Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Akshay Nanavati, Marine Corps Veteran

Episode Date: June 5, 2019

This week’s conversation is Akshay Nanavati, a Marine Corps Veteran, endurance athlete, philanthropist and creator of Fearvana.After overcoming drug addiction, PTSD and depression from fighting the war in Iraq with the US Marines, and alcoholism that pushed him to the brink of suicide, Akshay has since built a global business, run ultramarathons, and explored the most hostile environments on the planet, from mountains to caves to polar icecaps.Combining his life experience with years of research in neuroscience, psychology and spirituality, he wrote a book called “Fearvana: The Revolutionary Science of How to Turn Fear Into Health, Wealth and Happiness.”About the book, the Dalai Lama said “Fearvana inspires us to look beyond our own agonizing experiences and find the positive side of our lives.”He is now on a mission to turn Fearvana into a global movement to help others build a positive relationship with suffering._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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that stands in the way of our well-being, you know, is the negative relationship to suffering. I mean, we live in a world that demonizes fear, stress, anxiety, pain, adversity. Any of these words are not perceived as positive. So if we can shift that relationship, we can live a better life. All right, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais, and by trade and training, a sport and performance psychologist, as well as the co-founder of Compete to Create. The whole idea behind these conversations, behind this podcast, is to learn from people who are on the path of mastery. People have dedicated their life efforts to better understand the nuances of their craft.

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to kind of quickly put them on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them. One a day, one a day. What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell. Okay. All right. Look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective. 28 grams of protein, just 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. It's rare to find something that fits so conveniently into a performance-based lifestyle and actually tastes good. Dr. Peter Attia, someone who's been on the show, it's a great episode by the way, is also their chief science officer. So I know they've

done their due diligence in that category. My favorite flavor right now is the chocolate chip cookie dough. And a few of our teammates here at Finding Mastery have been loving the fudge brownie and peanut butter. I know Stuart, you're still listening here. So getting enough protein matters and that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value, and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash Finding Mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, Protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash Finding Mastery. Now, this week's conversation is with Akshay Nanavati. He's a Marine Corps

veteran, an endurance athlete, philanthropist, and the author of Firvana. Akshay has been through it now. After overcoming drug addiction, then he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, where he served in the Iraqi war. And check this, one of his jobs was to walk in front of vehicles to find improvised explosive devices, IEDs. I mean, imagine that.

And then after he was done serving, he was later diagnosed with PTSD and depression, and he also battled with alcoholism. And in his words, it got so bad that it drove him to the brink of suicide. Akshay figured it out though. And since then, he's built a business around it, Firvana. He's explored the most hostile environments on the planet, from mountains to caves to polarized caps, into extreme aloneness. So combining his life experiences with a deep appreciation for neuroscience and psychology and spirituality, he wrote a book called Firvana, the revolutionary science of how to turn fear into health, wealth, and Happiness.

Now, how about this for a cool little endorsement here? The Dalai Lama says about the book, Fearvana inspires us to look beyond our own agonizing experiences and find the positive side of our lives. It's a really cool endorsement, isn't it? And currently, he's just on a mission to turn Fearvana into a movement to help others build a positive relationship with suffering. It's a really cool thought now. So with that, let's jump right into this fantastic conversation with Akshay Nanaviti. Akshay, how are you?

Doing great, my friend. Great to be here. Thank you so much for having me on the show. Stoked to be able to connect with you because you've done something that's very difficult to do. And not only have you served the Marine Corps and served it well, but you've gone through what is the difficult side of facing down difficult situations, PTSD. And you found yourself in struggling in a battle with addiction as well. So the ability to be able to talk about your experiences is in and of itself, like I'm fascinated, but then you've gone one level, I don't know, through that that is stunning. And you've created an ultra lifestyle through running. So I want to understand that whole arc, right?

Like how have you gone and done what you've done, but then turned it into something that is ridiculous. And so actually I want to start off by saying like, when I put on my psychological lenses here, I'm not sure that what you're doing is like, if you're totally free or like, you know, like I want to really understand because I did an ultra event myself and I've only done one. And I'm not sure that I was clear when I started of what I was running to or what I was running from. And for me, it was a standup paddle in the ocean. So I, you know, we can talk about that. Yeah. But okay. So I want to just say at the out front, I think this is going to be a difficult conversation for me because of how much you've done. And at the same time, I don't think it's going to be easy for you because I really want to understand. And I want to say in advance,

like, thank you for being an open spirit and the calls we've had before, just knowing how open you are. So I want to say thank you. I appreciate you saying that, my friend. No, and I love the depth to which you go. And so I'm excited to delve deeper and see what shows up for me as well as what can show up for somebody listening. Okay, so let's just start with depth, like how you've done an inner journey, and you're still doing it now. It's not like the self-discovery journey just ends. It never stops, yeah. But yeah, why are you interested in depth? Some people are not, right? Now, most of our community is.

They're really interested in the self-discovery, their lying dormant potential or expressed potential. So why are you interested in depth? I think that I got into it just, again, as a result of all the life experiences. And then it drove me to go deeper and deeper because I feel like you're missing out on so much on life if you experience it at the mundane level. And most of us are kind of trapped in this. I mean, when I go some, you know, let's say I go to a social party or something like that, we put on these masks about who we are, who we think we are, who the world tells us we should be.

And we don't go deeper because going deeper is painful. It's hurtful. And I think you have to delve into the depths of pain, delve into the depths of hell, if you will, in order to experience the intensity of life at its most extremes. So as a result of, you know, from going into war, battling addiction before that and after that and PTSD, I was running away from pain a lot, sometimes in positive ways. Like when I spent a month skiing across an ice cap, that was, you know, something the world kind of praised me for. But truth be told, I was running away from things. I wanted to go back into suffering in a pure way to just to experience the simplicity of life. And then I was running away through drinking a lot,

right? And then as I stopped running and really just looked deeper within and kept going and kept going, it became its own journey that you almost can't back away from now. Because the intensity through which I experienced life, and that means the lower lows, I go through some low lows to this day, but there is beauty in that pain and there's beauty even on the higher highs. So I feel like- Okay, hold on. Okay. So yeah, I'm with you that going into those places are wonderful and difficult. Do you struggle in any way with, or have had a history of depression in your family or within yourself? I have had a history of my family,

definitely within myself as well. Like when I was in those dark spaces with drinking and the PTSD, I mean, just low, low, low lows. I mean, I got to the point that I was in the brink of suicide. I mean, I woke up after like five days of binge drinking and just literally wanted to go pick up a knife in my kitchen and just end it because I couldn't take that cycle of drinking and then feeling like I got to sober up and then delving back into the pit. I mean, the lows were just so bad. Okay. Hold on. Hold on. Let's put a pin in suicidality and PTSD for a minute and let's rewind it back just a little bit um earlier when did you first start drinking or using probably in when I was in high school so yeah

no definitely about 15 okay so was your depression if you go back to 15 was your depression and sometimes it's gonna be really difficult discern. But would you imagine like that sadness, loneliness, isolation feeling happened before you picked up the bottle or was it like after? Truth be told, now that you've asked that, like I think I wasn't as aware of it at the time. But looking back at my life now from the self-awareness that I have, I was very lost. I had moved from Bombay to Bangalore to Singapore to Austin by the time I was 13. Okay, hold on. Hold on. Okay.

So by the age of 13, you were in two different countries? Three countries. You said Singapore? Yeah, Singapore, two cities in India, and then Austin I moved to. Austin, Texas when I was 13. I missed Austin. Okay, so radically different countries too. Those are not, you know, there's nothing really similar about those.

So, okay. And that was by the age of 13. What led that to take place? My dad's job. He had moved, he had started 3M in India and moved from, you know, from 3M Bangalore to 3M Singapore to Austin, Texas. Okay, 3M meaning the large, what did they do yeah like post-its yeah that's right yeah okay yeah okay so obviously global you know international

titan in the space and then he started it in india well he was one of the first employees like if he had the number like the first share of 3m india so he helped start it employ people and stuff like that what did he do to position himself for that? That's massive. Yeah, it was, I mean, it was great. He worked with the company called Birla before that, which is when I was born in Bombay. And then originally when 3M started in India, it was Birla 3M. So Birla and 3M kind of partnered and then it became just 3M. So he was working with Birla and then I don't know exactly how he went from Birla to like 3M. I'm not sure how exactly that happened. But he was working with Birla for a couple years before I moved into 3M. Would you describe dad as a risk taker, ambitious? Like, you know, how would you

describe him? Yeah, definitely ambitious. He's definitely a hard worker. I mean, he's worked hard for 27 years, very driven. He himself went through some phases when he was a kid of a lot of drinking, a lot of partying. His own parents, my grandparents, thought he would amount to nothing in life. So I see a lot of similarities between who he is and who I am now. But yeah, so he was very driven. He loved his family. I mean, he traveled all the time to put food, you know, we weren't, we weren't as well off as we

are now, but so he, he worked really hard to take care of my mom and us from a young age. So, uh, you know, I couldn't have asked for a better childhood and better parents. I mean, I was born with that silver spoon, so to speak, you know, uh, everything I could ask for. Yeah. It's, I hear that. And at the same time, you know, moving three different countries, you know, it's difficult and it's, it's not, listen, I, I'm not. And at the same time, moving three different countries, it's difficult. And it's not, listen, I'm not saying that it's the most difficult thing. And I'm thinking you're thinking the same thing, but it's hard, right? And the cost of that for dad's career, dad's vision of what success looks like for him and his family was that you had a sense of being uprooted,

but what was the dark side or the downside of that is I think you're talking about isolation, but I'd like to hear you contextualize that so I can better understand what it was like to be a 12, 10 year old, you know? Yeah. You know, I actually like, well, I made friends very easily in every city I moved to, like my brother struggled with a lot more and he's kind of my opened up about it. He struggled with a lot more, but I kind of adjusted and acclimatized and made friends fairly easy in every city. But yet, and again, I wasn't as aware of this at the time, but looking back, I was still very lost and always trying to conform to the way of being. So I could be cool. You know what I mean? It was like, I wasn't me. I didn't know who I was. I

didn't know who I wanted to be in the world. So I would adjust to, um, to the world around me to be, to fit in. And, and, uh, and that's what happened when I was Austin. I was lost. Uh, again, I was just trying to fit in now this group of friends that I had made and to stand out, I would, I would do the, I would be like the craziest person in the group. So like when we started drinking any drugs, I would do the most intense stuff, like get into harder drugs, you know? And, uh, and that was my way of being the coolest one being like standing out from the crowd, you know? I mean, I have scars on my arm cause I used to cut myself, burn myself. Uh, to this day, I have these scars and these things made me again in a very negative way, but they made me stand out. Right. Everybody was like, Oh, crazy Akshay. Right. That was, that was me. So that was, okay.

So that was part of your identity because you didn't fit in. So you became – you didn't really become a chameleon. You became like the icon for the boundary pushing, right? So the crazy Akshay. Okay. You're still doing that now, right? Like you – I mean what did you just run? What was one of your recent ultras? The last one I did was, uh, uh, it was like a week ago, 21 hours, about 80 miles around

a 0.2 mile loop in my building. I mean, monotony is actually one of the culprits in elite sport, right? Monotony and strain, getting those two things right is a really important metric for elite sport so when monotony goes up we have to pay attention because people get burnt out and so monotony by definition is like doing the same damn thing non-stimulating thing over and over and over and over again and you did 80 miles in a two mile loop 0.22 mile. Oh my God. Yeah. So I missed that 0.2. 0.2 mile. So it's very small loop in the building. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What does a 0.2 mile loop look like? I mean, that's nothing that's smaller than a track, right? A little bit smaller

than a track. It's just so the building where I live here, there's got a few pools. So it's kind of going around this little section. It might be even a tiny bit smaller than 0.2 mile, but I kind of rounded up to 0.2. So just this tiny loop going around it over and over again, because I mean, the idea to me is that I want to get to a point that it doesn't matter if I'm going around 0.2 mile loop or running in the most beautiful scenery in the world, because my internal mastery is so, I'm not even, I'm not saying I'm there by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm working on it. But I want to get the point that I can, to me internally, it doesn't matter what's happening in the external world. I control my internal reality. And so that's part

of the reason why I practice doing it in these very monotonous conditions to see, can I rise above the external conditions to control where my mind goes? You know, I love that. I mean, this is at the center of why I wanted to speak with you, right? Because it's one thing to say it and it's another thing to practice it. And then you're pushing it in your practice. So yeah. Okay. But let's, and I want to make sure that I'm saying this correctly is that when I said you're still doing the same thing you are, but it doesn't mean that that's bad. It means, you know, maybe there's a different texture to it and the aim is different so if the first aim was to be recognized and because there was this hollowness right and this aloneness or isolation piece and when i say that about you as a 10 to 13 year old or maybe 14 year old like

how is that different now and maybe it's not and say, and this is why I love speaking with you because of your, I don't know, your commitment to honesty. But how is that different now, if any? Yeah. You don't, I mean, a lot of people are like, aren't you just channeling one addiction to the other as if it's somehow negative? And I don't think it is negative. I think being obsessed on a path to a point of addiction is beautiful.

But today I'm not doing it just, I mean, to run away from things. So even when I started getting into like long distance running and climbing mountains and skiing across an ice cap for a month, all these things that I doing way back when, like right after the war, I was doing it very clearly as a way of running away from life, running away from my demons, you know, and today, it's more like so I'm doing some of the same things that I was doing, let's say, seven years ago. But I'm now doing it from a very different level of consciousness. It's an access point to a greater evolution, not just a running away from a demon.

It's almost running toward the demon, you know, and to seek out that next demon. Because like I want to delve deeper into into the pits of the darkness. I mean, I'm actually going into a darkness retreat in one week where I'm going to be spending seven days in pitch blackness 24-7. Can't see your hand in front of you blackness for a week in an isolated room just to see what's still because stillness terrifies me. So I want to go deeper into the places of fear, deeper into the place of darkness in order to seek out those demons as opposed to just run away from them. So very different level of consciousness than what I was doing, even when I was doing these quote unquote positive things versus like, I mean, when I was doing the drug things and all of that, like in high school, there was not even really an awareness

to who I was and anything. I just, I mean, I could have, I lost two friends to drug addiction. To be honest with you, that could have easily been me because me and one other friend who we were the first two to start going into harder drugs. And then he ended up ODing one day and died. And I was headed down that path with them very easily headed down that path. So there wasn't much awareness, consciousness, nothing. It was just delving into pushing myself in that really negative, unhealthy way, which thankfully now I don't believe it is. I know some people do think some people think what I do, my own family sometimes is like concerned that I'm too intense and I'm going too much into exploring the depths of my darkness. But I know that it's beautiful and it sends me to the most

beautiful and painful places, but I love it all. I love even the lows. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentus. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers, their co-founder and CEO, I could tell this was not your average supplement company. And I was immediately drawn to their mission, helping people achieve performance

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How would you characterize the quality of your life now? If early days was there's some isolation pieces, how would you characterize now? There's still some isolation like I told you before. Recently, I went through a very challenging divorce with my wife. She was battling some of her own demons. She decided to move into a meditation ashram. After that happened and actually I broke my sobriety. It sent me to some dark places as a result of that but so hold on real quick really quickly thank you for sharing

you know that piece because i want to understand it as well but i hear a thread in here which is that you this external dictating the internal right is. Is a major driving force for you. Right. And you want it the other way. You want the internal to drive the external, right? So that's like mastery of self and inner command. And how does, okay. And the reason I'm picking up on it now is because you're like, okay, so an external event happens. My wife was struggling and she was separated or she moved to an ashram and then that that external triggered me to have um to make a poor decision for myself right something that

you know is consequential which is was it alcohol is that your drug of choice alcohol yeah i never got back into drugs just alcohol yeah yeah and um and how far did you take that you know on your your last binge i mean when i when i break i break big like i you know it goes it's a you'll down i mean i'll down like liters a day i mean until i drink till i pass out wake up and drink till i pass out till my body can just no longer take it after like five six days and i mean oh man it sends me into some like just the drinking and then the feeling after that about who i who i have become it's not somebody I choose to like want to ever be. And so it was low lows for him to say the least. And of course I don't blame her. I take full

responsibility for my actions. It's nobody's fault but my own. But yeah, I took it pretty far. Yeah. So, okay. I'm not jumping around, but what is the narrative? Yeah. What's the narrative that you say to yourself post a binge and you've been sober for a long time. So this is just, this was just a recent thing that you struggled with, right? Like how long has your sobriety been? So, I mean, actually when I first got into like that sort of suicidal mode and after getting out of that, I kind of moderated my drinking for a little bit and I was able to control it and building my business. My business was successful. Life was going great. I was still running marathons, all that kind of stuff. But every once in a while, the trigger would send me on these binges. Finally,

I was like, you know what? I'm not really goodathons, all that kind of stuff. But every once in a while, a trigger would send me on these binges. Finally, I was like, you know what? I'm not really good at moderation. Let's just kind of own it. And so I only sobered up kind of, I think, fairly recently. And then I was never one to sort of count the days. So I'm trying to think when it all started. You know, it was maybe like, yeah, I think a year or two that I had really fully a couple years. And then it did. Then I, you know, slipped in the whole process of all all of this so what is the narrative that you said to yourself

when like when you came yeah when you were like right at the tail end of using I mean just the uh the self-destructiveness of it like just your complete piece of shit what is wrong with you I mean how can you do this now after everything you've gone through, after everything you say to the world of who you are? Cause at this point I'd already written fear of honor. If you're a bond is out there, it's making a difference. Uh, it's like, this is your book. Yeah. Sorry. My book for your bond. Yeah. It was out there. Um, and it's just, you know, that how can you, how can you possibly claim to preach this message? If you cannot be, uh, if you cannot live it, if you cannot follow it? Was the shame and guilt kind of the two culprits in addiction?

And which one was larger for you? Was it shame or guilt? Or maybe neither. I had engaged guilt a lot over the years. So I think a point is that I had navigated guilt a little little bit already so i think towards in these more recent times it was more shame shame like embarrassment like and this is it sounds a lot like the imposter piece like what am i doing how could i do this like i'm a phony okay now what do you okay can we can we stay here for a minute? Yeah, of course. What did you do with that?

Because that is something that every human alive, and if anyone's listening that doesn't believe that they've ever been through this, like keep looking because you got it too now. Like we've all faced that, oh my gosh, this idea I have for myself is not matching who I really am. And that tension between those two is, I believe, at the seat of suffering. So we can put a name on it, shame or whatever, but it's this, and in some respects, it's a very healthy tension. I have this idea of who I want to be and who I can be. And then I'm not, but I'm not doing my part to be about it. Now, if that first version or vision is unhealthy and it's not realistic and it's not grounded in anything and it's a fantasy and it's based on what other people think that I should be rather than authentically owning something, then we got big time problems.

And then I also want to put a asterisk next to it, which is I fully realize what I'm saying is in the face of one of the most beautiful religions of Buddhism that no, that straining and craving and striving for something different than who you are now is the problem. And I understand, I really do embrace and understand that. But for this conversation, I want to, I want to better understand what did you do with that? How did you work through it? Yeah. I think part of it is you, first off, you have to be real with yourself and just own up like not, you know, cause after this, a lot of people, when I would start reading books about addiction and all that, a lot of things was like, don't judge yourself, forgive yourself. But I think that I think it can coexist, like beating up on yourself and loving yourself can coexist.

But I think you sometimes, you know, you need to be real with yourself. Like, look, I screwed up. I screwed up big time. This is like this is not who I am choosing to be. This is not who I say I am going to be for myself and for the world. Because at this point, and a very key point you addressed, at this point, I had gotten clear about who I wanted to be for myself, not because the world said I should be this way, right? Like I had gotten through a lot of the self-awareness journey to come through at least, okay, this is my path now. This is what I call, again, that worthy struggle. And so one is just being real, you know,

being real, looking at yourself in the mirror, talking to yourself, being real about, okay. And then after that, after you can really own up to the shame, to the love, to the forgiveness, to all of it, to the guilt that then you can then, then recognizing that you are not defined by this moment. There's, this is, I think one of the most important things, you know, is that we all define ourselves by our thoughts and our feelings and our experiences, right? Like when we feel something that becomes our part of our self identity, like I've worked with people with depression, they'll say, I have depression, or I am depressed, as opposed to like, my brain goes to a state of depression, but I am not my brain, my brain is not me.

So recognizing there is a space between what is and who I choose to be outside of what is. And that that experience of self transcendence was a realization that I hadn't fully mastered it yet. And it actually so when I broke my sobriety and all these things, it led me, through every fall, as much as I hated myself for it, at least the one thing I'm grateful for is that I had gotten to a point that I at least sought out a new awakening.

Because I believe through every struggle, there's another awakening on the other side of that struggle. So when I broke it, it led me to faith. It led me to the realization that I run away from stillness. It's still, like stillness was terrifying, right? And it led me to the practice of faith in a deeper way. Because now, like for example, I'm going back to the realization that I run away from stillness. It's still, like stillness was terrifying, right? And it led me to the practice of faith in a deeper way. Because now, like for example, I'm going back to the US, I'm going to be alone in my house. And that was a place where I broke my sobriety, was sitting in the house.

Like my ex-wife now, her experience is very present in the house, right? She designed it and all. So it sent me in a dark way. But I realized that the house is just four walls and I had created a relationship to it. And you have to create that space between what is and who, and who you choose to be outside of it. So I can feel fear that, okay, I'm about to go back and I'm going to be sitting in my house alone. I could go on a three day binge and nobody in my life would ever know what's, what's going to stop me from doing that.

Right. And so there's fear because I have a past trigger and it's, and so I can think the fear of that past trigger can coexist with, you know what? I also have the faith that when that moment strikes it, if it does strike, I'm at a different place than I was when I broke my sobriety last time. And I just have faith that that will guide me. And I don't know what had happened, right? Like maybe just the world, just I get into a thing and maybe I do fall. I don't know. I can't say with a hundred percent certainty, but I have faith that who I am today will guide me in that moment, if that makes sense. So it's like a combination of fear and faith and self-trans... I call this whole concept the paradox of singular duality.

And I believe this is the essence of true spirituality. The duality of life, there are all these dualities, life, death, war, peace, struggle and play, stillness and chaos, suffering and bliss, anxiety, serenity, demons and divinity, a whole series of dualities in life. And we always run away or demonize one side of the duality. Like even if you look at ego and humility, we often say ego is bad. Ego is the enemy, but everything in life,

there are no bad or good emotions, bad or good experiences, the oneness of it all. And when you can truly embrace the oneness of it all saying that fear can coexist with faith, you know, saying that pain can coexist with beauty and you can truly find the oneness in all of it, you transcend yourself. And that self transcendence is everything. And I feel like I'm at that point now where I've tapped into something so much greater as a result of the external and the internal evolution that I've been pursuing since the last time I fell that I'm confident and I have faith. You know, early when you're speaking, I was thinking, okay, is he repurposing, you know, uh, Dr. Bob and Bill W's 12 steps, you know, of, uh, Alcoholics Anonymous. And I said, no, that's not it. And then as I was listening, I was like, oh, well,

there's a little bit in there, you know, like, okay, I got to admit that I'm powerless over this alcohol thing. Like it's got me right. And when I'm, when I'm in it, I'm a mess. Like I heard you, that's step one, you know, re re paraphrased and then, okay, well, I gotta, I gotta figure out this faith thing. Step two. I was like, oh, okay, well, there he goes. And then, but then I heard a lot of Hinduism, right. That the, the beauty and the duality and the struggle and the war within. And I thought, okay, well, there's the Indian peace Hindu. Can you talk about that a little bit? Sure. Yeah. So one thing I also want to say is that I never liked anything of defining yourself as an alcoholic. So I feel like I really want to state that point because I don't think that's a

healthy way to say I'm an alcoholic. Once again, that's not my self-identity. I am not that person because I also don't believe there's a self to find. I believe there's only a self to create and it's on us to create that self every single day. Wait, wait, wait. Yeah. So I, and I agree. That's why I was, well, I'm not saying I agree. I, I hear that in you and then, okay. But then, then you threw, like you speak really quickly and I know you're not, not love seriously but i want to and i'm slowing down this is like the slowest podcast like speaking i've ever had and it's i really want to understand this with you at like a deeper clip so what was the last thing that you just said about defining and creating yeah that i don't think there's like there's often saying this who am i like what is

the self like we find ourselves right but i don't think there's an inherent self to find. We're not born with some inherent version of who we are that's placed in the world, right? We create ourselves and we always get to create ourselves. Like that's a moment to moment decision. Do we co-create or do we create? Co-create meaning with like the world around us, with people, with. Well, I'm just purposely going to leave it open okay um i guess it's a bit of both to be honest with you then because if we look at it from the context of what i was saying earlier with the dualities like i believe we cannot exist within a self-contained system right like i am not just me like i'm connected to the world that's

again that's duality like there's a connection between you and me michael now like we're having like you know there was a connection with with and me, Michael. Now we're having like, you know, there was a connection with, with, with earth, with planet earth. Like when I've gone on runs in nature, you feel a visceral connection with earth. If I'm listening to a song, that composer of that song in the moment, like I've had listened to sometimes music and it will send me in tears. Right. And the song, that composer, everybody involved with that song are now connected to me in a deep spiritual way. And so we can not exist self-contained. Like my, the life I believe has to be about something greater than ourselves. And I am not here to just do my own thing. Like my life, the meaning of it is, is in self-transcendence and something greater. So yeah,

I think it's a co-creation with, with the, with the within and without like externally and internally, we co-create ourselves and we co-create the world that we want to live in. Yeah. Okay. So the reason I'm asking is because that's a very different thought than I create, you know, co-creating and creating are very different. And then the other piece is that like a very traditional view in many religions is that your script has been written, you know, your tablet has already been prescribed. And so you're not suggesting that as a psychological or a spiritual framework or psychological framework, you're suggesting great, um, agency that you have agency to determine your

way. You can blow it, you can do wonders, you know, and, and, and I hear the subtlety in the co-creation piece. Now, let's say that you're listening to music. Are you, and that, that creator of the music or co-creator of the music, are you connected to him or her? Or is, is the music connected to you? It's all of it, right? Like it's all of it that's connected, the music, the creator of the music, the, the instrument. I mean, on all this, honestly, only recently have I, because you can hear it and just hear it, right? But it's one thing to hear it and consciously feel the deeper connection to it, you know? Uh, and, and that's on you to, to, to like to dig there, to delve into that space of I'm, I'm so connected to all that is

right now to everything that is. I mean, only recently I actually thought about even how the movie, so the movie Black Hawk Down was, it was a transcendent moment in my life that actually got me out of drugs. And it was the trigger that led me to join in the Marines. And recently I was thinking like the guys who serve the actual true story of those, you know, Gary Gordon and Randy Sugar, the Medal of Honor recipients, Ridley Scott, the maker of the movie, all the actors in the movie, everybody in associated with the movie, all of us, like everything was connected to lead me to a new space in my own life that got me out of drugs and had me join the Marines. And so only in my recent experiences of this duality of faith that I did that I was more conscious about. Again, I didn't think about this at the time,

but it was like, like the dots are aligning and there's this transcendent connection beyond the self. And it's like, we have to look without in order to seek what can happen within. And we have to go there consciously. It doesn't just happen automatically. Like everything. I think faith, uh, duality, uh, you know, mastery is a practice. It doesn't just happen. It's on you to engage it with will and a relentless will that does not stop. Okay. How do you practice? Practice like duality of the faith or all of it.

Yeah. The awareness, you know, the working to be tapped in and connected. Yeah. I think it's a, well, I actually have a note on my phone that reminds me and I, and now it's become more just habitual. What I said, like, no, the says, relentlessly think in the meta. So meta is rising above the thing to look at the thing. So like meta learning would be learning how to learn.

Meta awareness would be awareness of awareness. So constantly, and you have to, and like I'm getting better at this, I'm not perfect, but choosing when you want to be so immersed in the moment that you are lost in the now versus choosing when I want to go meta to actually rise above the experience to look at the experience. And I'm getting better at doing it at will to say, okay, at this moment now, I don't want to rise above the experience. I want to be fully lost in the, in the immersion of the experience. And then like anything, once you do it enough, it becomes implicit. It becomes habitual. Um, but you have to first like any habit, I mean, you consciously engage the will in order to turn it into a habit, right to, to, to, so you consciously engage to then make it automated. And it requires, I mean, just a relentless practice of self awareness to constantly go meta about above what's happening. I mean, most of us living on autopilot,

right? Like we live our lives completely on autopilot, just going about our day. I mean, because we're not like we're talking about, I think you touched on this idea of like free will and agency. I mean, there's kind of this myth of free will because we're very, we're all at the effect of our brain patterns that have been shaped by, you know, genetics, by everything that's brought us into who we are today. And only by recognizing that we are in this machine-like state can we then cease to be a machine and actually create that agency.

So there's a sort of acceptance that, okay, my brain is going to go into certain patterns. I'm not going to let myself be defined by those patterns. And I can rise above it to then choose who I want to be outside of it and create agency. This is how I was able to reframe my PTSD, my guilt, my survivor's guilt that I felt about the war, because I still have that. But today it works for me. It's just by engaging it, rising above it, and being conscious about it. So today, for example, I have a picture of my friend that I lost in the war up on my wall, and it says, this should have been you. Earn this life. And my guilt is one of the most beautiful things that drive me. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down.

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Where have you come to understand what you're talking about? Because you speak with eloquence on it. And, okay, yeah, you've done a lot of discernment. You've looked within, you've made some sense, but these are bigger concepts than just your life. So you're able to go to a place where you're conceptualizing not only the, let's call it the meta, but as well as the details. So where you know, where have you learned this? Part of it, just a lot of research. I mean, when I was like healing myself, like when I had, again, when I was diagnosed with PTSD, I had gone to the therapist and I did not like the way the

therapy was operating. It often sent me straight to the liquor store. And again, I can take agency for that, but I felt like something wasn't working. So when I hit that low moment where I was on the verge of suicide, I started reading books about neuroscience, psychology and spirituality to understand, like to kind of feel myself. And I must have read hundreds. I mean, that kind of led to the research in Fear Bon as well. So it was a combination of this cognitive understanding with then putting it into practice and tying in, you know, learnings with like sort of knowledge and wisdom, right? I think knowledge is studying something else. The wisdom

is experiencing it firsthand and tying those both in led to some of these, uh, um, realizations that have now brought me to where I'm at today. But it was an, it would build. Yeah. Where do you get in your own way? Um, beautiful question. I think, I think recently as i've come to figure out is that and although like it's i think i get in my own way in that only recently has been more about the like practicing joy more and practicing like uh play more and it doesn't even mean like i have to do playful activities and catch the mindset of joy and play to what I do. Because I felt like for a minute there, I was perhaps going too far into it. And it would lead to burnout. And I also feel like sometimes burnout is what maybe have also drove me to some of those moments of breaking my sobriety. And

it wasn't because I felt like I was working too hard. It was the mindset I attached to that, you know, I mean, so, so that's one recent evolution that I'm working on consciously now. I mean, literally in my morning and evening log, I just write in myself that practice enjoying everything you do today. So bringing more joy to the experience of life. And this does not mean that I sort of running away from the darkness, because if anything, I've only recently realized that I want to triple down on my practice of the darkness and experiencing greater, like going deeper into the demons. But it also means like attaching more love to those demons, attaching more joy to those demons, attaching more play to those demons. And that's been my recent gap that I'm now working on. So I'm always like actually every quarter I try to look for what's the next awakening to find.

So this quarter, again, I'm going into that darkness retreat in a week. So like exploring the practice of stillness to see where it takes me. I have no idea. Another one is actually surrender. So it also ties into surrender and faith. So I would say like surrender and joy, because I'm a big control freak. Like my world is in my hands, right? I will seize it. But I think there's value in surrender and it's a weak muscle of mine. So surrender and joy, I would probably say are the two biggest gaps where I'm working on right now. Okay. So if we tie some of this together, it, it started off with a sense of not knowing who you are. There's some isolation so that you, your archetype was to go big to get attention. And that led you into kind of big moves, if you will, alcohol, drugs, attention seeking stuff, eventually led you

into going really big into the military and the Marine Corps. You stayed big, if you will, in the addiction phase through there, you went big with a mental health struggle, PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder. And part of that was around, it sounds like guilt and shame. And then you went big again, right? Which is, okay, let me go big in the really figuring out how to find, co-create who I am and be that person on a regular basis. So I need to understand how the mind works, my mind works, people's minds work, how the world works, how the brain works, how there's patterns that I need to override, you know, survival patterns that I've created and things that have over influenced me early days. And then what I found is that I'm speaking like I'm you, that there's the duality is the most interesting part of life. And so the dark and the light. And so I want to understand both extremes. And part of doing that is to go into extreme conditions. And those extreme conditions

are either running in a monotonous loop or, you know, taking my places, uh, taking myself into ice caps and or into complete darkness and isolation. And what you're finding is so i guess yeah what i'm finding is that um that yeah the deeper you go into every place of of these dualities if you look at a series of dualities in life right like every like started listing out a few and i believe maybe that perhaps the two at their most extreme i would, are the demons in your divinity. Like, again, how would you want to word that? And then life and death. So exploring, let's say those are the two maybe meta-dualities, exploring that in the most intense way possible is the essential and elemental part to human evolution.

So I think a lot of us don't want to go into pain because obviously it hurts, but you're missing out. And I was having a conversation with a friend recently about this. Do we, do we need to experience greater pain to experience greater joy? And he felt like it was not the case. And I fundamentally disagree because I think that you have to experience greater amounts of pain in order to experience greater amounts of joy. Well, there's this, but there's a, there's a, like a, okay. So I'm often, you know, found saying that through pain is why we change. Yeah.

There's a difference though, between pain and suffering and, you know, pain can be very concrete and it can also, but what we're really talking about is like suffering. And so embracing suffering, which you've said a lot, you know, like really sitting with suffering is one of the greatest accelerants for insight and wisdom and compassion and love. And so it is through that process of really diving into those frames and those conditions that we understand more deeply, it's hard. And it's hard because what we reveal to ourselves is not pretty and it ain't, you know, it's, it's not all put together. And so it sounds like you're doing that deep work and you're super intense though, right? Like, and that's why I hear you saying on the other side, like, okay, uh, I want to return to some innocence, some joyfulness. When was the last time that you felt

peace? Recently it's been, um, in this practice of again, doing these, like in the more conscious awareness of these dualities, I think that you need war to experience greater peace as well. And I understand that, you know, this might sound, I don't know, out there or what, but like we internal, like I see, here's what I think. I think inner peace is not the absence of conflict or chaos. It's the acceptance of them because there's always going to be chaos and conflict within whether you seek it out or not. We all know this, our mind, like monkey mind goes on these places, right? And, um, and, but if you seek it out, like, I mean, just, just a Friday, a few days ago, I was on this gorgeous run. We're just midway through my run. I just stopped sitting on this rock. Like I climbed this little hill, just sat on this rock. And I

looked out, the sun was setting. It was on this kind of hilly landscape around here, uh, beautiful hills all around me. And I just felt this moment of just pure peace and connection with the earth, with myself, with the world around me. And so I experienced these kind of moments of peace on a regular basis. But I think the peace, I think if we don't, if we don't seek out a new inner war, we lose out on a greater experience of inner peace as well. And so they coexist. So that's very Hindu thought again, right? That silver war, that necessary internal war is a requirement for freedom. And so again, like where – but you say that you're not a practicing Hindu, but you've got really strong influential thoughts around it.

Can you tell me about where, like, do you agree with that? Or are you saying, no, no, no, I'm not articulating myself correctly here. No, I mean, I do. I actually have not read too much of the Hindu philosophies. I'm aware of some of them being, again, an Indian. And my mom has read a lot of that. We read, I think, the Mahabharata and Ramayana when we were kids. So I'm somewhat aware of them, but I think just, again, like, I think life experience has

taught me this, that, you know, we're all looking for, I think we have like a misunderstanding of what the true nature of happiness and inner peace is. Like, if we look at why, let's say, if we dig deep, why do we do anything in life, right? Ultimately, let's say, to be happy or to find that inner peace. But it's the same thing. I think it's not that you find happiness by pursuing it. You find happiness as a side effect of pursuing what I call your worthy struggle. Like it's kind of like I just did, you know, I do talk sometimes on like this, what I call the paradox of happiness.

That the paradox of happiness is by seeking it, you actually lead to greater struggle. And by seeking a worthy struggle, you actually lead to happiness as a side effect. And it's the same thing with inner peace, that it's in the pursuit of a greater war. And I don't mean external war, right? I mean the internal war within that you find. That's partly why even external war is so addictive, because there's a kind of peace that I found in Iraq, which was very hard to come back. Not just me, right? Many veterans struggle with coming back.

It's because there's a kind of simplicity and peace to the existence out there. War is a very addictive force, and many people who have been to it will testify to that. And so one of the ways I sort of solved my demons of the external war was by seeking an internal war. And I believe that we must have that, whether it's having experienced external war or not. Because I think part of it is it's going to be there anyway.

We're going to go through the internal conflict, so why not just have it be conscious? Why not engage it and tap into it and find your own worthy struggle? It doesn't have to be running for 21 hours. It doesn't have to be writing a book. It can be whatever your own worthy struggle is, but pursue it with obsession, with commitment that when you, and I think when you do that too, you actually make your demons work for you. They don't just become this thing that you're fighting or running against. They become a part of you on the journey. And I'll give you like a tangible example of this so it's not just abstract. Like recently I was running.

I did a 167-mile run across Liberia to help raise funds for a school and to do – and after that we did a lot of humanitarian work out there. So it's about just under a marathon a day for a week. And I think it was day three or day four. This horrific pain kind of hit my right shin. And, I mean, it just took me out of my tracks, right? Like I just stopped running, tried to put some cream on it, tried to massage it a little bit.

It wasn't going away. So I started limping and hobbling for a little bit and just battling not just the physical pain, but the psychological pain that I still had a whole lot of miles to go and a whole lot of days to go. You know, this is going to be brutal. And then, you know, about a mile and a half of limping my way through this, I just started jogging slowly. And within like minutes of jogging, I started sprinting. And while I'm sprinting, I'm saying things to myself like, you should have died in the war. I lost my close friend of mine named Corporal Jacob Neal. And I said, remember, Neal,

that should have been you that died. What the fuck do you have a right to complain about anything? Suck it up. Earn this life. People are suffering and dying right now everywhere across the world. You don't have a right to complain. You don't have a right to be weak. If you quit now, you deserve a cowardly death. And going into these spaces of my pain, of my darkness, of my demons, and they were guiding me in a way that was transcendent over the self. It's like we became one. And that five miles that I did to finish the 25 miles for that day was the fastest five miles I ran the entire trip. It's like we became one. And that five miles that I did to finish the 25 miles for that day was the fastest five miles I ran the entire trip. It's like I became one with my demons and they were part of me. And that's what happens when you truly engage them, that they're no longer an enemy or something to run away from. They actually all coexist with you as one.

And there's something beautiful in that. Yeah, that's really cool. And then when you think about structuring your life, I've heard a couple hints that you've dropped about how you organize your life. You've got some things where every quarter you look for a new struggle to amplify that challenge. Yeah, the awakening, the challenge that you're looking for. And then so that sounds like a practice. It also sounds like you've got a practice of every morning that you you're doing some sort of reflection. Can you go into some deeper nuances of that reflection? I follow. I mean, I work on systematizing everything in my life. So I have checklists and systems for every, I have a system for how I shower. Uh, you know, I get, I get pretty neurotic about it. And so like I have this morning ritual where I kind of, well, I'll meditate, do pushups. It's just a list that I follow. So I actually don't even know it consciously. I can pull up my list and read it, but I have a morning ritual and I track what are my top three to five actions for the day. And then I work in 50 minute chunks followed by 10 minute breaks. And I work through things for the day and I have my training week mapped out. So by before I get to the day, the week is already mapped out about what I want to accomplish in my business and in

my training. And then I often have maybe like a spiritual element or some other thing that I'm working on a learning element, depending on like what phase of my life I'm in. So even my quarter. So I map out goals based on quarters. And then I have my quarters broken down by months into weeks into days. And I also have like what I want to achieve by the time I die. So I like to stay present to my own mortality. So I'm thinking about death on a regular basis as well. And then break down from death to like yearly targets to quarterly targets to monthly to weekly to daily. And everything is mapped out. So the idea is you don't waste cognitive energy and you just – you don't think. You just follow the plan.

And you only – you save cognitive as well as physical energy for when you need it because the things I do are very intense. Like building my business and the long runs and my training. It's – I'm training pretty intense on a weekly basis. So I need – so I conserve my energy for when I need it in order to – so everything else I just don't think about. I just follow a system. How is this written? How is it visualized? Is it in a document?

Is it on paper? My systems are mapped out on an app. The app I use is called Todoist where I have morning ritual, night ritual, training ritual, shower systems, eating rituals like this, that, and the other thing. And then my, as far as my like journal for the top three, five things. And then I journal at the end of every day as well. Like what I accomplished for the day, any, any key learnings, any key takeaways, any lessons from the training, from the work, uh, that's all old school, just notebook. So those are kind of my two tools. My phone is kind of my, where I have my app for is my, uh, well, my systems are mapped out and then I use my journal to track everything else.

Who's been influential dead or alive in your life? Who have been those mentors? If you had a heat map of like five mentors, who would they be? Yeah. Um, uh, Jack Canfield, the chicken soup of the soul author was really helpful for me in navigating my PTSD days, uh, and coming out of that. Soul author, was really helpful for me in navigating my PTSD days and coming out of that. So he's been really helpful for me in terms of fitness. I know you've interviewed him. I love David Goggins. David Goggins is awesome. Really resonate with him

and his ethos. And I'm sure you can see there's a lot of similarities between the way he thinks and the way I do. So I kind of have fitness mentors and then business mentors. Those are my life. And I'm trying to think who else. I mean, just the hundreds of books I read in from various contexts. Dr. Rick Hansen wrote this beautiful book with his brain. Um, so I guess many different, um, people in, in, in different contexts. I think, I guess I go to what I need when I need it. And maybe that's why I'm a hard time.

I think like the top five would be like, so currently, maybe if I'm on a business path, I'd be at, I'd focus on the one mentor on what I need for the current evolution because I also like focus on learning from the principle of behavior change. So what do I currently need? What's the next awakening I'm seeking? And then I'll look to a mentor for that particular awakening. And then maybe I'll go to a different one for the next awakening or for the next evolution, if that makes sense. What do you think you're going to find with extreme darkness? I think by going into, because originally, I mean, the idea to go into this darkness retreat was after, again, with the things that happened to my wife and breaking my sobriety, I realized how much I still run from stillness. So I was actually going to do a silent retreat, those kind of Vipassana things. But I stumbled into the concept of a darkness retreat. And I was like, yeah, forget about silence. Let's just go into darkness, silence and isolation because that's why not. And, uh, with this experience, to be honest with you, I'm not often I'm going into experience with like, okay, this

is what I'm seeking out of it with this experience. I just want to purely surrender to surrender to it and, uh, and see what shows up as opposed to, uh, try to look for what might show up. And, uh, and because again, surrender is a weak muscle of mine. And so I think it's a muscle worth exploring. It's one of those dualities, right? Like if we look at control and surrender as to, as a duality, I believe every duality, when we play with the, if we look at the extremes of every duality and we find where we are on our path, like, like, for example, the duality of suffering and play, I might add play to my life a little bit, but I will always be somebody who leans more towards the suffering side of that particular duality. That's just clearly you can tell.

And that's okay. That works for me, right? So I think, I mean, to make this duality concept actionable, I was sharing this with a friend. It's like find a duality that you, and I'm happy to share. I have an ever-evolving list of my dualities that I constantly explore in life. And so find one that causes you a lot of friction and explore the other end of it and see where it takes you. So if you know you really struggle. So again, for me, surrender and control was the big one. That's why I'm going into

an experience of pure surrender and stillness, like one of the more intense ways you could do it. Right. And just yeah, just to see what shows up. So I have no idea what will come, but I'm very excited to find out and nervous. As you should be. So I know a bit of the science I've studied. I've been fascinated by it. It's heavy. I've done plenty of silent retreats, noble silence as they're called. But the extreme darkness, like it changes our brain.

And so enjoy. Let's circle back afterwards. know yeah i should share what comes from that yeah i'd like to do that with you okay actually thank you for um going into places to help me understand like how you navigated through it and then i've got just a couple you, kind of bigger questions that I want to understand with you. Are you more interested in mastery of self or mastery of craft? I think it's a bit of both. I think they have to coexist. Mastery of my inner self leads to the mastery of my craft. And the same way, if I pursue the mastery of my craft, it helps me evolve the inner self.

So I want to use like what my work to, to make a greater, like made it make a greater difference in the world. I believe that's why I'm here. Like when I say earn this life that has to be earned. Um, and actually interesting story. Sorry, I just came up. So I want to share it. Like it was kind of an interesting thing that happened 10 years after the war. I actually found out from my Marine buddy that our vehicle drove over an active IED in Iraq. And for whatever reason, it didn't happen to explode. I found out from my staff sergeant and another sergeant. And I was like, wow, what does that mean kind of thing, you know? And so I believe that maybe in many ways, I shouldn't be here, lost a lot of friends

to addiction, to war, to suicide. And if I am here, it has to be about doing something meaningful and earning this life. So that craft, it cannot be about just me of mastery of self. It has to be a mastery of craft so I can bring this craft to the others who are, because I mean, we all know that human beings are suffering all over the world and we have to do something about it. I believe you can't stay apathetic when you at least experience that, not just within, but I've seen it without as well. Like in war, I've been to leper colonies. Tomorrow, I'm going to one of the poorest places in India, these like waste picking colonies, because again, to experience the intensity and the suffering of humanity on a very visceral level. And you cannot stay apathetic when you see that. So yeah, that's my sorry, long winded answer to that question. Okay, yeah, intense. Where does pressure come

from for you? I think pressure comes from within, right? I mean, external forces cannot shape who you choose to be. What happens is between that space at the external stimulus and your conscious response to it is what is defines everything. What we do in that space is our life. So ultimately pressure comes from within and how I respond and to the, uh, to the, not just the external reality, to my own emotional forces that are beyond my control, right? Like I said, we don't control what first shows up in our brain. So how I respond to my emotions as well as to external reality creates pressure. It all comes down to? It all comes down to, I would say the relentless pursuit of mastery. I think that's happiness and that's life and that's evolution. And how, okay, so cool.

How do you define mastery? I think mastery is twofold. There's an element of, um, like there's a process element to mastery and there's a result element to mastery. So result is that you achieve, you, you get to a certain point at whatever your art is, whatever your craft that you pursue, you know, basketball, chess, writing movies, whatever it may be, um, that you get to a point where you're so, you're so comfortable with that, that you don't have to think about it becomes implicit. And in fact, whatever it may be, that you get to a point where you're so comfortable with that, that you don't have to think about it. It becomes implicit. And in fact, thinking becomes a crutch. And I'm sure you know more about this than I do, but I read this book, Choke, in my research, and where you don't have to think about it, it becomes implicit, your actions in pursuing that craft. And so that's sort of a result-based assessment of mastery. And the process element

is that you are constantly striving to evolve to the next level of whatever your craft is. Because I think sometimes we make a mistake that we get to a certain level and we decide, oh, we're done. And you see this all the time, right? People will come out of the military, maybe be the best in the military, and they just lose it outside of that, right? And they put on weight. They don't strive to the next level. So I think it requires both. You get to mastery and a result in whatever your craft is, and it's also a process element of that constant pursuit.

Okay, before we wrap, can you walk me through where people can find your book, Firvana, and all the social handles that are best for you? Sure. So firvana.com, you can find me out there. The book is available on Amazon. You can find it at Fearvana. 100% of the profits are also going to worthy causes that we're supporting through the Fearvana Foundation. So you can find the book there. And I'm usually on Instagram at Fearvana or YouTube at Fearvana as well, any of those places. Okay. And is there one thing that you would hope people would walk away and think or do differently? Fundamentally, I believe the most important skill you need to live a happier and more successful life, whatever success means to you, is to develop a positive relationship to suffering, to struggle, to pain, because you're going to experience it whether you like it or not. And if you can smile in the face of that suffering, you live a better life. So if there's one takeaway is to develop that, and I believe that's the

greatest problem that stands in the way of our well- wellbeing, you know, is the negative relationship to suffering. I mean, we live in a world that demonizes fear, stress, anxiety, pain, adversity. Any of these words are not perceived as positive. So if we can shift that relationship, we can live a better life. And that's ultimately what my goal is with Fear of Anna and with everything I'm doing with that

is to help people develop a positive relationship to suffering so they can find, live, and love their worthy struggle and ultimately live a more blissful life. So I hope people take that away and ultimately learn to embrace and even seek out pain. Akshay, thank you for sharing and taking us to a place that is authentic and real and the courage you have to be honest and the commitment you have to share and to learn from yourself and from, you know, scores of others. So I just want to say thank you for your time. I'm wishing you flat out the best.

And I really would like to reconnect after your five-day, you know, complete blackout retreat. I'd love to kind of, you know, follow on with that as well. Sure, I would love to. And thank you so much for having me on the show. Real honor. I really admire you and your work. So it's been an honor and a pleasure to speak with you, my friend. Yeah, well done.

Okay, all the best to you. Thank you. Thank you, Michael. Okay. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe

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