MYRON ROLLE'S MENTAL-FITNESS PLAYBOOK

The NFL player turned neurosurgeon has spent his life fine-tuning the tactics that powered his professional transformation and help him manage stress, failure, and grief-skills the rest of us can use, too.

- TAYLYN WASHINGTON-HARMON

BANGING HEADS and fixing heads might seem like totally different pursuits, but Myron L. Rolle, M.D., says that doing the one prepared him to do the other. Football "has given me so much. Friends, fitness, focus, and the intangibles: communication, teamwork, structure, discipline, and overcoming adversity." As he details in his new book, The 2% Way, Dr. Rolle was a standout safety at Florida State University, but instead of playing his senior year, he went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He returned a year later, was drafted in the sixth round in 2010, and played three years in the NFL until he was cut by the Pittsburgh Steelers. After that, he put his energy into studying for the MCAT, which took him to Florida State University College of Medicine and eventually to a residency at Harvard-Massachusetts General Hospital. Many of the processes and mental skills that helped him find success in football prepared him to excel in the OR.

Dr. Rolle is Zooming from the sunny Bahamas, but there's no sand between his toes. Currently a senior neurosurgery resident and the global neurosurgery fellow at Harvard-Massachusetts General Hospital, he's spent the past nine months on a medical mission to improve care in low-resource settings. That involved performing surgeries at Princess Margaret Hospital in Nassau, as well as working on policy, training, and education and doing whatever he could to help elevate neurosurgical treatment in the Bahamas, especially for people who face systemic barriers to care. In 2010, his aunt Annie Smith, a native Bahamian, was hit by a car while walking and died from a traumatic brain injury. "My auntie did not see a neurosurgeon for seven hours," says Dr. Rolle, 35. "No MRI, no CT scans, no diagnostic work, and she died without any medical care. That moment encouraged and motivated me to want to do something."