Mike Robbins was a baseball star. After turning down a draft option from the New York Yankees right out of high school, he attended Stanford, pitched in the College World Series, and went on to pitch for the Kansas City Royals for several seasons.
But when Robbins "blew his arm out" at age 23, there was no salvaging the baseball career he had spent 14 years cultivating.
"It was devasting," he recalled in an interview with HuffPost Live's Caroline Modarressy Tehrani to promote his book self-help book Nothing Changes Until You Do.
"That had been the focus of my life, so it was really painful physically and then, mentally, emotionally."
Years later, Robbins is able to see the merits of this unfortunate experience.
"I think at a deeper level, as I look back on it now -- although I'm not sure I was aware of it at the time -- there was a liberation in it at the same time," he continued.
"When you're really good at something, as great as it can be, and you get a lot of attention, as I did as a child... there was an element of it, sort of 'put me in a box,' if you will. So it was difficult for me at the time but now, at 40 years old, looking back on that experience, I can definitely say without question it was one of the greatest things that happened to me."
Watch Mike Robbins' full HuffPost Live interview below:
