[upbeat jingle] - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein, welcome to Side by Side.

My guest today has been recognized by Sports Illustrated as one of the most accomplished, physically challenged athletes in history.

With four impaired limbs, he still became a tennis Hall of Famer.

We're talking about the determination to create opportunity from adversity with international Hall of Fame member, Roger Crawford.

- Funding for Side By Side with Nido Qubein is made possible by: - Here's to those that rise and shine.

To friendly faces doing more than their part.

And to those who still enjoy the little things.

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- Roger, you are in the NCAA division 1 Hall of Fame.

You are in the international tennis Hall of Fame.

How does one get there?

- Well, first of all, Dr. Qubein, thank you so much for having me today.

I really, really appreciate it.

You mentioned the introduction that I was born with a physical challenge.

It affects all four of my limbs, from the elbows down and from the knees down.

I have two fingers on my left hand and one finger on my right hand.

I want to tell you that I have two granddaughters that are six years old.

They're in elementary school, and they're fascinated that their grandpa has a college degree and can't count on his fingers.

They just think that's really amazing.

But, no, I did grow up playing tennis with this physical challenge.

And you know, people often ask me that, Roger, how were you able to play at NCAA division 1 college level?

And here's what I learned.

No matter what disadvantage you have, if you can hit the ball over the net one more time than your opponent, you win the point.

It's really more about consistency than about perfection.

So if I could point to one thing that enabled me to play collegiate tennis with a physical challenge, it would have been that.

Look, there were certainly limitations that I had.

My arms being shorter and wearing an artificial leg, but it's funny, I had played a gentleman one time, and throughout the entire match, I wore long warmup pants.

My opponent didn't realize until the match was over that I wore an artificial leg.

He took the loss a lot harder then, I'll tell you that.

- I bet he did, yes.

- But no, tennis played a big role in my life.

It really, really did.

I approached it - How did you get started in tennis?

- Well, that's a great question, so.

- And who encouraged you?

- Well, we moved from Ohio to California when I was 12 years of age and there were tennis courts that were near my family's home and I tried different ways of holding onto the rack and I used to hold it against my right elbow with my left hands and everything with two hands, but still the racket wasn't secure.

So one day I walked into a tennis store and Dr.Qubein I saw the holy grail of tennis rackets.

I'm convinced this racket was made just for me.

And the racket was called a Wilson T2000.

It has the head of the racket, then two parallel bars that come down to the grip.

I held that racket for the first time and my finger got stuck in between the two parallel bars.

That's how I learned how to hold onto rack.

You know, people give me a lot of credit, saying, oh wow, that's so creative.

What?

That's real innovation?

I say, no, no, my finger just got stuck, That was it.

But that's how we learned how to play.

- And that's how you play tennis now.

- That's how I play right now.

Today, Wilson sporting goods has been kind enough to design my own racket.

The Roger Crawford Autograph.

Now it's a very limited market.

I'm the only customer.

However, but it really is the same principle.

It's those two parallel bars.

Now they're just into a more modern racket.

- So Roger, you took what many of us would call enormous adversity and you turned it into enormous abundance.

There's a great lesson in that for all of us.

You call it consistency, but it's really more than that.

Is it not?

Is it self-confidence?

Is it perseverance?

Is it competency?

- I would say, more than anything, it's mindset.

My father, I always joke, was a motivational speaker.

Now his speeches were short and he only spoke at home, but here would be my father's motivational speech.

"You don't live in pity city."

He was very clear.

- How old were you when he first told you that?

- I was probably six or seven years of age and I heard it numerous times throughout my life, but the message was this no excuses.

And so I grew up with the mindset that everybody is challenged in some way.

Some you can see like mine it's visible, it's evident, but there are challenges that you cannot see.

And oftentimes it's those invisible challenges that are infinitely more difficult to overcome.

So the mindset was that I wasn't handicapped disabled or limited, right.

I just had to find my giftedness, find out what I was able to do, but isn't that true for most people, Dr. Qubein, I mean, have.

- Roger, you were a kid, you went to school, did your friends or other students say things to you that were uncomfortable?

And how did you overcome that?

Take us there.

I want to show, yes.

We all have an opportunity for giftedness as you put it, but how one get to the point of receptivity?

So many people are resistant to the opportunities or they don't acknowledge that there are opportunities for a better future, but you somehow broke through that glass ceiling.

Somehow you said, I can.

What got you there?

your father giving you the advice and the motivational speaking, but there's more than that.

I want to know more about your heart, your soul, your pain.

- When I was a young person, there certainly were other students that rejected me, ridiculed me, made fun of me.

If you will, there was bullying back then, but interesting enough, Dr. Qubein, it fueled me to want to be like all the other kids now.

And here's what I mean by that.

We're all unique in our own way.

And I'm not saying that we should strive to be like everyone else, but the point was I wanted to compete equally with the other students.

[crosstalk] - You didn't want any special privilege.

- No, no, not at all.

In fact now, as you know, in my speaking career, I always want to be looked upon as a speaker who happens to have yes, a physical challenge, because I want to be able to look in the mirror and say, you know, Roger, if you didn't have a personal life story, you still could be an effective communicator.

It was very important for me growing up.

And that was true in athletics as well.

So I think some of it came from pain.

Sure.

Feeling rejected and maybe feeling less than from time to time.

But I, but I also think that a lot of it came from my, my mom and dad, my mother used to say to me, if someone ridicules you, that's a weak person's imitation of strength.

And that's a saying that you've probably heard before, but it really resonated with me because it helped me put that into perspective.

You know, that was their hurt.

It was less about me, but more, more about them.

But I, but I'm not going to say that there weren't times that I wished I had normal hands.

In fact, I, I got a new pair of hands when I was younger.

When I say new, I hadn't had them before they were perfect, beautiful fingers, you know, everything I had dreamed of.

And it's funny, I thought it would change my life.

And it did.

I remember thinking, what do people do at 10 fingers?

I mean, I'm poking myself in the eye and everything, but, but the point was, this is that they were just cosmetic.

They changed the exterior, but not the interior.

And as I've heard you say, my friend, we do live life from the inside out.

And that's so true.

So I think certainly my parents, I had a burning desire to want to be like all the other kids.

I also came from a very athletic family.

My father was a baseball player at duke university.

My brother was quite a good athlete as well.

So I was oriented towards athletics.

[crosstalk] Yeah.

And, and now, you know, we see you on the tennis channel, you know, giving presentations and motivational minutes and interviews.

And I mean, you've, you, you are a remarkable story of a human being who took what could be seen as a challenge or for some reason as a problem.

And you showed us all that, no, you are enough.

You can make great things happen.

You're an inspiration to the young and the older, because of your life story.

How did you become such a good tennis player?

I understand the tennis racket.

First of all, did you have any operations that gave you more dexterity?

What did you do in that, in that area?

- Right.

I had surgery when I was 12 years of age to give me dexterity in my left hand.

And that certainly helped.

I think for me playing tennis, we spoke earlier about consistency, but it was also about diligent practice because I would spend hours on the tennis court hitting balls against the backboard.

And what I understood was I may have to work twice as hard as someone else to be successful on the tennis court.

And I became okay with that.

I really did.

I, I understood that going in.

If someone was going to have to practice two hours, maybe for me, it was, it was four hours.

The other thing is controlling the controllable.

There's nothing I can do about my hands or my legs, but I can do something about focus.

I can do something about determination that is within my control.

That's volitional and, and also taking it really one point in time.

And I know people may think that's trite because we talk about living one day at a time, but I saw a great example of this.

You mentioned my work on Tennis Channel.

I had the opportunity of being in a room with the great Rafael Nadal.

You know, one of the greatest tennis players in history.

This person asks Rafa, "What is your next big goal?"

What do you want to accomplish in the future?

And I'm thinking, well, he's probably going to talk about the French open or Wimbledon.

Here's what he said: "I want to have a good practice tomorrow."

And the interviewer said, no, no, no.

I was talking about maybe something like a grand slam tournament.

And he said, "I don't think about that."

The only thing I'm focused on right now is a good practice tomorrow and what a great philosophy of life.

And for me on the tennis court, again, it was that point by point.

Now I had an opportunity of playing in Serena Williams' tennis tournament a couple of years ago.

That's what I learned a positive attitude is work every time.

I'll tell you that, but, I felt that for me reaching my potential as a tennis player, I wasn't going to be a Wimbledon champion.

I wasn't going to be in the US Open, but I could be the best version of myself.

And that's what I really strive for my entire life.

Just to be the best version of myself.

- And that's the message for us all.

Is it not to be the best version of myself?

What a, what a great way to, to state it.

How does one become the best version of themselves?

Well, tennis aside life.

- I think first of all, it's taking an inventory of your gifts.

We talked about giftedness, but you know, I always say to audiences, look, I'm a lousy piano player, no matter how optimistic I am, no matter how focused determined, I'm not going to be a great piano player.

So it's separating -- - [Nido] Do you play the piano?

- Oh, no, no, that would be good though.

I should give that a try.

If you got a piano around here, maybe I'll give it a try, but separating what you can do from what you can't do.

Okay.

I think number one, number two, it's allow yourself to dream.

What's possible Here.

Here's what I mean by that.

You know, you, you mentioned that I was an inspiration on, I thank you so much for that.

That means a great deal coming from you Dr Qubein, but I'm so thankful to have grown up in this country that has given me these kinds of opportunities, because I do know had I been born in another part of the world?

My life might not, might not be possible.

It wouldn't have been before me like it is here, but I think it's again, getting in touch with your giftedness.

It's, it's being focused on making those gifts exceptional.

You know, there's a big difference between acceptable and exceptional.

And if you take your giftedness and you work as hard as you can in that gifted area, then, then you can, you can make that exceptional and all of us can do it.

I, you know, I've really believed that one of the quickest ways to increase our results is to decrease excuses.

It's so easy to make excuses, isn't it?

Because we can always find something in our life that's wrong.

We can always find someone to blame.

We can always look at circumstance, say, gosh, that didn't go my way.

And what we do is we overestimate the negative and we underestimate the positive and there's so much good in all of our lives.

You know, I talked about, you know, my grandchildren, they've been such an amazing blessing in my life and it's been really fun to watch them become aware of my physical challenge.

At first, they didn't notice, but see, now they've gotten a little older and they notice and they call me pop daddy.

And I feel so blessed.

- How do you explain it when they, when they point as children are innocent and direct, how do you explain it?

- I say to them that this is the way that I was born.

This is how I began my life.

And then I related to them, this is how you became your life, curly hair, straight hair, whatever it may be.

And it's important that they understand that I don't feel badly about how I was born, that I'm not disappointed or that, gosh, I wish I was different because we've known each other a long time and my life has been incredible.

I have an amazing wife love of my life and great children and grandchildren.

And you know, what, what more could I ask for in life really?

And I think we, it also is about gratitude, right?

Just, just being grateful for what we have every day, because it's very difficult to be negative and grateful at the same time.

- Very, very difficult.

In fact, I say whining is the opposite of Thanksgiving.

So when you whine about anything, you know, the amazing thing, Roger, listening to you, the greatest gift that you and I have is called oxygen without which we would die.

And yet we all take it for granted.

The only time we really realize that oxygen is so valuable is God forbid when you're in a hospital on a ventilator, trying to try to try to live, right?

Otherwise we don't think twice about it.

You don't think about clean water.

We don't think about this country quite often about other other benefits that we have.

But what's remarkable about you is that you took something that for most of us, I think we would give up.

I think most people would say like, Tennis, come on becoming a champion, being inducted in the NCAA division, one hall of fame, come on, let's be realistic.

You defied that.

You defied the natural behavioral response that people have and set to yourself.

I will, and I will compete, you know, with the best of them.

Are you still practicing tennis?

- Oh yeah.

I still play tennis.

I don't play as often as I, as I used to, but I I'm still playing tennis.

In fact, I've been working with my grandkids playing tennis and that's been fun.

- Roger, this is, this is probably a silly question.

You play tennis with someone who's equipped to do anything with them.

- Absolutely.

Well, right.

And when I was growing up now, here's what, what people often say, "Well, did you play in the Paralympics?"

Well, there wasn't such no thing when I was growing up, but I will tell you that for me, it was very important that I competed with able-bodied people.

It was just how I saw myself.

Not that I -- I think the Paralympics is fantastic.

I really, really do.

But for me, I just felt that was important.

You know, when I went to college at Loyola Marymount University, I didn't want anyone to give me any special accommodation for my physical challenge, because it would go against the way that I think it's, I, I don't think of myself as, and I've said this.

I said this earlier in the interview, I don't think of myself as disadvantage, less than I don't spend a lot of time feeling sorry for myself now, do I have challenges?

Of course.

But the truth of the matter is it has very little to do with my hands and my legs they're usually self-imposed like everyone else.

The real obstacles that I've had in my life have been the ones that I presented to myself.

I think so often for us, Dr. Qubein, that we, we look at ourselves and we immediately focus in on what we can't do our limitations and we completely neglect what we can do.

I think all of us are filled with such amazing potential, but it's begins with intention.

No, it's okay.

I'm going to do the best I can with what I have, which are simple, simple words, but so profound.

But one of my, my granddaughter, Alec, Gina talking about grandkids, you can time proud to grandfather.

She said something to me one day, she says, "You know, pop daddy,?"

She says, "You've got two fingers in one hand and one on the other.

And that's okay."

And I thought, "What a great philosophy of life."

- Yes, yes.

- "And that's okay."

- She carries that through life.

It's a wonderful philosophy that keep us from having all these relational problems.

As some people seem to be hung up about.

Roger, when you play tennis, now you play with someone who's better than you?

- Yes, actually I do.

I -- - And your percentage of wins is what?

You win half the time?

You win most of the time?

- Well, if I'm playing against someone my age, I would say that I've got a pretty good chance.

I don't know that my ability, it would be not in a state ranked or a nationally ranked in the, in the over sixties just revealed my age, 60 years of age, but I still can play pretty well.

- But again - You play singles?

- Singles.

Yes.

- Yeah.

- But again, it gets back to this idea of consistency because that's something that for me could be my competitive advantage.

If it was going to be power, that wasn't going to be efficient, but what was, is keeping the ball back over the net because when you look at a tennis match -- now this is this isn't true of maybe the elite world-class tennis players, but most points are lost than won there's many more balls that are hit out of the court.

- This is a Thomas Edison story, right?

You have to do a thousand of them to get one or two right.

- Exactly.

Yeah.

So, so Roger, what advice do you -- I know you speak to a lot of young people.

You speak at a lot of corporations.

What advice do you typically give young people?

I say young, I don't necessarily mean seniors in high school, you know, young people, young professionals starting out in life, becoming entrepreneurs and getting a job in a good place, et cetera.

- Something that I've said to audiences for many years is that challenges are inevitable, but defeat is optional.

Helping young people understand that you don't really fail until you give up until you quit.

You know, it took me 16 years to learn how to tie my shoes.

- Took you six, 16.

- Years.

- To learn how to tie your shoes.

- Right?

- Why in the world did you not go to Velcro?

- Well.

That's very funny, but back then it was that funny.

I don't, I don't remember them being Velcro shoes.

I wish there was when I was growing up.

That's a great idea.

Dr Qubein.

- Loafers, for example.

Well.

- Because tennis shoes, which I would wear.

Yes, but I, but I want people that are listening to understand how important tying my shoes was.

That was my last step to independence.

Now I don't want to depend on another person for help.

I just grew up that way.

Now my lovely wife tied this tie, I would admit it.

And so she can, so I still get help from people don't misunderstand me.

However, tying my shoes was something of great importance to me.

- Take us there.

How long did it take you?

How much, how much crying did you do with the process?

Did you give up?

- Sure.

- You know, what was the thinking process as you, something as simple as that is such a powerful idea about achieving anything of importance in life.

And that was really important to you, that you could do that independently.

- It was, and I will share this with you, Dr. Qubein, that my two most cherished friends in life are two young men that when I was a kid, they'd tie my shoes for me.

And I've never forgotten it.

I felt comfortable with this would have been probably 10, 11, 12.

They were my go-to and they have, they are my two dearest, dearest friends.

I, I felt comfortable enough asking them.

Now it wasn't in view of all the other kids you see, it was very important.

I just wanna express it because I didn't want someone to see another person tying my shoes.

So I tried different ways of doing it.

And I remember a teacher saying to me, you know, "Roger, have you ever thought of wrapping the lace tight around this finger?"

And it worked.

After 16 years.

- Wow.

- That simple idea.

And I will tell you that nobody loves tying shoes more than I do.

Well, I love it.

- I noticed today.

I have laces on your shoes.

I, on the other hand, have a loafer on, I haven't tied a pair of shoes except for tennis shoes in a long time, both inspired and embarrassed, embarrassed by my laziness inspired by your agility to -- - These actually are not ones that I do tie, but I, I most often do wear tie shoes because I just, it's one of those, I it's one of those activities in life that I still take.

Great joy of just, just doing that.

- So this teacher with one sentence, yeah.

Had tremendous impact on you that literally helped you to accomplish a goal that you had.

- Absolutely.

I think one of the greatest advice that I ever received from a teacher was someone who said to me, you'll never reach higher with your hands in your pockets.

- You will.

- Never reach higher with your hands in your pockets.

You never reach higher.

We guys in your pocket, my hands were in my pockets because I was reticent about other kids seeing my hands.

- I see, I see.

- But you see, it was very profound, that statement.

And I want the listeners to think about this for a moment, how that applies in their life.

That may not be hands in your pockets, but what are you resisting - Or holding back, - holding back that might be this amazing opportunity.

- You must step up and step out to make.

Anything happen.

- Exactly.

And those words were really profound for me because it helped me understand that.

Wait a minute, okay.

I have to take that risk and risk, maybe embarrassment or a stare.

If I want to reach a little higher.

- You know, what's ironic about you is that you even have talked about your father being a motivational speaker.

You thought why your friends are tying the shoes for, you talked about the teacher who planted seeds, the greatness in your mind, heart and soul.

And then you chose a life calling of inspiring other people.

That's what you do.

You're traveling the world, telling other people about the art of the possible, - Right?

Don't let your limitations stand in the way of your possibilities - Right?

This is fascinating to me.

What's next for you, Roger?

- Well, what's next is I'm still doing quite a bit of speaking now that COVID, I've written some books, I've written some books and I have a new book coming out.

I'm very excited about that, but life is good.

I, I want to keep doing what I'm doing.

I I've always had a heart for people that are hurting or discouraged.

And if I can bring to them a message that might inspire them, or they might look at their life challenges with a different perspective, a fresh perspective, or they can rise above adversity, or just as simple as they see in their life.

What's possible, then that's work that I love and I enjoy.

And there for me, there's not a greater privilege in life.

They have to be able to inspire enough.

- Yeah.

True to all of us.

Roger, thank you so much.

Thank you, Dr. Qubein.

God bless you.

Take good care.

Keeps inspiring the world.

Thank.

- You.

My friend.

- Funding for Side By Side with Nido Qubein is made possible by: - Here's to those that rise and shine to friendly faces doing more than their part.

And to those who still enjoy the little things you make it feel like home.

Ashley HomeStore.

This is home.

- The BuddGroup is a company of everyday leaders making a difference by providing facility solutions through customized janitorial landscape and maintenance services.

- Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally.

Thanks to our teammates.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated your local bottler.