Exclusive: Diamond Dallas Page on his new book "Positively Unstoppable" & more
As a WWE Hall Of Famer, Diamond Dallas Page is known to many millions of people around the world as a legendary professional wrestler.
But rather than spending the rest of his post-wrestling life coasting on his wrestling-related accolades, including being a multi-time world champion, Page decided to take a professional path that practically no one could have seen coming: creating a fitness system known as "DDP YOGA."
While DDP YOGA does have the word "yoga" in its title, DDPY is unlike any other fitness system you will ever encounter. The program combines yoga poses and calisthenics with physical therapy principles and is exactly what Page himself utilized to get his body healed so he could get back into the ring in the late 1990s.
Based on an interactive app -- think Netflix but with workouts, cooking programs, motivational talks, and a points-based rewards system -- DDPY lets users of any age, skill level or fitness capacity do its workouts from anywhere.
Much like his wrestling career -- which began at the age of 35 -- finding success with DDP YOGA was by no means an immediate success for Diamond Dallas Page. It not only took years for DDPY to find an audience, but Page spent just about all of his savings from his wrestling career before any of his hefty investment started coming back to him.
Fortunately, nowadays, it is totally normal to hear that both celebrities (e.g. Slipknot's Corey Taylor, Nita Strauss, Chris Jericho, A.J. Styles, Gabriel Iglesias, Darius Rucker) and everyday folks are doing DDPY.
Positively Unstoppable: The Art Of Owning It is the new book by Diamond Dallas Page. Part-memoir and part-inspirational tale, it ought to have you both laughing and learning as you read it.
It is intended to give you the know-how to "own it", whatever it is to you, on a permanent basis. I spoke to Page about this and more during our December 2018 phone chat, and highlights from that interview are below.
More on Diamond Dallas Page and DDP YOGA -- including live workshops, success stories and a link to purchase Positively Unstoppable -- can be found at www.ddpyoganow.com.
On letting fans stay at his former home, the Accountability Crib:
"There's just a lot of really cool pictures from Jake's career, my career, Scott's, people I met, our time out at the Slamdance Film Festival, so it's a pretty cool place. Plus my mother-in-law, she's like the house-mom there, a friendly little elf... (laughs)
I bought another home and I was going to rent it out... People can stay in the Jake 'The Snake' inn suite. We call it a 'suite' because every room's got its own bathroom. You can stay in the Razor Ramon suite, or the DDP suite, which is really sweet. (laughs)"
On how long it took him to write Positively Unstoppable:
"I think I've been putting it together my whole life. Actually writing it, putting it all together, about a year. Placing it, figuring out what lessons I wanted to teach through whatever anecdotes...
People really don't want to be told they want to be told to stop smoking by a doctor who's got a cigarette in his mouth. They don't want to be told to stop drinking by someone who's an addict, who's getting f**ked up all the time.
They want to be around somebody who's already done it and continues to do it. So I walk the talk. Many people, as you know, do not. But I do. I don't really teach anybody or do anything that I do myself on a daily basis."
On where the Positively Unstoppable title came from:
"WWE did a documentary on me when I was going in the Hall Of Fame and they called it Positively Living. A friend of mine, Laurie Dolphin, said it should be called Positively Unstoppable. I look at Laurie and go, 'No, that's the name of our next book.' She was my agent on it and was like, 'Alright, I'm in.'
Again I just don't talk the talk, I walk the talk. And you know all that dream goal-setting stuff, I don't just set a goal. I imagine it first, I see it happen and I make it happen...
[A lot of people] surround themselves around negative people. They have a job that they hate, a relationship [they hate] or whatever, and they surround themselves with negative people. It's tough to get out of that rut.
A lot of people don't believe they can. As you know the beginning of the book says, 'What would you do if you knew your success was guaranteed? What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?' So that's how I live my life."
On if he minds being called a "motivational speaker":
"Yeah I do. I don't think that motivation hits. I think inspiration is the key. To motivate 'c'mon you can do this' isn't what I'm doing. I'm teaching everybody that they've all got the spark inside of them to inspire themselves.
I'm showing them how they can do it for themselves. 'Motivational speaker' wouldn't work for me, yet people call me that all the time. I'm not offended by it at all because I do motivate people, but it's not really what I do.
When we were on Shark Tank, Mr Wonderful said to my partner Steve Yu, 'How are you successful in the places where nobody is except Beachbody and Gaiaand, you know, the couple of heavyweights? How are you successful in the fitness business?' Steve said, 'We inspire people.' 'Yeah yeah yeah, that's great. How do you make the money?' I said, 'We inspire people. That's what we do.'
So the book is set up to inspire someone that will be inspired within themselves, because each one of us in our personal lives and our professional lives, we're all constantly hit with one adversity after another, most of which we have no control over.
But the one thing we do have control over when we take control of it, is our mindset. That's not motivation, that's changing the inner-voice, the story you tell yourself. That's what that is, that's not motivation.
I'm teaching people how to inspire themselves. That's what 'owning it' is. Positively Unstoppable: The Art Of Owning It. Like what is 'it?' 'It' is whatever the hell you want it to be.
And it's going to take work, and I talk about it from the introduction on, it's going to take work. If you bought this book because you thought it was some magic pill that you're reading it and you're on your way to getting it...
You might be on your way to getting it, but you've got to put the work in, and most people, they don't know how to put the work in. I think this is kind of like a blueprint for that.