You Can Do It!
Hello moms, dads, brothers sisters, aunts, uncles, distinguished guests, and, most importantly, the graduating class of 2023! Can we take a moment to appreciate how incredible you all look? Seriously epic. Faculty and staff you look good too. It is a joy to look out at all these smiling faces!
And Thank you Principal Shaw for that warm introduction.
I am here to share a small bit of knowledge and a few words for our grads to take into the world.
Growing up I was blessed to pursue athletics and eventually become a professional hockey player not unusual over but what makes it crazy is I started playing in Florida back when there was really no hockey being played in Florida.
I was 13 years old playing adults and 16 to 18 years old. I was at the “top” of the Florida hockey pyramid. Everyone told my parents and me that if I really wanted to pursue hockey, I had to leave the state.
On a fluke encounter, my dad and I ended up at a tryout for a top-level team in Michigan. We thought it was just a random open ice session.
We were so naïve we asked the coaches if there was hitting…. think about that. Even if you don’t know anything about hockey you know it is a brutal sport. Here we were two people from the sunshine state asking these grizzled coaching vets if there was hitting in the sport. They nervously said yes. To which my dad and I walked away and debated the merits of skating at this session. I could get horribly embarrassed by taking a bad hit and worse injured by these monsters from up north but hey… it could also be fun. Maybe? We decided I should skate. It went by just fine.
After the skate I was undressing in the locker room and heard my name. Noah Babin. Is there Noah Babin in here.
Oh no…. what did I do wrong. I barely knew what I was doing in the first place. The coach asked if I had someone with me. I got my dad.
Based off that one skate they wanted me to come tryout for their team. Tryout? Team? What team? This was just an open skate.
Next thing I know we are packing the car and my mom, and I are driving to Michigan to play for his team. A top tier team kids from all over the country want to play for. I accidentally made it on.
This one act starts a course that would eventually lead me to be a part of two world championships and the first international championship for the USA since the legendary 1980 Olympic team. I scored the game winning goal, and my stick and puck were on display at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, Canada.
I was offered a scholarship to play hockey at the University of Notre Dame. We eventually went on to be the top ranked team for my entire senior year, only to fall on a fluke game to a team we beat every game we played them that year and were knocked out of the NCAA. I still really dislike Michigan State for that.
The journey continued when a Hall of Fame hockey player by the name of Ron Francis saw me playing at Notre Dame and decided I was good enough to play hockey for the Carolina Hurricanes of the NHL. I signed an NHL contract, and the rest was history. Or so I thought.
After signing that contract the “wheels” fell off the bus. A congenital defect in my knee cap started to show its ugly face. I would eventually learn my patella was attached incorrectly and because of that my kneecap rubbed my femur. End results after about ten years of intense training. I tore a dime sized piece of cartilage off my knee cap. Not good. It was so bad by the end of my two years in the pros my quad muscle stopped working. I didn’t even know that could happen. Your body can turn a muscle off to protect itself from further damage. Pretty wild.
Crazy story right? Small town kid from a non-hockey town makes it big time, then loses it all to a freak accident. Heartbreak tale.
So, I stand before you as a graduate of the University of Notre Dame. Former division 1 athlete. Former professional athlete and current investment professional. Because of my life in sports, I have rubbed shoulders with Hall of Fame athletes, billionaires and future presidents. I have ridden in private jets and been cheered on by tens of thousands of people in arenas across the country.
I am now a confident, secure and accomplished person.
That is what some people might see anyway.
What you don’t see is all the stuff I had to go through.
While playing in Florida, I was a weird 13-year-old kid playing with 18 year olds. I was picked on. A LOT. One time I was being so annoying or something like that my teammates put me in a corner and just started punching me.
When I moved to Michigan, I didn’t know that I was supposed to hang out with my teammates and I didn’t really have any friends when I started high school. The first day of school, I will never ever forget. In Florida where I grew up we wore skater clothes. Back in those days Baggy Cargo shorts, a birdhouse skateboard t-shirt and DC shoes were about as cool as you can get. I walked into Northville high school for my first day and a kid I didn’t know walked up and says: “You’re not from here, are you? No. Yeah dude, nobody dresses like that here.” A group of kids laugh.
Oh boy, this might have been a mistake. Head down walk away quickly. Be invisible.
That first year was rough.
On my “World-Championship” teams, I was ok. I got kicked off the ice more than once by my coach Moe Mantha because I wasn’t playing well in practice. My friends still laugh about it to this day.
He would come up at practice and say: Babs, I had a great day today. I went golfing. I have dinner with my wife later. Please don’t mess this up. Just get off the ice now and I won’t even be mad at you.
So, I did.
What’s even crazier is I didn’t even understand why that was so bad. I mean everyone has a bad day right and he wanted to have a good day. So I would just do what he said. Seemed simple.
I’ll never forget when we got back from the world championship. My line, which included the smaller unit within the team that goes on the ice got scored on 7 times in 7 shifts playing in Chicago. 7 times. In 7 shifts. In a ROW. It was really bad. I was really bad. In hockey 7 goals is a ton!
Between high-school and college I had to play a year in Green Bay, Wisconsin
I was getting benched in Green Bay and my coach eventually called me into his office and said: I don’t think you want to be here. I don’t think you want to play hockey. Frankly, I think you should just go home. I spoke to Notre Dame, they think they made a mistake choosing you and they don’t even want you anymore.
I will never forget looking at that man and being in such a deep dark depression at that time. I didn’t want to go to sleep at night because I knew the morning would come and I was terrified of another day living my life. I would just lay there at night. Eventually the sun would start coming up and I was afraid of another day starting. The days just wouldn’t stop showing up.
A huge benefit of hockey and sports is seasons end and new beginning start like clock work.
When I finally got to Notre Dame, I was in and out of the lineup, but I didn’t care really. I did but not REALLY. I was there for the education. I truly didn’t think I could go past college hockey. I mean from where I started, being at the University of Notre Dame was an overshot by about 10,000 miles.
When the season ended and my coach pulled me into his office. Dave Poulin. He had won a few Stanley Cups and was captain of the Flyers in his playing days.
Coach Poulin said: Noah, you have no head game.
A what? I asked. Head game, he said.
I didn’t even know what that meant.
He handed me a book: The Mental Edge. I will never forget it.
He said read it and come back.
It was like every problem I ever had; every mistake I had ever made and every question about myself I ever thought of had a solution in that book. My mind blew up. I mean blew up.
He gave me more books. We discussed them. I read and read and read. Everything from ancient religions to modern day sport psychology books. I found what I was missing. What nobody else had the insight to see.
I had no confidence growing up. None. I had no control over my mind while growing up. I didn’t even know I could have control over it. I had been told more times than I want to remember:
You need more focus. You need to be more intense. You need to be more aggressive. You need to be more CONFIDENT!
Not a single person that said those things to me cared to share with me HOW I could do that! Until Coach Dave.
I learned how meditation is the foundation to train your mind. When you learn how to meditate properly, NOBODY can mess with your head. You can learn to control your thoughts. Pick and choose them to best serve you. It is like a cheat code so few people use it and Coach Poulin shared it with me.
You just sit and relax. Focus your mind on your breathing, nothing, an object or just notice the thoughts coming into your head. The longer you can do that, the more you control yourself.
So simple. Just so simple and it solved so many problems.
I learned how I get to choose how I perceive things. That coach in Green Bay who I thought was a 6’3” 230 lb screaming angry lunatic who hated me was actually a 6’3” 230 lb screaming angel who was there to teach me something. I learned I get to decide how I interpret events. Events and situations in life happen for me, not to me. You hear that. Situations and events happen FOR ME. Not to me. That goes for you too. You just need to decide how to view them.
So when your 6’3” 230 lbs screaming angel comes into your life, realize they are there for you, to teach you something.
Lastly from Dave, I learned that I get to define myself. Nobody else gets to define me.
I can control my thoughts, and I can control how I decide to see the world around me, I get to decide who I am. So, I decided I wanted to be an absolute rock star. Nobody could tell me otherwise. I crafted my mind with the thoughts I wanted through meditation and visualization. I hardened my mind by subjecting my body to intense workouts and lengthy sessions of meditation. Every single waking moment was an opportunity to improve and become the person I wanted to be.
Which leads to my NHL career.
I worked my entire life and got the opportunity to play as a professional hockey player for a decade. I had finally fixed all the things that had plagued me. I was focused, I was confident, I was fast, I was strong, I understood the game.
Then it ended. No big celebration. Just two years of pain. Two years of taking the highest doses possible of ibuprofen and aspirin to cut the pain down in my knee. Just to get on the ice and compete. Two years of watching guys I knew weren’t as good as me go on to NHL careers, while mine was vanishing with each passing day. Two full years of daily suffering. At the end of it, I could barely walk down a set of stairs, it was so painful.
The difference between then and before. I had my mind. No matter how hard things were, I knew it was my choice to get upset, to get depressed and to get frustrated. Did I feel all those emotions. You better believe it. I was so angry sometimes I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t watch hockey for ten years after that because every time I turned the TV on, I heard the name of yet another guy I played against or played with that was now getting to live out his dream.
That door closed. Another one opened. Time to get my head straight and move on. So I did.
Now I share that with you all because you all have the power, just like me to control your life to be what you want to be and do what you want to do. It all starts right here. In your mind.
You get to choose your thoughts; you get to choose the vision of your life, and you get to believe it into existence.
It’s your choice.
I have watched these same tools and techniques change the lives of hundreds of people from all walks of life. I have seen them used by professional athlete. I now coach athletes and I have seen them change the performance of a girl trying out for the Olympic team and I have seen them help a kid calm down before a math test.
My point today is for you, grads, go out and learn how to control your inner world to craft your physical world. Learn how to meditate, visualize, and think so you can be the best version of yourself. You deserve it.
You have already accomplished so much and learned so much through your 18 years of school. I urge you to learn about your self a little more to set yourselves up for success. You can learn from me and my class at mental-matters.com or from any one of the hundreds of books on the subject. But this material changed my life and I know it can guide yours. You can take control of your world.
So to the graduating class of 2023, be what you want to be. It starts with a dream, a vision and a focus. Most importantly, it starts with your mind. Learn how to control your mind and the world is yours.
Congratulations on your high school graduation. I now wish you success and happiness and may all your dreams come true.
Thank you.