Thomas J. Morris has known life’s victories, big and small.
Ruggedly handsome with a slightly graying beard and blue eyes that always peer into yours, and a relentlessly upbeat personality, Tom was a long-bomb throwing QB king of Penn State IM football while getting his degree in kinesiology and movement science at University Park.
A stint followed as a grad assistant for strength and conditioning for Nittany Lion football, with Morris gratefully and dutifully working under JT Thomas and Jeremy Scott.
Morris grew up just south of Hazleton in the tiny town of Jeansville, which was just north of the tiny town of Tresckow, the hometown of his high school sweetheart and now-wife, Christa Sist-Morris, also a PSU grad.
The two spent 16 years at Indiana University in Bloomington — “an incredible place,” he says. And yes, their time at IU overlapped with current Penn State athletic director Pat Kraft. Tom was senior associate AD for athletic performance, working his way up the chain after starting as an assistant strength and conditioning coach. Christa was director of retention and learning services for football. And yes, the head football coach for part of that time was current Penn State defensive coordinator Tom Allen.
Then, last August, Tom and Christa fulfilled the dream of thousands of Penn State alumni, and returned to their alma mater to work for Penn State athletics. Recruited by Kraft — “his energy and overall vision are infectious,” says Tom — Morris returned to campus as assistant AD for high performance, to develop innovative training and monitoring methodologies and technologies for Penn State’s Olympic sport athletes.
Christa works as a learning specialist for athletics. They happily live outside of Boalsburg with their boxer, Dex, in a tight-knit community that “as soon as you get home,” Tom says, “there’s a neighbor there with a beer who’s happy to see you.”
Morris works daily with scores of coaches, support staff and trainers and hundreds of athletes, using high tech and high-energy motivation to drive Penn State’s athletes to be their best — on and off the field. That includes incorporating all the resources of Penn State, as well as the community, including the use of a local masseuse and the folks at State College’s yoga mecca, The PYP Studio.
“Pat is all about supporting the athletes and our goal of winning championships, and giving them all the resources that football has,” Morris says. “Pat’s big thing is, How do we create this for everybody? My position is to be the glue of it all, to make it all come together with a lot of great moving parts.”
For Morris, those are large personal and professional victories. As is living the Penn State life with Christa.
But Morris’ biggest win is, simply and extraordinarily, life itself. Injured in a mountain bike accident and paralyzed from the waist down, Morris at one point thought — feared, to be honest — he would spend his life as a quadriplegic. That’s why among all his life accomplishments, he says none was bigger than the day he could once again, painfully, touch the tip of his forefinger to the tip of his thumb.
“I was at the point where I didn’t know the future,” Morris shares. “Maybe I’ll walk out of here and maybe I won’t. At that point, I had a little hand movement. So I’d sit there all day just trying to do this” — touching his two fingers together.
“They still didn’t move, and I kept at it every day,” he continued. “And when it finally happened, I’d celebrate that success. Like I won a frigging national championship. So it was a matter of shifting your mind into a place where you can make things happen. That’s why I lean on gratitude so much — because gratitude was the only thing that shifted my focus to what I did have. I’d spend my energy putting everything into that. And I’ve literally lived that life since.”
Now, many years later, he does the work of building the mind, body and spirit of Penn State’s athletes while on the go in his wheelchair. He’s also an active and very positive contributor on social media and has an online presence with his ChangeMaker brand (watch a clip here), where he coaches executives and, in his words, “strengthens their resilience” and “fortifies their ability to handle life’s unexpected twists and turns.”
Tom Morris, obviously, knows whereof he speaks, as I learned when we got together over a cup of coffee at Good Day Café recently, to talk Penn State, sports and, most importantly, his life philosophies. He is part Norman Vincent Peale, part TB12 and part Tony Robbins.
In that sense, Morris is a true evangelist. And, to that end, based on my recent interview with him and buttressed by a few of his social media posts, here are seven key daily and lifelong habits that he uses to guide not only his athletes’ lives, but his own:
THE MORRIS SEVEN
1. Make the Day’s First 10 Minutes Count. “What is the first storyline people tell themselves when they get out of bed? Is it something from the day before that was built in negativity or something bad that happened to them? Is it some kind of doubt? When you initially get out of bed, your thoughts in the early morning dictate the mood for the entire day ahead.
“Your day gets pivoted really quick just by those early morning hours. You come out of it in a fasting state, with a blank slate. You’re depleted, so what you absorb stays planted in there. And so if you wake up and you start scrolling through social media and you see something political or something that is something negative, your day is dictated off of that — even though you may not even realize it.
“That’s my No. 1 thing for coaching athletes or coaching executives: You’ve got to win the morning. If you do that, you’ll win the day. It starts with taking inventory of every one of those thoughts as soon as you wake up. Do not look at your phone. Sit there and you start with your practice of gratitude.”
2. Practice Gratitude. “Every morning, I get up to the edge of the bed and 99% of the time I look back at my dog and my wife. True gratitude has to really be impactful. You have to feel it and to feel it I encourage you to put your hand on your heart. I take that moment. I am grounded. It sets my intentions right. Then I make my way out of bed.”
3. Live the 90% Rule. “What’s behind the eyes and between the ears is upwards to 90% of how you’re going to live out your potential in life and live your life on your own terms. It’s not about the physical. The large majority that’s sitting in your head focuses on the potential that’s in this world and how you’re going to act on it.”
4. Be Kind. “Kindness is when you treat people with respect and actually genuinely care about them. Ask them a question, ask how they are doing and genuinely listen. Smile at people. Even if they’re the meanest person on earth, they automatically return the smile. It’s contagious.”
5. Listen. “Jerry Yeagley was a legendary soccer coach at Indiana [and originally from Lebanon, Pa.]: Jerry’s big thing was if a kid comes up to you and says, ‘Hey, can we talk?’ The answer is always ‘Yes.’ I don’t care if you’re in your office or in the middle of a phone call or if you’re on the field. It doesn’t matter. You put everything down, you stop and you just give them space to talk. Don’t even worry about giving them feedback, just let them have space. That little piece of advice of giving people space to talk, then to listen and to continually care, has been the greatest advice I’ve ever had.”
6. Live in the Moment. “I don’t know if I have tomorrow, but I have today and I am taking full advantage of it.
“In the grand scheme of your life, this very moment holds unparalleled significance. It’s the only moment within your grasp right now. Your actions in this instant strive to outshine past endeavors, guiding you toward your desired destination in the future.”
7. Make Each Day Better Than the Last. “Make today better than yesterday. And if you’re given tomorrow, then live that to the fullest. All I know is that I got this now. So how can I make this moment the very best? By being a better version of me than yesterday. That is a really powerful thing.
“Human performance is fundamentally about continuous improvement or decline. The nature of life prevents stagnation. If you’re not actively striving to enhance yourself physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally, then you’re regressing compared to your yesterday. That’s why it’s so important to be deliberate in how you approach each day.”
