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About Nathan Winston
Nathan Winston was born in Southern Ohio with proximal femoral focal deficiency, a rare birth defect that left his femur and hip socket unformed. His left leg was amputated when he was four. His mother says that as the leg grew shorter he simply started bear crawling through the house and never complained. Doctors told him he would never play sports. He was playing basketball at five. He went on to compete in basketball, football, and baseball, and eventually played baseball professionally. Today he is a high school baseball coach, corrections officer, motivational speaker, and the founder of Next Level Mindset. His memoir of the same name is forthcoming.
Competing on a prosthetic leg meant solving problems most athletes never consider. Winston sweat through the early cotton sock liners, so the leg worked loose mid-game and he ran down the court holding it on, dumping sweat out at halftime. The pin-and-lock socket rusted shut. His leg broke constantly through football and basketball seasons — once on a Friday before a Saturday start, which he fixed himself with Allen wrenches, duct tape, and a flat splint, then pitched the next day. He also carried three sports on one leg until his body forced him to drop one.
On The Daily Mastermind, Nathan sat down with George Wright III for a conversation about fear, prosthetic failures, and the night he almost let a warmup lap stop him. They covered the origin of his message — get comfortable being uncomfortable until it becomes comfortable — how he redefined success as full effort rather than outcome, why belief has to start with you before anyone else's belief counts, and what finally convinced him, after years of resisting, to write his story down.
