In March of 2015 Clint Gresham was at the top of his game. He was fresh off a Super Bowl win and had just signed a three-year contract to continue as a long snapper for the Seattle Seahawks. Just one year later that all changed.
In March of 2016 Gresham got the call from the general manager of the Seahawks telling him he had been cut, his career in the NFL was over.
He wrote on his blog calling the day, “absolutely the worst break-up ever.”
“Everything I had known for the last six years had happened in Seattle,” Gresham wrote. “I mean, I won a freakin’ Super Bowl with the men on the other end of this empty phone call. All I wanted to do was crawl into a hole and not feel what I was feeling.”
Two more months after that and Gresham had found something new to focus on, writing about his experiences and struggles in his first book, “Becoming: Loving the Process to Wholeness.”
Set to be released Oct. 3, “Becoming” tells Gresham’s story of learning the importance of his own self-worth and not to solely measure himself on his success or failures.
“If you live for people’s approval you will die over their criticism,” Gresham said. “Having that type of mindset makes us very, very fragile. I had to come to a place of who am I really? I’m not what I do.”
Gresham said his faith played a large role in his journey of self-discovery and identity.
“In those challenging moments you realize what’s in you,” Gresham said. “Not because God is trying to show us how bad we are. He’s trying to bring things to the surface because he’s trying to grow us.”
It wasn’t an easy path for Gresham, who writes in his book about the worry and uncertainty he often felt over his identity – even as far back as with his freshman year homecoming dance date. However, it was only through these trials that Gresham said he was able to find himself.
“It’s only through the fires that that stuff comes out,” Gresham said. “It’s only in those painful moments do we get refined in ways that we otherwise never would have had.”
While many of those trials were emotional, sometimes they also came in the form of a TCU business school test, which Gresham faced when he was an entrepreneurial management major.
“I was taking financial accounting up until three in the morning dying to get a C on this test,” Gresham said. “I’ve never worked so hard for a C in my life. I’m so proud of that C.”
His hard work didn’t go unnoticed by his professors. Dr. Bill Moncrief, the Charles F. and Alann P. Bedford Professor of International Marketing, said Gresham was a “very good student” who showed great time management as a Neeley Associate, helping to put on events for the college, and as football player.
“He did a good job of balancing the two,” Moncrief said. “Always being there for the football but he was always there when I needed him.”
Moncrief said that he wasn’t surprised that Gresham ended up writing a book and is excited about it.
“He’ll do a good job for the book,” Moncrief said. “He’s always had a little bit of a marketing flair.”
As part of that marketing Gresham will be back in Fort Worth Oct. 7 before the West Virginia football game to sign copies of his book and meet with people on journeys of their own self-discovery.
“I’m hoping to start a conversation of where does your value actually come from and what does it mean to be whole in every area of your life,” Gresham said. “I define wholeness as giving up hope for a better past, relinquishing control for a perfect future and choosing joy and courage right where my feet are. If you can have a mindset like that, you’re going to be pretty unstoppable.”
