Rodney Mullen Is a National Treasure

When I was young, I attempted to skateboard.  At the time, I thought I was pretty good.  In retrospect, I was not.  Nevertheless, I knew the culture fairly well in those very early crossover days as the sport was gaining mainstream prominence, but before things like the X Games existed.

During that time, I idolized Rodney Mullen to the point of doing the perfectly understandable, but probably somewhat unfashionable, thing: I bought one of his skate decks, hoping that it would imbue me with his fantastical prowess.

It did not.

Still, the man has always amazed me, even more so when I just recently discovered that he has, apparently, begun a second career as a motivational speaker for tech gurus and the like.

What follows is a TEDx Talk that he gave about five years ago.  In this talk, he focuses mostly on the power of positive thinking and how skateboarders can—and must—will themselves to perform in the face of the demands that they absolutely should not be doing to their bodies what they are doing to their bodies.

This video, when I discovered it just a few days ago, really hit home, for reasons that I have discussed at some length.

Give it a look, because it’s great.  The usual caveats apply, of course: 1) just rubbing some dirt on your clearly injured body is not ever a good thing to do; 2) if you are hurt, seek and follow sound medical advice.  Please, do those two things.

Beyond that, yes, strive to be excellent, and do excellent things.