Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Bonus Episode: Aaron Lazar & Dr. Michael Gervais on the Mastery of Self and the Journey to Reverse ALS | Impossible Dreams Podcast

Episode Date: November 10, 2025

Welcome to a special Monday episode on the Finding Mastery channel.Every once in a while, we come across a story or a person that moves us in a profound way — and this is one of those moments.Recently, I was invited by Aaron Lazar to join him on his new podcast, Impossible Dreams. Aaron is an incredible human — a Broadway and television actor, singer, and storyteller — who’s facing ALS with extraordinary courage, humor, and grace. He’s also pushing toward an almost unthinkable goal: to become the 64th person on record to ever reverse symptoms from ALS.I enjoyed the conversation so much that I knew I wanted to share it with you here on Finding Mastery — to raise awareness, and to honor Aaron’s message about purpose, connection, and resilience in the face of life’s hardest challenges.Takeaways from this episode:Why mastery of self — not just mastery of craft — changes the way we meet adversity.How awareness, self-talk, and gratitude can shift what’s possible in any moment.What it means to move from “my team” to “the team.”How purpose and love become anchors when life feels uncertain.The small, daily practices that help us stay grounded, connected, and alive to what matters most.Enjoy this conversation with Aaron and myself — and let it remind you of the strength that lives inside all of us, even in the storm.____________________________________________________Links & ResourcesSubscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: 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: findingmastery.com/morningmindset!Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and XAaron Lazar: http://www.aaronlazar.com and https://www.youtube.com/@ALImpossibleDreams ALS: www.als.orgSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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women. So if you're looking for a smarter inside-out approach to hair health, go to Nutrafall.com and take their hair wellness quiz. You can also get $10 off your first month plus free shipping with the code finding mastery. Again, go to Nutrafall.com, N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L, Nutrafall.com and use the code finding mastery for $10 off and free shipping. Welcome to a special Monday episode on the Finding Mastery Channel. Every once in a while, we come across a story or a person that moves us in a profound way. And this is one of those moments. Recently, I was invited by Aaron Lazar to join him on his new podcast, Impossible Dream. Aaron is an incredible human. He's a Broadway and television actor. He's a singer and storyteller. And he's also facing ALS with extraordinary courage, with humor and a sense of

grace about him that is uncanny. He's also pushing toward an almost unthinkable goal to become the 64th person on record to ever reverse symptoms from ALS. I enjoyed this conversation so much that by the end, I knew I wanted to share it with you here on the Finding Mastery Feed as well. I wanted to raise awareness and to also honor Aaron's message about purpose, connection, and resilience in the face of life's hardest challenges. So with that, here's my conversation with Aaron Lazare from Impossible Dream podcast. Dr. Michael Treve, welcome to A Possible Job.

I'm so excited to have here. I'm stoked to be here with you. Thank you for creating the space to make this happen for me. I appreciate that. Thank you. So you are by not just my account, but the accounts of so many incredibly top performing elite athletes, humans, right? Not just elite performers in their fields, but performers as human

beings. You are the master of helping all these people find mastery. How did that start for you? Very kind. First, I think that I would not accept the position of being a master. I'm on the path, and I'm committed to the path of understanding mastery of self through mastery of craft. And so the craft is just this thing that somebody can do exceptionally well or they're really deeply interested in it, whatever it might be. And it's almost like a, I don't want to sound blasphemous to the communities I'm in, but I'm not that interested in the craft.

I'm interested in the way that the person orientates their mind, orientates their relationships with others, orientates their relationship with experience, to be able to pour in to some something that looks really easy, but is incredibly intricate and complicated to do. So I'm much more interested in mastery of self than mastery of craft. But you put the two together, you've got something that's pretty special. I mean, I think that just leads me right back to, would you say that mastery of self is, is in essence, a spiritual practice? I think it can be.

I think I think you'll recognize what I'm about to say here is that when you speak to people that are extraordinary in the way that they live their life. So they have a great life. It's not something that is dictated by the external conditions. It's primarily dictated from the way that they work from the inside out. And when you talk about the spiritual path, this is the part I was going to say, is that most of those extraordinarys,

they talk about the same things. most of the 11 world or all of the 11 world religions kind of talk about the same thing you know which is the deeper principles and working from those deep principles to line up your thoughts your words and your actions eloquently in even the most rugged and hostile of conditions so we would never throw somebody to a hostile condition and say you know be your very best right now without training how to line up thoughts words and actions in calm environments and then a little more stressful environment and then even more stressful and then you keep pushing it to one day you have the sense of of full command or early on the path kind of a you know haphazard command but you still have a sense of like how do I work how does thought one and thought two work together with emotion A and emotion B and until we become aware, I'm going to bring this back to spiritual, until we become aware of how our inner world works, we'll never really be able to be so settled and fully present to understand all of the

gifts of life. And those gifts are relational. They're gifts with the experience. They're gifts with the sense of awe that Mother Nature can provide us. So we do need to work on the internal experience to be able to experience the riches of the external experience. You're just, I could not agree with If you're more, you're preaching to the choir, I have looked into this camera or this camera many times to say, I wish I could have learned everything that I've learned over the last couple of years without ALS. Maybe you can. And I think you've just said it in a much more, it got me emotional because what, when you said, you can't throw somebody into that crisis and then expect them to be an elite mindset performer. But that happens to people. It happened to me, although when I look back, I could go, oh, I see how all of these moments or this particular experience was training for, you know, laying the foundational groundwork of mindset mastery that allowed me to then tap into my highest potential with this crisis in front of me and go, okay, I'm going to put all that to work for me.

But what you're saying is, I mean, it's the heartfelt mission of why this podcast exists. It's to say to people, you have an opportunity, hopefully, most of you, have an opportunity before the incredible adversity to just start to be curious about self-mastery right now. And it will always be there for you. You're either in a storm or heading to it, you know, is a first principle for me. Yeah, it's a first principle for me. And it reminds me that somebody that I'm speaking with, it seemingly seems okay, could be in the middle of a storm, or they're heading to a storm. Me too.

And so I want to be my very best in the most challenging of situations so that I can, why? Okay, so it begs the question like, why? There's something about meeting a moment with eloquence, meeting a moment with dignity, meeting a moment to be able to know that you're not in it alone, but that you are an emblem and a lifeline and or a piece of hope for other people as well. So nobody's in this thing alone. It's too complicated. And nobody certainly does the extraordinary alone. It's way too complicated. So we need each other.

This whole kind of thing is emotions and relationships are running the whole show. And oftentimes when we meet ourselves in a moment where we come up short or we come up in a way that we don't have a way through, you know, because we feel like we've just fallen into a thousand pieces. And I don't know what it's like, of course, to get a diagnosis that fundamentally changes everything about my physiology, which is what you received. And I would imagine that you fall into a thousand pieces plenty of times and that you've also squared up with it. You've wrestled with that dragon. And you're coming through it in a way like, look, there's some stuff I learned.

To be an elite performer, there's some things I learned. And that has helped me a lot. I know how to work with stress. I know how to prepare my mind. I know how to be emotional in moments where other people might be overrun by their emotions. You know, that you have a way to harness that. So you have trained in many ways, I would imagine that would help you. And probably that training was not exactly everything you needed.

There's more to learn. Yeah. So I think you're really unique when I was watching what you've been doing over the last handful of years. Like you're in a really unique situation to help point to the power of understanding how to use your psychology. And again, I'm stoked to sit here with you. It means so much coming from you. I appreciate that. And it certainly has felt that way.

It's felt bigger than me, so to speak. But, yeah, I mean, I mean, it's as simple as when you audition for 200 roles as an actor and get told no and keep insisting, right, that I'm going to keep going to keep going. That kind of, you know, it's a blessing and a curse. You talk about this. Wait, can I say, yeah, please. When you first said, when I got diagnosed, I was like, all right, I'm going to be the one to kick its ass. I said, oh, yeah, he's, I see, I see me in that. Like, I see most of the extradinaries.

They're unreasonable. It's unreasonable to think that you can be the one. It's unreasonable to think that you can be the one in anything. But somehow, somebody is, and why not you? That's right. Yeah, why not, why not be the one that changes the narrative? Why not be the one that takes your family narrative forward or takes a community for it? Why not?

You have to earn that right to be that radically unreasonable. Otherwise, you're just kind of like a kook. But when you said it, it was organic to you. Yeah. Are you still in that same frame that you're going to beat it? Or are you in a different, have you shifted that approach? And I'm not sure what beating it means, by the way. Yeah.

Well, and I wasn't, you know, pretty early on, I was quoted as saying, I think beat is the wrong verb. You know, it's to heal from it because there's so many ways to heal. and what am I going to war with, you know? And I really wanted it to be that verb as kind of like a former athlete, you know, a guy who just continually wants to be the best at whatever I do. And it's tough to go to go to war with an invisible thing

that's doing a thing that you want to talk about unreasonable. I mean, the disease itself is totally unreasonable. I love the word. I used to, I used the word incomprehensible up to this point as a word that, That just, it doesn't make sense. Why would the body decide to kill itself while the mind remains, you know, it doesn't make any sense. Although, you know, in reading all these books and doing all this research, German new medicine gave me an incredibly powerful image.

There was a doctor and his wife, they lost a child. And in the absence and the loss and the grief, he developed testicular cancer. she developed ovarian cancer and they looked at each other and went, this can't just be random. There's got to be something going on here. And they psychologically determined for themselves that their bodies were trying to make another kid, right?

And they looked at ALS. They started to create what's called German New Medicine. Robbie, we should probably check me on that because it's been a minute since I checked in with German new medicine. But for ALS, I remember my mind being blown because it said ALS is a disease of the person feeling prey to a predator, either an event in life, a person in life, or life itself. And so the body plays dead. And I thought to myself,

is that me? Despite all my success, has something caused me to be, feel like prey to life? And oh, hell's, yes, it did. I had slowly eroded away my trust. in myself, my belief in myself, to accomplish the dreams that I had for myself and my family, and I had lost my trust in life to support me. So I was essentially propping up

this hero's journey of, you know, leading man, good-looking, great physique, but under the hood I was a mess, and I was just driven by a lot of fear. Depressed or anxious? Axis. Yeah.

So you abandoned and abandoned the kind of dignity that you would hold within yourself for the approval and praise from others? You know, when I was looking at your book, which correct me if I'm wrong, a couple years ago, first rule of mastery, fear of stop worrying about what people think of you. You know, you're going to fear of people's opinions, FOPO, as a fun phrase. Yeah. I think it was very deeply psychological for me, meaning I can look back and know that my soul chose the theater thing. It just started as a kid. I want to ask you a little bit about when this all sort of you were inspired to head down this path. But when you lose that, when you lose that faith and trust in the path and start going, you talk about this too, that true mastery is. is not what I did, which is pushing and pushing and just keep pushing, right, for more to get more, be more, do more, have more, because I'm afraid. I'm afraid that if this acting job ends and I won't be able to be the father to my kids or the provider to my kid, it was very deeply critical of myself.

My self-worth, as you like to talk about, was tied to the validation of others. I just didn't know it. Yeah, right. I mean, I was not aware of that. Yeah, I think that's the case for most of us. So what you're describing, you're right, is not mastery, a path of mastery. That's like the path of high performance, which is this idea that, you know, I'm, that there's like this proverbial treadmill of high performance. Get on it grind, grind, grind until, you know, you can't anymore.

And eventually, you'll you'll have something from that, but you'll lack, I think, much more. You'll have some money, some whatever. Like, it's a pretty well-seen recipe about that hustle hard, grind hard thing. And I'm not saying that work is not part of the process. I'm just saying that that sloppy proverbial treadmill for high performance is not what it's cracked up to be. And it's quite dangerous. You can achieve a lot from it. And especially if you happen to find your genetic coatings matched with the environment that supports that thing, like you for the voice and the smile and the charisma to be on stage.

You know, like if you find that match, the high performance treadmill, you know, works a little bit more efficiently. But it's still, there's still a metallic feeling to the path of high performance versus the path of mastery. There's some warmth and contour to it. Both are equally difficult, you know, like both have equal challenges in there. I'm just more interested in the contour and the kind of more enduring principles that come with mastery. and I do think that they are more aligned with the 11 world religions more than they are with the hustle, hard, get after it mentality. Finding Master is brought to you by Defender.

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And we can speak from personal experience here. At Finding Mastery, we've used LinkedIn jobs to find our last several hires. If you follow Finding Mastery on LinkedIn, you would have seen these posts. And as an aside, if you don't follow us, please do. We post content there that you can't get anywhere else. It's how we found our recent project managers, Janelle and Taylor, and it's how we found our lead producer, Emma. We love

what LinkedIn has created and has been such a great service for us as we've grown. If you're looking to grow your team with intention, this is a great place to start. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash finding mastery. That's LinkedIn.com slash finding mastery to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Since you've started this work, which is I think 20 plus years ago to today. Have you seen a shift in that what is accepted as success, which I think used to be the hustle grind and now more people's eyes, there's more curiosity about these another way of doing it? I don't think so. I think that it's, I think the hustle hard anxiety provoking narrative is still pervasive.

and the value that comes from external is still the predominant value for most people, meaning that I'm okay if I've got money in the bank. I'm okay if people laugh at my jokes. I'm okay if I've got a position of power. I'm okay if I drive a nice car and have a nice watch. And there's nothing wrong with any of those. But when they are the primary source, like my father-in-law always says, he came to the U.S. from Central America with $100.

His dad died when he was three years old. his mom came first when he was I think I think he was 12 and she came so he was kind of left with some family members in a neighborhood that didn't have a whole lot she saved a bunch of money from the U.S. sent it back she didn't have papers okay this was 50 years ago and it's the American dream because he came by himself with a hundred bucks in his name a 15 year old kid My God. Right? Yeah.

And he came. And so something he reminds me of all the time. He's like, look, if you can afford three watches, buy three watches. It's awesome. But, and he looks at me, he's like, but what are you really doing here? I'm like, yeah, that's a right question. What am I really, really, really doing here? What am I, what do I really, really, really, really want in this spinning rock that we're on,

in this made-up language that we're both using? You have your body. I have my body. Neither of us chose it. We're trying to do the best we possibly can with what we have. have, like, what do I really, really, really, really want? And I think that's a foundational question to wrestle with. And until you get clear on it, maybe yours, maybe I've heard you talk about the gift of ALS, which I find to be a remarkable perspective, that I think maybe the gift

that you're referring to is that it forced me to answer that question, to get honest with that question, like, holy shit, like, what was I doing? A little hollow, a little empty, you know, the anxiety that you're talking about? 100%. World-class talent. Highly recognize. You walk into a room and people look at you and they're like, oh, fuck, there's Aaron. So it's not until we get to that place where some of us get forced to our knees, but at some

point that we're like, wait, I need to square up with what am I really doing here. You and I don't know how much time we're going to have left. Nobody does. And that's meant to be inspirational, not desperation. 100%. Do you think that what we're talking? what you're really talking about there is purpose. That's it.

It's 100%. So to try and just empathize with every viewer and listener, I was aware that my purpose was to become a Broadway star. I was also then aware that that wasn't affording me the life that I had dreamed of, so I needed to become a bigger star, which was, let me become a TV star, which was way harder than I thought it was going to be. And then that wasn't enough either because it wasn't. having fast enough either, right? So now I needed to be a movie star in an age when movies

were, you know, everything. I mean, it was, it was sort of this pressure. Just kept putting all this pressure on myself. Aaron, those aren't goal. Those are goals, not purpose. They're correct. But I thought they were purpose because I connected them to if I am going to be the father to my kids and the provider to my family that my father, you know, was, is to, you know, my dad, by the way, completely selfless working, I mean, 73, still working almost seven days a week. Every single thing goes to his kid.

You know, just that was the bar of like, I'm an actor. If I'm unemployed right now, that means I'm a schmuck. You know what I mean? Like, what am I doing? And so I just, again, I created this narrative. I created this story and I put

all this pressure on myself. And I thought that was my purpose was to just, well, I live the purpose of being the Broadway star. Now that's got a bit bigger thing, and so it's all just connected to a purpose of entertaining people, being creative, and making this millionaire lifestyle for my family that I've always dreamed of. It was so void of purpose that I would often be in conflict with myself. I would feel like I'm on stage in a show. There's something missing here.

I don't know what it is. I'm happy, right, when it's all going well. I'm a mess when it's not, and there's no consistency, there's no evenness, and I don't know how to align my career with my values. And you talk about this in brilliant ways about how, like you've been saying, it's not about what's on the outside. You have to align with how to create sustained excellence, I think I've read you talk about, which has nothing to do with more work, more work, more, work, more work. It has everything to do with aligning with your true purpose and your values. How does somebody start to do that? First, I operationalize excellence. So for me,

excellence is being at home with myself wherever I am. And so that sense of, you know, internal peace, you know, like to my best ability. That's what I think excellence is. Amen. So it's not, it's not the other thing, which is like, oh, he hit just the right note. There is excellence in that, too. You know, but the deeper part of excellence for me that is 100% under my control, which puts me in a lever and a position of real power is like I can control

my inner experience. If I'm highly skilled, I'm really good at it. If I'm early on the path, I'm not so good at it. I've got all these thoughts happening, all these emotions that are flooding, and I don't have the requisite skills,

requisite skills to be able to manage them, but over time, one of the NFL teams I'm working with right now, one of the first principles is there's a handful of first principles that I help NFL coaches and CEOs work through like what are the first principles that you're going to share throughout your organization and with this NFL team I'll come back to first principles in a minute with this NFL team it's about stacking wins we're not we're not expected to be excellent right now we are expected though to be to bring our very best into this rep whether it's in the gym or whether it's

you know, in film or it's on the field or whatever. Be your very best, whatever that is. Strain, try, give yourself to it, be vulnerable, have the courage, like pour into it. And then you start stacking reps, start stacking wins, if you will. And so I think it's like this, I don't know, it's filling up the, your engine of your car one thimble of oil at a time. It just takes time, you know, but so what are the things that you're, you said, what are the things we can do?

The whole thing begins with awareness. without awareness there's three best practices for awareness the first is mindfulness or meditation that is a way to understand what's happening inside of you and outside of you without critique and judgment

so that's a best practice and according to science you know eight minutes is kind of a minimum threshold up or just 20 minutes a day is kind of a bit more optimized but if my first teacher you know he was like it was about 30 years ago if he was listening to me

say count your minutes he'd be like oh my god he missed the whole thing, you know, but us Westerners kind of like, you know, some concrete. Give me the number. Give me the number, man. So eight to 20 minutes a day of that would be a really interesting investment. So mindfulness meditation for awareness.

That's number one. Number two is journaling. So it's hard to fake yourself out when you're writing. It's hard to write and be honest. That's a difficult thing to do. It takes a real discipline to do it. But it does increase your awareness of what's happening. And then the third is conversations with people of wisdom.

people that have lived compellingly interesting, introspective, discerning lives, that they have radical reference points. And they realize that, you know, one of the greatest gifts they can give the other person is to hold the mirror up and be deeply interested in what the mirror has to say. And when you have conversations with those folks, you change. They change too a little bit, but you change. And you become more aware of how your inner world is impacting your, outer world and how the outer world, there's all types of trip wires that I have, how that my

external world can trip me into, you know, kind of low-level thinking, shitty thinking, we call it in sport, or like more beautiful, spacious type of thinking. There's two types of thoughts. There's thoughts that constrict us and thoughts that open us up. Yep. You know, and I think one of our jobs, yours and mine, is to understand how that aperture works and keep the aperture as open. and wide as we possibly can, even when our brain is saying, tighten up, get out of here, this is not okay. Sometimes it might be. Sometimes the best thing is to leave or to tighten up embrace. But not always. Not with my love, not with my wife. Not with like a teammate of mine that, you know, I tripped on an anxiety wire around them or something. Like, I got to keep that

thing open. Yeah. Yeah. So anyways, those are the three best practices for awareness. Finding Master is brought to you by Momentus. If you follow us. for a while, you know how highly I think of momentous and what they're trying to do in the supplement industry. They talk about something they call performance for life. I want to say that again, performance for life. I love that because it puts words as something we hear at finding mastery care deeply about. We do not believe in high performance for high performances sake alone. We want to help others unlock their potential that is already within them so that they can experience all the richness, all the fullness of life. That's what I want for you. And that's what

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slash finding mastery. When you use the code finding mastery, I think you're really going to love it. Again, that's branch basics.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery to get started. Would you say that self-talk is somewhere in there? Yeah, self-talk is... Let's call it a tool. So when you understand how you're speaking to yourself, about yourself, about another person, about an experience, about your future self, like, we are talking to ourselves a lot. It's part of how we're making sense to ourselves.

So when you increase your awareness of how you speak to yourself, then you can, it's like you're going upstream a little bit to the rapids of life. Like, there's rapids coming, like we talked about earlier. But when you become aware of how you're speaking to yourself, then you get to optimize, you get to play, you get to change it. But if you're not aware, it feels like in the NFL, we talk about bang, bang plays. Like, it happens real fast. Player one hits two people kind of at the same time, like bang, bang. And the whole thing is like over before you know it. And actually, if you slow down the tape, you would see that he put his right.

right foot down first and then kind of scooped in a certain way and then was able to adjust to hit two people, two players at the same time, like, wow, bang, bang, bang. And in life, it's the same way, which when you slow it down, when you go upstream and you're aware of how you speak to yourself, you get to play a different game. And that game in life is to choose the types of thoughts and to harvest the types of thoughts that you'd like to have later. So if you think about gardening as a metaphor. I'm with you on this one.

Yeah. So if you and I are going to gripe and complain and critique, we're harvesting. We're watering the seeds of whatever those things are that I just mentioned. And in a different way, if you and I choose to think about or talk about things that are of abundance and interesting and curious and hard to solve and like what would it take for us? us to do this and what are the resources we need and shit yeah that that that that sucks and that's difficult but holy hold on how do we how do we actually embrace the da-da-da so those you can water and harvest the seeds so that they show up more naturally later so it's harvesting the thoughts that

you want to have those seeds if you will and it's also if you're upstream in the the rapids of life then you can choose more eloquently the thoughts that you'd like to have I just love both of those images and both of them have been a part that's I would say probably unconsciously at first and then very consciously a part of my mindset throughout this journey right what do you think the mindsets are that are required to live well in the modern world and I'd love to know your take because your world five years ago probably was radically different and the mindsets were radically different. Like, what have you come to learn about the most important mindsets that people can develop? It's so much of what you're talking about. It's that I used to look at people

whose success I admired, people who I wish would have been mentors, right? People whose level of success I wanted to achieve and attain. And instead of having the maturity or the expansive consciousness to to view these people and their lives from the lens of what does it feel like to be that person? What do they feel when they wake up in the morning? What do they feel when they're at work? What do they feel when they go to bed? I was just looking at it like, oh, when you make a movie like that as a movie star, you're

doing great and that house makes you feel great. and all the traps, which, I mean, I don't know how I fell hook, line, and sinker for it. Now that I'm on the other side going, come on, I was smarter than that. But we all kind of are, I think the system is still one that educates young people into a society that values those things. Values performance and values external recognition rewards. 100%, which is why I was hoping to hear a different answer from you that things have changed. changed and it's it's sad to me that they haven't it also means okay there's more work to do and more conversations to be had but what do i think the mindset is now you know it's it's you use the word

being by yourself at home uh you use the word peace and that to me being at being at home with yourself being at oh okay yes so not being not being in a physical location just that felt sense of being at home with yourself for me it's actually directly tied to home because whenever I had found myself prior to ALS, I mean, I literally almost asked God. I did ask God. I stood in my kitchen two weeks before muscle twitches started with this four and whatever years ago. And I said, God, I just want to know how to love myself as much as this partner that I had just broken up with in a relationship because as soon as that breakup happened, I felt myself

totally unable to be at home with myself at home. I was like, dude, it doesn't matter that you just had your first series record on TV show. Doesn't matter that you just moved into an amazing place. Doesn't matter that your kids are doing great. You suck. You're a failure. What are you going to do? You need a relationship or you need a job or you need to.

And so the fact that through transforming myself being very aware from moment one, okay, I'm going to beat this, which, you know, it became, I'm going to heal from this somehow. I had no idea that that healing meant change. But in change of what? Change of change of my thoughts, change of my feelings, change of my behavior, change of my beliefs, change of my disciplined practice of whatever became the patterns of my life that I had been unconscious of. I realized all of that was creating my life. It was my life. So you had something outside of you that forced you to examine your internal experience. And how have you gone through, I still want to come back to the mindsets, but how have you gone through changing your thoughts?

I don't think you're changing your feelings, but changing the way you're working with your feelings. Or maybe changing the types of feelings that you are having as a reflective response to like, I don't know, spilled milk and or looking at yourself in the mirror. Exactly. It was like I used the example of I would do the dishes. and be so angry. And I'd be angry because I was unaware, but I was judging myself as a failure that I wasn't making enough money in my job

or I wasn't this, I wasn't enough. Pre-diagnosis. Yes, pre-diagnosis. And so I was unhappy with who I was and my life, and I couldn't get out of the tractor beam of that. No matter how hard I try. I knew I didn't want to feel that way. I didn't know how to stop feeling that way.

it became a conscious sort of choice of like, all right, look, man, with whatever time I've got left, the number one thing is I want to enjoy my life. And so I've got to change these so that I'm doing, whether I'm doing dishes or sitting in a chair while my partner has to feed me because my hands don't work, I want to be the happiest guy in the world. Like I want to be not just surviving,

I want to be thriving. And it's just disciplined practice of, choosing, as you said just a few minutes ago, we get to choose over and over and over and over again to break the, you get off of those old train tracks and start new ones and trust that if I just keep going, I'll get there. There being to be in the moments of my life enjoying every single one of them regardless of what the destination is. It's possible. And you're resting on good science. Oh, well, that's good. Tell me a little bit about that because I've been And I've just been preaching that it feels true, guys, but like, you know.

Yeah. Well, before I drop into the science mode a little bit, what do you name that mindset? I would call it the victory mindset instead of the victim mindset. It's cool. Victory. And then so it begs a question, like, so I defined excellence earlier. Have you got to the place where you're able to define what victory means? Yes.

victory is for me staying on purpose, in belief, that making a full reversal of this. And by the way, if I get a chance to mention it, I do there are now 63 reversals of sporadic ALS, ALS reversals.org, that I can be, you know, at first it was 61, and then it was 62, and then it was 60. Now it's 64, whatever it is. I don't care what the number is. There's 63 people that have reversed ALS. Yes. Yes. And in fact, side note, you know, Brett, my buddy, Brett Goldberg, my business partner, producer on the podcast, along with Robbie Shaw, Brett and I, after talking to Mark Cuban, who was on the show, and Mark said, okay, you want to know what I would do with AI to attack ALA?

Here's what I would do. So we now have what's called the impossible dream machine with a data science company, Mark's support, and two of the top of ALS docs in the country, including the one at Duke, which is our alma mater, on the board of this basically trying to use AI to look at these reversals and understand and go, how has nobody ever done that?

And the doctors go, well, we've always wanted to, but there hasn't been the time and there hasn't been the money. And so... Oh, this is pretty rad. It's pretty cool. But again, like if you told me this, This is where my life would be five years ago. But even that, yeah, right, 100%.

Even that number, though, creates a different narrative of possibility. You know, like, I wish it wasn't true for me. I wish that I didn't need some sort of confirmation that something can be done. But when I know that one other has done it, let alone 63, it does create a little bit more space for me to go, yeah, okay. I wish, as I'm saying it out loud, I wish that I didn't need that. I wish I didn't either. Yeah, but I do. And that's why I need in my life people to keep pointing to what is possible.

I'm constantly thinking about what is better than probable, like what is possible for me and for another person. I call it like, so it's an actual best practice for me, is to sit with another person, to get to know them a little bit, and then go away, close my eyes, and imagine what is possible for that person? What's the vision I can hold or cast for that person that is unreasonable? But just maybe if we thread this thing. Bonnie Master is brought to you by Lisa. Sleep is a cornerstone of high performance, full stop. It touches everything, how we think, how we feel, how we move. And when we get quality sleep

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this publicly almost two years ago. Your diagnosis? Yeah. And I had only told my kids about it just months before that. So for about a year and a half, I just said, I don't want anybody worrying about me. I am going to take this on. I'm going to go on a ride and I'm going to see what I learn and I'm going to see what I can do and I'm going to do it.

By the time I, by the time the story sort of came out very unintentionally and then the Broadway media started to put it out there and people, magazines calling me and it's like they said, well, we'll pray for you. Everyone was saying, we'll pray for you, we'll pray for you. And out of nowhere, I just said, can I ask you a favor? Can that prayer for me please be you envisioning and imagining me 100% and filling that vision with your love and your magic, which is what you just said. What is possible for that person?

Because that to me is the prayer. I don't need the fear. I don't want anyone's fear. I don't want anyone's pity. I know that's true with a lot of not just ALS patients, but other people dealing with disease. In order to change the game, we have to change the level of consciousness

at which we are playing the game. And to me, that's one way to do it. You know, the second step in this, as I'm nodding my head to everything you're saying, is I think it's really important when I do that thing of using my imagination is really what I'm talking about. And you're calling your consciousness.

I'm talking about my imagination in this sense. And then to calibrate it with the other person. Share it. So the way that I do this is, let's say it's you and me. And I go, hey, listen, I'm going to go away and, like, really try to think about a compelling future that both of us sign up for. So I go away, and I say, I want you to do the same. And let's come back and talk about it.

Like, okay, good. So I go away a couple days later, we meet back up. And I say, you want to go first? You want me to go first? Right. And sometimes they'll go, no, you go. I love this. I love it.

Yeah. And then what I'm doing, if I'm sharing first or second, it doesn't much matter. But I'm looking for pupil dilation or constriction. I'm looking for body language. I want to see that I just shock the system or did I shoot too low? So I want to... Which is which? Dilation is...

So when we're interested, we're dilated. We're tighten it up when we're constricted. And so let's say another more easy is like body language. like if they kind of give the frontalis muscles and they squint their eyes a little bit, like, that's all you see? You know, or the eyes come up like, whoa, you see that?

So we're just looking for like micro expressions or full expressions, not necessarily the language, but the connection between body and verbal language is what we're looking for, the connection. Okay. And that calibration has to be important because if I overshop

and the person doesn't believe it's possible, it's not going to happen. and now I'm signing up for this weird game. I've got to try to pull somebody to... I'm not into that game at all. If I undershot, and they go, no way, dude. I might have undershot for you because I didn't know about reversals.

And I don't know if my imagination would have allowed me to go to a full reversal. So the calibration's really important. Because let's say I say, I don't know, something, whatever it might be, and then you come back and you go, no, dude, like 64. Remember that number, Mike? 64.

Maybe somebody beats me. maybe I'm 65, I don't know, but that's what I'm shooting for. And on the journey for 65, 64, what number do you like better? Let's go with 64 right now. Let's go right for it. Let's go for you. Okay, good, I see you. Let's speed this up, baby.

So 64 is a number. Like, as I'm going to 64, look, there's a way that I want to do my daily life. And so it's the process and the vision that we want to line up. And so your old process was I'm pissed off while I'm doing the dishes. your new process sounds like it's something about, there's a graciousness and a gratitude about like the thing that you're doing and there's an appreciation for the other people and like fill in the blanks.

So that's where we start to get into the weeds and say, okay, so we're both on line on 64. You go, yeah, yeah. Oh, man, are you sure? Yeah, fuck, that's awesome. You kidding me? That gets my hair to stand by, okay, good, all right. So we're nodding our heads to it.

Then we go, look, I'm going to go on that, I'm going to go on this thing with you. Let's get a plan together. And my job is to help you stay disciplined on the plan because this is not going to be easy. You're going to need to be great with your inner language. You're going to be great with your words. You need to be world-class with how you're lining those things up.

Let's fucking see what we got here. Amen, brother. So that's where we build the plan. And that's where in elite sport, it is, there's such, there's lots of problems in elite sport. It's kind of unrealistic that most people would ever get the chance to do it at that level. So it kind of feels like this fishbowl, like these weird, you know, born talented people. It's, yeah, there's some genetic talent.

But the discipline to train every day towards the edge of your capabilities when in front of your coach, who decides if you play or not, in front of a teammate who's trying to take your position in the roster, in an exhausted, tired, messy state where you're making mistakes in front of everyone is not easy. This is not an easy path. And we miss all of that. We see them on Sunday.

We see them on game day. And they look like these massive, amazing, artistic giants sometimes. And we miss all of the vulnerability and courage required each day and the discipline to not just be on time, but to be early. To not just take care of yourself, but be in service of your teammate being great. And you and I can use that same type of things in our lives,

which is how do we go build a discipline plan, support and challenge each other every day to be our very best. And that's when I say no one does it alone. World-class sport is a beautiful reminder of that. Can we just take a pause on that and just go? I mean, you just answered one of my questions, which was how does all of this, how does this apply not just to,

the professional, but to life, just life, just being a world-class human. And I think you just gave us so much insight to that, and I thank you for that. Yeah, so it's holding that vision, but then the process piece that I'm talking about is like, what are the values that are uncompromising for you and how you express those values in calm waters and rugged waters? And that requires mental skills training. So there's an awareness training that we're talking about. And then what sits on top of that are the mental skills to be about it.

Yes. Self-talk is a mental skill. Breathing is a mental skill to regulate your intensely levels. Imagination, imagery, some people call it visualization, is a mental skill. And I could go on and on,

but those are basic, basic mental skills to be great at. And, you know, first of all, we should play this game, guys, Sarah. We should definitely play this game. Sarah is like, you want to talk about, You know, the team analogy, right?

I mean, everybody in this room is on my team. And somehow talking about this publicly, which I didn't plan on doing, it garnered a sort of amount of love and support from people. Everybody out there is on my team in a way. The amount of love, right? Like one of those values that has just become infinitely more important than anything else. It's just love. Okay, I go, can I hit you with something?

Please do. Are you sure? Yeah. I'm looking forward to it, actually. You're okay to be coached for a moment? You can literally hit me. What if it wasn't your team? Just get there, right job right there.

What if it wasn't your team? What if it's the team? This is our team. You've got a role, right? Sarah's got a role. And Brett's got a role. It's the team, not your team. Because your team hints at version

whatever, five years ago. Okay. Yeah. What if it's the team? You're the front person. You're the one that is kind of going through the unique physiological changes. Everyone in this room that's on the team is also changed their life in response to your condition. And they're supporting you.

You have to support them. So support and challenge are two hinge ideas that are really important. And the ordering is foundational. support then challenge, right? So they need to support you and challenge you. You need to support them and challenge them to be their very best because you're on the team together. So if it's just your team, you're taking the best of them.

How about it? And I know I'm probably hitting on a couple landmines in here, you know, but. I was just gonna say that the timing of what you just said is so divine in that I have found myself just recently over the last, I don't know, couple weeks, month, advocating for my team members, right? I think Robbie, you felt me do this a lot. I think Brett, you know, because we work on other things together, I hope you feel it for me.

I've been advocating for my partner. I've been advocating for my caregiver. And recently, I've really had to learn how to advocate and support. When I say advocate, me, support to use your word of support versus challenge. Support my parents, who for them, this has been just, and It's an awful, awful experience, and I keep challenging them as much as I can to allow this to break them open in ways that make it extraordinary, not excruciating. And they are in such resistance and walking the line of how much do I challenge them versus yesterday in talking to my dad. I literally said to Sarah, he's so broken over this that I cannot challenge him right now. And I cannot challenge my mom. It's not the time to do it.

I have to just somehow let go and love them for who they are, which today I go, that's supporting them. I have to support them because they're on the team. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, our teams are bigger than we usually know, but there's like an inner circle and then a little bit of outer layer. And, you know, like, but I do like the idea of I don't want it to be, and I'm speaking from personal, it's not pain.

but like suffering, sorry, is the word I was looking for, is that I nearly lost the love of my life, the relationship that we had. She said I'm done with the relationship. And so because it was my team and I was the selfish self-absorbed, self-focused, the one that was like trying to figure out every little nuance. I read every research article in the field. Like I was maniacal to obsess to really understand how the mind works. It has served me well, but it almost cost me everything. We separated, which is step one to a divorce, like most people that separate don't, and we moved out of the house together. And she was so rad. She said, look, you're a good man. I love you, but I can't be me around you. Oh, Jesus. That was not her doing as much as it was my doing in

the situation. It was a collision for the two of us. So I'm saying that, I just want to make sure I'm sharing my bias in that the trigger when you said my team and I was like, wait, hold on, I've seen this, I felt this. It didn't work out well for me. Now it has worked out well. It's our team now. You know, and so that's shifting and we are teammates. I thank you so much for sharing that. That hits deeply home. I've been through a divorce. It was the beginning of just a loss, complete loss of identity. And, um, Yeah, I do have a, there is something in me that goes like, to get this done, whatever this at the moment might be. 64. Right. At this moment, it's 64. To get this done, I know what I got to do. And part of the process of surrendering to God, life, the creator, whatever you want to call it, over these last couple of years has been learning sometimes, most of the time, probably.

maybe all the time, I don't know shit. And it's a lot, it's a lot, it's easier. Aaron five years ago, that's a lot of work, man. That's a lot of work holding all that up. This is a lot of work dealing with physical challenge. The work and discipline and practice of getting my mind to a place where now I cannot just live with this, but I can enjoy my life with this. That has happened. and I am infinitely grateful for getting there

and part of getting there was letting go of that I know best necessarily for anything and it was a lot of asking for help from people and God and staying open to things going in ways that I could never possibly imagine while still being super connected to that that unreasonable thing

that's just like look look I mean God brought Michael into the studio today, man, for us to talk about it's another when just after a month of things physically getting really hard like here's another breadcrumb keeping us on the path you know and and you look at it all. It's all miracles now. Is God active or passive? Super active. Incredibly. Well, I should I think he's as active or she's, it's as active as you believe it to be. I used to, I turned it off my entire heart.

There's this amazing graphic. I don't know if you know the energy healer David Elliott, but he has a book called Healing. And in his book, there's this graphic of a silhouette of a man, and there's a spiral coming out of the person's heart, going to something he calls UEF, universal energy flow. And then this whole flow of life that happens. That's when you're in flow,

when your heart is open and you're in flow. And then there's a line. from the belly button down and it goes from fear all the way, you know, through all the negative lower vibrational, lower levels of conscious stuff to illness and death. And I looked at that and went, oh, Jesus, I'm on the other line. I'm on the other line. And I've got to open up that thing again. And as soon as I did that, I made a conscious choice to say, God, source energy, the universe, infinite consciousness, whatever you call it. It wasn't a religious thing. It was a deeply sort of spiritual cry for, let's co-create together. Let's make this life together. I can't do it

alone. I've been trying. It's not working. I'm on the other line. You know, and so I think God is so active now. This whole thing, Michael, this whole thing has been way beyond. I'm answering a call that God has been like, oh, you're here. Welcome to the party, man. And now I'm going to help you. I've been here all along. You've just been tuned off. You turned the television. television station off. Yeah. Cool. What are some of the best practices

you're using to be able to navigate, you know, the difficult parts of life? Because I'll, if you want me to go first, I'm happy to go first, but I don't want to almost

kind of taint the water, if you will. Okay. Well, then, I mean, meditation has been certainly one of them and all kinds of meditation. It started with,

I don't even know what meditation is. And by the way, I should say, leading up to symptoms of ALS, I had been invested in self-development, personal growth, spirituality for a decade. I just couldn't embody it. It was an intellectual pursuit.

And I knew something was there, and I was passionate about it, and my friends were sick of me trying to talk about it. It was just all woo-woo. And I would just go deeper and deep down these rabbit holes. And I never integrated. And then all of a sudden, you know, This turning point, which leads me to the, you know, I had a world-renowned medium on the show named Rebecca Rosen, who basically said, Aaron, your soul chose this, even though you did your damnedest very ambitiously to probably break your nervous system with how you were living. It was going to happen because your soul is that ambitious and shows this thing. Now, I believe it. You don't have to, right? But to me, it speaks to a trust.

that there is a level of things going on here that I don't control and that I don't need to control and I can just trust and let go. I mean, athletes say this all the time. I'm a big Eagles fan. And A.J. Brown is a fascinating player and a spiritual dude who, after this weekend

where he'd made this unbelievable play, he said, man, I just stuck my hand out there. God caught that ball. And I used to look at athletes and go, come on, man. You walk off the field. Thanks be to Jesus. Jesus won that game.

And I didn't understand. I was like, no, dude, you won that you. But now I go, oh, yes, this is all thanks to God. Be grateful for all of it. Sarah's dad, Rob Oregon is an energy healer and has a beautiful phrase that's like, be grateful for all of it, not just the great stuff. So gratitude is another thing that helps. And it's, you know, I used to say this stuff.

I mean, I started to travel and speak about this. because I needed to because it kept me in practice so as much as this podcast is for everyone out there listening it's also for me because it's creative and it helps me heal

so it became this whole realization of like oh I'm a performer and if I get to do what I love to do and I can't get on stage in a musical anymore but I can this is something I use my voice I use my creativity

we have these conversations and so part of it was was one big tool was creativity. It led me to purpose, right? So meditation helped me find ideas that I'm a vessel for, right? Great athletes, great performers are a vessel for things. And I just kind of let those things come through me. And then I just went, well, what happens if I share them?

And I started to get that feedback that when you said, you know, I wish I didn't need the number, 64. isn't it the same thing with all of our feedback in life? You know, if I had tried to make an album and God made it awful every step of the way, you know, like most of, not most, but a good chunk of my acting career was such pushing that rock up a hill,

slamming doors down, you know, cracking my head open on every rung of the ladder. This has been different. This has really been a co-creation, like you said earlier, planting seeds in the garden and watching the plants grow. We reap what we sell. So this has really been God saying, you're in flow now, and it doesn't have to be perfect.

And you don't have to be great at it, but just keep going. Cool. Yeah. I could talk about it for days. Yeah, you're on it. There's like, I think some folks are down the path like you are with training. They've got a meditation practice. They've got a gratitude practice.

They've got, you know, something else they're doing for arousal regulation or mental imagery or, you know, keep going. I use both of those. Yeah, and so, and there's other folks that are like, I don't know what you guys are talking about. That's mumbo-jumbo. And one of the things that we developed, and I think we've got it on your website or our website for you, is just a very simple 60-second morning mindset routine.

And it's before you get out of bed. And there's four steps to it, and I'll share the link for you guys to be able to do it. But it's an audio file that your folks can download. But it's four simple things. things, which is before you get out of bed, before you check your phone, before you do anything, you tune into one breath. It sends a signal to the brain that, like, oh, I'm in charge of this thing. And there's no will to beast. There's no saber tooth. Like one long exhale resets the system

that I'm in control and I'm going to move from a relaxed state rather than a tense state. I haven't even got out of bed yet. One breath, one thought of gratitude. And the gratitude is not, like, check the list I'm grateful for. It's an embodied feeling. where it's like you bristle, there's like a mini kind of explosion, if you will, like, oh, I really feel. Wow. Okay, so that takes a little bit of time to get to that place. So you start with the checklist, but then you move it.

And the third is an intention. You use your imagination to see how you want to show up at a particular time in your life today. Like, and so that means you got to kind of know what you're doing today. But how do you want to walk through a threshold, roll through a threshold in your case? how do you want to move into a space you know and so that's a really important part of using your imagination and then before you before you get out of bed is that you just take a moment to be wherever your body is you know and so just be there you know and so that's about practicing being fully present those four steps we'll load you guys up with it um and and i'll put it in

the show notes so i ask you to put in the show notes but it's a i think it's a great simple little practice. Dr. Michael Jervais, you are such a cool dude. I've been, I've been such a fan and I'm, you know, not just now a fan of you and your work. I'm a fan of you. And I appreciate you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 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 the 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,

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