Finding Presence, Purpose, and Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais

In this episode, Dr. Michael Gervais, renowned psychologist and high-performance expert, shares his journey from a tumultuous childhood to becoming a mentor for Olympic athletes and elite performers. He discusses the importance of presence, purpose, and mastery, as well as the power of mentorship, dealing with dark times, and creating impactful morning routines. Dr. Gervais provides profound insights on overcoming fear, building confidence, and the significance of genuine care in personal and professional growth.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I think the best gift we can gift we can
give each other is helping another person feel pain. And
the worst thing that we can do is minimize and
co sign in a way that doesn't help them feel
the pain. Because pain is why we change. Uncomfortableness is

(00:22):
how we grow. I kind of like, unimpressed, ask him,
where's that come from? And and he says, yeah, what
my dad's asked when I was fourteen. And he looks
at me like seeing if I'm getting him, and I'm
unimpressed with it, and I go, you got anything else?
And he goes, yeah, I was an endgame position. I
was being choked out triangle choke. Those legs is wrapped

(00:44):
around my neck. I break it. I put him on
my back and dragg him across the cage. I dump
him and I finished the fight. And he looks at
me and he says, I'm a tough motherfucker. And so
I think to myself, can I do it one more time?
I said, I don't know, can you back it up anymore? Like?
Is that all you got? And he leans in and

(01:05):
he says, if somebody were to ask me one more question,
I might choke him out.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Welcome back, to the SINOS show. Oh I'm so excited,
all right. Today's guest is one of the most respected
minds and high performance doctor. Michael has worked with Olympic athletes,
world class musicians, and elite military operators, not to make
them tougher, but to go deeper. His focus is presence, purpose,

(01:40):
and mastering in our game. He's the host of the
Finding Mastery podcast, co founder of Compete to Create, an
author of the powerful book Finding Mastery, How to Perform
at your Best When it matters. Most good doctor, Welcome
to the show. It's an honor to have you here.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
Man, oh man, I love your fire like you brother,
A little warm welcome, thank you.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
No, no, well, real blessing and thank you. You're busy man.
You may time. And I wanted to thank our brother
Apoulo oo for having us on.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yeah, I mean, Apollo is so special and when Apollo calls, listen. Yeah,
he's the best in the best in the world for
a reason.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Okay, So, oh boy, how about I don't know your backstory?
Where'd you come from? What happened? Then? How did you
enter this crazy field? When'd you get the calling? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Okay, so I'm classically trained as a psychologist with a
specialization in sport and performance and a sub specialty in
high stakes environments. And how did I come to be,
you know, into this field. I needed it. I needed
somebody like me when I was younger, but I didn't
know anyone like me. And so my folks dropped out
in the early seventies. They wanted to get out of

(02:46):
the rat race, out of the city, and they bought
a small house in Virginia on a farm. And when
I say farm, I say that loosely. It was dirt roads,
no street lights, you know, and summer we had or
in the winter we had we had to figure out
water because it would our pipes would freeze. Da da dah.
So I had that experience of being in nature for

(03:10):
a long time, growing up until the fourth grade. And
my parents are laissez fair parenting, so they just kind
of let mother nature's natural consequences be the teacher. And
there's pros and cons to that. It's not this is
not something that I would recommend to modern you know parenting.
And then my dad got a like a nice significant offer.

(03:32):
It pulled us to the West Coast. So I spent
from fourth grade on in California, and I was attracted
to things that made sense to me. And it wasn't
stick and ball sport because there was parents and adults
screaming at kids with man made rules. I didn't like it.
I didn't fit in. I didn't understand men. As a
young kid, I didn't get it. Wow. Yeah, because the

(03:56):
foundation was like, listen to the real teacher, which is
mother Nature. Yeah, that's a good down man like that
that segment or that kind of stitching from mother Nature
into suburbia. As a fourth grader as a nine year old,
that was hard. I didn't fit. So then my parents

(04:18):
had this brilliant model, which is they thought, let's move
every four and a half years, so in the middle
of you know, school, if you will. And so I
moved a bunch, had to figure out transitions, had to
figure out how to socially fit, and I needed to
find a way for me to be tuned to what

(04:39):
mattered most, which is like the ultimate teacher, which is nature.
So I found surfing, motocross and skateboarding were kind of
great teachers for me.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
Wow. And then and then okay, and then were you
a happy kid? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (04:55):
I was pretty happy. I think I was I was
intense dad. Dad was a functioning alcoholic drug addict. Mom's codependent,
and so you know, I didn't know what the truth was.
And that's why mother's nature was so important to me.
So I had to figure out how to figure it out.
And in high school wasn't stimulated properly served more than

(05:18):
I went to school. Probably the dean of discipline and
academics pulled my girlfriend at the time now wife aside
and said, you know, what's a nice girl like you
dating Gervais and so like, I needed help, and I
found a mentor or A mentor found me at a
young age, and he was a drug and alcohol counselor.

(05:38):
So yeah, he saw right into me, dude, and so garrettablaseia,
what's up? And he saw right into me by asking
questions that my body would heat up when I was
thinking about being honest or not, and I thought, what
is this? Give me?

Speaker 2 (05:56):
What was one of the questions he asked you?

Speaker 1 (05:58):
I don't know. I mean it was like this was
around the war when I first met him and they
were thinking about opening the draft back up. Which war
was that I wasn't It was nineteen eighty eight, ninety
ninety one, somewhere in that range. I can't even remember
the war with the name of it, Gulf War maybe,

(06:18):
and like, how you doing, Mike? It was like that
type of but he meant like, not hey, how you doing,
don't really give me the answer, but like, how are
you doing? And just the way that he held himself.
He comes from he's classically trained, but he's his influence

(06:40):
is from Native American traditions, so classically trained with like
wisdom teaching, and there was just nowhere to really go.
He saw you. Yeah, I could have answered whatever I wanted,
but I didn't felt like I had that option. So
I answered honestly, and my body would heat up and
I'd feel flush in my face and and you know,

(07:01):
so we just built this relationship over time, and he
helped me navigate some of the trickier parts of my adolescence.
And so how long were you with him still? Today?

Speaker 2 (07:11):
Wow?

Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yeah, so call it. My first benut was probably seventeen
and I'm fifty three now. Oh I love that man. Yeah,
I feel so lucky. I don't know how mentorship happens, Like,
I don't know. I can I can kind of walk
back to how I met him. But all of the

(07:32):
confluence of things that had to happen for he and
I to meet is I don't know, random, Maybe I
would say that, but man, I hope people, I hope
your community can feel in their lives the power of
somebody really seeing them. It can come in a lot
of ways and come from a partner, somebody like yourself.
It can come in a lot of forms. So you

(07:55):
went to school, Yeah, So I had this conversation. It
was southern California. I grew up in Redonna Beach and
I was in my parents' kitchen. It was beautiful out
and it was probably about two to three o'clock in
the afternoon, and my parents pulled me aside. It was
my mom, and she said, like, we tried. You know,
none of us went to school. My parents didn't go

(08:18):
to college. And you know, you've got a choice now
you you didn't take the SATs. Grades are what they are, Like,
You've got a choice to make, and that's either get
out and get a job, you know, or you can
live here. But you've got to go to school. And
I thought, like, I'm not ready to get out, Like

(08:39):
I was not ready to get out and to go
to school bit like I only had an option, which
was community college or you know, a local kind of
two year program. And I knew that I could go
to school and hustle my game through, you know, by
surfing and not really going to school. And so I
thought I was just going to postpone adulthood by telling
them I'd go to school, live in the house and

(09:00):
just kind of wing it for a couple of years,
but not really go to school. And I went to
school and I found three other mentors, doctor Kuzio, doctor Zenke,
and doctor Perkins. Now they're academic, so they saw me
in a different way. They saw this kid coming and
they're like, oh shit, like he's got a little fire
in them, like let's talk to him. So those three
professors were a theologian, a psychologist, and a philosopher. That

(09:24):
sounds like a bad joke about to happen, right right, yeah,
And and so they they they just spark this rich
imagination of the invisible world. And I thought, this is
what I need to understand, like how do how do
humans work? Because it was a mystery to me. Dad's

(09:46):
an alcoholic drug user. Mom was codependent. That means there
was a lot of shifting in the world that I
grew up in, Like, I mean, you know better than anyone.
Dad's a bit of a mess and mom's cleaning it up.
And I didn't know what the truth was, right, and
so how did these people? How did humans work? And
I'll one more kind of triangulation here is that I
was a young athlete that was pretty good. And I

(10:08):
say that loosely, but I couldn't stitch practice sessions to
game day sessions. I was far better when there were
no observable stakes, you know, competition stakes. So when it
was just me in the wave, I could pull into
the thing. And it's called core surfing. No one's looking,
don't talk about it. Just you know that you put

(10:30):
yourself in a heavy consequential situation and as a matter
of fact, it shunned upon talking about or bragging about it.
I could do that, but then when family and friends
and judges were on the beach, I was a disaster.
I knew I had more in me, but something was
getting in the way. It was the way I was thinking.

(10:50):
It was. My physical body didn't change overnight. My technical skills,
you know, my surfing abilities didn't change overnight, But I
felt like I was a rookie, a beginner at surfing,
not in a good way. And I'll never forget. It
was about seven thirty in the morning, beautiful conditions, glassy
out in the ocean. There's a competition day, three people

(11:11):
in the water and usually there's like thirty, you know,
competing for just a handful of waves. Yeah, and I'm
a disaster. And this older competitor paddles by me, and
I'm competing against him, and he paddles by me during
the heat and he says, Gervat, I surf with you
out here every day. You got to stop worrying about

(11:33):
what could go wrong. And I thought, how the hell
does he know? Like how does he know? And it
just it just hit me, like I need to figure
out how my thinking is getting in the way of
the quality of my life. And that was his sixteen
year old So it set me down this path. And
it was great timing to meet those three professors and

(11:56):
that's it. So that was kind of the confluence of
the origin story. I needed what I studied, and I
needed someone to see me and challenge me, and I
needed a framework to how to how to do that
for other people and that's why I went the long
path in education to be science based and hopefully bring

(12:19):
the intuitive wisdoms from years long ago into the mix.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
Wow, and did you did you go start as private
practice or did you started just with a group practice
or yeah?

Speaker 1 (12:34):
So right out of school, it was like, so we
have to get three thousand hours of supervision to get licensed.
That's three thousand hours of somebody watching the choices you're
making with a client. And I was like six weeks
in and I went to my supervisor. So this is
post PhD. And I went to my supervisor. She goes,

(12:57):
how you doing. I said, I'm exhausted. Yeah, And she said,
I'm not sure you're built for this. And I said,
what do you mean? She says, you give so much.
There's no boundary you're pouring in. She says, Mike, people
people aren't ready for that. You know, it's okay to
kind of back it down a little, And I don't

(13:21):
know how to do that. And surfing and skateboarding and
kind of action sports, it is the dictum is progression.
The mandate is get to your edge every day because
that's where the unlock happens. And if you're not getting
right to that magical edge that is radically uncomfortable where
you don't know how it's going to go. But you

(13:42):
can find some sort of way to embrace yourself to
be fully present, you'll find the unlocked and that's how
progression takes place. And so that's what I was doing
in one on ones, and for the most part, I
wasn't met with it, and so I was giving more
than they were and I felt like I was on

(14:03):
a fast path to burn out. And I did my
three thousand hours, you know, I kind of tried to
figure out how to navigate that. And fast forward now
twenty five years later, I have one client a month. Yeah,
what one client a month? For how long I've been
doing that, probably like five years, you know, like one

(14:24):
they're extraordinary, They're the rare ones that fly in altitude
is like world changing.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
And so the biggest part of my business is taking
best practices from high performance sport, all of the principles
and practices that elite athletes and the cultures that come
with those elite athletes, taking those best practice and principles
from sport into business and teaching organizations how to switch

(14:55):
on to culture and how to train the minds of
people inside of it. The employee base is into the
athlete base, you know, in a team and training them
how to train their minds to be their very best.
And so we get to do that at places like
Microsoft and Salesforce and fill in the blanks. Oh right,
but I can I know you do too, Yeah, I know,

(15:18):
I can feel it.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
Yeah, you know, I know. Pete Carroll loves to do
his work, Carol, Let's talk about Pete Carroll.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
I love Pete Carroll. He was a great partner, right.
What did you learn from coach a lot? Yeah, I
spent nine seasons with him. We had a dinner to
a mutual friend, put us together over dinner, and at
the end of the dinner he says, I know you're
done with pro Sport, Mike, because I was over it.
I was over the narcissistic twenty four year old that

(15:46):
was more interested in their contract and shoe deal and
how they looked than like true mastery. Right, And so
I left pro sport to go into action sport, back
to my roots, where if people made mistakes, it was
highly consequential. So those are environments of truth, and I'm

(16:07):
compelled by them for the obvious reasons, right, and so
coach Carol he's amazing and he said, Mike, I'm trying
to do something different. Will you come up and see
what I'm trying to create and just catch a vibe
for it. So I go up to the Seahawks. I
walked into the building. It was like no other organization

(16:28):
I've been part of sport organization. And he said, what
do you think at the end of the day. I said,
I see what you're trying to do. I can feel it,
and I go I'd like to spend more time, and
he goes, yeah, let's do it. So we ended up.
I'll tell a fun story. Was right eighteen months into
us doing work. We're heading into our second season and

(16:50):
it happened to be our super Bowl winning season.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
But we didn't know that yet.

Speaker 1 (16:54):
So Super Bowls played in February and this was around
November ish. He comes flying out of office and music's
blair and like, you can feel this, there's energy in
Pete Carroll's environments. Comes flying out of the office. He goes, Mike,
can you feel this? Can you feel what's happening here?
And like I got big eyes, you know, and I'm yeah,
but I'm not sure where he's going to go with it.

(17:14):
And what he was talking about is, can you feel
the energy the noses of sixty five alpha competitive athletes,
twenty five plus coaches, and these are the best of
the best of the best, and they're pointing their noses
in the same direction. They're wanting the same experience and
the same outcome. It's rare. So when he's flying out

(17:36):
of his office, he says, can you feel it? That's
what he's talking about, the specialness of the alignment of
the individuals and the true commitment to people being their
very best so that they can be great teammates to
each other, so that we have this knowing of what
it takes for us collectively to be our best. And
so he says, let's just write it down. Write down

(17:58):
what you're doing, what I'm doing. Will figure out the overlap.
I think people would be interested in this. So we
wrote it on a napkin. It turned into like then
the napkin, it was really just a whiteboard, and then
it turned into like a deck to try to organize
our ideas made up winning the Super Bowl that year
and the CEO of Microsoft, Sati Nadella, who I think

(18:20):
is one of the most significant CEOs of our time.
Right now, he's leading two hundred and twenty six thousand
humans with the first principle of empathy. Amazing. The second principle,
if you will, about knowing your purpose and being Microsoft
being in service of the employee basis purpose, and the
employees being in service of Microsoft purpose like a hand

(18:43):
and glove around purpose, where it's not just one direction, Hey, employee,
get on board or get out. Our purpose here is
to blah blah blah blah. It's not that, it's like,
let's be great partners to each other. Your life matters,
Your purpose matters, are our company's purpose matters. Let's be
great for each other. And so anyways, I'll get I'll

(19:06):
come back to that. And so Sati and Adela we
sit down with Satia and he says, do you think
you can do what you've done for one hundred and
some folks for two hundred and twenty six thousand. You know,
I don't know, you know, I have no idea. And
so we've been at that like nine years, and they're
our most meaningful partner for sure.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
Yeah, what's the buy in on that? To get the tribe.
What's the buy in? It's not easy? Or which were
like the sports team? Can you go in there? You've
got these young kids, know they know everything, You've got
a lot of energy.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
What's the how do you get them to say, hey,
we're all It's a really good question. I think one
is I think there's a there is a language that
is familiar to people who honestly want to see how
far they can take this life. There's a there a
special language for those folks, and it's not buy in.

(20:05):
It is speaking that language. It's understanding how to relate
to somebody who is uncompromising in the commitment to be
their very best. And it's just slightly tuning that to
being a great teammate. So relationships run the whole thing.

(20:31):
It's through our relationship with ourself, with other people, with
mother nature, with experience itself. It's the relationships that run
the whole thing. So it's a slight tuning to have
a deeper, most more powerful relationship with yourself so that
you can have a deeper, more powerful relationship with others

(20:51):
to support them and challenge them. And it has to
go in that order support them, challenge and the buy
in typically happens when you have to first know the
language and then secondly, is you need some sort of
air cover. Yeah, so yeah, they they need to look

(21:11):
to one of their elders or one of their mentors
to like give them the nod yeah, like yeah, this
is the real thing. So that that's harder to get.
And that can either come from outside the building or
it can come from inside the building. For example, if
the quarterback happens to be the best athlete and a

(21:35):
great communicator, and the quarterback says, hey, everybody, I think
that this supplement is like it's the one I'm using,
or this mindset practice is like legit, or this football
is the one that we should all be thinking about,
like it's got a better or like they have influence.
So there's a couple of things I mentioned. They have
to be talented and be good communicators, and that's air

(21:57):
cover from inside the building and then air cover from
out side. The book building is like what's the movie
when you know the introduction is like he's a friend
of ours, Yeah, yeah, good is a good fellow, Donnie bros.
He's a friend of ours versus a friend of mine.
And so if you get the nod like he's a
friend of ours from outside the building. So a world's

(22:18):
great from outside the building that knows the language of
mastery and they vouch. So you need some sort of
air cover. And then on one more variable is that
you leadership from like a coaching staff or leaders in
the senior leadership team. Let's say in a business, there's

(22:40):
a different form of air cover that they create, which
is they need to demonstrate somehow that they are doing
the internal work too. There's only three things we can
train as humans. We can try in our craft, our body,
and our mind. And so most conversations are in sport
about craft and body. Most common conversation in business are

(23:01):
about craft, be better technically, solve strategic problems, if you will.
And the special organizations in sport focus on training craft, body,
and mind. So leadership needs to say, oh, yeah, here
we're training the mind, and I'm doing the same thing
because I want to be my best, no stone unturned,
let's get with it. And when you walk in this door,

(23:23):
it's on, we're training craft, body, in mind in a
world class way. Get with it. So there's like this
mandate from leadership that they're walking the talk and then
you need someone in the building that says, I understand this,
I'm in with it, let's go, and need somebody outside
the building to vouch. That's usually how it goes. Okay,
that's so good man.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
Probably my favorite show on your podcast is with Steve Kerr.
I'm an NBA legend and NBA legendary coach, and I
want to add to you. I think you tell me
and I think it's I think I'm pretty confident why
you're so successful as well. Coach Kerr talks about what
was about Phil Jackson? What was it about Popovitch?

Speaker 1 (24:04):
Right?

Speaker 2 (24:05):
They loved their players, They actually really gave the fuck.
They really cared about them in a very specific way.

Speaker 1 (24:12):
And that's something.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
That's Can we talk about that, Yeah, why love is
so important, like actually caring about somebody, Yeah, and really
showing up for them and maybe a way they never
showed up because you're actually seeing them maybe for the
first time.

Speaker 1 (24:25):
That's right, you understand this? Yeah, I want to go
that narrative just to give me a little context. When
was the first time it happened for you? Do you remember?

Speaker 2 (24:35):
Oh? Sure, it was the first time I had a therapist.
Jim Don again, I did some crazy thing and he
just made me laugh, you know, instead of shaming me
like a lot of people. There's a sign on the
doorknof you saw no shame aloud.

Speaker 1 (24:48):
Yeah, it's it.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
And he made it okay to be goofy and fucked
up and shit my pants. But he saw me that
I was beautiful, and he saw something in me that
I couldn't see it myself. So he really loved me
until I love myself.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
So we talk about care. You got to have your
stuff together to care about another person, you know, like
if you're an addict, you can't really care about someone
else because you're such are you're on the struggle bus,
like you're trying to keep your head above water. You're
you're trying to figure out how to get your needs met.

(25:19):
And if you've got some sort of mental or psychological
emotional disordered way of working with the world, like there's
so much turmoil or pain you it's not the same
type of deep care you and I are talking about.
And when you've got your stuff and I'm not saying buttoned
up together, like you you're a wise person, but when

(25:40):
you can when you can float in the river of life,
with some buoyancy and you're not overwhelmed by the rapids
of life, like you know, you've you got a dinghy,
you got an ore, you've got some of those wings
that we all floated with with kids around your arms,
Like you can take care of yourself in a certain
way that you can also have the available resources to

(26:01):
really see and care for another person. But if you're
overstressed and underrecovered, if you are overstressed and underskilled psychologically
and emotionally, your needs and your survival dictum are paramount.
And I was with my son and a couple of

(26:21):
friends skiing two weeks ago and we're on the chair
lift and it's cooking along. It's all fine, We're at
a nice altitude, like it's one of those moments where
it's kind of tall, you know, the distance from the
ground in the chair, and then an abrupt holt so
the chair kind of gets that swing motion and stops.

(26:43):
If you've been skiing for a long time, you're kind
of used to it. But one of the kids hit
the panic button and grab the bar like quickly. I
was like, ooh, the survival instinct and this one is strong, good, good, Okay,
So this one will probably have to work he was scared,
he'll probably have to work through that to really unveil

(27:08):
what his potential is. And now let me go back
to the caring bit. The survival instinct in all of
us is so strong that if those things aren't met,
because we have real turmoil or pain in our lives,
real suffering, then it's nearly impossible to extend love and
care to other people. So you're a therapist. Probably either

(27:31):
created a space for him to let go of all
the drama that is in in his life, or he
was really swimming well in the rapids of life. And
that's my promise to people is to hold the container.
That we can go as deep as you can go,

(27:53):
and the well is even deeper than you imagine, so
you can fall apart into a thousand pieces, you can
laugh wildly, you can do whatever we need to do.
That my promise to you is to hold the container.
And if you don't hold the container, I'll pop us out.
I'll make a joke that relieves the tension, or I'll
try to take care of myself at the cost of

(28:15):
the other person going to the honest place. Or maybe
I'll smile because I'm uncomfortable, like there's things that we'll
do to take care of ourselves before the people. Anyways,
this is a long, long narrative to get to your
very powerful question about like love and care. It's a verb,
as we all know, and so we practice loving and

(28:36):
carrying other people. And it starts with this idea that
we can only give what we have. If we have
anxiousness and frustration and tolerance, that's what we give, certainly
under stress. And if we have love and kindness and care,
then that's what we give. And so those are skills,
those are actions, and they come from a place, and

(29:00):
I'm far more interested in the place balanced with the actions.
Not just the place, but balance with the actions.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
Why do clients trust you.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
I think that they get a felt sense that I've
traveled the path right and I'm not I have a
I'm not built for like the bullshit I'm not. I
don't I don't have a tolerance for small talk and

(29:32):
surface conversations. I feel like there's kind of a race
to get to the truth because I missed so much
of it for so long. And I think they trust
me because they have a sense that I've gone to
the frontier. It's scared myself a lot. I understand suffering,
and I've come back with some things that have worked,

(29:54):
both in the laboratory and on the frontier, you know,
some some ways of seeing and helping other people. And
not everyone does trust me. I remind them of the
uncle that they couldn't stand, right, you know, there's there's
that there's that embedded kind of subconscious stuff in there,
and that's okay. I just want to get to the

(30:15):
truth of it so that I can help them find somebody,
so that I'm not playing this shadow game, like let's
try to make this work when it's really not working.
So that non conscious bias stuff I try to bring
forward to who do I remind you of? Right, you know,
And there's a lot of jokes embedded in that, but
like know, really, who do I remind you of? And

(30:38):
people say, oh, man, there's there's this coach that like
just saw right into me. I feel that here or
you know, I don't know, like you remind me that
person that like thought I was never good enough. And
so then we all right, let's go you want to
go there, Let's go there. I want to go there,
you know, so I hope that answers your answer to perfectly.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
What's your experience working with addicts? What have you seen?

Speaker 1 (31:06):
They're the best manipulators in the planet. That's yeah, I
have a I have a I have a heartfelt softness
for the suffering that comes with it, and I have
an intolerance for the bullshit that is wrapped and shrouded
in it. So when you're ready to work, I'm ready
to work, you know. And so it's for me, it's

(31:27):
about the work. And I don't care where you are
on your journey, no, no, whatever, but when you want
to work, I'd love to do that work for you.
They are some of my most favorite people because I
think you would recognize that truth talk bit. You can
get to the truth and you get to the honesty

(31:48):
of the suffering, you come through it in a radically
powerful way. And they are some of my most favorite people.

Speaker 2 (31:55):
What's some of the best advice you've given them? What
do you see the tracks with addicts?

Speaker 1 (32:00):
The tracks?

Speaker 2 (32:01):
What do you mean, get them help them wake up,
get them on a different help them shift consciousness, help
them have a different narrative.

Speaker 1 (32:06):
What's two things on that? One is I don't think
that advice giving works, So yeah, I'll start there. And
then the second piece like that I think helps is
unconditional positive regard that they hold the answers, that it's

(32:30):
inside of them, and it's messy and it's clouded and
it's unclear. My job is to hold a mirror up
to distill all of the fog, the smoke, the liquids
that are getting in the way of the clarity. So
I just hold a mirror up. And it's what my
mentor first did for me. And it's really uncomfortable. It's hard.

(32:54):
I want to hide. And then when you're with somebody
who's really guild, they just see you and don't let
you hide. The most magical experience I've had in the
intimacy of deep work is the psychologists across from me
felt both like a lion that would be the most

(33:16):
amazing kind of protector and a lion that had the
gnarliest claws and teeth. It was both and they could
flex either way. And I was both vulnerable and strong,
and they were both vulnerable and strong. To like to
honor the complexity and the power of trying to get

(33:38):
to something that is fucking hard to get to. So
I'll answer. Very concretely, I think the best gift we
can give each other is helping another person feel pain,
and the worst thing that we can do is minimize
and co sign in a way that doesn't help them

(34:02):
feel the pain. Because pain is why we change. Uncomfortableness
is how we grow. So if I can help you
feel some pain, help you stay in that uncomfortableness just
a little bit longer, arm you with some skills, I
think that that's the magic recipe, and the whole thing
is shrouded in this unconditional positive regard that you hold

(34:23):
the path, not me. The path starts within you. I'm
walking my path and I'll hold the light and shine
it back. I'm trying. I'm maybe just a couple of
corners ahead of you, but I'm going to hold the
flashlight and shine it to my best ability. And soon
maybe you're going to grab this flashlight eventually and start.

(34:44):
We're going to walk shoulder to shoulder, and maybe you're
gonna You're gonna go ahead of me and shine it
back too. So I don't hold the answers. They do.
And I shared that analogy with my sixteen year old
son the other day. Like, son, when you were born,
I was a lot steps ahead of you, you know,
and then like your sixties, taller than me, he's more

(35:07):
muscular than me. Now like he's switched on. I said,
I'm still a couple steps ahead of you, because you know,
he wants a challenge, right, he's got that kind of
thing that fire cool, totally cool. I see me and
him when I was young, and I said, son, I'm
still ahead of you, and that at some point in

(35:27):
time we're going to be shoulder a shoulder and we're
going to walk this world together in that way. But
right now it's not that time. And he wells up
in tears, and I say, at some point, you're actually
going to be steps ahead and then many steps ahead,
and I'm going to be here for you when you're
trying to figure out how to be powerful and strong.

(35:49):
I don't know, widen the aperture, you can thrash, you
can do all these things. There are boundaries that I
will make sure that are contained. But it's to get
us to shoulder to shoulder, to see this world and
you know, in a parallel way. And then eventually I
can't wait for you to take steps ahead of me.
And I'm gonna need you there too. He's well en up,

(36:09):
and I'm well enup, and you know so. But I
think that you know, whether it's parenting or it's partnering
or mentoring or guiding. I'll do one more thing here,
is that I got this early piece of guidance. I'll
tell us through the lens of a story. I just
graduated college my PHG program and my mentor at that time,

(36:36):
he was the president of the school. He was he
was he was also the psychologist that was the lion
with nails or the lion that would protect. So he
was both the president and taught group therapy slash individual dynamics. Incredible,
and he says, Mike, congrats before you leave. Like, there's

(36:56):
a transition phase here where I don't know what I'm
going to see you next. And so do you have
any things that you know that are kind of burning
questions or anything before this last phase? I said, yeah,
what happens if somebody shows up across the seat from me?

(37:18):
Because I hadn't done practice yet, and and like, I
know what I'm supposed to do if they're suicidal. I
understand the protocol, but how do I how do I
conduct myself. He goes, oh, that's a good question. Yeah,
I said. He says, do you have any more? And
I said, what about rape? Because yeah? And he goes,

(37:39):
you got others? And I listed like four or five
like situations I was afraid to be in. And he said, Mike,
I don't have your answers, but everything you need to
understand yourself is going to be in the chair across
from you. Like what And he says, oh, yeah, they're

(38:00):
going to teach you. You don't have their answers. You're
going to hopefully help open the aperture unconditional positive regard,
support them and challenge them only like you know how.
And they're going to teach you about how to become
better yourself. And you're going to teach them in some
respects what that means to model it, be vulnerable, be

(38:23):
in it with them. You don't have their answers. And
I've said that like ten times. You don't have their
answers unconditional positive regard for the other persons. So that's
that's kind of again a long way of answering something
I think is maybe more profound than I could get
into language.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
Yeah, let you just let's talk I love that conversation.
Yet with your son. I don't think your dad was
having that conversation with you, was he?

Speaker 1 (38:48):
No, I didn't know how.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
I'm very big on any generational trauma. It's probably besides
my surprising thing I'm most proud of. Yeah, in what way? Well,
my son's twenty when I was in prison at twenty one.
My son is doing great things of the world, travel
around doing great things. He's he's had nothing but masterclasses
growing up with me. So I taught him a.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
Few what to do and what not to do exactly, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:10):
Yeah, and boundaries and different things. And he's safe in
the world. I'm not worried about him right now. Yeah,
And that means the world to me. So I can
tell you're a great father. You work with a lot
of you teach people to be great fathers. What advice
do you have, you know, any generational trauma and having
a different relationship with our children.

Speaker 1 (39:28):
Yeah, I think we have to sit with the pain
of it and be honest about you know, what we
learned before we were verbal. And there's a DNA genetic
component to trauma. There's a non verbal, pre verbal experience
of trauma, so it can escape words, and it's there's

(39:52):
so much rich information that is happening genetically and pre
verbally that I just say it's important to go and
understand that stuff. And then at some point like I
don't know, this is the right hood, the right passage
for adulthood. How are you going to be in this

(40:14):
small amount of time that we have on this spinning rock?
You know that in this body. I don't know how
I got to this body into this made up language,
Like it's crazy, it's like absolutely flipping blockers what we're
doing here. And so it's like this right of passage,
how do you want to do your life? And if

(40:37):
you can't answer the question like how are you going
to be a contributor to the larger ecosystem, I think
you're just a taker? And so why would we take?
Because we're in pain, because we're struggling, because we need
that survival thing is real and we need to feel
like we're going to be okay? And so how would
I how would I guide people as like got to

(40:58):
get quiet, got to get honest. Some people do it journaling,
some people do it meditations, some people do it with
conversations with wise people. If you do some combination of
two of those three. I think you're on the battle.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
You've said a lot of great things. Why don't tell
you a couple that I love? And I've been so
excited to talk to you about this. This is one
of my favorite things that you said. If you don't
know what you stand for, the world will define it
for you.

Speaker 1 (41:24):
They will. This world's not designed for you and me
to thrive. Yeah, man, this is not there's no like.
It's not designed for high performance, for well being, for mastery.
It's designed to regress to the mean. And your brain
is to regress to the mean, which is like, well,
I think most people are struggling. You think about thriving suffering,

(41:46):
and then in the middle of struggling, I don't think
most people I know are not thriving. Most people I
know are suffering and struggling. And it's not designed for
you to be great. So if you don't know what
you stand for, your brain will win. Your brain's dictum

(42:07):
is safety, and safety means belonging, and in modern times,
belonging means approval by others. So this is the brain's
game of fitting in is really about safety. And if
we don't examine it. We are wildly craving acceptance, head
nods and verbal kind of like yeah, you're good, and

(42:31):
we're wildly fearing rejection so much so that it informs
the car we drive, the watch we have we don't have,
the bike we buy, we don't buike, the job title
like it forms so much. And if we're not clear,
I studied the crates both from a scientific investigation and
on the frontier. They know what they stand for. If

(42:52):
Gandhi walked in this room, you know what we're talking about,
Mother Teresa walks in the room. You know what we're
talking about. Michael Jordan walks in the you know what
we're talking about. Probably it's now about gambling or something else.
But they know what matters. The most powerful people they
don't let the external world dictate their internal experience. It

(43:14):
works the other way around. They come from a place
and then they end up shaping their external world. So
if you don't know your purpose, nobody can, by the way,
according to research, nobody can give you purpose. It has
to be personally important to you, It has to matter
to you, be bigger than you, and have some sort
of future orientation. Those are the three ten poles for purpose.

(43:39):
If you don't do that work, the world is going
to just push you around and bully you, and your
brain is going to figure out how to find acceptance
as opposed to purpose. It's the big one now, especially
in our world where we get to see the highlights
of so many other people. It's wild, man, it's crazy making.

Speaker 2 (43:59):
So let's talk about your great acronym FOPO.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
Fear of people's opinions.

Speaker 2 (44:04):
There are people's apoul turm. I said, who turns out
that's how he initially got onto you. I said, that's
a mating I gotta talk about because I like stuff
like that.

Speaker 1 (44:14):
But I mean it was a it was just a
fun kind of cool FuMO is real, right, fear of
missing out? And I thought, you know that's true for me.
But you know what's bigger for me is, like most
of my life, I was terrified of not being good
enough in the eyes of others. So go back to
early childhood crises for most people. Okay, not everyone has

(44:37):
a crisis, but childhood is hard. You know, again, not
for everybody, but there's these very predictable and you know,
these uh, these emblems that we adopt when people come
from alcoholic or drug using families. You adopt the angel,
youdop adopt the high performer. Maybe maybe the joker, maybe

(45:02):
it's the wild one. Whatever. There's like these personas that
we adopt to take care of ourselves, to either get
attention or hide from it. And that's what the angel
is really about. I adopted the high performer. Don't look
at me, so I don't know who I am, and
I'm afraid that you might see me. Look at how
clever I am, look at how good I am at sport.

(45:27):
So it is a performance based identity rather than a
purpose based identity. And the grades of the Greats of
the Greats are purpose based, not performative. So performance based
identity shows up when you're more concerned about the outcome
of something rather than it moving something forward that really

(45:50):
deeply matters. Performance based identity is like, you know, when
you go to lunch and you're by yourself and it
kind of feel weird that people might be looking at you,
or because you're by yourself, or you flip open your
phone because you want to seem like you got something
going on at a social event, but really you're just
kind of uncomfortable not knowing how to navigate it. Or

(46:14):
you're holding a cocktail even though you don't want to
drink at this event. You know, like, what do I
do with everyone's got a red cup, or everyone's got
a cocktail, everyone's got a beer in their hand. What
do I do with my hands? And early on some
people are like, well, just going to fake it to
you make it. You can't fake anything to yourself. I
don't know where you said on this, but I'm so
clear in my mind. Fake it till you make it
is full bullshit. It gets exposed right away. You know

(46:36):
you're faking it. One pop in the mouth and like
they know too, you know. And so those are all
performance performative and performance based identity culprits. And I think
FAUPO is the greatest constrictor of your potential. My potential too.
All right, here's another doozy.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
All right, you can't be confident and in the future
at the time same time, how did that come into
your consciousness?

Speaker 1 (47:02):
Confidence is considered the cornerstone of high performance. Confidence is
not it's a tricky little thing because it's what we
call state. It's a state specific experience, meaning that it's
it can change from moment to moment, and once you
understand like the mechanism of confidence, then it is one

(47:25):
of the the fast tracks to being fully present. So
if I'm up in my head trying to sort out,
am I okay, I'm missing all of the rich data
that's happening in the environment and in high speed, high consequential,
high performing environments, I need to absorb as much of
that data as possible because it's on and I'm if

(47:47):
I'm flickering between the present moment focus of trying to
get all the rich data I possibly can to eloquently
or masterfully respond, but part of my mind is attending
to like, shit, is this looking okay? Am I okay?
Like is this going to go okay? And I'm trying

(48:08):
to sort out like the confidence of how am I
doing in this moment? I'm missing too much information. So
it's quite simple, is that the mechanism of knowing how
to build confidence is one of the slipstreams to being
fully present, and full full presence is required to get

(48:29):
into quote unquote flow state, the zone. Musicians call it
being in the pocket. You know, there's phraseology that's been
around this for a long time. If you can't be
fully present, you have no real shot of getting into
that space. And confidence is one of those mechanisms.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
Beautiful, Yeah, walk me through the process. You've got a
client that, let's just say they were favored to win
the playoffs. They don't. He has a bad game, there's
whispers of him being traded, and he comes into you
a little nervous about what I You know, I don't

(49:07):
know what's happening here. I should have won that game.
What happened? And I might get traded and this my
wife's fucking on.

Speaker 1 (49:13):
Me, all the stuff that comes with it.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
Right, I was getting ready to have a big five
year contract that's being pushed. Now walk us through that
meeting with him.

Speaker 1 (49:24):
Yeah, So that one wouldn't be really about confidence, the
framing of being in control or not in control. Right. So,
self efficacy it's a fancy little word in psychology or
phrase that means a sense of I feel like I'm
in I have power in my life, that I have
an active role in choosing how my life goes. And

(49:48):
people that have high power high self efficacy pay far
less attention, if any, to the things that they cannot control.
So if somebody comes in anxious anxiety is an excessive
worry about what could go wrong. So some people have
a predisposition for it because of their their genetic coating

(50:10):
what they learn preverbally, and some people have earned it,
meaning they're just very practiced at thinking about what could
go wrong. They like the movie of the the blood
and the drama and the guts and the and the
gore of catastrophes, So they like the movies and they're
very practiced at priming those movies. And those movies I'm

(50:33):
talking about imagination. So if you use your imagination to
see call it success. Or you can use your imagination
to see disaster. We need both. It's that's cool. But
people that are anxious clinically, so that groove of seeing
a disaster is just just well greased. And so if

(50:58):
a person's coming in and they're highly anxio, it's they've
somehow forgotten there how they can play an active role
in co creating the next steps. So when people are
very powerful, they're like, yeah, look, this, this, this, all
of those could happen. But for me, I'm gonna double down,

(51:19):
triple down on the things that I can control. I
need to be great with my attitude. I need to
be great with quality thoughts. I need to be great
with my recovery. Now's the time that I'm going to
triple down on like world class nutrition, like make sure
that I'm meditating and I'm getting my data da whatever.
The plan is that that's what the really powerful folks do.

(51:40):
So if somebody comes in and they're like totally on
their game, like, shit, I just got my ass handed
to me. Contract might be slipping away. I got some
stuff I'm dealing at home. You know what, Shit, I
know what I need to do. It's not gonna be easy,
you know, Mike, what do you think about this plan? Bang?
Bang bang? Yeah that sounds pretty good. You know, like

(52:03):
what do you think is that doable? I'm a little nervous,
you know, I'm not sure I can stay true to it,
but like, yeah, yeah, for the most part, I can
get this done. Great, let's go. So that's the opposite.
If they're in an emotional storm, they have forgotten, or
they are they have under hydrated the elements that put

(52:24):
them back into a position of power. Yeah, it's a
good It's like the sprouting of Yeah, it's beautiful. Yeah.
So so it's It's quite simple. It's like, Okay, look,
I hear you, I feel you. Is it this? Like,
hold on, let me explain what I'm doing. The old
trick that seems to be played out in medias that
psychologists say, well, how does that make you feel? Right? Right?

(52:48):
You know, which is like you know that what you're
really trying to do is calibrate with somebody like, oh,
it's this. Wait hold on, am I hearing that you're
freaking out? Yeah? Dude, I'm freaking out. Okay, am I
hearing that You're like? This is rage? No, it's not rage.
I'm just pissed. So they will calibrate with you. You

(53:12):
try to get as close as you can, and they'll
even calibrate across emotions. Wait, you're pissed. Huh No, hold on,
I fucking hurt. Okay, go there, what do you mean? Yeah, like,
I'm just I feel like everyone's left, like they don't
want to be part of this scarlet letter that I've got,

(53:33):
you know, So they'll calibrate across emotions when you've got
the right kind of space to do that. So my
job is to understand and to play it back in
a way that they feel seen. And understood and experienced
and then calibrate with them the intensity of it, right,
And so it's so when you get that kind of
mix going, they start driving. They're like, no, it's not that,

(53:56):
or yeah, that's it, you know, Yeah, I'm pissed. All right,
all right, how are you going to manage that? I
don't know. Well, how's your breathing practice? Terrible? We'll start there,
not right now. I want to be pissed a little
bit more. Okay, well that's fine too, yeah, right, whatever,
you know, Like I had at a moment where I
was working in I cornered three fights in the UFC,

(54:19):
and it was a really fun phase of my life.
And so I was working with one fighter and he's
exactly the image that you were at, shaved head, five ten,
two hundred and fifteen pounds, lumpy as lumpy, you know,
traps up to his ears, callieflowered ears, tattoos crawling up
his neck, and we're in the small, little hot office

(54:44):
and the temperature is really hot. I just really remember
that piece of it. And so I said, what's it
like when you're at your best? And he goes, there's
nothing in there, it's pure. I go okay, okay, check.
But when you're working, go one step down from that
and you're really working, and it's just good to be

(55:05):
in your mind, in your body. What's that like? And
he says and grins and he says, it's clean. Man.
I'm a tough motherfucker. He goes, that's what I'm saying.
I just know it. And I so I kind of
like unimpressed, ask him, where's that come from? And and

(55:25):
he says, yeah, what my dad's asked when I was fourteen.
And he looks at me like seeing if I if
I'm getting him, and I'm unimpressed with it, and I go,
you got anything else? And he goes, yeah, I was
an endgame position. I was being choked out triangle choke.
His legs is wrapped around my neck. I break it,
I put him on my back and dragon across the cage.

(55:46):
I dump him and I finished the fight. And he
looks at me and he says, I'm a tough motherfucker.
And so I think to myself, can I do it
one more time? I said, I don't know, can you
back it up anymore? Like? Is that all you got?
And he leans in and he says, if somebody were
to ask me one more question, I might choke him out.

(56:10):
I remember what I was shit, And I laughed, and
I go, dude, I just pushed my luck too me.
And he's like and he's like trying to catch himself
because he's fired up. And I'm laughing because I'm nervous.
I didn't know. He didn't know if he was serious
or not. And I didn't know if he was serious
or not. And I'm trying to take the edge off
with a laugh. And I'm looking at him like I

(56:30):
see you, and he goes, man, why'd you ask those
questions like that? I go, I respond to him that
I needed to understand it, Like, where's it really come from?
He goes, Dude, it's dark, but I know it. So
there's a dark side here. There's a dark side to master.

Speaker 2 (56:51):
Talk about that. Please, Yeah, that's really important. People understand this.

Speaker 1 (56:56):
Yes, you know that.

Speaker 2 (56:58):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
I don't. I really don't. People are want to go there.
We want to talk about highlight reels, and we want
to talk about the success and the paths of success,
which is great. But when I'm talking about getting to
the truth, that means embracing the parts of you that

(57:20):
are unbecoming. Right. That means, you know, having the courage
to open the closet door and examine the sound that
scared you. You know, when I was a young kid
on the farm, you know the house with creek it was,
it was built during the Civil War, and I remember
my response. I would get as still and as quiet

(57:44):
as I possibly could because I was convinced there was
something in the closet. And I think that there there's
no science around what I'm about to suggest. It was
my personal experience, but I've used it with clients because
I asked them, do you remember when you're scared as
a kid when it was dark? Do you have any experiences?
And they go yeah, and they bring something up, and

(58:06):
I ask what was your what was your response? What
was your natural response? And some say yeah, fuck that
I didn't like it. I go, I make a lot
of sound and I go to the closet. Okay, so
I get under the bed I just got or i'd
run to get help. You know, those are kind of
the three no action quiet, some action of hiding or

(58:28):
going to it or getting some help. Those are kind
of their typical responses. And I got really quiet, because
I didn't know who I could trust up and that
is like, that's a part of me I need to understand,
is that when I get pressed, I go to like, man,
I don't know who's in it with me, and I
get real quiet, and I don't take this action required

(58:48):
to face the dragon. And the dark side is like
meeting your dragon, you know, opening the closet door to see,
to look at the dark recesses of your own character
and to acknowledge it those are true too, to understand
your predisposition might be to lie, to shift, to look

(59:12):
for approval rather than honesty. You know, we all have
them at some level. Is it toxic or not? And
if it's toxic, you really got to address it. And
it's not, You're still not going to understand mastery without
going through those those those dark places. And then that's
one part of the dark side. The other part is
the selfishness that can come on the early part of

(59:33):
the walk, and there's an early investment in yourself which
can unfortunately, this is my hardest part of my life
is that I charismatically convinced other people to go on
the journey with me, But my journey was about me

(59:56):
and the pain that I've lived with because of that
and the sacrifices that other have made is like it's unsettling,
and so so I have to be honest with that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:12):
How'd you make peace with that?

Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
Oh? I don't know if I have. I'm not at
peace with it. It's very unsettling for me. And so the
way I'm trying to do it is it's the pay
back the love, the gifts of time, the gifts of

(01:00:35):
support when I took so much, and I'm trying to
figure it out to my best ability. But I still
have that selfish predisposition and I don't want it, but
my early life required me to be good at it,
I bet you know. And so it's what I'm trying

(01:00:58):
to do in my life now. And I have to
be honest with the pain because if I'm not, I'll
just keep going. I got a motor and the one
that gets me the most is when my loved one
say to me that hurts. Fuck. It stops me in
my track because I'm the cause of that stops me

(01:01:20):
in my track. And what I have to sort out
is like the balance between giving to this craft I love,
giving to the compelling future that I can see feeding
both of those, but never at the compromise of giving
deeply to my wife and my son. And early in

(01:01:41):
my path, I fed the craft and I fed my
feeling that comes with proficiency and competence and being seen
that way, because that was all born out of trauma.
I needed you to see how smart and clever and
what a high performer I was. And it was until
my wife said to me, I'm fucking done with this.

(01:02:04):
And she she said, I love you. You're a good human.
I think the world is better because of you. But
I can't be in this relationship with you. Wow. And
so I hit the panic button. I said, no, no, no, no,
I'll change, And she says, I've given you too many chances,
So no, no, no, Look look I get it now.
I get it now. Yeah, right, she said, And she

(01:02:25):
looked at me with full tears in her eyes, love
in her heart, and resolve in her words. She said,
you have to leave. This is a woman I dated
since I was in high school. This is a woman
that gave me everything. I was busted as a kid.
Violence was my go to to quell anxiety performance and

(01:02:48):
you know, breaking rules was my way to to kind
of be seen, and she saw something better and she
stayed with me, and it was awesome. And I fucked up.
I blew it, and so we were so the first
step to divorce is separation. We separated and I came back,

(01:03:12):
like she says, as a friend, As a best friend,
I need to know who I am, and I can't
do it around you. Wow, you sucked it all out
of me. So I'm crying. I leave, I leave the relationship,
and I know exactly what is happening here. And a

(01:03:33):
month later I text her and I said, look, can
we can we go to therapy and she goes for
what I said, we owe it to ourselves, and she goes,
I'll go. This is for you, it's not for me.
I'm done, I said, just once. There's the charisma in

(01:03:53):
this whole thing. And we show up in the therapist.
He's a wise woman, she's amazing. We sat across and
I I got Italian roots and she's full Latina, Cuban
and El Salvadorian and it's loud and the therapist stops
us because there's so much pain and hurt not being seen.
I didn't see her, she didn't see me. Take that back.

(01:04:17):
I didn't see her. She saw me clearly, but she
didn't see me seeing her, which I wasn't. And so
the therapist stops and says, this is as bad as
it gets. And she asked the most important question I
think I've ever been asked. She said, Mike, do you
know you need to do work? I said yeah. She
looked at my wife and she says, do you think

(01:04:38):
do you know you need to do work? She goes yeah.
And because we chose each other, we fit, not well,
but we fit. And she says, here's a question, do
you want to do the work with each other or
with a new partner? I said, holy shit, I can't
answer this right now. It was my it felt it

(01:05:01):
felt like it was an eternity, and I looked at
I looked at my wife, and I knew this was
going to be the go no go moment. And she says,
I don't want to do this work with anyone else,
but I don't trust he'll do the work. I've got
a chance. I got a shot, I got a show.

Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
You got a shot, brother.

Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
And I went to work. I went to work. Yeah,
so we figured it out.

Speaker 2 (01:05:22):
I thought you were going to go you know. That
was ten years ago, we're best friends. Now we're Yeah,
but what did you have to do because I.

Speaker 1 (01:05:28):
Had to fucking examine everything, had to be completely naked
in front of her, in front of the therapist, in
a way that I'd never really knew how to do
in this intimate level. I could do it with like
my guy Gary. I could do it with my guy,
but this was different. And and we did the work

(01:05:50):
and we dated for six months. You know, we did
the work. We didn't date. We just did the work
for six months, and then we dated an additional six
months after that. The second important question she asked therapist
asked was okay, so while we're separated, let me ask
you one more question. Are you gonna honor your vow
Do you want to honor your vowels or not honor

(01:06:11):
your vouse? You know? And it was she meant it like,
there's no rules here. You guys are young. Do you
want to go like sleep around? Do you want to
go have a romantic other kind of thing? And maybe
you come back around Like she meant it, she knew
that that was she knows the research. I know the research.
That's a death sentence. For the most part, it's way

(01:06:32):
too complicated when you start, you know, doing that and
bringing that into the mix. And there's part of her
probably that was like that, it'd be great to have
that energy somebody seeing me kind of have that sensual
kind of feel, and she like great. She's like, I
am not interested in fucking around. It's not like I'm hurting.

(01:06:57):
And I thought, fucking right, I got a chance, you know,
So those are the two most important questions. And yeah,
gave us a chance.

Speaker 2 (01:07:07):
How long into that processes you start trusting you again?

Speaker 1 (01:07:11):
I think there's still a part that there's such She
intimately trusts my fidelity, She trusts my decision making to
take care of the family, She trusts my work ethics,
she trusts my character strength, She trusts a lot. But

(01:07:32):
when I'm honest, I think that there's still a turn
to screw that. Does she trust that I will choose
her over choosing me? And it's not until I really
have enough time under tension. And it's been ten years,
you know, like it's not enough time undertention, and I've
made some mistakes, like you know, like I'll I'll take
the easy path and not confront the truth. I need

(01:07:56):
a psychologist in my life. I need a mentor, I
need someone that holds me accountable to being the person
I want to do and left to my own devices,
it's hard, you know, I choose, I usually choose something different.

Speaker 2 (01:08:10):
It's a great story.

Speaker 1 (01:08:11):
Yeah, thank you for giving me the space to share it.
I don't appreciate that. Yeah, I don't talk about it often,
and I'm not flushed with the emotion as I'm telling
the story. But I wish upon everybody to go through
like that gauntlet of getting to the truth. And sometimes

(01:08:32):
I get to be in your role to help, you know,
help help people go through it, and sometimes I'm in it.
And so I wish that upon everybody to feel that
suffering and to make a fundamental commitment to do the work.
Not a convenient but a fundamental commitment. And then I'll
just kind of twist this one more thought here is

(01:08:53):
that that's what the greats do, the best athletes in
the world, matter of fact, the most aspirational athletes that
I really care for, They've made a fundamental commitment to
organize their life, to explore their potential. That's not what
most people do. They wake up in the morning thinking
about how to they do imagery or write goals or like.

(01:09:16):
They structure their life to have four hours of physical
movement right at the edge of their capability. They studied
their craft. They invite mentors and coaches to point out
the things that they can't see that are not good enough,
and they do all of it publicly in front of
their peers every day at practice with people that are

(01:09:37):
trying to take their job. And to keep your job,
you got to get to the edge. And it's the
edge where you make all the mistakes. And they've got
to get to the mistake making edge in front of
their peers, in front of their evaluators, their coaches, who
decide if they have a job or not, starting time
or not playtime or not, with a bunch of like
hyenas or wolves that like are like, yeah, good, I

(01:09:58):
see you making mistakes. I'm not you know, I'm stepping
into your role. So I have tremendous respect for fundamental commitments.
And to be your very best requires a fundamental commitment.
Sobriety requires a fundamental commitment, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
So I'm a huge fan of a morning routine. I
don't think someone can stay sober and be free. You
can be sober and to be a dickhead still not change,
but to actually which a lot of people are dry drunk, Yeah,
dry drunk. Can you talk about morning routine? Can you
talk about I'm curious what you do? I'm curious. You've
worked with so many people. You can graph it. What

(01:10:33):
do you see?

Speaker 1 (01:10:34):
I'm gonna give you the top thought, and then I'll
get down to the concretes. The concrete nature is that structure,
no structure to break, structure, no form to break form.
So it's very much a martial art. Bit here is
that we need a structure, and then at some point
we need to break that structure to innovate new and

(01:10:54):
so I think about that for all routines, is that
there's a time for a routine. And when you're uncertain
about the proficiency you have of particular skills, maybe it's
a skill of gratitude or kindness or love or compassion
or honesty, it requires some structure. And when you've got

(01:11:17):
a felt sense of mastery, it doesn't need a structure,
but it's good. It's good to have it, you know.
So I go structure to break structure, just as that
thought meaning that the rigidity of routines is problematic. So
I have routines in my morning, but I'm not rigid
because if I as soon as I become rigid with it,

(01:11:38):
then I lose track of the purpose of it. So
my morning, my morning's they've they at one point were
pretty complex, meaning that I did a wheel of life
kind of thing, like what is how do I switch
on each vertical of my life? How do I what
is a practice to be physically tuned, emotionally tuned, spiritually tuned,
psychologically tuned, real relation tuned, financially returned, you know, like

(01:12:02):
each of the dimensions if you will, And I would
do something to kind of do that. Now it's too complicated.
I don't have it. I don't have that time. So
what I do now it's ninety seconds to nine minutes,
somewhere in that range. On the ninety second, it's four
key elements. And anyone that wants this, we've packaged it
up and will send it an audio or a or PDF,

(01:12:26):
and it's it's a cheap way to get you on
my mailing list so I can stay in touch with you.
But you know, if you go to our website, we'll
send it to you. It's a Finingmastery dot com slash
Morning mindset. And I learned this from interviewing best in
the world, both on the Finding Mastery podcast and by
being in the environment with them. And there's four elements

(01:12:49):
that I think are materially important, and it's to switch
on a ppecific, a specific part of your brain to
help with your psychology to give you a chance of
great behavior. So the brain piece comes first, and the
first order business is one long exhale. Before you tune
into the noise of the world, your cell phone, anything,

(01:13:12):
one long exhale begins to send the signal to the brain.
I'm in control of this thing. I'm gonna choose if
we're going to be calm. I choose because long axls
are paired with safety. When the wild debast was chasing us,
or the warring tribes were after us and we got away,
we did exactly what you're doing now, long exhale, So

(01:13:35):
one long axl Okay. So it's a basically what I'm
saying is take a deep breath and if you want
to do two, three, four, five of those awesome and
a long exhale is about eight seconds. So if you
went four seconds in eight seconds out. If you went
eight seconds in, eight seconds out, you're setting your brain
up to know that you're in control of the whole situation. Okay,

(01:13:58):
one long breath. Step Two Gratitude. It could be one thought,
or it could be a handful of them, but it's
one at a time. And it's not a check the box.
It's a fully embedded experience of something that you are
grateful for. It is not a check the box. I'm
grateful I got milk in the fridge. I'm grateful I
got running water. It's not that experience. It's like really

(01:14:22):
feeling the thing entire across your entire body. You might
get to a place where you like kind of tear
up a little bit, like maybe not maybe, but just
feel the whole frickin thing. That's designed to wake up
another part of your brain. And again I'll send I'll
send you this audio file so to walk your community
through it. The third is one intention, So use your

(01:14:43):
imagination to see yourself kicking ass in some specific part
of your life. Later, it's what the best in the
world do. They use It's called performance imagery. They use
their mind to see themselves being great. And again, that
can be a quick, quick, little movie that you run
or it can something that's kind of more nuanced. I
was working with. It was more of a conversation with

(01:15:05):
Hicks and Gracie, one of the greatest ever in mixed
martial arts, legendary Brazilian kind of three hundred street fights
that he won all of them, like a greater than life,
very complicated human, but truly a master of fighting. And
I asked him about imagery and he lit up, you mean,
the most beautiful movie I could see with me starring

(01:15:25):
in it. I love that. He goes, yeah, I do
it a lot. I was working with the fastest human alive,
and I asked him about mental imagery, and he goes,
because my doc my wife thinks I got a problem.
She thinks I have a masturbation problem. I go what
he says, yeah, because I do mental imagery in the shower,

(01:15:46):
and I honestly I'm doing it. I like the hot
steam and the shower on my back, and I'm seeing
myself out of the blocks, ripping, and I just keep
doing it and doing it and doing it, and like
I want to get to my time. I'm trying to
time my It's like this beautiful movie and I'm flying
in my movies and I lose track of time, and
my wife thinks I'm in the masturbation. You know, right,

(01:16:09):
I know, so so choose, choose your space and you
know wisely right, Okay, So so again, one breath, one gratitude,
one intention, and then take your sheets off. So all
this is done in bed, Take your sheets off, slide
to the edge of your bed, and just take a
moment to be fully present. Ninety seconds, nine minutes, whatever

(01:16:30):
kind of in between. You're just firing up in your circuitry,
in your brain, getting your mindset dialed in so your
behaviors will follow you follow.

Speaker 2 (01:16:39):
All right, two more questions. I'll let you go back
to your lovely wife. We've been so patient with you. Yeah, yeah,
what's the most important question we should be asking ourselves?

Speaker 1 (01:16:46):
Who am I? Is? Kind of the ancient of all
of them? And you know what am I doing with
this time on this planet? I think those are the
two big ones. Who am I? Will take you forever
to explore, and there's it's just a worthwhile exploration. It'll
get you to the dark, the dark recesses. It'll get

(01:17:08):
you to the celebrations of you know what are your
true gifts? It'll get you past role, It'll get you
into substance, and then you got to keep asking the
question beyond that, like who am I really? And am
I part of the cosmos? Am I speca dust? Am I?
What what am I? As? Equally as interesting? And then

(01:17:30):
like what am I going to do with my time here?
What is my purpose? I think if you get those
two things, if you entertain those two and get on
the path of discovering those, your output becomes exponentially more powerful.
Inputs and inputs and outputs. People are listening to the
show that are relapsters.

Speaker 2 (01:17:47):
There might be some of listening to the show that's
seriously debating taking their life right now. Somebody's wife just
slaugh them, somebody's has just slap them. Money's tight, they
lost a Super Bowl, it's all there. What's the message
for them?

Speaker 1 (01:18:00):
Doc, I lost my uncle to suicide. The message There's
nothing I can really say to that person right now
other than you're in pain. You think the best solution,
the most loving solution, is to get out of that
pain by ending it. I wish my uncle could know

(01:18:21):
how much he's missed and how it haunts me that
I didn't help enough. I wish I was better. I
could meet him at that pain. So there's a there's
destruction on the other end of it that is equally
or greater than the destruction that you're feeling. So I

(01:18:42):
like have I have great compassion for all of that pain.
So you know, the great poet Cohen talked about there's
a crack and everything, and that's in the crack that
the light comes through. You got to find the crack,
reach out, connect to somebody. You know, I don't want
to give you a prescription, but like it's to keep fighting.

(01:19:06):
So I'm caught on that part of your question because
of just how fucking gnarley it is to deal with
and be on this side of that trauma. But what
was the other part of your question. Somebody who's listening.

Speaker 2 (01:19:23):
That's just struggling, that just they've lost hope, they lost purpose,
They're in it. They're in the funck, man, They're in
the darkness right now.

Speaker 1 (01:19:30):
Yeah, I mean, the last thing I want to do
is say something pithy. The last thing I want to
do is say something that is trite, because when you
feel hopeless, somebody saying there's hope feels like an empty meal.
I mean, it's easy to say keep fighting, But when
you're tired and you feel like you're a burden and
you've let people down and you're a feeler, and you

(01:19:53):
feel all of that and you're not treating yourself well,
you're saying yourself with the fuck have I done? Why
am I such a loser? Everyone else has got their
shit together, you know, Like I mean, first order of
business is like can you can you run a couple experiments?
Can you be really kind in the way that you

(01:20:14):
speak to yourself for ten minutes? And if that experiment
goes well? And I mean, like, see if you could
adopt like this world class coaching narrative, the way that
you've always wanted to be loved, the way you've always
wanted to be coached, where somebody is like you got this,
I see you, Sean, Hey, don't give me that shit.

(01:20:36):
Come on now, come on now, stay in it, come on,
like hold on one breath at a time. Maybe that's
all we got to do, you know, And you just
start coaching yourself in the way that you've always wanted
to be coaching loved, do a ten minute experiment and
then do it. Run another ten minute experiment and run
another running back, run back, stay in the fight. I

(01:20:59):
think that people underestimate what they're capable of. And I've
seen it over and over, even the best in the world,
I see it over and over again. We need those
we need I'm going to speak right to the listener
right now. If you're like, we need you to show
us how to be honest with the pain, and we

(01:21:19):
need you to show how others can do the same.
And if you haven't touched the depth that you're touching,
you can't really teach it. So you are the ones
on the frontier that are showing exactly how to live
the good life, and you don't know it yet. You're
feeling all of that pain and it feels overwhelming, but
you can't. We can't teach, and we can't learn from

(01:21:41):
people that don't understand what you own. What you own
and understand keep finding. So I wish I would have
said that to my uncle. It would have been maybe
a breath of fresh air form. You put himself on
a train track and he really wanted to die, and
I have I hold him in great regard. Two, I

(01:22:03):
didn't if I walked if I lived his life, I
probably have the same demons and I didn't know. I'm
walking in different life. Okay, So the folks that are
kind of struggling otherwise, get over yourself. Just fucking keep fighting,
you know. And then I say, like, your drama is
more important someone to be in service of other people,
you know. It's one of the best practices according to science,
you know, for a good life is be in service

(01:22:26):
of others. And we're in pain. We're not doing that well.
And so that's what my mentor says to me at least.

Speaker 2 (01:22:34):
So I appreciate you, man.

Speaker 1 (01:22:36):
Yeah, thank you, Sean.

Speaker 2 (01:22:37):
I really appreciate you coming out here and speaking from
your heart. Yeah, it's important. Well, you create the space
for it.

Speaker 1 (01:22:44):
Yeah, you know. I I we did our homework on
why come here and why with you and you create
the space for it.

Speaker 2 (01:22:53):
Why did you come here?

Speaker 1 (01:22:54):
Yeah? For that reason is that I don't do I
don't do many podcasts.

Speaker 2 (01:22:59):
I know you don't.

Speaker 1 (01:23:00):
Yeah, and the ones I've done, like, I hit the
ground running hard on on like the book launch first
Role Mastery. It was such an empty meal for most
questions of like, so I took a hiatus for about
eighteen months, I've I've only done I think one or
two interviews since then. And so I came because you

(01:23:22):
create space and I wanted to go places I don't
really talk about. And I didn't ask you about your
your traumas you know, which are interesting me, but I
know you've got them, and so you created space to
to celebrate the traumas. Brothers.

Speaker 2 (01:23:41):
That's the best confident in the world coming from somebody
like yourself.

Speaker 1 (01:23:44):
True.

Speaker 2 (01:23:44):
No, seriously, thank you, man. I I have a feeling
we'll have many more conversations.

Speaker 1 (01:23:50):
Yeah, that'd be great. And I'm rooting for I'm rooting
for you, and I'm rooting for your people.

Speaker 2 (01:23:54):
You are, Yeah, I know you are.

Speaker 1 (01:23:56):
It's a pathworth walking.

Speaker 2 (01:23:57):
I'm root for you too, man, and your wife, yeah,
and your children.

Speaker 1 (01:24:00):
Thank you big time.

Speaker 2 (01:24:01):
Thank you, and I love your smile. Man.

Speaker 1 (01:24:04):
Yeah, I appreciate it. Thank thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:24:06):
The Sales Show is a production of iHeart Podcasts, hosted
by me Cina McFarlane, produced by pod People in twenty eighth.
Av Our lead producer is Keith Carlick, Our executive producer
is Lindsay Hoffman. Marketing lead is Ashley Weaver. Thank you
so much for listening. We'll see you next week.