to us we're not going to make it to the top in time because there's a certain time that you have to get to the peak for safety purposes. And, as I saw my teammates fall off throughout the night, like my confidence went down. My belief system went down. I'm like, if they're not making it, like I don't know if I can make it. And I remember, if I'm thinking this the entire time, my body is following everything that I'm thinking. We didn't make it, sonny, but I'm excited to share with you.

Speaker 2:

I didn't give up. I took a year, trained differently, I ate differently, I looked at different routes to take. I re-strategized my whole strategy of climbing this mountain. I ended up going with the highest volcano in North America. And I'm excited, not because I made it to the top, because now, as I'm down, I know how to get people up that mountain. I know exactly what route to take. I know what mindset you need to have. I know how to get you there. So when I climb mountains, I don't just do it for me. It's like, okay, I can get to the summit of this and now I can help others climb up.

Speaker 1:

Okay, this is where we hit the pause button. I hope you enjoyed part one with my guest Tia Banks. Make sure we check back next week for part two, where we dive deep into the importance of self-awareness and burnout prevention how to transform challenging behaviors into leadership opportunities and building sustainable habits for long-term success. I hope to see you then. Thank you so much for listening and for being here on this journey with me. I hope you'll stick around If you liked this episode.

Speaker 1:

It would mean the world for me if you would rate and review the podcast or share it with someone you know Many need to hear this message. I love to hear from you all and want you to know that you can leave me a voicemail directly. If you go to my website, evokegreatnesscom, and go to the Contact Me tab, you'll just hit the big old orange button and record your message. I love the feedback and comments that I've been getting, so please keep them coming. I'll leave you with the wise words of author Robin Sharma Greatness comes by doing a few small and smart things each and every day. It comes from taking little steps consistently. It comes from making a few small chips against everything in your professional and personal life that is ordinary, so that a day eventually arrives when all that's left is the extraordinary.

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