Devon Harris is an original member of the 1988 Jamaican bobsled team and captain of the 1992 and 1998 teams. He’s a 3-time Olympian, and he achieved something that he could only have dreamed of having been brought up in Kingston, Jamaica. And yes, Devon and his teammates were the inspiration for the movie Cool Runnings, which if you’re like me, you probably grew up watching on loop over and over and over again. We talk about that a little bit in today’s conversation. Most of today’s conversation is about Devon’s...
Devon Harris is an original member of the 1988 Jamaican bobsled team and captain of the 1992 and 1998 teams. He’s a 3-time Olympian, and he achieved something that he could only have dreamed of having been brought up in Kingston, Jamaica. And yes, Devon and his teammates were the inspiration for the movie Cool Runnings, which if you’re like me, you probably grew up watching on loop over and over and over again. We talk about that a little bit in today’s conversation. Most of today’s conversation is about Devon’s perspective on the culture in Jamaica and how that leads to great performers and great athletes. We talk about Devon’s own perspective and how he had naivete, and his teammates probably had naivete, to achieve something that they could have only dreamt of where they were going to compete in the Olympics. He is someone who is philosophical, he is thoughtful, and he has a military background which he’s going to share greatly served him and helped him when it came time for the Olympics. And so, this is conversation that gets deep into themes like confidence and themes like greatness. Devon is a motivational speaker, he thinks deeply and thinks in ways that might be new to you and I think will be helpful to you.
Devon had a number of amazing insights during our conversation. Some of them include:
“There is nothing glamorous about a bobsled” (5:35).
“Other people have done it before so I should be able to figure out how to do it” (6:00).
“If I die, I die. But I’m going” (7:25).
“Every time we set out to do something amazing, great, different, there is a certain amount of fear with it” (7:40).
“Courage is being scared to death but doing the thing anyway” (8:15).
“I could not allow that fear to stop me, so I went for it” (9:05).
“Anyone who has achieved something great and out of the box experiences some level of delusion” (13:15).
“There’s a certain level of delusion, but it’s founded on the experience and the knowledge and the work that you did before” (14:55).
“You can always learn new skills” (16:10).
“You have to be willing to acknowledge that you don’t know so you can learn” (17:50).
“We [Jamaicans] feed off the success of our compatriots” (23:20).
“There’s a kind of defiance that’s embedded in us as Jamaicans” (26:25).
“No task is too difficult; no obstacle is too great” (29:35).
“It was the army experience that I relied on to get through those early days” (31:50).
“Adversity allows you to grow. Adversity allows you to be inventive and be creative” (35:05).
“Once you learn to deal with adversity in one area of your life, it translates into another area” (35:50).
“I never could have imagined, coming from where I’m coming from, that you could have a movie made about a part of my life” (42:35).
“I don’t know if they really captured the hardships we experienced trying to get to the Olympic games” (44:05).
Additionally, you can find everything you need to know about Devon on his website. You can also find the link to his foundation, Keep on Pushing, here.
Thank you so much to Devon for coming on the podcast!
I wrote a book called “Shift Your Mind” that was released in October of 2020, and you can order it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Additionally, I have launched a company called Strong Skills, and I encourage you to check out our new website https://www.strongskills.co/. If you liked this episode and/or any others, please follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers.
Thanks for listening.
