Author Jim Murphy discusses attention from Eagles WR AJ Brown reading his book

Author Jim Murphy was in a Dallas-area hotel room Sunday night preparing for a retreat when his phone started exploding.

Murphy watched a replay of Notre Dame-Penn State, after missing the College Football Playoff semifinal earlier in the week. As it turns out, his focus should have been on Philadelphia Eagles 22–10 wild card win over Green Bay Packers. That’s because Eagles wide receiver AJ Brown was sitting on the bench during the game flipping through a copy of Murphy’s book, Inner Excellence. Brown’s teammates call the book “The Recipe” because Brown has read it regularly throughout the season. Brown says it helps him maintain a sense of calm, no matter what happened on the previous drive.

“It’s been a pretty great night,” Murphy said when contacted Sunday after the game. “I’m sitting here in a hotel alone. i was like What’s with all these messages? And then I saw what happened and I’m like, Oh my God, this is crazy. Really nice.”

He added: “It’s truly an honor to be a part of his life and to have a meaningful place in someone’s life.”

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Murphy was a former MLB prospect who had to retire due to vision problems. He moved to Tuscon and lived a spartan lifestyle alone in a house while pouring his savings into the completion of Inner Excellence. For years he flew around the world talking with renowned experts about how the greatest athletes in the world can perform under incredibly stressful situations and from there find a deep sense of meaning and joy independent of their performance.

He told me he ended up nearly $90,000 in debt after finishing the book, and after an almost cosmic series of circumstances, including donating his last $100 from a cash advance to feed someone in need, his life began to change say, as his book was picked up by one high-performance athlete or CEO after another.

“I got a message from a golf caddy in Ireland one day and he said, ‘Can you talk to my friend (PGA Tour golfer) Henrik Stenson? He needs your help.’ So I fly to Sweden and meet with him. A few weeks later I get a call from Hunter Mahan (also a PGA Tour player). Then I get a call from David Novak, the CEO of Yum Brands! Pizza Hut) and he said he sent my book to all his managers around the world.”

After Stenson read the book, he won the FedEx Cup. Mahan won a PGA Tour event and a match play championship shortly after working with Murphy, and “I’ve worked with world-class athletes ever since.”

Although Murphy has no relationship with Brown, he knows how the book found its way into the Eagles wide receiver’s locker. Brown’s teammate, Moro Ojomo, received a copy from Murphy’s friend DJ Giaritelli, who is the director of Austin Athletes In Action (Ojomo attended the University of Texas).

He plans to reach out to the Eagles’ star soon as the book – published in 2020 – will undoubtedly get a second wind.

“I’m very grateful and I look forward to talking to AJ about it,” he says. “We don’t have a relationship yet, but I’ll send him a message.”