Keith Mitchell: Exclusive Interview
Special philanthropic initiatives he supports include mental health awareness for veterans and athletes and youth obesity prevention.
OMTimes had the privilege to Interview Keith about his new life after a Tragic event and how he reinvented himself Mindfully.
OMTimes: Coach Ditka says that you always played hard on the field. What drove you to always play your best? What was your inspiration?
Keith Mitchell: I have two mentalities – I have an understanding of what I know now and I have an understanding what I knew then. Back then, it was all more centered on anger and validation and now I understand the reasons why. Erich Fromm was a very inspirational writer, I studied a lot of his work and I teach from his book “The Art of Loving”. Fromm talks about why we are all born narcissist, because we learn love without having to work for it. So, in the development stages of finding that consistency of the love that we received as children, we find a niche to create our validation and create a consistency of that love. Whether it be your looks, your brain, your athletic ability, whatever you find your niche in, you will find your way to excel in that to get your validation. OMTimes: You were just mentioning anger. Where does anger come from?
Keith Mitchell: Anger can come from the extremes to the subtleties – It can be things you don’t understand and you don’t have a concept of expressing it and the little things as we know, add up to big things. It can be the slightest things that we carry with us, like people at middle school telling us that we were not attractive, we have big lips or we have this or that and we still hold this insecurity inside of us.
