Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Ariana Kukors: Swim

Episode Date: October 14, 2015

In this conversation we learn from Ariana Kukors, who is a USA Olympic Swimmer, current American Record holder and former World Record holder in the 200-meter individual medley (long course). A 2-Time World Champion, Kukors has won a total of seven medals in major international competition- two golds, three silvers, and two bronze spanning a 10-year national team career. After barely missing the 2008 Olympic Team, she set out to explore a deep understanding of her mind and craft. The result was a 2009 World Title and a berth on the 2012 Olympic Team. If you're wanting to better understand the nuances of a psychological framework that supports growth in the face of failure, you'll enjoy where this conversation goes. Show Notes: 5:16: Having everything you could want in a childhood and being active 9:42: How her upbringing made her an olympian “I was a competitive kid and I didn’t win a lot when I was little” 10:57 16:04: Impact of having a serious competitor when growing up “Eventually [Katie and I] ended up training together, which was one of the greatest gifts and some of my fondest memories from my swimming career…day in and day out it was like an olympic final” 16:46 24:03: Person that shaped her life toward mastery 29:10: The dark side to sport and mastery 33:13: Starting out at the olympic trials “I was in first and I wasn’t necessarily looking around to see where everybody was, but I knew at that point I had to something to lose and they were gunning for me” 38:05 42:13: Dealing with the pain of blowing the last lap at the olympic trials “I was really competitive, but I also didn’t see myself...really standing on the blocks with just a ton of passion…” 46:11 49:53: How her dad supported her during the loss at olympic trials 1:00:02: Showing up at the world championships with a quiet confidence “I was excited for the first time to lay everything out on the line and not have an ounce left” 1:00:26 1:06:10: The moment that defined her gold medal-winning race at the world championships 1:08:33: Valuable habits that got her to where she was 1:12:55: How to deal with her inner critic 1:21:13: Her most important mental skill “When it came down to making the olympic team, it was calm that saved me 1:23:20 1:28:08: Defining success 1:29:08: Defining mastery_________________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.

Finding Mastery is brought to you by Remarkable. In a world that's full of distractions, focused thinking is becoming a rare skill and a massive competitive advantage. That's why I've been using the Remarkable Paper Pro, a digital notebook designed to help you think clearly and work deliberately. It's not another device filled with notifications or apps.

It's intentionally built for deep work. So there's no social media, no email, no noise. The writing experience, it feels just like pen on paper. I love it. And it has the intelligence of digital tools like converting your handwriting to text, organizing your notes, tagging files, and using productivity templates

to help you be more effective. It is sleek, minimal. It's incredibly lightweight. It feels really good. I take it with me anywhere from meetings to travel without missing a beat. What I love most is that it doesn't try to do everything. It just helps me do one very important thing really well,

stay present and engaged with my thinking and writing. If you wanna slow down, if you wanna work smarter, I highly encourage you to check them out. Visit remarkable.com to learn more and grab your paper pro today. All right. Welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. And my name is Michael Gervais. And in this conversation, we're going to sit down with Ariana Kukors. And these conversations are meant to spend time with people who have touched mastery or are hungry to understand it and to really unpack and understand their learning, their process, their journey, and the mindset skills that have led them on this path and that

they've cultivated and worked through. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true. Meaningful relationships are at the center of sustained success. And building those relationships, it takes more than effort. It takes a real caring about your people. It takes the right tools, the right information at the right time. And that's where LinkedIn Sales Navigator can come in. It's a tool designed specifically for thoughtful sales professionals,

helping you find the right people that are ready to engage, track key account changes, and connect with key decision makers more effectively. It surfaces real-time signals, like when someone changes jobs or when an account becomes high priority, so that you can reach out at exactly the right moment with context and thoroughness that builds trust. It also helps tap into your own network more strategically, showing you who you already know that can help you open doors or make a warm introduction. In other words, it's not about more outreach.

It's about smarter, more human outreach. And that's something here at Finding Mastery that our team lives and breathes by. If you're ready to start building stronger relationships that actually convert, try LinkedIn Sales Navigator for free for 60 days at linkedin.com slash deal. That's linkedin.com slash deal. For two full months for free, terms and conditions apply. Finding Mastery is brought to you by David Protein. I'm pretty intentional about what I eat and the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods. And when I'm traveling or in between meals on a demanding day, certainly I need something quick that will support

the way that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David Protein bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put him 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 davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. So let's jump into this conversation, but first just a little background. So Ariana grew up swimming with her older and younger sister. So she got two sisters that were doing the same thing. And interestingly enough, all three of them swim at a really high level. So this is going to beg the conversation about nature and nurture. And I think what she would describe is that she obviously had a genetic predisposition, but at the same time, the culture that she grew up in and the family unit and the culture that her coaches created were phenomenal. So there's

really some deep insight from parents as well as people that are in the business world on developing a culture that allows people and challenges people to be their best. Okay, so in a nutshell, she became the fastest person in her sport in the world. And that happened when she broke the world record. And then she eventually went on to become an Olympian in 2012. So she's been through some real challenges in swimming, and most notably, missing the Olympic team in 2008 just by a fingernail. And she missed it by eight one hundredths of a second.

She talks about this and we really break, break down like what was her experience and what led her to be able to shift and grow from an incredibly painful experience for her. All right. So there's so many insights throughout this conversation and one that i love is the importance of being there for people when they're a mess and it's something that touches me deeply in my own life and and can we be there for people when they are celebrating themselves at their best can we be there when

they're absolutely disaster by not trying to take away or minimize their emotional experiences, but, but rather being consistently authentic and present with other people. And, you know, I say that and I, I, I want to do that deeper in my life and I, and I hope that we can learn from Ariana and the gift that her family has given her and how she decodes this for us. All right. So yeah, let's jump into it. And, you know, she talks about the family structure and her parents, what they created. And so I just hope you can listen deeply and pull some of these nuggets. And at the end of it, this conversation, I'll spend a little bit of time decoding how it is that you might be able to train some of the skills that

she mentions, the mental skills that she mentions in this conversation. Okay, let's jump right into it with Ariana. All right. So Ariana, let's jump into your story and how you landed into this conversation. And first, let me just start by saying I'm looking forward to this. Me too. I really am. I'm excited to be here and honored to be included in this group. It's been quite the journey. And I was actually today, I was being a little bit of a nerd and I went back and watched a couple of my races to kind of get me into the athlete mindset of, you know, there's so many things that I carried with me and I have carried with me through my life. Um, but there, you know, those moments are so raw and real in a lot of ways. And, um, I'm pretty grateful to be here. Yeah. So you went back to just to key up for this conversation. Well, you lived it for how many years? Probably about 15, 10 on a big stage.

But yeah, it started. I feel really grateful because my career started in the most organic way that I could possibly imagine. I grew up in a suburb outside of Seattle. Two parents who were athletic, but neither one of them were swimmers. I have two sisters who I'm really close with. I'm the middle. And we had a family boat. And my parents really just wanted us to be water safe. And that's how we got started with swimming. And somewhere along the way, my older sister joined a swim team and we all kind of got shuffled into that. But at the time we were doing a million activities. We tried every sport you could imagine. You know, we were doing theater and church choir and plays and piano and gymnastics and all of these things. And so we were really busy kids. So what are the ages of your

sisters? And you have two? Yes. So I have two sisters. My older sister is four years older than me, Emily, and my younger sister is two years younger, Maddie. Okay. And so you guys are really active. You're doing a lot. Were your parents active as well? Or did they have an idea that activity is important for kids and not necessarily themselves? Or was there alignment? Yeah, yeah, there was total alignment. And we lived in a great neighborhood. I think back on my childhood is just, you know, everything that you could possibly imagine in childhood. We lived in a great neighborhood. We had a ton of friends close by. We were always outside and riding our bikes and being able to use our imaginations and make up games and make new friends. And we were constantly in this

environment and being able to do it together. And it was super active. My dad is six feet, five inches, and he played your typical basketball, football, baseball type sports. And I remember we used to play like wiffle ball in the front yard. And whenever my dad would come up to bat, we'd all like, go back, you know, like go back pizza. And, and so it was definitely, um, you know, being active was a part of our lifestyle. We went on, you know, family hikes and family bike rides. Um, we had a summer league swim membership. And so we'd spend our summers in the pool playing tennis. And so it was definitely, it was just a theme in our lives. It wasn't necessarily anything that we were forced to do. What was the theme?

Movement and fitness or outdoor activities? Yeah, movement, fitness, but also just imagination. And at the center of it was constantly playful. I just remember we had a basketball court at our house and we would shoot hoops until the school bus came every single morning, you know, up until I was in high school. And it was just kind of like a constant engagement of being active, using our imaginations and doing things together as a family. Um, we did family dinner every single night, which I'm really grateful for because we, especially as life went on,

had the craziest schedules and we were all moving a million miles a minute and with school and swimming and everything else that we were involved in. I'm really grateful that at the end of the day, we kind of centered in as a family and got on the same page. And so you've mentioned, okay, so when I think of swimming, I do not think of imagination, staring at a black line often early in the morning and being told by formal instruction, the most efficient way to move, which for me is almost the antithesis of creativity until, let me put an asterisk, until you become so good at it that you're creating the most ideal movement for you. And you're maximizing the very small

nuances in between strokes in between breathing in between rotations of your hips and and you know the turns on the wall that like all of that is required out of but it's so you have to get so good at it you do in at least that's how i think of swimming yeah yeah and so you talked about imagination often how did that come into play? Did it? Yeah, it did. And the funny thing with the black line, and I joke about this all the time is, you know, I spent, I spent my life looking at a black line and eventually it starts to talk back to you if you stare at it long enough, but it really holds just your, wait, you say that like a joke, but do you, it really does It really does. So is that your inner dialogue?

Is that self-talk? Is that? Yeah. Like it's you talking to you. It is. Is that what, I'm just, I don't know what you know about this. Yeah. No, I really do think it is that internal dialogue.

And I just remember later on in my career, I really came to understand kicking underwater. And we can talk about this either now or later, but it was one of the, it's one of those techniques in swimming where at first I was so resistant to it because it's scary to be underwater. And, and it really made me anxious to be alone with my thoughts because it's so quiet under there. And so when, you know, we think about swimming and you think about, you know, lifting your head, you know, and there's a stadium full of fans and you hear just noise and then you go back under and it's quiet and then you lift up and it's noise. And, and when you're underwater, there's just this magic sense of peace. And what I heard you say just a moment ago is that it was scary.

Yeah. And then, but now you're calling it peace. Like, was there, there's a transition from that for you? Totally. Yeah. So at one time it was scary you didn't like it and then you found peace yeah and and okay so i've got to ask yeah how how yeah yeah so um wait you know what let's put a pin in that yeah i know i think it'll come back later yeah and the reason why is because i want to set up in my own head uh your path first that that led you to being the fastest in the world in your sport, in the 200 I am. But then also the way you understand the world, which we're calling the framework, your psychological framework, before we get to kind of the lessons and mindset skills that you've been using. So, okay, What was it about your upbringing that led you to being

an Olympian and one of the fastest or the fastest in the world at one time? Yeah. So I, from really early on, I had great coaches and they really implemented, you know, What makes a great coach? There are multiple things. For me as a kid, it was a really playful environment where we were invited to try new things and really test our limits. But there was so much room for us to grow and still figure out ourselves. Where it wasn't a culture that was too rigid, we could really kind of play and figure out who we were within it. And what age? Um, it was probably about 10. Is this looking back, you realize this or during the time, did you say,

well, you know, swim, I love to go to swim because it's like, it's like playful and I get to have fun and I'm getting better at it. I don't know if that mattered or was it social that, yeah. Um, at the time I think I really realized that. Realized? I realized how playful and exciting and wonderful of a culture it was that I could show up and really be myself. And show up and not only test my limits, because I was a competitive kid. And I didn't win a lot when I was little. And I think that that's a solid distinction for my appreciation later in life of that in the sense of, um, I, I was constantly trying to get better. I never had like a complacent moment in my career. And I, and I think that especially when I was a kid,

there was just this, like, just this really stubborn drive in some ways to, you know, show up and, and show up as myself and a, and a good team player. My parents had this cool motto in our household. You're not a swimmer. You're a person who swims. And they made this distinction early on and it really allowed for us to, um, to not take swimming so seriously when it really could have consumed all of us. Okay, because you were naturally, something happened in this conversation where you said, I was really competitive. Like there was a bright line when you said that. So you were naturally competitive. Your family was competitive.

Yeah, Monopoly games were brutal as okay so there was a natural so being a being competitive was rewarded or it was just part of the DNA of your of your family then when you got into the pool there was playfulness in that because the competition could have been overwhelming is that like intensity could have been overwhelming and your parents helped shape that by saying you're a person first so i think you've maybe heard me talk about being able to decouple who you are from what you do and your parents it's one of the most foundational gifts i think we can give to kids is um this thing that you're talking about now. And what most of us do is this statement,

like you're a great athlete. You are a great student. And then the identity gets fused with that thing that they do as opposed to who they are. And so you were able to feel this from a young age. And okay, so keep going. Yeah, no, that was great. I've never really heard it kind of put that way.

Which part of that? Just in the way of, you know, like decoupling away from that and how good it was was that we were naturally competitive. And I think the playful elements and the curiosity that, you know, my parents brought into our household, as well as the coaches that I was fortunate enough to swim for. Oh, so your parents picked coaches that were playful? I don't think they necessarily sought them out.

We just were really lucky where the town that we grew up in, in the area, we just had an amazing swim team. And we never switched programs or looked for different coaches. They were always just kind of in our area. And so I had an amazing age group coach who, um, you know, there were so many racing games involved. And I remember, um, you know, this one racing game in particular when I was probably 11 or 12 and I was constantly racing the boys and, and it was just, it brought out this fire in me and, and this excitement of, of really testing myself and, and risking it, you know,

with a guy and, and I'm not supposed to beat them and he doesn't want to get beat by me. And, and just this constant, but were you as fast as him when we were 11 and 12? Yeah. Yeah. So is that typical in swimming that boys and girls at that age are they, they neck and neck in some respects. So strength hasn't really kicked in for gender. Totally. And growth spurt, you know, for the most part, we're kind of all the same size and, and I had hit my growth spurt when I was about 13. And so,

um, I was kind of on the cusp there, but yeah, but I just remember the competition was so celebrated, but then also, um, it, it was just so fun.

Like at the, did you, when you got into the Olympic world-class arena, did this show up? This celebration for competition, this enjoyment for this freedom of competing towards something, did that show up or did the game change at some point for you? Yes and no. So it went back and forth over a couple years. And so I remember at some points in my career, especially later on,

I had really invited back this playfulness. But at some point, things got really intense. Breaking a world record and having these big goals and dealing with- Did that intensity come before? Like when you were first given the jersey, a US jersey, I hear people talk about this often. Like all of a sudden the whole framework,

their psychological framework changes as soon as they have, let's do pro sports for a minute, an agent. As soon as they have signed a contract. In the Olympic spirit, as soon as they're given a jersey and they're representing the country, or as soon as they move up to a national something, was it one of those? Or did it not happen until you actually,

you looked up and you had world title, WR next to your name? Yeah, it actually happened much later in my career than I would have thought. Because winning a national title, I won my first one when I was 15. And I was really lucky where my biggest competitor of my age, um, was this amazing competitor who I actually got to train

with later on in life. Her name's Katie Hoff. And, um, she lived in Maryland. She grew up over there and I would break a national age group record. So fastest in your, um, you know, age group ever on the West coast to find out that she'd broken it in Baltimore a couple hours earlier, you know, and, and this was literally my entire early swimming career. And so I was constantly hungry and I was really proud of how I was progressing. And it's not a gift to have someone else that's sharpening their sword. Yeah. And it is amazing. I feel so, so lucky, um, you know, to be, to have been able to compete with Katie for so long. And eventually we ended up training together, which was one of the greatest gifts and some of my fondest memories from my swimming career was being able day in and day out.

It was like an Olympic final. And her and I got along great. We would go to dinner and movies and we're best friends outside of the water. And then every single day we showed up and just from warm up to warm down, we were flat out racing and just building each other up, but also just sharpening our own, like you said, sharpening our own tools and figuring out what we could learn from each other. And, and I think the learning from each other and coaching each other piece was something, um, early on in my swimming career, in my high school years, we were in a culture that really celebrated that.

It was knowing your teammates' stroke technique, knowing what motivated everybody around you. And because my sister was four years older than me. Wait, wait, wait. Yeah, this is interesting. Well, there's so much. I've got so many thoughts in my head. And one of them is, and I don't want this to be, I'm afraid that if I say this in a way that doesn't honor a gender difference, that it's going to be misperceived. And so I'm holding it back. But let me just say what's on my mind.

And it's coming from the most curious place, but there's something different about the way boys and girls compete. And there's something different about like, they go a little bit older than boys and girls and do like high school, right? They're no longer boys, they're adolescent males and females. There's something different and it there's a celebration for a boy in a sandbox to grab a toy and to kind of do his own thing and now he's a leader and then when a girl does it in the sandbox there's all this other like you're

supposed to be nice and sweet and kind and I think it's changing like I see that I have a seven-year-old son and I see that, I have a seven-year-old son, and I see that changing, which is a wonderful celebration that we're hoping teaching human behaviors well rather than gender-specific behaviors. But did you run into anything, this is a long way of me trying to qualify this awkward statement, but did you run into any challenges being an uber-compet competitor as a young female that was as good or better than many of the boys your age and coming from a family that was pretty competitive of females was there or was it just normal and that's just who who

that our family is and that's who I was and you're maybe even oblivious to what others thought of this very special ability that you, that you, your parents and coaches helped to cultivate. Yeah. I think that in a lot of ways we might've been oblivious on the pool deck because it was like totally right there. It was totally. And I remember too, um, as you were talking, I had this image pop in my mind and I remember being like 13, 14, 15, and I was new to this group and I was one of the younger members of the group. And I'd had some success and on the national stage at this point, but I was still like, you know, really new to all this and so hungry for more, hungry for more

knowledge and technique and, and opportunities, you know, to really test myself. And I used to swim these long distance sets with, with some really good distance swimmers in our group. And I just remember I had this one set pop up in particular where everybody else was kind of doing like a sprint workout, which is, um, you know, kind of like blasts, um, sprinting, like diving off the blocks. And we were going for like two hours straight, just back and forth doing sprintinging? No, just, I mean it was fast, but like long distance type stuff. So holding a certain pace for a long period of time.

And I just remember like, with every single one, I'd pass a guy. And these were like the best guys in our team. And you know, and then on like the next one, they're 800s if anyone understands swimming, they're about 10 minutes long, usually in training. And then I'd pass another guy and and I think I was one of only two females that were in this group at this one point but it was okay and I remember because it was such a culture and I for some reason as I distinctly

remember someone just being like go in front of me like you're doing better than me go in front of me like I'm dying. And no one ever tried to hold each other back. And I think that that was a really important part of that framework of that culture early on was that we really lifted each other up. The true spirit of competition. Totally. Strive together, grow together, get after it together, appreciate and love that the competitors across the pool are trying to do the same thing across the country, across the world. And they're part of that striving together as well.

And so your coaches, your family unit as well at home celebrated and cultivated a way for you to almost honor. And it was fine to compete. Is this rare? So to the other part of that, so on the pool deck, it was so okay. Um, this culture, but I do remember I, I had as bad as normal of a childhood as I could have had while, you know, competing on the world stage and trying to get better and trying to achieve this Olympic dream. I went to my prom, I went to Friday night football games with wet hair and, you know, tried to, you know, really

be as social as possible. And it was important to me to have a really solid group of friends that weren't swimmers because it was an escape. You know, it was, it was my ability to leave things at the pool and then go be quote unquote normal. But, you know, there was always this underlying hint of, you know, Ari has to miss this, or she has to get up at 4 30 AM to go to swim practice when everyone gets to sleep in at slumber parties. And, and it wasn't, um, at the time it didn't feel aggressive looking back now, you know, I can, I can see that in, in some ways my sisters and I were definitely doing something different, but I think that because we had each other, it was okay. And yeah. Okay. Right. You know, so in, in, in a way where

if I hadn't had them, it might've felt like I'm really alone on this journey and this sucks and I'm different. And it, this is hard sometimes. And, and I wish that I could sleep until 10 AM on a Saturday, but because we're all doing this together, because when I woke up at 4 AM and went to swim practice on Saturday, while all my friends were sleeping in, I was met with a group of 30 people who were so excited to be there and get better that it made it totally okay yeah how when i'm pulling from this is how important it is to have a group yeah whatever that group is and when that group well the impact importance of having a group and when that group is orientated toward progression and they value competitive spirit in the right way or whatever there's maybe no right or wrong but the way that builds as opposed to is tries to just destroy

others and that it gender didn't matter uh it was about getting better and it was about as fast as you possibly can getting better yeah what a gift uh for from your family and coachings totally finding mastery is brought to you by Momentus. 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 for life.

And to do that, they developed what they call the Momentous Standard. Every product is formulated with top experts and every batch is third-party tested. NSF certified for sport or informed sport. So you know exactly what you're getting. Personally, I'm anchored by what they call the Momentus 3. Protein, creatine, and omega-3.

And together, these foundational nutrients support muscle recovery, brain function, and long-term energy. They're part of my daily routine. And if you're ready to fuel your brain and body with the best, Momentous has a great new offer just for our community right here. Use the code FINDINGMASTERY for 35% off your first subscription order at livemomentous.com. Again, that's L-I-V-E Momentous, M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S, LiveMomentous.com, and use the code FindingMastery for 35% off your first subscription order. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Felix Gray. I spend a lot of time thinking about how we can create the conditions for high performance.

How do we protect our ability to focus, to recover, to be present? And one of the biggest challenges we face today is our sheer amount of screen time. It messes with our sleep, our clarity, even our mood. And that's why I've been using Felix Grey glasses. What I appreciate most about Felix Grey is that they're just not another wellness product. They're rooted in real science. Developed alongside leading researchers and ophthalmologists, They've demonstrated these types of glasses boost melatonin, help you fall asleep faster, and hit deeper stages of rest. When I'm on the road and bouncing around between time zones,

slipping on my Felix Grey's in the evening, it's a simple way to cue my body just to wind down. And when I'm locked into deep work, they also help me stay focused for longer without digital fatigue creeping in. Plus, they look great. Clean, clear, no funky color distortion. Just good design, great science. And if you're ready to feel the difference for yourself, Felix Gray is offering all Finding Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code finding mastery 20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix gray. You spell it F E L I X G R a y.com and use the code finding mastery 20 at Felix gray.com for 20% off.

Was there one event or person that shaped your path towards finding mastery? Good question. I think that I can't identify one person. I had, you know, a handful pop into my mind because I was really fortunate to have an amazing group of people around me, you know, so my mom in a huge way, which just was kind of the underlying rock of support of, you know, go out there and risk it, you do your best i love watching you swim you know she always had that mentality is that what she would say to you um i love watching you swim yeah that was kind of our go thing and she didn't necessarily like go risk it but it was like implied in her energy our mom we like to joke that she's the energizer bunny um and she and she

gave us that feeling that we could go lay it out on the line and we would come home and life would be normal. And what would happen? What would it be like after you trained for however long and then you got on the blocks? You knew that what you were about to go do, you were going to be tested because people around you were pretty good. Yeah. Okay. And then you touched up. I don't know if you had many of these, but you touched up fifth and you didn't get, you didn't, you didn't make it to the next race and you basically went home early or you,

you got out touched by something, um, uh, as a youngster and yeah, no, let's, let's hold that story for a moment. Yeah. But so what was it like, what did your mom do? Cause I'm curious as a parent. Yeah. Right. So I absolutely want to support going for it more than anything else. I want to support the joy of watching development and progression and straining and striving and letting go and trust. I want to do all of that.

But was there one thing that your mom would say to you after when you felt disappointed or you felt like you didn't get what you had hoped you would get? Yeah, so one thing that really sticks out in my mind is you're saying that, and it goes back to Katie Hoff and I would get really discouraged. And while I was so hungry for, you know,

that competition and for progression and, and especially looking back now, I'm grateful for, you know, the role that Katie played in my career at the time I used to go up to my mom and was just like, my hard work's not paying off. Like I'm still getting destroyed by this girl. And, and I don't know what to do. Um, and I remember one time in particular, my mom sat me down, I was probably

12 or 13 and she was just like, you know what Ari, it's Katie's time right now. Like she flat out said that. And she's like, your time's going to come. Like, I can see you're hungry for it. I can see like that you're doing everything that you can in this moment to get better. And, and, and kind of the driving point that she came back to was on any given day, anyone can win. And it's really a cliched statement, but it was just, and I, I remember carrying that sense through the rest of my swimming career of, you know, is this, this could be my day. Like, how dare I shy away from this moment? If, if this is, this is time to go and, and how dare I hold myself back

just because somebody else is having more success than me? That sounds to me like what she was training was optimism. Yeah. Like, hey, it could happen anytime. It's coming. Keep working. Keep trusting. So she was actually instilling two things that I'm hearing.

She decoupled. She gave you the gift of decoupling what you did from who you are. She loved you for who you were. And she said that thing that you're doing, it's going to happen if you keep working, right? You're so close on a regular basis. Like keep,

keep going for it. Totally. Yeah. Good job, mom. Yeah. How fun is that? I know.

It was so fun. I had seriously, I'd love to talk to your mom. Yeah. Right. Because you'd love her. Yeah. There's some stuff in here that like she's, how was she taught? Um, she has an interesting, um, kind of

story and upbringing. She grew up outside of Seattle. Um, she's actually first generation American and, um, my mom's side of the family are Dutch. My dad's side Latvian and they actually both grew up on farms in the States, um, up in Washington. And, you know, she just grew up working hard and, um, you know, really making opportunities for herself. I have a lot of, I have so much respect for my mom in, in what she was able to do in her life and the amount of love that she was able to show my sisters and I, and continually show us. And, um, and on top of, you know, going through her own struggles and, um, you know, wanting to grow herself as a person, she just was always there.

Okay. So mom was a stud that dad was in like an alpha male that would take care of the family in a good way. And then you were highly competitive in a great environment. You were one of the fastest in the country, maybe world at that time at a young age. I don't know yet. And that sounds like it's perfect. And I don't use that word lightly because I know that there's another side to all journeys. And this is the part that I don't think

people talk about very often. And you can say, I don't want to talk about it. Do you have clarity around the darker side and the cost and the pain and the struggle? And is there a particular moment or part that captures how challenging and difficult it's or the thing that costs the most for you, um, in your, on your path? Yeah. So this is actually something I've been thinking about with my career and I didn't really have, so there's definitely a dark side. A dark side to what?

To sport. To mastery. To really going all in. And I'm trying to figure out... Do you know why? What makes you think that there's a that going all in is um can be dark um because i think especially when you do it as a kid you do lose your sense of identity and you lose that who am i without this and and later on in my career i had this moment

which we'll get to of who on earth am I and what am I doing here? But there are a couple, a couple of ways that I, or one way in particular that I experienced the dark side. And I remember this as clear as day. Um, my older sister was 18 and I was 14 and she was full on my hero. Like whatever Emily did, I wanted to be right behind her. I didn't want to be next to her. I didn't want to be in front of her. I wanted to be behind her. And I was learning as much as I could from her. And she was just an incredibly dynamic leader and, and really set the stage and helped cultivate our culture at our, our club team growing up. Um, and she was, she was that swimmer that you wanted on the end of a relay. She was the one who you wanted to come from behind.

She was going to just lay it all on the line and so it happened. It was in the 200 individual medley and it was at our home pool in Federal Way, Washington and I beat her and I was 14 and I cried. I was so upset. It was the most traumatic experience for me that the world just felt completely off balance. I had just beaten my hero at something that I never wanted to beat her at.

And she handled it with the utmost grace and compassion. And for that, I will always be grateful. And you've shared this with her, like you work through this with her. Cause it doesn't seem like right now, it seems like right now you can talk about it. Oh yeah. Like effortlessly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so Emily and I, I remember Emily, older sister. Yeah. So Emily and I, we, we always drove together. So she was 18 at the time. And so we were driving home and I started crying to her. And I remember asking her as silly as this sounds to try harder because I didn't like to beat her. And she just said, you know, like sometimes you're going to beat me and I'm so proud of you and I want you to be

successful. And, um, you know, like it's not exactly fun for me either to get beat by my little sister, but she's like, you're doing amazing. And that culture within our sisterhood. And we got asked all the time, um, about sibling rivalry throughout our whole swimming careers, because my sisters were absolute studs. I mean, they both went to fantastic colleges were contributing members to their teams, went to Olympic trials, like unbelievable, unbelievably successful careers. And we never, that was as close as we got to sibling rivalry. Just that confusion of where do we go from here? Like this is unfamiliar territory. So this is a nice little way to,

I think, highlight what a psychological framework actually is, is your framework at this age of 14 was that I want to be behind my sister. I want to learn from her. The framework that you're seeing yourself in the world from is that she's like the alpha and that you want to keep learning. And you had your eyes set on something, which was to learn from her, but not beat her. And maybe now's a good time to segue into you know trials for you and because you had a framework at that point and that framework led you yeah you've I've learned from you knowing you that you've had two kind of iterations on your framework and I think it's also

important for folks that are listening to this conversation. There's other people at the other end of this. Is that we never worked together. We didn't know each other during swimming. I know lots of folks that I've been fortunate enough to know that swam, but we didn't know each other. But your story is pretty well understood. And maybe people don don't know it but maybe we can jump into that now and then I'll come back to some more of the path stuff yeah great so

2004 was when I went to my first Olympic trials and you know you have to show up at Olympic trials you have to place first or second your body of work doesn't matter. What matters on that day matters. And so meaning that you have to, if you just for clarity, if you don't place first or second at Olympic trials, then you don't go to the Olympics. And what that means, Americans, the American swimming program, the top five Americans probably could be first, second, third at the global Olympics. Yeah. Right?

So being fourth in America might mean that you would take fourth at the Olympics. So only one and two go. So if you place third, there's a good chance that you could medal in the Olympics, but third doesn't go to the Olympics. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. So 2004, I'd placed 10th, and so I kind of stuck my toe in the Olympics, but third doesn't go to the Olympics. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So 2004, I'd placed 10th. And so I kind of, you know, stuck my toe in the water there and got an experience

for what that meet was like. And then when I showed up at 2008, I, I'd had a small amount of international success. You know, I'd been on a couple of world champs, world championship teams, you know, had some national titles under my belt, had, um, an amazing swim program that I was with, um, that we're really gonna, you know, put some Olympians on the team. We were, um, you know, just across the board, just so solid. And it was so fun to be able to show up at this meet just with force. And I don't remember how many swimmers we had there, but I want to say it was something like 30 or 40, which was like, it's like a college team showing up and here's a bunch of 13 to 18 year olds. And, um, so at the time I was going through a transition between a 400 IM,

which is the longer of the individual medleys to a 200. So the sprint version, and I'd swum my 400 and it, it didn't really go as planned. Um, I, I think I placed fifth or sixth and, but I knew that my 200 IM was pretty solid and I knew that, you know, I might have, um, have a surprise. Can you describe what the IM is? Yeah. Yeah. So I'll walk you, I'll walk you through it.

So, so you have to swim three times in order to make the Olympic team. So we swim through prelims and then semifinals and then finals. And so, um, the 200 individual medley is one lap of every single stroke. And so it's butterfly backstroke, breaststroke freestyle. And so in the semifinal at 2008 Olympic trials, I had placed second and it kind of surprised some people and it half surprised me, but it was half like, this is where you have to be. You know, if you want to make the Olympic team tomorrow, which is why you're here, like, good, this is, this is a good spot to be in. And what was your goal going into that? To make the Olympic team, to make the Olympic, to make the Olympic team, which is a good spot to be in. And what was your goal going into that?

To make the Olympic team. To make the Olympic team. To make the Olympic team. Right, which is to swim one or two. It wasn't to swim your absolute flat out fastest. Is that right? Correct. And it wasn't at that point to win a medal. Yep.

It was like the goal was a little bit shallower, if you will. Exactly. Yeah. And the thing, oh, I'll get there. So I go through, and the thing with placing second in semifinals is that you have a spot to lose in finals. You have a spot that you've kind of half claimed, but that it's anyone's taking. Because there are eight people, and everyone has a shot. You know, like the saying, if you have a lane, you have a chance.

It goes without saying at trials and so I showed up the next day at the final and I was just really ready to go and I felt really calm through the first three laps of my race and I was turning away from my competition um at this point and I had just one of those like gut out of body experiences where it was like, you're in first place right now. And two really fast women are chasing you down. And I panicked like I'd never panicked in a swim race before. I just remember I was thrashing my arms. I was praying so hard for the wall on the fourth lap, on the fourth lap, fourth and final lap halfway through.

No. As soon as I pushed off the wall, I started panicking. And do you remember that thought it was uh just oh crap like and was there hold on hang on was the word i think i was saying to myself was just hang on because i wasn't first and i wasn't necessarily looking around to see where everybody was but um i i knew that at that point I had something to lose and that they were gunning for me whoo so everything shifted from like the goal to approach success in an instant it approach avoid failure avoid avoid failure exactly that's exactly the framework that I shifted into yeah was

so why would you do that that looking back like this is 2008 now right yeah so why why what was it about that because I've had those moments too where everything's going great and all of a sudden there's this one thought and then what I noticed what I noticed for myself is that it changes everything about my experience in that moment. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think there was a certain amount of fear of, am I ready for this? Um,

and, and I, I say this with, you know, utmost respect for my upbringing and everything I believed and everything that I strived for. But really up until this point, it was like the Olympics happened to people over there. You know, like they're gifted. They, you know, they're destined for this.

So all this happened like that quickly that this thing got really big? Yeah. Is that where it got big for you? It got really big. And the thing, I'd been to a couple international competitions and so I don't know why it was

that in this moment it all of a sudden was was the aha, like you've made it. Like I don't, because keep in mind, I'd been second. I had never won

an international gold medal at this point in my career. I was second. had you ever done any imagery around seeing yourself touch up first I hadn't at that point no so there's no like mental imagery as a mindset skill yeah and I yeah and I worked on that later which we'll get to but at that point you know I I understood the importance of visualization and I I did a lot of it but I the funny thing up until 2008 I don't really remember myself finishing races in my mind like I would always start them and I and I did a lot of well certainly not the fourth lap the fourth and final lap being ahead yeah we joke about it now but yeah okay so finish the story I know yeah sorry so I touched the wall

and um turned around and looked at the scoreboard. So wait, hold on. Before you go there, the last half, uh-oh, oh shit. You know, take the sensors off. And then what was that like for the last half lap? The last half lap was kind of like a blacking out where it was literally just. You don't remember it. I don't remember it.

I don't remember it. And I actually made a really critical mistake going into the wall. A lot of people joke that I touched the wall with my face because I took a half stroke in, which there's no saying if it would have gone a different way. But I was in so high of panic mode at that point where I was not thinking clearly. I wasn't executing the race that I had wanted to execute. And that's not even an excuse. It's like, that's just what happened.

Yeah, that is just what happened. It's just what happened. Okay, so then... Yeah, so I touched the wall and turned around and looked up at the scoreboard and I saw the number. Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. So when you touched it,

what happened at that moment? Yeah, so I remember touching it and I what happened that at that moment yeah i started i remember touching it and i turned around as quickly as i could and just look at the board yeah and i remember the feeling just being like please just like an like a like a cry for like please you know what i mean no i, I know. I am like, I can see it vividly in my mind, but it was, what do you feel? It was desperation.

Desperation. Please. Meaning please, like, please have done this. Please give me a two. Please give me another shot. Please don't have blown this.

Please don't have blown that in your, even if you, you knew that, let's say that you touch first or second or third or fifth or sixth. It didn't matter at that moment. You knew you blew the last half of the last lap is that yeah so you just close your eyes now like like that is was it painful when i just said that or yeah or painful to yeah have you said okay sorry yeah no it's good no in in like a good way. Yeah, it was such desperation.

Like that's what the entire last lap felt like was I could see. And you know when you watch on TV like the world record line and you know some people just like floor right by it. And other people like you're just trying to grasp it with like it just felt. Okay, so that's it. Desperation. And you looked up desperate. I looked up desperate. And there was a picture of the look on my face. And it up desperate. And there was a picture of the look on my face.

And it was just like, there was a picture of the look when I saw it. I saw the number three. And I realized it had been touched out by eight one-hundredths of a second, a fingernail. And it was like, and I didn't even look. Could you compute that? Was it instant? You knew exactly what was happening there? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. And I remember like it was, it was the quickest amount of processing I'd ever done because there were three of us in this race. Um, you know, and it was the three of us that came down to the touch and it was such an, like for the fans,

it was such an exciting race. I mean, who doesn't love when it comes down to the touch? And I just remember in that moment when I saw that three and then just seeing how close I was, it was just like this gut-wrenching pain of numbness throughout my entire body and just so much sadness. I think sadness was at the core at the core and, and the embarrassment came later and just like the overall disappointment and, and maybe the frustration with myself. But, but the feeling that fit me, like hit me immediately was just being sad. And I remember, um, so our parents,

you know, really set this framework when we were kids, you know, there will be no throwing your goggles. There will be no temper tantrums on the pool deck like if you want to do that kind of stuff you do that in private and you know it's fine to show like emotion or um you know like if you're sad you don't have to like put a fake smile on your face but like be real and authentic but if you need to have a moment like like get people you trust trust and go have that moment by yourself. And so I just remember like getting out of the pool deck and just, oh, it hurts so bad. 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. And that's why I've

built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that. Their bedding, it's incredibly soft, like next level soft. And what surprised me the most is how much it actually helps regulate temperature. I tend to run warm at night and these sheets have helped me sleep cooler and more consistently, which has made a meaningful difference in how I show up the next day for myself, my family, and our team here at Finding Mastery. It's become part of my nightly routine. Throw on their lounge pants or pajamas, crawl into bed under their sheets, and my nervous system starts to settle. They also offer a 100-night sleep trial and a 10-year warranty on all of their bedding, which tells me, tells you that they believe in the long-term value of what they're creating. If you're ready to upgrade your rest and

turn your bed into a better recovery zone, use the code FINDINGMASTERY for 40% off at CozyEarth.com. That's a great discount for our community. Again, the code is F Mastery for 40% off at CozyEarth.com. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Caldera Lab. I believe that the way we do small things in life is how we do all things. And for me, that includes how I take care of my body. I've been using Caldera Lab for years now. And what keeps me coming back, it's really simple. Their products are simple and they reflect the kind of intentional living that I want to build into every part of my day. And they make my morning routine really easy. They've got some great new products I think you'll be interested in. A shampoo, conditioner, and a hair serum. With Caldera Lab, it's not about adding more. It's

about choosing better. And when your day demands clarity and energy and presence, the way you prepare for it matters. If you're looking for high-quality personal care products that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash findingmastery and use the code findingmastery at checkout for 20% off your first

order that's caldera lab c-a-l-d-e-r-l-a-b dot com slash finding mastery what were you sad about what like what was why sadness and and not anger or yeah fear i was so sad that in an opportunity where I could have had an amazing race that I had set myself up to have an amazing race that I had completely let myself down and that I had completely gone against everything that I trained for. Because, you know, while I did have this small inkling of mindset of the Olympics happened to other people, I did go into this meet with just this intense resume of training. And, and that's what I really was early on in my career was a trainer. Um,

so you had a deep body of work, deep body of work, like really deep. And, and a lot of people, including myself for a long time, considered me to be a trainer, like the person who could stand up on the blocks at the end of practice for a long time, considered me to be a trainer, like the person

who could stand up on the blocks at the end of practice and go best time, but never really showed up in a race. Oh, you had that reputation? Not necessarily that reputation. I had it within myself because luckily I... Well, there it showed up. It showed up there. It showed, yeah.

Yeah. Look at that. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So, no, but I remember I walked away from this race and why would you have that thought, that framework that I'm a, I'm a trainer, not a finisher. Yeah.

So this is kind of going to contradict some of the things that, um, we've talked about kind of like the competitive nature. I was really competitive, but I also didn't see myself as like, like really standing on the blocks with just a ton of passion and doing whatever it takes to win and pushing myself to the utmost. Like I was able to do that day in and day out in training,

but in competition, like I couldn't quite at that point, like in my young years of my career, like figure out how to stand up on the blocks and just be like, I'm going to go. Like, let's do this. And it's something that I figured out later. But at this point, I didn't have that. Like, I love racing. I want to be up here. I'm so excited to compete and test myself against you. This is the reason I'm asking all these questions. I know it's intense and I appreciate

you like helping. I feel like I'm learning right now because this is what happened to me when I was in high school as a, as a young competitor is that, um, this was in surfing. And as a young high school surfer, like free surfing was amazing. I loved it. There was freedom in it. Call it practice and training. It's unstructured like traditional sports in Olympic sports.

But so surfing, there was no surf coaches, put it that way. And me figuring out me with the ocean, with other good surfers around was great, and I could figure it out, but then as soon as the judges showed up and parents or friends were on the beach watching, and it was a competition, and there was only five or three guys out in the water, everything changed for me, and it was so painful.

There was such a smallness that I felt that I couldn't, the smallness, I don't think that's a word, but I felt really small and I couldn't even feel myself. I don't think you're describing this, but I felt so small that I couldn't do what I knew was inside of me. And at some point I had had it with feeling small and I had to make this fundamental decision that that, that doesn't work anymore. And that's what set me on this path to want to understand mastery. Like how can people be so good at what they do and so lost in what they do and they create something that's beautiful or unique and, and possibly changes the way the world works.

But the same thing that you're talking about that showed up for you like in an instant like oh no it what i just learned is it was part of your framework that i don't i'm a trainer not a finisher is my language around what i heard and i had that same thing which was i'm a great free surfer but competition i'm a disaster but at the same time yeah you really i don't know if you relate to this at all or you're just nodding like like i hear you no i can relate totally because the other part is like i was really competitive yep but then i couldn't do the thing i wanted to do when when i wanted to be able to compare myself for maybe that was the problem i was trying to compare myself to other people yeah instead of just feeling it yeah oh yeah Oh yeah. I could definitely see myself in, in what you're just saying there. And,

and that, that was a huge shift that I took moving forward from that race of I'm tired of this. Like I work my butt off day in and day out. Why would I, why would I give up on myself? Why would I not want to see this through? Why am I not more curious about what my limits are and, and really testing them in a competition? And, and that's when I started to understand my fire, which is actually, I had a great conversation with a friend, um, this week about the fire. And so what happened after this swim was, um, I had an awesome moment with my dad and he, so at this point it'd been like right after trials, 2008, right after trials, right

after the race, it was like two and a half hours after the race, after third place. And I just like broke to him and it was the first time I'd cried and I was sobbing and my dad did the most incredible thing for me he sat there silently and let me fall to pieces in front of him and I screamed I was sobbing I was so mad I was embarrassed and disappointed and he just sat there just holding my hand. And, and so. Isn't that amazing when people can stand strong in with you while you're in the most unbelievable pain. Yeah. It's that.

And, and somehow you knew that they were there in strength, not like get it together. Yeah. What are you doing? You know, it's okay. It'll be okay. It was like, like, I'm going to be here with you when you're, if you're holding a gold medal or you're saw third. Yeah. Yeah. And that's exactly what I got from him. And that's what I want to do for like people I deeply care about. Yeah. Isn't it awesome? Well, it is awesome. And like, yeah, that's, that is awesome well it is awesome like yeah that's that is exactly what i

want to be able to do in my life for loved ones yeah is uh it doesn't matter if we're holding gold let's celebrate that but if we're if we've taken third and whatever we're doing it it's not that it doesn't work the way we hoped yeah and people are in pain yeah good thank you for reminding me of how important that both parts of this are. Yeah. Yeah. And, and it was, it was so cool and I'll forever be grateful to my dad for giving me that moment.

And, and the cool thing, and it actually was literally this week I was having a conversation and we were talking about fire because right after I'd broken, like looking back now, I could see that my flame was just like going out. And this is something like my- Before 2008 or right after?

Right after. Right after, yeah. Right after. And it was kind of that moment, like I could see it just like about to go out and, you know, I was getting all this out and I remember just looking at my dad and I was like, this isn't it. Like, this isn't it. Like, this is the beginning. Like, let's go. And, and all of a sudden, and it was so passionate and dramatic in that moment. And I just remember telling my dad, like, please don't give up on me.

Just hold on a little. Like, I know that this is, there's something really great that's about to happen. I know that. And, and I said those words out loud on him and I both wrote them down later, but I think internally, because this is really how I guide my life now of just like this inner fire. And, um, like I could feel it and see it going out. And I just had to do something so dramatic and just say like, no, full flame. let's go. Do you think that it's possible for all of us, maybe not to get to a break, but to be able to make a decision like that, have a fundamental decision

that this is how I'm gonna set course on my life, this is how it's gonna look, my intention for the way that my life can feel. Do you think that's possible for everyone, or do you think that we need to feel a depth of pain like what you and I are both talking about, not life can feel, do you think that's possible for everyone? Or do you think that we need to feel a depth of pain? Like what you and I are both talking about, not comparing each other, but enough pain to say, okay, I'm done with that. Yeah. Um, I think pain is important and I'm going to use another one of my mom's references. Um, she always used to say, um, everybody has their own Olympics, you know, and, and everybody has something they're

striving for. And so in that same way, everyone has their same dose of pain, their same, um, I don't want to use the word aha moment, but, but that moment where you have to stand up and fight for you. Like, are you have to stand up and fight for you. Are you willing to bet on yourself? And it doesn't have to be that dramatic. It doesn't have to be on a world stage. Yeah, there's something I think about what we're talking about, the pain and the breaking

or that awareness that this is no longer tolerable. Compare that to addiction. Is that by definition, this is part longer tolerable, compare that to addiction. Is that by definition, this is part of what addiction is, is that, hey, everyone gets a DUI. It's okay. Oh, everyone misses days of work

for being hung over. It's okay. Oh, you know, yeah, a little bit of jail time, it just means you're part of the club. Like it's this irrational, seemingly rational way to take away pain man i don't i'm not i don't this is why i want want to understand not in masochistic way but really to celebrate the darker side so we can be honest with ourselves and maybe help others say okay where is the pain can you stand in it and once

you can stand in it you can then make a decision that no i'm not doing this anymore and this whatever fill in the blanks this is what i'm going to do now so can you get to that part of the story first yeah yeah yeah so that was great the way that you just kind of framed that um but the standing in the pain like is really something where you know i felt that and i remember you know, I felt that and I remember, you know, moving on from that meet. And is this, you want me to move on from, yeah. Which direction would you like me to go? No, I, so you, okay.

So you had this moment, you say, don't, don't give up on me. You said, okay, there's more coming. So bring us into what, yeah, what's the more, what, yeah, what happened? Yeah. This is now the fun part. Ooh, this is so fun. So I got home and I just started pulling literature. Like my mom would just drop books on my nightstand.

And it started with just different things on goal setting and vision and who are you and understanding where confidence comes from and calm and kind of how to train all of this. And I just remember like running full force towards like for the first time in my career, running full force towards my potential, which sounds insane for someone who'd, you know, been on the national scene for a couple of years. But at the, this was the first time where I was like, you have nothing else to lose. Nobody cares about you. You didn't go to the Olympics. You have no platform in that regard. Like create your masterpiece. Like what, what are you going to do now? When, when nobody's looking, you know, when, when there's no lights, when, when the Olympics are four years away, you have a lot of days to build up to that.

And I just remember the culture that we had created at the swim club was pretty extraordinary where everyone was coming in and just had a really contributing role to the team. And we are so fired up to be there at this point. I was one of the older kids of the group and, um, you know, loved just, just the group that I was training with. Um, I was taking my, my technique and my craft to a whole new level. Um, in particular, underwater kicking was the thing that I really chose because I was pretty solid at all four strokes. I didn't have one that really stood out. Most IMers will have like a weapon stroke and I didn't have that.

And so I was like, okay, I have to, I have to have a fifth, you know, this underwater kicking thing. And, and the men had really embraced underwater kicking, but the females hadn't yet. And so I, I started setting daily goals of underwater kicking and committing to it. And at first, oh my gosh, it hurts so bad to kick underwater. And I knew that they were coming every single day where we do sets where you spent more time underwater holding your breath kicking than you did on top of the water and I remember like my chest would convulse and I would like start to panic and my mind was racing about when my next breath was coming in a way I don't know if you were aware of this but what I'm hearing is you did two things you said okay no more and then you you your mom started

to help you with thinking differently goal setting and vision setting and philosophy and books and reading so that was like an early maybe unsophisticated but thoughtful approach to changing your mindset and mental skills and the second you're doing something different physically you're already one of the fastest you're gonna you're winning yeah you know and if you didn't have a mental error or decompose mentally or whatever, that's not the right phrase. But if that thing didn't happen, then you were going to likely win that race, maybe underwater and the panic required for it or experienced by you would actually get you really close to that inner experience of panic because that you felt when you turned on lap four or the final lap yeah and so you were learning in a physical through physical training by pushing a limit a deeper relationship of your inner dialogue and you're

working out each day that you went further and further and further a deeper relationship of your inner dialogue and you're working out each day that you went further and further and further a better relationship with that self-talk yep and so exactly right yeah where did it lead you to yeah so um also that year a really strong element of of playfulness and curiosity came into into the mix and um throughout my entire swimming career i always had this just relentless stubbornness to really want to get things right. And, and technique was, was my biggest thing because I'm not the tallest swimmer, you know, I wasn't the strongest and how I chose to get a competitive advantage was really knowing my body and how I can move through the water in a unique way.

And just becoming as in tune with myself as I could. And that stubbornness of just like, I'm gonna do this until it's right. Just relentless, but also, if you can imagine, like a playful element too, where it's just like, this is fun. Like I'm kicking underwater, I'm testing my limits, I'm going faster than I've ever gone. I'm a part of this amazing culture I

have great teammates who are all going in the right direction or the same direction like how magical and so um what this really came to was the year 2009 um so when we don't have the Olympics we have world championships which is kind of our big celebration at the end of the year. And I just showed up at this meet with so much quiet confidence of what I had just done that year. And it was really special because I was just excited to race. And I was excited for the first time to lay everything out on the line and not have an ounce left and not have, you know, to think, you know, we talk a lot, I've done a lot of research about flow state and

figuring out, you know, how much time I experienced in that. And, and this was such a magical time in my career because I had no pressure. I was so excited about what, what I could do. And, um, I imagine you saw this to be a challenge. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's one of the ingredients, necessary ingredients for flow state is, you know, the, that there's a real, there's some risk or a challenge ahead of you. And you believe you have the skills to manage that challenge or risk. Yeah. And you're, you're nodding your head like yeah i put in the work like yeah where it was different going into 2008 totally different i i didn't trust myself oh there you go as yeah that i i just made that connection i saw that yeah i didn't trust myself in 2008 i didn't trust

that i that i could stand behind the blocks and do it. And in 2009, I, there was absolutely no doubt in my mind and it wasn't cockiness. It wasn't, um, you know, like the beating of your chest and, and, and that side of it, it was just like a, I can't wait to test myself here. And, um, so worlds come and, um, what a really important statement. I can't wait to go test myself. Yeah. And imagine, I don't know if you're doing it now, but every day waking up, whatever you're doing, any person is doing, whether it's clerical work, whether it's architectural work, whether it's psychology or teaching or whatever it might be to say, okay, how am I going to test myself today? How am I going to push? How am I going to grow? How am I going to go see what I've got? And that requires

embracing that feeling of uncomfortableness, but you were good at it now. Yeah. Yeah. At this point, better, much better. And I was, I was really learning. And so at worlds, um, it was cool, the progression between prelims to finals finals because in prelims, um, you know, you always, you always want to have more in the tank in, in the sense of like, you got to make sure that you have a lane, you know,

so you, you have to, you know, make sure that you're performing and you're on top of it. And, and because I was just so ready, I wasn't as in tune with my times and what my body was doing. And,

um, I remember the prelim, the prelim came and I broke the American record, which was my very first American record. Here I am 19 years old coming off. She's not an Olympian. She had been on the national team

and it was so exciting. But quietly I was like, I have more. I have more. And I remember there was so much noise around me that this is cool because there was so much noise around me that this is cool because there was so much noise saying, oh, like, why did you do that race in prelims? Like, you got to show up tomorrow and like win a medal for us, you know? And I just remember just this so much excitement of, oh, but I got more.

Yeah. Like, I think I'm not listening to what everyone else thinks about what is possible for you. Yeah. Yeah. And so then this is the value of being able to be so committed to knowing yourself well and the self-awareness required of the years work that you did differently from 2008 to 2009 so that you could not get sucked. So you didn't get sucked into all that noise about you don't have this.

You empty the tank too early. Yeah. Yeah. And so then when the final did come, it was probably, you know, for a long time. Okay. I'm going to frame this in a different way. I was so excited for the final. I was so excited just to see what could happen. And it was at that

point where I was like, you know, I use the phrase a lot lately, just let it rip, you know? And it was, it was that moment of like, let's do this. Let's see what is possible for my body at this moment in time, have fun racing, enjoy your competition. And, and it was really this meet that defined me for the rest of my career i was known as a racer and a competitor which was a huge for like it might not seem like a big deal to most people but for me the fact that i had become a competitor and a finisher was unbelievable did you know that before others recognized it did you know that you were a great racer? Or did you need this race to know that you're a finisher? I knew leading up to that race.

You knew before they knew? I knew before they knew. Isn't that fun? Yeah. It is fun. Yeah. That's that self-awareness of knowing something before others. And there's nothing, an athlete on the Seattle Seahawks says,

the best part about knowing before others know, and even if they do know that there's nothing they can do about it, it's, it's a really kind of fun. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. And so, uh,

the final comes and I was next to three time Olympic gold medal medalist, Stephanie rice, and it was her world record. And her and I had a really cool competition. Um, and the phrase that I like to use, and this could be great self-talk for me moving forward was Steph brings out the best in me. Like I love racing her because she just like, she was someone I admired prior to me, quote unquote, becoming a racer.

And did you just like do a little link in this conversation that that would be good for you moving forward? Like you yourself of that phrase yeah that something brings out the best this person that is great brings out the best in you this opportunity that maybe is challenging brings out the best in you yeah that that sounds like it's worth repeating yeah i'm gonna listen to this a couple times um but yeah and so steph and i had one of the coolest races and we ended up touching almost even i was just a hair ahead of her with one lap to go the freestyle leg and i stayed underwater and kicked which i'd trained for um for about 13 kicks which was almost to the limit that you could go and i came up a body length ahead of her. And that is why,

like in that, and I knew if you can kick really efficiently, it's faster underwater than it is on top. And I knew that. And that's why I trained it so intensely. But when I needed it most, when I needed that moment, because I turned to face her,

I looked right at her when I flipped and I saw her. And unlike the year before when I'd went oh my gosh I'm not capable I'm not qualified to be in competition with her like how dare I finish it was a you've been here oh yeah you know what to do yeah oh yeah okay and then and then all right so wrap wrap that part so I ended up breaking the world record and becoming world champion for the first time in my career. World champion, world record holder. Yeah.

Best in the world at this thing that you have been training for for a long time. And then so you celebrate. I think you would know that I like relating to this part because world record holder next year having uh it's stripped away it was one of the experiences that i was able to fortunate enough to be part of with the seattle seahawks both both of those and so that's like it's wonderful it's painful it stings and but at the same time like it provides a whole new perspective and that you can't pay for yeah you can't buy it. Exactly. You gotta take the risk and put yourself in it to feel it. Yeah. Okay. What are the habits? What are some of the

habits that you've used, um, that I've been valuable to you on your path to being one of the fastest in the world? Yeah. Um, gratitude was a big one that my parents really instilled this in us when we were kids was just this overwhelming feeling of, you know, just being thankful for, you know, every opportunity, every race, every person. And, you know, living an attitude of gratitude was something that my parents taught me really well, but it was something that I live in my daily life now. And it's probably the most. So what's the habit? How would you train it? Yeah.

So I've done it a couple ways over the years. I used to, at the end of the day, write three things that I was grateful for. Now I do something called Three Amazing Things, where I kind of connect with being a researcher of amazing and seeing that throughout the day and, and, and what that connectivity is, um, in my life. So every day at the end of the day, will you just anchor on the three things that happened that were wonderful in your life? Yep. Yeah. So I'll do that. Um, and that's research. If you, if anyone wants to look that up, it's research that comes right out of the UPenn and, um, Seligman, uh, did some great research there and it's a nice little easy practice. And then what we find is

people that do that practice with a loved one, that at the end of 30 days time, that there's a deeper relationship, a quality of relationship. And so, yeah, this is a nice practice. Yeah, yeah, it's great. And I mean, I'm so grateful for that practice. My boyfriend and I actually do it together.

I've brought him along. I was like, hi, what are your three amazing things? So it's kind of something cool that we can connect with at the end of the day. Um, and so then before that, um, I would do it in a different way. Like I did a gratitude rock where I'd keep that in my pocket or a purse. And so every time I touched that, I would, I would have a moment of gratitude. Um, why was gratitude important? Because mom talked about it and valued it.

And it was something that would help shape. It really helped shape us. But I don't know, for some reason, just throughout my entire career and even now in my life, I just get blinded with these moments of feeling so in awe of the experiences that I've been able to have in my life. And that in no way, shape or form have I been alone on this journey. Like, it has been such a blessing to be able to work with the people that I have, to have the teammates, the coaches, the family, the friends, the support.

And for some reason, I always get choked up just thinking about the people who were there for me and who continue to be there for me. And it's just a continual practice. Well, you know, there's a couple interesting things about gratitude as a practice is that um when it's impossible to have two emotions at the same time and so if you have a state of gratitude it's not possible to at the same moment in time have a state of anxiousness or anger or uh trepidation or whatever the other state might be.

And so gratitude, that's one part that's interesting. We only get one thought at a time and only get one emotion at a time. And if you're doing gratitude training, you're increasing the experience that actually precedes joy. So chasing happiness is actually found to be somewhat fruitful, possibly. I know that most people will say, what do you want in life? They'll say happy. But what we're finding from research is that gratitude is the thing to actually get more connected to, to increase your experience of joy, the frequency and occurrence of it.

So gratitude training is something that is both from a performance aspect, because if you're grateful for where you are and focused on how you want to be, then you have less opportunity to be anxious or nervous or angry, which are our suboptimal, often suboptimal states for performance. Yeah, it's nice. Yeah. Oh, sorry. So gratitude, no habits. Um, you know, I had a lot, I, um, had kind of like my daily routine. Now I have a morning routine, um, you know, of breathing of meditation of, um, you know, this moment of gratitude. I like to walk and have kind of a quiet moment. Um, exercise, you know, is, is somewhere in that. But, um, you know, as someone who lived such a rigid schedule for a long time and, um, you know, at one point I was training

six to 10 hours a day. I was a full-time college student. I was trying to maintain a social life on the side. Um, you know, and, and so I'm really grateful for what my swimming career lined me up for, um, and how it taught me those skills moving forward. So how do you deal with the inner critic now? You know, this is like, there's a great phrase that I've, I love quoting and I, at any moment in time, I'm a standing civil war within myself. And how do you manage the inner critic now that you've, you've faced down some tough stuff and then celebrated being the fastest and then making it to the Olympics. You know, how do you, how have you, um, how do you deal with the inner critic now? Yeah. So, um, for better, for worse, you know, with swimmers, when we retire,

we're not set up for life. We have to start another career, you know? So the joke within the swimming community is like, you know, you just really get a late start on life is how this works out. But, um, I'm how I've kind of, um, dealt with that now. And it's interesting and kind of the work that I do, um, because there's so much learning and there's so much, um, you know, outside variables and putting myself in the position to love this opportunity for growth and kind of deal with, um, a lot of the things I dealt with as an athlete of the, oh my gosh, you know, there's so much better than you. You know, when I was a kid, that's what we love the uncontrollable. So I was working with some swim kids over the weekend and they were like, how do I control my competition? You know, and that's such a common thing as athletes. Like

we want to know what we can do, but obviously there's nothing we can do to control my competition? And that's such a common thing as athletes. We want to know what we can do, but obviously there's nothing we can do to control our competition. And so how I've chosen to deal with my inner critic is I have a pretty steady mindful practice so that I've started to quiet it. But I also, I love to be coached. And this is, oh, go.

When you say, well, so I just want to make sure when you say mindful practice, I don just want to make sure when you say mindful practice, I don't think enough people really know what that means. And they think that, you know, are you talking about being grateful? Are you talking about meditation? And there's, there's mindful eating, moving, mindful breathing. There's so many different types of mindfulness practices. Um, can you talk a little bit more about your practice right now? Yeah, so mine encompasses a handful of different things. So I obviously practice gratitude

and that will always be at the root. I do a 20 minute kind of quiet contemplative meditation or I mean, not contemplative, just meditation, I guess, 20 minute. That's what I stick to. And I normally do it in the mornings. Um, I sometimes do a moving meditation, but it doesn't work for me as well. I, I like the quietness. And so are you talking about a breathing practice? And a lot of people, a lot of times people think when they think about this mindfulness or meditation that you're supposed to get to no thoughts, which is either I'm doing it really wrong, but that's not what it is for me.

For me, it's this thousand thoughts to ten thoughts to one thought over and over and over and over and over and over again. And that one thought for me as well, it sounds like for you is focusing on my one breath at a time. Yep. And then it just becomes really clear when I'm wandering from that. Totally. And I- Is this the same for you?

Is this similar? Yeah, this is a similar for me. Yeah. Totally. And it's kind of changed over the years. It's been like that for about a year now. I've really made it a part of my daily routine. But before, especially when I swam, I did a lot of imagery stuff and some visualization and breath work.

Breath is really important, not only for me as a swimmer being able to kick underwater for a long period of time, but having those moments of calm and being able to have those when I need it. Did you do any underwater breathing where it was like extend all of your breath as long as, as far as you can then go underwater? Did you do any of that deep survival based breathing work for, um, to expose yourself to panic or was it always with physical exertion?

See how far you can go with whatever breath you have. Yeah. On occasion, um, it would be kind of let all your air out, go under and see what happens um and then but for the most part it was the physical elements of it but the adding movement it it went on for so long like we used to do 20 or 30 minute underwater sets where like you'd go

underwater for an entire lap come up you'd have seven to ten seconds to breathe and then you do it again and you do that over and over and so at at the end of this, like you're in just full on panic mode, the gas exchange, that, that, that gas exchange inside your body is pretty hostile by that point. Yeah. Yeah.

And so going back, but that teaches you, sorry, that teaches you a new adaptation. It physiologically, it shifts your body. And then psychologically, you know,

you can do more because you've done it. Yeah. And one of the things that I'm, I, I, I'm learning from you right now is that much is possible when you really, more than you think might be possible, but you actually had this experience that, no, I knew this was coming and I had a lot in me.

But you'd earned the right to say that. Yeah. It took me a while to earn the right to say that. And I had to teach myself that I had the right to say that too. And I, and I had this fear always as a kid, I remember, and I think that this is why it took me so long to figure this out was that I

never wanted to be perceived as arrogant or cocky for my craft. And I think with this, that's why I was resistant for so long to understand what my, like where confidence and self-talk came from, because I was so scared of crossing that line. And you can be really confident, but also have humility. Exactly. And so for me, confidence, I'm curious how you talk about it, but for me, confidence is, um, yeah, I'm pretty sure I could do that. Like, wow, that looks hard. Okay. I could give that a

shot though. It's not like I'm going to show everyone, you know Like, wow, that looks hard. Okay, I could give that a shot though. It's not like, I'm going to show everyone, you know. Is it similar to you? Totally similar. Okay, that looks challenging. Yeah. I think I can. Like, let's do this.

Exactly. There's that tone to it. It's not an absolute, I have this all the time. Yeah, and exactly kind of what I was saying earlier. Like, I want to test myself like i'm so excited and curious to see what's going to happen here yeah so okay i got in the way do you have other habits that are like um that you used or are using now we got gratitude we've got a mindfulness breathing practice i think you said 20 minutes there's something about movement on a regular basis yeah yeah those are ones that i like really really stick to yeah

and kind of ground me when you were competing you were doing imagery yep i was doing imagery um where did you learn the value of imagery um from a sports psychologist that worked with uh the olympic team yeah how long did you work with a sports psychologist or the team work with a sports psychologist uh probably starting at age 12 yeah so pretty young yeah so 12 to 19 uh 12 to 23 23 yeah it was 23 so 10 years of work on the inner game yeah totally there you go yeah and that's awesome yeah i mean isn't it a gift like i don't know this is the whole field that i've dedicated my life i'm not saying he's a gift or she or whoever it was but um the the the learning from science and research and other great competitors, how to optimize the thing that you want to do in your life, whether that thing be swimming or that thing be a great parent or that thing be an entrepreneur, is that there's a craft to everything. Completely.

But also, can you access the craft and deepen the craft through using your mind yeah and until we train it it's kind of sloppy totally you agree oh completely and and i think as an athlete too um like the role that played and and i said this before just like the team of people around you and this is why i have so much gratitude because i couldn't be an expert in you know massage, massage and recovery and sports, I call it and, and technique. Um, you know, I think one of the biggest reasons why I was successful, especially early on was, um, my ability to be coached. Like I love to be coached. I love when someone, you know, tells me what I'm doing wrong and what I'm doing right and how to get better and, and working through things like that just ignites a fire in me. And I get so excited about that.

You know, that I think that that's really pretty common for elite athletes, not all like for sure. Not all. Some people don't want to be told anything, you know, there's always like lots of paths, but at the same time, um, I don't think that that's totally common for most people because being coached feels like that somebody's telling you you're not good enough because they've still haven't decoupled who they are from what they do and i'm not saying it's simple but i i it's refreshing to hear that like you love to get coached because

you know that that's going to help you get better and you're grateful for them paying attention and caring and being totally really smart about what they. Okay. So on the mental skills, what would you say are the most important? Like calm, confidence, deep focus, imagery, pre-performance routines. Yeah. For me, the one when it came to making the Olympic team or not, calm saved my life. It saved my race. And I just remember, um, cause you know, you, you train your whole life for something that comes down to 131 seconds was what it was for me. And I was in a full on panic. So how did you train for calm? Yeah. Um,

so a lot of breathing, um, breathing was fully how, how I, and I learned from an early on, um, an early age working with a sports psychologist, you know, the power of the bell curve and, you know, your body's activation level on a scale of one to ten and five being optimal. This was something that I was familiar with. And I knew when I was too high, you know, and the too high is when you're shaking and, you know, you feel like you're going to vomit and you're just kind of all over the place and ragged breathing. And so I trained this through breathing and, and through that, that practice of breathing that I got ready to clear on. For those who are still listening to this,

how long have we been going? Oh my God. An hour and 20 minutes. Sorry everyone. This has been really, this has been really fun. The Yerkes Dodson, you can Y E Yerkes,

Y E R K E S and Dodson first created this bell-shaped curve that we're talking about in this relationship. So you can take a look at that. But basically the idea is that there's an optimal zone, there's an optimal arousal or activation state for our body to perform well. And there's a second layer of generating calm.

I wonder if this happened for you, is that when you have a perspective about something that is not threatening, but that you can be curious and go into it, that you don't get over-activated because you're not in an alarm state. So it sounds like you did both of those. You're like, let me see what I've got,

which is now the environment is not threatening, but inviting. And then if you had a little bit too much juice or energy and you were able to breathe to bring it down. So you'd say that that would be the one that like that thing was was yeah more so than confidence or neck and neck or maybe neck and neck but but when it came down to making the olympic team calm was what saved me okay and then okay being able to stay calm when your entire swimming career comes down to placing first or second on that day.

The fact that I had had that. So it wasn't calm on the, on the blocks. It was calm at breakfast. It was calm on the drive over. It was calm in the hotel. It was that it was, is that what? Yeah. Well, and it was the constant kind of like activating a little bit too high and then

pulling myself back down. And I just remember 10 minutes before my race, 10 minutes before I made the Olympic team, I was freaking out. And I was sitting with my little sister behind, um, you know, behind the screen of where we're supposed to walk out. And I was in like a full on panic. And I was like, this could be the last race of my career. Like, did I do everything? Did I, um, am I, am I ready? And I had, my inner critic came out wrong in that moment. Amazing. All the work that you've done. Unbelievable.

Yeah. And, but the, but the thing, all the work that I had done saved me because I was able to say, if this is man, it's been an awesome career. Like I want to enjoy this last race.

Like nothing I've ever done before. I want to smile for that five year old girl who jumped into a swimming pool and just completely fell in love with how she felt in the water. Like this race, I want to embody all of those elements. And I was able to control my breathing and just put the biggest authentic smile on my face and go out and swim the race that I wanted to race. It's really cool. This, that's where training really pays off both technically and putting in that body of work,

but also the mental skills to be able to be aware of your thoughts and guide them the way that you want them, even when it's haywire. How fun is that? So fun. And train so much that it's there when you need it. That was the thing where I didn't always see the application of it when I was training it, but I was like, I know that someday I'm going to need this. Might be tomorrow. Might be on the trials. Who knows? Yeah. All right. Um, do you think anyone else is still listening? I know. Okay. I've listened to all of yours. I think some people have gone longer. I think you had an hour 30 recently. We are, we are out of 23. Yeah, that's good. All right. So in psychology, there's these ways to kind of gather quick responses from people.

And so can I just give you a couple of things to riff off of? Pressure comes from? Oh, hurry up. I know. Well, because I've heard so many of your podcasts. I'm joking. Okay. Pressure comes from? Oh, hurry up. I know. Well, because I've heard so many of your podcasts. I'm joking. Okay, pressure comes from?

I mean, the thing that, like, from yourself, it comes from me. It comes from how I deal with my external surroundings and how I deal with things as they come to me and as I process them. And what was creating pressure for you when you were in pursuit of best in the world um or were you in pursuit of best in the world or your personal best my person after 2008 my personal best to before 2008 where i just it was just to be part of the group was it just to be yeah i was just so stoked on life like honestly i like i liked i i i was a part of an awesome team i wanted to show up every day yeah i wanted to be successful but um suffered before that had you had suffered in life before

that um more like personal stuff yeah like you you felt pain and loss i felt pain you know there are a lot of external forces that um how you deal with those external forces or where pressure is created. It can just roll right off you. It all comes down to... Mine was gratitude. The crossroad of my life was... Missing the Olympic team in 2008. If I had a chance to do it over again. I would have sat in more moments of meaning.

And I say that in the sense of, so it's kind of like a steady climb through my career. You know, 15 first national title, 16 international medals, 17 world championships. And I remember in 2009 when I broke the world record, I had an awesome moment. After everyone had left the pool deck, I sat on the block that I had just set the world record in and I sat there and just drank in what that moment meant to me. And, and I obviously remember being on the podium and what that felt like, but it was

this moment of just overwhelming, just so many feelings, you know, much joy so much gratitude so much love and respect um for everything that and and the pain i just remember kind of encompassing all of that so i wish that i had taken those in the best way that you can. Success is defined by me and I've had to change my version of success over the years. Like I always want to compete and I always want to learn and grow. Like that's the motto of my life is, is to be a lifelong learner, to continually be moving forward. And, you know, I'm so grateful for what I was able to accomplish. But if the center point of my life was 2009 when I broke a world record,

like, how sad, you know? And I believe in the power of each moment that, you know, that we're in. And the next one, and this is something, you know, we talk a lot about. So, yeah. I am. I keep using this word, but I'm grateful. I really am. Well, the laugh certainly reflects that for sure.

Okay, here it is. In your words, how do you capture or describe mastery? Yeah. For me, mastery has come to look like a continual advancement in skills, just a hunger of knowledge, a hunger of progression and moving forward and, and taking in all of these things, but also trusting yourself and trusting that, um, that, you know, in my craft, my body knows my mind knows I've been there before and, and the certain amount of trust and risk that go into creating that moment and, and creating that race, I guess, is, is how I would better want to phrase that.

Wow. There you go. Progression, trust. And what was the last part? Risk. Risk. Well, thank you for using your path and being extraordinary what you do and having the ability to articulate it. Thanks. Yeah. So where can people find out what you're doing now? I know that you're going to do some work heading into Rio. Um, and can you just tell folks about what you're up to and where to catch you on that? Yeah. So I have a lot of different things going on. Um, going on the camera side of things to Rio. I'm so excited to tell the stories of my friends and my teammates and, um, that's going to be a blast. Um, if you can find me on social media, um, at Ariana Cougars, my first and last name.

My website is under construction right now, but in the future, it's arianacentral.com. So, yeah, I'm always on social media, always doing something. Is there any questions you want people to ask you? Can we open that up a little bit? Do you answer questions on social media? Yeah, I i mean if someone sends me a question for sure okay um social media is so cool and i always try to be um as authentic as i can in that um and and really let kind of like the the fire come through so i i welcome and invite questions twitter i i love twitter is twitter so I love Twitter. Twitter is so like engaging. Spell your name. So everyone knows. Yeah. Yeah. A R I A N A K U K O R S.

Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. I love any questions on today. I mean, send them my way. I'd be happy to answer and engage and sounds great. Okay.

Thank you. All right. So let's do this. Um, if you are still listening, um, we, we appreciate it. And at the same time,

um, it'd be great if you went to uh shared this somehow with someone else and on itunes to just do a quick search for finding mastery and then finding mastery.net if it's easier to find this conversation there uh and you know i've learned this we oh this just, this just this week, news and note knows news and noteworthy on iTunes. Yeah. I'm not sure how that happened. I know. It's so awesome.

That's so good. Thank you for everyone that helped with that. But I did learn that if, um, when people do reviews and, and add comments that that does help generate some buzz for it. So appreciate that. And that's maybe at some point, some point we can do it again and maybe get it down to, let's see, we're at 131. I think you've broken the record. Okay. So it's another world record holder, longest podcast on finding mastery. Thanks for sticking with us. Okay. So,

all right. Thank you again. And yeah, all the best. All right. Thank you for listening. I hope you had a great time. I know that this conversation with Ariana went long, but it was just rich and it was so good that I wanted to take some time to unpack some of them here. So obviously what she's done is stared down adversity and she's really done this in an incredible way. And that's really the part of her path to mastery that's so phenomenal is that she's been the fastest in the world at her sport and she's really had to face down adversity to get there. So if you're interested to do some of the mindset training that was mentioned in the

conversation, and I want to make it simple. I want to just, if we do this in a really rich way, we'd spend another 60 minutes talking about just one or two mental skills. But let's just start. Let's start with something really quick, really light, something that you could begin training. And you might already be doing this. And maybe this is just a reinforcement to keep rolling with it. But here's two things that you could get started with.

The first is mindfulness training. And there's two basic camps of mindfulness training. One is, well, let me back up. There's lots of mindfulness types mindfulness training. And there's two basic camps of mindfulness training. One is, well, let me back up. There's lots of mindfulness types of training, eating mindfully, walking mindfully, moving mindfully, breathing mindfully. And let's just do the one that she talked about, which is mindfulness training that centers on breathing training. And the way that you might be able to set this up is just focus deeply on one breath at a time, and that's it. And now there's a mechanics or an anatomy of a deep breath.

And what that looks like is if you just put your hand on your stomach and you relaxed your abdominal wall, your gut would basically pop out. And if you took a deep breath in, but you just started by relaxing your abdominal wall and your stomach expanded and you kept breathing, and eventually you'd bring all of that fullness of lungs to the top of your lung, that would be part of a deep breath. That'd be the inhale. And then if you felt a pinch at the top or a little tension or a pause at the top, and then

you let go of all of that, and then where the exhale would be longer than the inhale. So if the inhale was about four seconds and you held it for just a little bit and holding is not quite the right word, you just paused at the top and felt that tension and then released all of that tension. And I mean, literally enjoy the exhale. You don't have to worry about the way you sound or look,

just release it and then pause at the bottom where the inhale is longer than the, I'm sorry, where the exhale is longer than the inhale. And if you could just start by setting a timer to do like a, have a one minute goal where you just started one minute goal would be about eight breaths somewhere in that neighborhood. And then if one minute is working, set it up for two minutes set it for three minutes maybe just do what would be considered the minimal effective dose for getting some behavioral change i'm sorry some neural changes some psychological changes which would be about six minutes and that's it so what you end up doing is mindfulness training if you're just focusing on your breathing is focusing on just one breath at a time. And what will happen is that your mind will wander.

It'll just the natural state of your mind will just wander. And when that happens, can you bring it back to just your breath? It's it sounds so simple. And when you play with this, it is really challenging. And it trains for a deeper calmness. It trains for awareness of your thoughts. It trains for the skill of refocus. So there's an incredible reasons why to do this. And it's difficult to talk about.

It's more challenging to do, but it's simple. And I'd love to challenge you, support you, and challenge you to invest in mindfulness training. You've heard from Ariana how it's helped. And I think you've heard from a bunch of folks in these podcasts and these conversations how they've actually been doing some sort of training. So that would just be the very, very beginnings of it. And the second thing she talked about was imagery.

And imagery is really, there's a lot of science around it and the way that i i would hope to capture this for you is that it's it's creating the most beautiful movie in your mind where you feel it and you see it and you smell it and and you create this beautiful movie in your mind that's so alluring and so important to you that it if you get in it, it's amazing. And when I say get caught, that you just really create all the nuances that you can. And the idea is, can you spend time in your own mind in a disciplined way to create the way you want to be or respond to something in your future, something that hasn't happened yet. So those are the two things that I'd like to pull out that from this conversation, mindfulness training and imagery and mindfulness

training. If you started in the morning, great. You know, while, while things are fresh, that that's unbelievable. And then maybe you could button it up with imagery at the end of the night, or you could flip it around. There's no real deep science around the order of this. There's science around both of these training crafts, but the order of them is left to the art of it so mindfulness training and imagery there you go have fun with it love to hear your feedback on it find us on social media at michaelgerveil.com or findingmastery.net for some reason i think twitter and facebook um seem to be a bit easier to respond to. The Facebook link is facebook.com slash finding mastery. Okay. Hope you're doing

great and enjoy your training. Take care. 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 or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter we send out every Wednesday.

Punch over to findingmastery.com slash newsletter to sign up. The show wouldn't be possible without our sponsors and we take our recommendations seriously. And the team is very thoughtful about making sure we love and endorse every product you hear on the show. If you want to check out any of our sponsor offers you heard about in this episode, you can find those deals at findingmastery.com slash sponsors. And remember, no one does it alone. The door here at Finding Mastery is always open to those looking to explore the edges and the reaches of their potential so that they can help others do the same. So join our community, share your favorite episode with a friend, and let us know how we can continue to show up for you. Lastly, as a quick reminder, information in this podcast and from any material on the Finding Mastery

website and social channels is for information purposes only. If you're looking for meaningful support, which we all need, one of the best things you can do is to talk to a licensed professional. So seek assistance from your healthcare providers. Again, a sincere thank you for listening. Until next episode, be well, think well, keep exploring.