Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Coach Anne Parmenter on Resiliency, Mindset, Ethics

Episode Date: November 15, 2017

Imagine being within striking distance of your lifelong dream, only to come to a fork in the road. Continue onward but in doing so, put others lives in danger, or turn back and potentially never have another shot at fulfilling your dream.What would you do?How would you respond?Ethical decision making under duress is a fascinating process.I don’t know anyone that says, “I’m a bad human being. I’m a terrible human being and I do bad things. But some people put up an armor, a shield of denial, when there is a something at stake they badly want.When there is money, effort, years of commitment on the line, the moral compass can become clouded.This conversation with mountaineer and Trinity College field hockey and lacrosse coach Anne Parmenter touches on just that, and more!Anne has a unique perspective – she’s been in the trenches summiting the World’s greatest mountains and has also coached for over 20 years.Anne has climbed Aconcagua in Argentina, Denali, Chimborazo in Equador, Mount Blanc in the French Alps, and two expeditions to Mount Everest.  In this conversation, we discuss how to prepare for moments of true test.Resiliency has been a profound theme over the course of Anne’s life. We dive into strategies she's used to overcome setbacks and how she helps do the same for her athletes.We also touch on why the environment you operate in can have a significant impact on your mindset – which ultimately impacts your performance. I hope this conversation inspires you to embrace challenges, overcome obstacles, and hopefully gets you thinking – how would you act in a moment of crisis when something you badly want is at stake?_________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value, and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. And for this week's conversation, I hope you enjoy this. There's so much loaded in here. And before we jump into it, imagine being within striking distance of a lifelong dream.

It's right there. You can see it. You can feel it. It's right there. You can see it. You can feel it. It's right there. And then to realize that you're at a fork in the road. If you continue onward in the pursuit that you're on, you put others' lives in danger. Or if you turn back and potentially never have the opportunity to take a shot at your dream again. So that's the crux of this conversation. If you move forward, and this is not like this, I don't know, like make-believe scenario. This is something that's very concrete.

There's a time-sensitive decision. If you move forward, you put other lives at harm. And if you turn back, you might not ever get your shot. What would you do? You know, how would you respond? And this is one of the reasons why it's so important, I think, to be able to front load the mental skills, to front load the training for how to think optimally, how to know the framework to be able to resonate against the

decisions that are challenging against your true nature and your character. And so it's really an important thing to get ahead of it and to front load the training. So we minimize moments of crisis for sure by doing that. And ethical decision-making under duress, it's a fascinating process that takes over for humans. And again, one of the reasons to front load that training. So I don't know anyone that says to themselves or even says out loud, I'm a bad human being. I'm a terrible human being. And I do awful things to other people. Most people, they use strategies to be able to make sense of or act in denial to turn a blind eye, if you will, to behaviors and thoughts and words that are compromising to other people's wellbeing. And what we end up doing in this storytelling to ourselves is we

justify the behavior. And there's a lot of science around that. But check into yourself throughout this conversation about your ability to rationalize or to make sense of things that are actually ethically challenging. All right. So that's the essence of this conversation. And especially when money and effort and years of commitment are on the line, our moral compass, if we're not careful, can become clouded. And that's not me saying to you, that's all of us. That can happen. So this conversation is with Mountaineer and Trinity College field hockey coach, as well as lacrosse coach and parmenter. And we touch on all of this. She faced it down. She was in it. She's got clarity about that process and it wasn't easy. And Anne has a very unique perspective. She's been in the trenches

summiting some of the world's greatest mountains. And she's also coached young athletes, college-aged athletes for over 20 years, and has climbed many mountains, Aconcagua in Argentina, Denali, Chimborazo in Ecuador, Mount Blanc in the French Alps, and she's had two expeditions to Mount Everest. And in this conversation, we discuss how to prepare for moments of true test, like true test. And embedded throughout this conversation is resiliency. And it's been a profound theme for her over her life. We get into that and we dive into strategies that she's used to overcome internal and external setbacks and how she helps do the same for the

athletes that she coaches. So this conversation has a dual pivot on it. It's, it's for anyone listening as strategies that she's used just like you could use, as well as the other pivot is, or the other lenses is that we can think about how we can help others through their process. And obviously that's an important strategy as well. So we touch on why the environment that you operate in can have a significant impact on your mindset as well as your psychological framework, which both of those ultimately do impact performance. And I hope this conversation seriously inspires you to embrace challenges and overcome obstacles because that's what this is about and get you thinking. How would you act? How do you want to act in moments of crisis when something you really want is at stake, but there is a cost to

it. And with that, let's jump right into this conversation with Anne Parmenter. Anne, how are you? I'm great. Thanks, Mike. Oh, good. So thank you for coming on and having this conversation. You know, one of the things that we like to do in this podcast is be able to explore the beginnings of how people became and have achieved something that has grabbed the attention of many. And you were recommended by a former guest. And can you talk about your relationship with that former guest? Yes, Paul Asciante is the head squash coach at Trinity College here in Hartford, Connecticut.

And I am the head field hockey coach. I've been here for 16 years and I've known Paul for the entirety of my time here. And I feel that, you know, Paul and I, although we coach different sports, we've sort of followed similar pathways. And he has actually helped me as I have gone through my time here. We serve on a number of leadership committees here at Trinity together. And we've just been very good friends for a long time. And so after I listened to his podcast from your show, he suggests, he goes, I have to get in touch with my friend Michael because you need to do this.

And so I agreed. I love it. So yeah, right afterwards, Paul said, he said, listen, you've got to connect with Anne. And so I said, okay, let's go. And so he's so switched on about how really about the path of mastery, but really about the human experience inside of sport that I followed as lead blindly. And I'm looking forward to this conversation. And so if I get it right, doing some digging and some homework is that you've used sport and

mountaineering in particular and coaching to really understand how to push the rules as far as you possibly can, but play inside the rules and to reveal the decision-making and ethical processes that are involved in intense situations. Does that sound close to being right? I think you, you said it better than I ever could. Okay, great. Yeah. I think that's perfect. Okay. Beautiful. So then walk us through. So you've done at least two Everest climbs. Is that right? Yes, that's correct. Okay.

And then you've also mountaineered other summits as well. Yep. You know, I think coming to the United States in 1984, which we can talk about a little bit later, I don't know that I would have been sort of able to have the opportunities that I've had since arriving here. I had been involved in mountaineering and climbing in the UK. But, you know, once I got myself established here, I already had a sort of mountaineering and climbing background, but I've met people along the way, and it's all been about the connections with other people. I was fortunate enough to get with a group from Connecticut here to go to a mountain called Aconcagua, which is the highest mountain in South America in Argentina, right on the Argentine-Chilean border. And during that expedition, there were four of us, three guys and myself, and two of the guys got altitude sickness and decided that they were going to return home. Third guy said, well, obviously I've got to go with them.

And at that point, I was feeling great. And I was completely bummed that we were going to turn around when we were only at base camp. But there was a full-time professional mountain guide, Jim Williams from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, guiding his own private clients that we had been climbing alongside for a few days now. And you get to know a lot of people when you're sharing camps with these expeditions. And Jim knew our circumstance. And he just put an offer out to me. He said, hey, jump ship and stay with my group. And so I got the approval of the three that I was with. And that's kind of how this all started. I stayed, climbed with Jim, helped one of his clients. I managed to summit Aconcagua and that was in, I think, 1992. And I'm still great friends

with Jim today. I've been on many trips with Jim since that time. a mountain called Amadablam, which is in the Himalayas and looks right at Everest. I was with Jim, actually summited, it was December the 6th, 1999 on that expedition. And it looks right at Everest. And I never thought I'd ever, you know, have the opportunity to then go and climb one of the big 8,000 meter peaks. But I've been back to Aconcagua, so three times on Aconcagua. I've climbed Denali, again with Jim. Ama de Blam, I've climbed the volcanoes in Ecuador, Chimborazo, Cotopaxi, some of the summits in the Alps, Mont Blanc, and then Everest, two Everest expeditions, one summit.

Okay, beautiful. All right, so in this conversation, bring us into why mountaineering? What was younger life like? And bring us into that so that we can get a sense of why mountaineering was your choice. I think my schooling in the UK was at a time where it was schooling in England was going through a very experimental stage of what they called comprehensive education. And my year just happened to be part of that experiment. I don't think I did very well in that environment.

It was very unstructured. And so I was not a top-tier academic-streamed student. But I had a teacher who, when I was 11, took a group to the Lake District in Great Britain, which is a mountainous area, very beautiful. And it was a mixture of boys and girls. And I think, you know, without realizing at the time, we slept in tents, pouring rain. You know, most people would think it was miserable, and I absolutely. And I just thought it was amazing. And so that was my first exposure was when I was about 11. And, you know, at about 13, I started playing field hockey and competitive games, I also ran. And then when I went to college,

I went to a physical education college in England called Chelsea College of Physical Education. And we had to choose what would be considered sort of a secondary concentration. So I chose outdoor education. And I was playing field hockey competitively and at a high level. But then this whole outdoor aspect, hiking, climbing, canoeing, leadership stuff in the outdoors became my sort of secondary focus and it became more and more important. And that was my introduction was that in the UK. Okay, so go back to 11 just for a moment. When you're in the tent, it's raining, you've got mixed gender. Do you remember the moment when you said, whoa, gender doesn't matter here? Do you recall that? I can remember the girls shared a tent, the boys were all in their own tents. But I can remember very specifically, it was the boys had done, they were allowed to sleep outside two nights before the trip was ended. The boys were going

to get to do a bivouac outside one night, and then the girls were going to do theirs the next, and it was going to be weather dependent. And the boys had done theirs. And then the next night, the weather wasn't very good. And they then said, oh, we're going to cancel this. And I remember the girls lobbying that, well, it doesn't really matter whether the weather's very good. And they then said, oh, we're going to cancel this. And I remember the girls lobbying that, well, it doesn't really matter whether the weather's very good because we've got our survival bags. And they agreed. They allowed us. They're like, well, the boys did it, so the girls have got to do it. I remember that scenario. And I also remember just all hiking together. And there was myself and I think a couple of other girls and the boys were behind us and realizing that, wow, we're actually ahead of the pack here. It's not about winning or being first,

but the girls weren't being left behind. We were just one big group of filthy, dirty, smelly kids out in the woods. It was great and we was great. And we all loved it. And we were wet for the whole time. Were your parents, like, let me learn from your parents a little bit. Were they dirty, smelly? Like, were they into that as well? Or were they more prim and proper? And this was a big deal to support you to go to this camp? Like, what were your parents like? Yeah, they were not, I would say, my mom was probably more athletic of my parents and had my mom is still alive today. She's 85. She walks, she swims, very active, and she currently lives in Australia. But she was a community nurse. She worked really hard. My father was an aeronautical engineer, had been in the RAF, Royal Air Force, but was not an athlete, was really not that interested in sports. was a little bit more of the tomboy athlete that bit of a misnomer in some respects but I you know my mom was the one who would listen to the rugby on the radio because she was from both my parents were from Scotland and my mom had been brought up in a town where rugby was a really huge part of

the community but they've always been you, they were always really supportive of the things that I wanted to do. And whether it was running cross country or playing field hockey and then doing this school trip, which, you know, my mom and dad were two working parents. We didn't have a lot. It costs money to send me on this trip. And there wasn't a lot extra. And so in order for us to do things, I have a sister, we had to either save up our money from pocket money ourselves and then mom and dad would usually sort of chip in. But we had to show that we were fully committed to wanting to do this. How did you earn money? At 11, I first, I was babysitting when I was about 10.

And then at 11, I got a paper round. And in the mornings before school, six days a week, I did a paper round. And at the time, I made, what was it, like 70? I made basically, I mean, it's ridiculous back then, but it was like I made a dollar a week to do a paper round. So I did that. And then I got a job working in a store. And then at 16, there was a community sports center was built next to our school, which was just, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven because I could be a lifeguard then. So I actually got paid to be working in

the sports center. And there was a climbing wall in the sports center and that's when i first got introduced to indoor rock climbing and that there could be a whole nother community of this and then and then what age was that at 16 16 okay so there was some outdoors stuff that happened at 11 that you felt stimulated by and felt some gender equity was a first kind of thought interception of that thought. And then you started really working in different jobs. Well, no, not then, but you had to earn yourself. And then you found climbing. Okay. So at 16 and then, but nobody in your family climbed, nobody was really like, it sounds like they were supporting you, but nobody was nudging you towards a particular path. Okay. Now, did you become, as the woman you are today, did you become more of what your mom wanted you to be, your dad wanted you to be, or was it a complete path all into your own?

I think it was a path all onto my own because I distinctly remember when I went to this the school that I had this outdoor climbing trip from it's the first time I'd ever we ever had an actual sports teacher and I mean I think the only thing I was really good at at school was you know I was I was really good at all the different sports academically you knowically, you know, my report card would read, Anne spends too much time looking out the window and would rather be outside playing. And my mom reminded me of that this past summer when she visited. You know, I'm sure nowadays I'd be diagnosed with something and have been on some kind of medication because I couldn't focus.

But when I realized that there was an actual job that you could have teaching sports, I knew at age 11 or 12 that I wanted to be a physical education teacher and that I was going to go to physical education college. Nobody told me about it. I just found out that you could actually do this and teach sports for the rest of your life. And I can remember teachers at school. I remember a very particular instance at 13 when an English teacher called me out in class that I thought I was going to college and that I should think about doing something else because I was never going to be smart enough to even get into college, let alone be a teacher. Oh, so somebody said that to you?

Out loud, in a class, called me out, and then two years later when my sister followed in my footsteps, that same teacher reminded her that her sister thinks she's going to college. She needs to think, yes. And that has had a profound effect on me. When you bring that up even right now, what happens for you? Oh, I get so angry inside, really. And then it has affected me in now teaching here at Trinity

where in me teaching an academic course as a freshman advisor and a seminar professor there is a big part of me that feels that somebody's going to find me out that I'm not really that and I should never be sitting in charge of 14 first years that I'm in, you know, the whole imposter syndrome is huge. But I've also, I shared that story. I have shared that story with my first years, and I've told them that the most important thing for me as a teacher is nobody can ever tell you that you can't do something. And particularly doing it out loud in front of your peers. I'm very conscious of that when I coach how I deliver information to students because of the effect it had on me. things to my athletes that at our end of year meetings, they will say, oh, on September the 3rd, Anne, you told me that I couldn't. And I'm like, oh, geez, I did? And I think it's amazing the effect that teachers have on people. But to be publicly called out by this teacher, both my sister and I have said we would love to go knock on that teacher's door and just say, hey, look, I think we kind of turned out okay.

Okay. So I've got like 15 thoughts around this one idea. And let me start with just the most maybe counterintuitive response to what you're saying. And I think the intuitive response would be, wow, that's terrible. But the counterintuitive, what I want to say is, well, hold on, because you felt something and you had a response to something that someone said, and then you swallowed that and made it part of your motivational path moving forward to do amazing things and to coach in a beautiful way. So I'm not advocating that people should be rude to kids publicly by any means, but you did something really special with that pain. And I don't know if you've healed from the pain or you're still using that pain, because it sounds like it's still kind of in you now, the anger. But would you want that person, looking back now, would you want that person to not say that to you? Oh, no. And I have spoken with my sister. We talk about this often. I would, in my mind, want to knock on that teacher's door and thank them. Because...

Like an authentic thank you? Yes. Thank you for challenging me in a way that you at the time yes hurt and has hurt for a long time but i think that shaped me to really i mean school was a challenge for me but but I had a goal. I had a focus. I knew exactly what subjects I needed to do well in in order to get to college. I found out that information all on my own. And then I was driven that I was getting there, you know, come hell or high water. That is what I was going to do with my life. I was going to be a teacher of physical education. Nothing was going to get in my way, basically. 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.

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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 FINDINGMASTERY20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FINDINGMASTERY20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. And then where did you learn that persistence? Where did you learn that intense competitive drive that nothing is going to get in my way? How did that, because that sounds like a very special trait or skill set that you have.

I mean, I think being, you know, I first started, you know, running track and cross country. And then I found, you know, field hockey, which, you know, in the UK is is huge it's not as big here team sports not again not being selected for the first team right away I've had to I've had to really be a hard grafter it hasn't you know it hasn't always been handed to me on the on a plate but if you want something badly enough and you're willing to keep working and keep working. When I went to college, the college had six field hockey teams. For the first year, I was on the second team.

I didn't make the first team right away. Then an opportunity arose and I was selected to the first team. We went on and won what would be our national championship in the UK on that college team. We went to Europe. We qualified playing in Czechoslovakia to go on to the European championships. And that wouldn't have happened if I quit because I only made the second team. Okay, so help me understand what you said to yourself at the moment when you didn't say your name on the board, when you didn't make the first team. You're crushed.

Okay, so what did you say to yourself? I don't know if I said anything other than I'm going to just keep working. Okay, so you didn't, and then the feeling was? I got a phone call from our captain that somebody couldn't make this upcoming tournament. And I was the next person. And so, you know, I was the 12th man, if you like, or 12th woman. And I jumped at that chance and I got to the tournament and jumped in with two feet. And from that moment forward, I was on the first team for the remaining of my three and a half years.

So you, okay, so you capture the opportunity. So the first, the first thing when your name wasn't on the board is that you were crushed, which, you know, the emotion around that was like hurt or embarrassed. It was one of those two or maybe both. Yeah. Well, hurt. I mean, a lot of people's names weren't on that list, but I was surrounded now at physical education college with, you know, there were a number of women who were playing, you know, on the national team. So there were people playing at extremely high levels who it seemed to come very easily to, and so always living in the shadow of those people.

Okay, so you didn't, you didn't make it about you, you separated, you didn't say it sounds like you didn't say, I'm I am not worthy. You said my skill needs to get better. Like you were able to separate those two. Yeah, I need my skills need to get better. And I need to just keep working at this keeper. Okay. So it wasn't a blow to the self-esteem. It was more like... Not at the time. I don't think so. I mean, I also think that's a very British, you know, sort of head down, keep grafting kind of, that's a very cultural thing too. But I think my experience there has helped me in some of the situations that I've had. Sort of when I came to the U.S., it's almost like you could reinvent yourself. And using those experiences from my time growing up and being in England to here, it's sort of very much survivalist type of mentality, really.

Okay, and you learned that, or you were first exposed to that maybe when you didn't make that first team? Yeah. I mean, I had a couple of those experiences along the way of, yep, you're not on the first team, you've just got to keep trying. And then what is that keep trying? If you were to put that into action, is that, it's obviously doing the work, the practice, but is there a particular way that you would practice and when that thought would kick in to be valuable to you? Was it to start practice or was it a way that you focused more deeply in the middle of practice or was it towards the end you would push a little further? Like, how did that actually apply? Well, I think, you know, I'm 57 years old

now. And I consider myself I am an athlete when people talk about Oh, back in the day. It's like, well, it's still my day. I don't consider myself an ex athlete. I, you know, I was at the climbing gym last night, I was out on the rocks on Sunday, I was running yesterday morning. I run road races now. My times might not be what they were, but in my mind, there's no reason why I can't still be better every time within my age group. I'm climbing, if you look at the grades, harder now than I've ever climbed in my life. And I think it's about learning as you get older. I think the adage of work smarter, not harder. My technical understanding of whether it's through field hockey and coaching, my skill set now is so much more refined that I don't have to do all that crazy running in order to be in the right place

because I know and understand where the ball is going to be in three passes from now. Or when I'm climbing, it's about how my body moves as opposed to over-gripping the rock and trying to pull the rock down. How I go about things, even in my daily life working in the office, if I'm going downstairs, I'm not going to walk up and downstairs 20 times when I can walk up and downstairs once if I'm more efficient. So I think about that much more consciously, being smarter about how I work so that I can maximize the output of when I'm actually training and working. Okay. And then for the rest of us that are not at the level of fitness or activity

that you are, but you're using, you're using something difficult, whether it's physical or emotional or spiritual, whatever the area of interest might be, you're using something challenging to you to redefine the way that you think about the world. And so how can the rest of us use some of the lessons that you've learned about being efficient? I look at it as, you know, understanding that your body is going to age through time okay but fighting for me fighting the fact that as your body ages doesn't mean you should slow down or stop because yeah you sure as heck seize up and it's harder to get it moving in the morning but the important thing is the fact that if you can keep moving you don don't experience that seizing up. And for me, my mental and emotional state of mind is very affected by whether I've been active. And there

will be days when I need to go for a run, not because of the physical benefits, but I need to clear my mind. I need to think about how my practice is going to be that day or to process. We lost a big game on Saturday. How do I process that? And I will try to use running, climbing as a way to refocus. And it doesn't have to be super intense but I do think it's important whether it's through walking or through yoga through meditation to be able to get to that different mindset where you can separate an intense experience in your life and step out of that and realize that, you know, that,

that moment was just that it was just a moment in your life. And it's not the be all and end all of everything, even though at the time it might have seemed so. And for me, running and climbing is a way for me to get beyond that very, very sort of deep feeling that you have about an intense experience. Okay. And then do you, do you see, because I heard two different ideas inside of what you just said. One is that you had a big game. And then the other thought was that it's just a moment, you know, whatever, whatever the intense emotional experience might be it, when you really kind of separate, uh, in a healthy way, it's just another moment. So which, which way do you see, um, I don't know,

we can take it outside of sport and put it into, um, anything really, it could be business or intimate conversations. Do you see them as big moments, like a championship game is a big moment or putting your hand up in a boardroom to share an idea is a big moment or is it just another moment? I think academically, a championship game is a big moment. A hand up in a board meeting is a big moment. But in order to practice for those moments, you have to have, you have to make every practice or every smaller group meeting safe enough so that you can perform at the highest level when it matters the most without feeling the pressures of the big moment. Okay. So then what you do is you, in practice, you amplify the safety as well as some sort of,

yeah, it sounds like you create safety in practice so people can push to a limit based on that safety so that they can become comfortable being at a limit so that when they, it's almost like then they flip into an, I'm almost seeing like a, oh gosh, like a card that flips it's on its side. And then now, now you're in an intense moment for real. And then, but, but you've trained the person to push to a limit. Yes. So, you know, mastering mental mastery. And for me, rock climbing is a perfect example because when, when you are rock climbing,

you can either do, you can either top rope, which means there is a rope connecting you to the rock that's running above you and down to somebody who is holding the other side of the rope, the belayer. So if you were to slip and fall, you're going to slip maybe two inches the stretch of the rope. But when you really get into rock climbing, you start to lead climb, which means you take the rope to the top of the cliff. And you are placing pieces of what's called protection you're finding natural cracks in the rock where you can place protection that you clip and now you climb above that protection if you were to fall above that protection so if i climb two feet above my last piece of protection i actually actually am going to fall double the distance

four feet. And so the consequence of my actions now, the higher I climb above my last piece of protection become really quite significant because you can fall five, 10, 20 feet the further you climb between your pieces of protection. And so trying to mentally train for a very difficult rock climb, and this is where now you're upping the ante all the time, is I will either practice a climb with a top rope knowing I can do the movement, and there's many climbs where I know I can climb them but if I were to lead it there the consequence of me falling now could be quite extreme and being able to do that is being able to overcome that voice in your mind that's sort of saying, I could die, I could die, I could die, where

you have to master that mind and say, I can climb this. How do you do that? I love the simplicity of the explanation. And how do you in particular? You take a, I mean, I was just doing this on Sunday. So there are days when I can step up to a climb and I can take a deep breath and I will either have a routine, a very, very short couple of seconds of a couple of breaths. I put all my gear on my climbing harness. I put the chalk on my hands. I have you go through a routine. And the minute you step onto the rock, and I've got my eyes closed as I'm saying this to you, because you see yourself succeeding and you practice the movements mentally. And then you visualize completing and being successful with each sequence of what it

is you're doing whether that's the rock climb whether it's running a race it's focusing on your goal and making your goal something that can be broken down into small pieces where you visualize yourself completing each of those pieces to reach your ultimate end goal. Okay. So if you're at the bottom of a wall, I can see how you could in your mind cascade the 20 or so holds, right? Like that's easy to do. But if you're at the bottom or at the beginning of a marathon, how would you run the entire marathon? Or would you just see a couple of segments that you think might be tricky? Yeah. So how I've done marathon running is I've divided it up mentally. The first five miles are

my warmup. So start the race. I'm the kind of person who likes to get as far as close to the front as i possibly can even though i i'm not running with those five minute milers i i want to get up get out of the way of everybody's feet race goes off i know i'm going to end up running faster at the beginning than i really want to but here we go hold on for a dear life so gun goes off start running and i use the first five miles as like i'm just i'm going with the i'm going with the crowd i'll hang in there that's my warm-up it's like okay so i run it in five mile type of increments and so second five takes you to 10 miles and you're now well in you're beginning to really get in the groove at this point so once you've hit the hour mark now you're into your running and now from 10 for you for you yeah for me for me i'm done yeah well yeah i but this is when i've been running a marathon i've

this is how i've and then I'll be looking at the splits. So from 10 miles to the half marathon distance, 13.1, I'll keep an eye on what my time is because I usually will have – I will have a goal of what I want to try to run. Now I can see am I on my target? Am I running sub-eight-minute miles? I'll run from the half marathon 13.1 now, from there to 18. Now you can enjoy the race, really enjoy it, take it in. I can remember running the Boston Marathon, the 100 year anniversary. All I wanted to do was break three and a half hours. I didn't care about the whole occasion and how historic it was. And I realized I ran the race, went home, couldn't remember anything about the race because I was so focused on just time, time, time and pace and pace. everybody and you know the weather and the day and so then at 18 you know the supposed you hit

the wall time get to 18 and then you go it's only eight more and then get inside 20 and then it's hold on for dear life and just bring it home okay so you've pre-programmed some thoughts that you want to have at 18 and 20 in the start of the race Yeah. And then so part of those segments that you have, you'll do a quick hit before you take your first step and see them. And then, but do you also do imagery beforehand? Like days before, weeks before, months before? Are you always doing imagery? How do you use that skill in your life?

You know, and I think training for a marathon, I tell people, you know, because everybody always talks about, you know, how do you train to climb Everest? How do you train to, I think part of what my life is, I have, you know, my life is running, climbing, it's, this is my lifestyle. So when I say to people, I didn't train for Everest, I just did what my life is. And I don't mean that to be sort of facetious or sarcastic. It's like my life is active. Every day it's active with a goal to this is what my goal is right now or this is what my goal is. So I don't, you know, it hasn't, things might change a little bit depending on what it might be, in the miles that you put in in preparation for running the marathon, those miles that you're putting in is seeing yourself completing the race. And it's the preparation of all those miles that will enable you to actually run the race. And weeks and weeks and weeks ahead of time is how you, running a marathon is, yes, there's the physical component,

but it's much more of a mental, you know, most people can't imagine running for, you know, four hours, to actually go out and run for four hours. That's ridiculous. Why would you ever do that? But the preparation is to be able to get yourself to realize you can go out and run for four hours.

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at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash findingmastery. Okay, so I want to share, can I share a couple thoughts I have as you've been going? Like I've got some models that I'm working from. One is that Coach Carroll, the head coach of the Seattle Seahawks, he says, Mike, and he says to the team, every moment, every game is a championship game, whether it's the Super Bowl, regular season, preseason, every practice is a championship game, whether it's the Super Bowl, regular season, preseason. Every practice is a championship practice.

Every moment is a massive moment. So we have to capture this moment by being in it now. And I say, okay, I hear you. And I flip it on its head and say, I go the other way. I say, Pete, there's no such thing as a big moment. I say, there's no such thing as a big game. There's no such thing as a big play. All you get is this moment. So then the work is to be in this moment. I say, there's no such thing as a big game. There's no such thing as a big play. All you get is this moment. So then the work is to be in this moment. And so we're, we're,

we're starting in two very different places and ending up at the same exact place, which is the present moment. And so, so I hear you saying that you're more aligned to Pete's model, coach, coach Carol's model about, you know, you know, you've got, there are big moments, but we want to work to maximize our limits in what seems to be an ordinary moment. But you've just made it a big moment if you've maximized your limits through safety. And it sounds like what you're, that's your model, Anne, if I have it right. But what it sounds like you're doing is in that space, by creating safety, the space of safety, helping people push their limits, that you're giving them an exposure to self-talk. Because they're out on the limb, they're out in some sort of limit, so that they can say to your whole life to do difficult things because you didn't take the easy path on just about anything. Someone told you you couldn't, and you went the distance and became an educator and summited some of the gnarliest mountains in the world. So is that kind of the way that I'm hearing that you've structured

maybe your personal life efforts in to support the life efforts of others is to help them explore the moment that it becomes difficult or limit so that they can realize that they do have the internal right to say to themselves, I can do difficult things. Yes. And I had a moment yesterday with one of my players and I think part of getting older and now looking at you know the population that I'm coaching 18 to 22 year olds and you want so much to share you know what you now are becoming conscious about in the way that you live your life. And realizing that when I was 18 to 22, I had the same reaction as this young player had to me yesterday. I was really challenging her to play differently and she was resisting. And so we stopped practice and brought everybody together and trying to get this young woman to acknowledge it's not about

me being right and her being wrong in what is happening and at the age that some of my players are they are still they are fighting me that the way they're doing something is is right. But they also realize that I, the coach, I'm not trying to get them to do something that is wrong. But what I'm asking them to do is now a little bit more difficult, but will lead to more success for them as a player, but that they have got to be willing to try something different. And this player's reaction to me is, but this is hard. And I said, yes, it is very hard. It is very hard to be willing to try to change something that you've been doing for a long time that has been giving you a level of success that you have now plateaued and you will never achieve greater than because we are now playing against people who are much quicker and faster and stronger but if you tweak just a couple of

things in how you play your level of success is going to be exponential. But the maturity of a young athlete. And so in my coaching, I don't enforce a certain way of playing. I will try to explain why I want them to try something different that is frustrating when they won't try it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It's hard. It's very hard. Yeah. And again, you've earned the right to say to yourself, I can do difficult, I can do hard things. And it sounds like your model is to help people be aware the value of that inner dialogue. And you know what, like, this is where I think sports psychology has gone very, very wrong is that they, the evidence or the, the lazy version of sports science is just say that you can do it. Just speak to yourself and positive self-talk, just figure out the right things to say to yourself, and then just say

those over and over again and have these affirmations where, you know, they sound great when you say them and just repeat them. So you brainwash yourself. That doesn't work. No, at least it doesn't for me. I've never, and you know, I know that I sound, I don't want to say condescending, but I'm agitated that the lazy part of a discipline that is beautiful is butchered by that, that over simplistic understanding and application of the value of the inner dialogue and so it sounds like you're structuring difficult challenging moments so people can learn the value of saying i can do i can do it but they've had to earn it i i 100 agree with everything you just said nothing replaces the work that has to go into perfect performance in whatever aspect of your life that might be. And you're right, I this country where we can overanalyze everything to

death, at some point you actually have to go and do whatever it is you've said you're going to go do. Otherwise we'd just mail in the ballot and say, this is the result of the game. Trying to get people to work their, yeah, work hard, but work smarter is what I try to coach by because a lot of young athletes today just think they can sign up for all these club teams and traveling tournament teams. And, well, I've done all of this work, so now I should be on the varsity team. But it still comes down to me looking at those athletes and saying, fundamentally, you will make my team if you have this level of skill. And if you don't have the level of skill, it doesn't matter all those other things that you've done. If you haven't attained that level of skill, it's not a right to now play on this team. But, you know,

the sports psychologists, you know, back in the day when we used to play in the UK, we'd arrive at a game, there would be no hours warm up with music going on and all this hoopla. We'd fall out of a car, put our cleats on, get people psyched up. Well, you know, if you want to perform at a high level, that should be coming. I think you have to have that internal fire. I can help ignite it, but I can't, I can't be the one that implants it initially. If you don't have it, I can't give it to you. So do you, how do you, okay, how do you help people connect to that internal fire? Working every single day, trying to do different things, having my assistants coach some of practice, try, you know, trying to really get to know your constituent because some of your athletes, some of my climbing partners, some people respond to lots of external rah-rah, yeah, you can do it, you can do it. Some people want silence. Some people want quiet support.

It's not a one-size-fits-all. Some will rise to a challenge different differently some want very competitive situations all the time so you spent you spent a lot of time learning coach carol has a phrase learn your learner yes so you spent a lot of time learning your folks to see if they're internally or externally motivated yes and what do you do with the ones like how do you help build the fire for the ones that are either their inner fire, their internal fire is dormant or they just haven't tapped into it? Like how do you bring that out in people? Do you just ask them? I mean I try to at the beginning of every season. We have individual meetings with athletes and you're dealing with first years who are, you know, they're new to the school,

they're too afraid to even speak in your office. They're afraid to say anything because they want to make the team, you know. So first of all, breaking down that I am trying to create again this safe environment that most sports, most things in life are about making mistakes all the time. It's about how we recover from our mistakes that makes the best athlete, the best team, the best person. Life is not a perfect science. And so if you're not afraid to push the envelope to the point that you're going to fail, you'll never know how far you can push that. So, and I flat out love that. And then how do you help people recover from their mistakes? Like, what is it? What do you do to help them through that process?

I share, we do a thing. We don't do it every day, but we either do it at the beginning or the end of practice where we call either checking in or checking out of practice. And each student athlete, a minute or less, can share a quick story, something about their day. Every single person gets to speak in practice every day. It gives me a chance to put my finger on the pulse of how they're doing personally, how the team is doing, if people have got a lot of work, if it's a a tough time on campus but it's also a time that I share very personal stories of what I'm dealing with a perfect example this year I mean I went I went for a trail run one day and you know we still had a couple of games before one of the big games of our season and team that won the national championship last year had just been upset by another conference team i started daydreaming what it was going to be like when we beat that team because i know we were going to beat that team this year and i tripped

over a route i went absolutely flying had this huge digger on the trail, cut my knee, cut my elbow, laying on the ground, blood. I was like, oh, that really hurt. I had to get up. I was only just a mile into my run. And that day at practice, I shared with the team, because they could see I had a big cut on my leg, cut on my elbow. I share my peaks and valleys very personally with the team. And I sort of said to them, I said, you guys, you know, I always preach to you that our season is climbing a ladder. We go one rung at a time. If we try to step too many rungs up the ladder without making sure our foot is firmly on the next run, we trip and probably crash and fall to the ground. And I did that because I was daydreaming about a game that

actually was three games ahead of where we were. And I, I bid it big time. So I said, I am a walking metaphor for everything I tell you not to do. Yeah, that's why I wanted to talk to you because not only are you doing it, not only have you summited many mountains and Everest once and attempted it another time, which I want to get into now, but you're also coaching it. So I really wanted to understand, you're like a working laboratory. And then it sounds like you just hit the nail on the head is that you model risk taking and resiliency by sharing how and it's not like this one it's not a theory that you're sharing you're sharing hey listen day in day out here's where I made a mistake here's where I've done well here's how you know it sounds like you're modeling it and giving people on your team ways to model it as well for each other.

I hope so. I mean, that's my theory. And then we ended up beating that team 3-0 later. And I said, I would take the dive for you guys again, any game. It was awesome. Okay, so what is harder? The decisions that we make in moments of duress, uncomfortableness, pain, physically or emotionally? Or is it the internal battle about staying with something? So I don't know if I'm being clear enough, but... No, no, that's clear. Okay. Yeah. Oh, wow. That's a very interesting question. I think there are challenges for me personally now. At 57, that's a number on a piece of paper in my mind. But every morning when I get up, I'm reminded by it now because it gets harder. It is definitely harder physically.

However, many of my rock climbing and mountaineering partners are young males in their 30s. I feel a huge pressure that I need to still be able to perform at the level that they are because mountaineering rock climbing is colorblind and and it is gender neutral in that respect that I don't want to be the person who's holding somebody up I don't ever want to be that oh it's that woman and so I think working with a population that's 18 to 21, I am surrounded by youth and vibrance and music that I think I'm delusional because I still think that I can stand on the end line. And there are times where I've actually run part of our fitness test or I have done sprints with my team and I'm not coming in first, but the ones that I beat should be embarrassed because I still am. There's some research out of Harvard

that when you manipulate people's environment and you turn back time and you've turned back time like by 50 years, that if you put them in that environment long enough, literally it's like old clocks, old images, old sofas, or contemporary sofas from that time, 50 years earlier, that they change their psychology. And then they take on. Yeah. And then there's actually physical markers, physiological markers in their body that start to change as well. Yeah. So I think that you're onto something really important that research is also going to back you saying that when's, I think that you're onto something really important that research is

also going to back you saying that when you're in environments that are switched on, something happens to us. And when we're in environments where people are pessimistic, where they're dodgy, where they're complaining about stuff, and I'm not talking about Brits in general. No, but like, you know, when you're in those environments that, and people are finding all the things that are wrong and hard and difficult, not reasons not to do, then we, I think we get, we accelerate our aging process and our belief that we can do more than what we're able to do now. So go, can you take me back to that question though? What is, what is the, is it decision making under duress or is it the staying with it under duress that is the difficult, the more difficult challenge? I think decision-making under duress and the circumstances of the environment that you're in when you're making those decisions can be also very stressful and can be dangerous. So in a mountain environment, those decisions can have

incredible consequence. And when we talked about into thin air, oftentimes decisions that are made in a mountaineering environment, it's not the decision that causes somebody to lose their life in that one instance. It's sort of cumulative decisions over a period of time. In the same way, I think in industry, when you look at catastrophic accidents in an industrial setting, it wasn't the final button that got pressed. There were things way before that that led to that wrong decision being made. looking in to see the big picture because you get so uni-focused on the singular goal that you then can't see everything that's surrounding you that an outsider might go, oh my God, look behind you. He's right there. I think that's really important. Do you use mindfulness for meditation

to be able to amplify that toggle i do but i don't do it all the time and i think i draw on that more in the particular moments i.e when i'm running when i'm climbing when i'm running, when I'm climbing, when I'm on expeditions, when you are so into whatever the activity is, standing on the sideline of a game, self-talk, the actual, once I'm in it, but you know, the everyday in the office, sometimes the craziness, I think for me, I have to find, it's so important to be able to find half an hour to go and have a run to get into that headspace. It sounds like that is part of your, it's like a mindful movement, is that you're using movement to be more connected to your thoughts so that you can be aware of them and play with them and toggle from first person to observer. It sounds like you're using that, but I don't want to put words in your mouth. Yeah. I mean, that's why for me, I have an area that I run a lot that's, you know, it's

trails and, you know, right now it's beautiful and the leaves are changing and I never run with headphones on. I've tried to, but running is not about numbing my senses and i haven't needed music to motivate me to run i want to run and hear the birds and see the deer that's standing in the middle of the trail stop and realize i'm 10 feet from a deer that's right here it's i enjoy running in nature to be able to maybe have that focus be a little bit more intense. Okay. So yeah, that would definitely be mindful movement, right? Using movement as a way to be aware of your thoughts and experiences.

Yeah. And then can you take us into your turning back from Everest? Because if I set it up correctly, my mind is that you train your ass off for, no, you weren't, actually you didn't train. Most people would train. Yeah. I was, I was actually, you know, 2004, I lost about 25 pounds on that expedition because the food was so terrible and you're, you're in an environment where it's cold. So you're cold in your altitude. So your heart rate is always just about maximum heart rate. So it's like putting your foot on the gas and just keeping the car running with your foot on the gas.

You're going to burn out that gas tank really quickly. And so you burn about 10,000 calories a day when you're at extreme altitude. So you just can't take in that amount of food. And when the food's not good and you're not eating, so that creates another level of stress for sure. So when I went back in 2006, my training was I actually tried to put on weight before I went on the trip, knowing I was still going to lose weight. So along with sort of doing more work on the elliptical and sort of long, heavy resistance elliptical work, I was still going to lose weight. So along with sort of doing more work on the elliptical and sort of long, heavy resistance elliptical work, I was eating. That was my training,

which was kind of counterintuitive for most women, I think. Okay. So let's go back to your first expedition that you showed up, you were committed, you put some money there, you're fit, your fit, because that's your lifestyle. You have great awareness of your inner dialogue. You're with other people and you're going to go do something difficult, something challenging. And that is a beautiful Petri dish for you in particular, based on what we've just learned, or I've just learned about you. And then, and then I think you're, I don't know, I haven't heard you say that the ultimate aim is to, you know, win championships and to reach your goals, but they're important. And so, so you're setting out to do this important, you know, summit or the summit for yourself. What was it like the moments before turning back? And

what was it like when you actually turned back? Can you bring us into that, that moment? So the group that we had originally had been in quite a lot of conflict and was pretty much splitting into, there was a group of us that felt that we were sort of taking the moral high ground. Leader of our expedition had suggested that we would steal oxygen, we wouldn't pay for ropes, we would do things very underhandedly, keep the budget low. But the minute that it meant we were going to endanger other people's lives, that's when there was a group of about four of us were absolutely not on board with that. Four out of how many? There were eight of us altogether, I believe, that had formed from here, from the state of Connecticut.

One of my friends, one of the good guys, if you like, decided long before this that he wanted no part of climbing Everest under this type of sort of way. And he, I take my hat off, he turned around at Advanced Base Camp long before both Michael Kodis, who wrote the book in High Crimes, he turned around long before and said, that's it, I'm done. And, you know, in retrospect, I probably should have done the same thing. I, we kept, it's laughable, but we kept saying, oh, it'll be okay when we get to Kathmandu. It'll be okay when we get to base camp. It'll be okay when we get to advanced base camp. Things will settle down. The team will come together. We kept sort of giving ourselves that little caveat or an out that it's going to get better. And it wasn't getting better. It was getting worse. Based on the leader's advice, you set out with not enough oxygen.

Well, we didn't even set out with not enough, there was never an intent to buy enough. It was, you'll only need X amount. And when we got to the mountain, we took his advice, he said, Oh, well, we don't really have enough but don't worry every year i've been here i've been able to just pick up more when i've needed it from other camps and of course the group of us that were were sort of banding together were absolutely horrified by this and obviously that really divided the group and, a guy who I had been a climbing partner of just went with the leader because he was so driven for the summit. And many people on these big expeditions get what you call summit fever. It's summit at all cost, regardless of human life or care for others. And to this day, I ended my friendship with this particular person because of the decision that he made to continue regardless of the rest of us.

And this individual actually summited in 2004, and I told him once we returned to the U. US, that I would no longer climb with him, I would not tie onto a rope with him. And our friendship was over. And how does he justify his behavior in ransacking other people's or taking other people's oxygen, which obviously, like, in this environment, you and I speaking, that sounds morally, morally horrific yeah he his justification was well um you know if we really need it then those people would be happy for us to have it and they probably weren't going to be able to use it anyway and oh yes of course we'd replace it

which was not true and so i think he sort of allowed himself to think that if they did use other peoples, that it would be replaced. But by the same token, there was no effort made to pay for the fixed ropes that were being put in place and all the expeditions were going to chip in to cover the additional cost of these ropes. Our expedition flatly refused to pay. And then a group of us went to the leader of one of the expeditions that was placing the ropes. And we offered to pay out of our own money that it wouldn't be coming from our expedition. It was just going to be the four of us that were going to put up extra cash because we just felt that morally it was wrong for us to use ropes that have been put in place but we weren't paying for and so his his explanation for that was well they're doing they're doing that on their own nobody's asking

them to to use fixed ropes and so we won't touch them which okay so you mean you're going to climb and the ropes that are actually right in front of your nose, you're not going to put your hands on again. Yeah, okay. Yeah, so I'm fascinated by ethical decision making processes under duress, because I don't know anyone that says, I'm a bad human being. I'm a terrible human being, and I do bad things. So people, people have an armor, a process, a denial, something that they do to be able to protect themselves from saying, I'm an awful human being. And I don't know, but the moment of crisis is for many people is when you say, oh my gosh, what I've been doing has been awful. And that must mean I'm an awful human being and that's a massive crisis for people but so it sounds like you you you had your wits about you to be able to say this is unethical

behavior even when you had so much money on the line so much effort on the line so much commitment that you still turned around not from a physical challenge but from a moral dilemma yeah I mean Mike at the time wasn't feeling well, and altitude was just making that worse. I had a chest infection, which is very common at altitude. So I'm now moving up to camp two, not at my strongest, which most climbers aren't. And I think the final straw for both of us was we got to a point where the leader of the expedition threatened Michael and threatened to throw our tent off the mountain for things that Michael was writing and reporting back to the newspaper that he worked for the Hartford Courant here in Connecticut and was sending blogs back for them to print. And he was writing what was happening. And the that point, it became really evident that those people were no longer part of a team that would help and look out for us and be a band of brothers on the mountain. independently, just the two of us, not feeling 100%. And it was just so evident to me that

as hard a decision as this was going to be, I no longer felt safe because I didn't trust my teammates. And that was the worst realization for me was you thought you were part of a team, but actually you're not. Okay. And then so you geared back up and took another crack at it two years later yeah we came back trinity was amazing you know they gave me the time off the first time and i promised my athletic director well i'll never do something like this again and two years later i'm knocking on the door saying can i go back again? And part of this was Michael Kodis now had a book deal and was writing about our 2004 experience. And he wanted to go back to do, he needed to do some more interviews actually on the mountain because the book didn't come out until the end of 2006, about the 2004 expedition. And so Michael was like,

come on, let's go back. But this time, we went with a group that I knew the leader, I went through a reputable outfitter, you really get what you pay for. And they were all, it wasn't a guided group, it was all people that were experienced mountaineers. So the other climber from Connecticut, my friend Bill, who turned around, he went with us as well. And of our group, there were 12 climbers originally. Unfortunately, Mike did not summit. Bill didn't summit. Of the 12, there were six of us that were still going on summit day. And i was lucky enough to be one of them and it was the complete opposite of the group in 2004 everybody was 100 committed to what we were doing supportive shared their food shared equipment shared everything and i almost needed to go back to erase and rewrite my memory of the awful experience of 2004.

Gee whiz. It's awesome that you got a chance to do that. Yeah. So, I mean, when I do lectures and presentations now, I talk about 2004, but my slides are all of my 2006 expedition. I don't want it to all seem like it's all lovely, blah, blah, blah. But I do talk about the adversity of, of what happened in 2004, but what was positive. And I, I focus for me on 2006. Is there a phrase or word that guides your life? I think honesty and is there is there a phrase or a word that cuts to what you do the best

I just think I'm one of the hard workers of the world what's that like to say my hands hurt and I've got blisters, but I'm going to keep doing this until I can't do it anymore. It feels good. I like building things. I like doing things. I like seeing physical things as a result of my labor, whether it's my team or completing something. That's important to me. And what are you internally driven by? You're one of the hard workers. Fear of failing. Oh, no kidding.

Yeah. So what would failure be and what is success? Well, success is standing on top of the mountain. Failure is not even putting the backpack on in the first place. That's amazing. I didn't know you were going to say that because I'm not using the backpack analogy. That's how I describe failure as well, which is the not going for it, playing it safe and small. That's the failure. I think you're the first person in these interviews that have reaffirmed that thought for me. So that's pretty

cool. Yeah. Okay. What is the, on your inner critic? I'm sure you have one. Yeah. So what do you do with the inner critic? As soon as you are aware of the thought that you have, that's being critical, what do you do with that critic? It's interesting. You say that I, Paul and I were talking about this the other day. I still stand on the sideline when I'm coaching and I feel like someone's going to find out that I really have no idea what I'm talking about.

And they're going to tap me on the shoulder and go, okay, you fooled us for how many years? We found you. So I think that sort of imposter syndrome goes back to that teacher. I think I still battle with that. I think most of us do. And so you dive deeper into what it is you do and you do it harder and longer and more to try to justify that you actually do your colleagues actually value you as somebody who knows what they're talking about or is it all smoke and mirrors so at stanford uh incoming professors are i don't know if it's still the case but at one time they were all asked to take a course on imposter syndrome because professors are walking around they look down the hallway or the person next to them in their office next to them is a nobel peace

prize winner and they're walking into stanford saying how did I get here? What, you know, and so this imposter, the conversation about imposter syndrome, it's come up over and over and over again on this podcast. And so it's except people doing exceptional things and people that are exceptional doing exceptional things tend to run into that. Am I going to be found out one day? Yeah. Okay, so last couple questions here. Pressure comes from? Resistance. Internal or external resistance? I think both.

Okay. You don't have pressure unless something is pushing against it to make that pressure be what it is. That's a really cool thought. Okay, so where can we learn more about what you're up to? I enjoy doing public speaking and working with other groups, sharing my story. a business set up yet. But, you know, I basically sort of market myself that I'm just a normal average working person that can do some things that hopefully can inspire and make other people realize that they can do really cool things too. Well, you have something to offer. And I want to

encourage you to amplify that as best you can. And we're going to do it here on this podcast. And I want to thank you for your time. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed this. Yeah. And let's thank Paul Asciante and his podcast for getting us connected on this as well. And then so with that, I hope you have a great afternoon. Thanks so much. Okay. Take care. Bye Mike. Bye. 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

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