¶ Evoking Greatness Through Resilience
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 . 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 .
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 .
Tia , welcome to the show . Thank you so much , sunny , for having me .
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 .
It's all about adapting . We can adapt to change , and that's exactly what we were able to do .
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 ?
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 . 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 . 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 ?
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 .
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 .
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 .
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 ?
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 . 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 . 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 .
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 .
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 .
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 .
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 ?
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 .
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 .
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 ?
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 .
¶ Navigating Grief and Overcoming Limits
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 .
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 ?
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 .
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 .
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% .
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 ?
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 . 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 . 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 .
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 ?
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 .
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 . 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 .
Okay , this is where we hit the pause button
¶ Achieving Greatness Through Consistency
. 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 . 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 .