Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - How To Approach The Future — AI, Humanity, and Creative Thinking with Futurist Jamie Metzl

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

What sets humans apart? Technology and healthcare futurist Jamie Metzl dives into the intersection of artificial intelligence and humanity, why learning and creativity are crucial, and what it really means to be optimistic.This week’s conversation is with leading geopolitical expert and technology futurist, Jamie Metzl, a returning guest to the podcast we’re so happy to welcome back. Jamie boasts degrees from Brown (undergrad), Harvard (law), and Oxford (Ph.D), but that may just be the least interesting thing about him. He’s served in the U.S. State Department, and on the National Security Council, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the World Health Organization expert advisory committee on human genome editing. He’s also been called “the original COVID-19 whistleblower” as a leading advocate for a full investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.His bestselling book, Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity, is a groundbreaking exploration of the future of our species. Jamie’s profound and provocative inquiry suggests humankind is about to start evolving by new rules as genetic engineering begins to alter the core foundations of our lives - sex, love, war and death.This conversation proves that Jamie has so much more to offer than his resume and I’m so grateful to have had him back on the podcast for this insightful and important discussion._________________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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stay present and engaged with my thinking and writing. If you wanna slow down, if you wanna work smarter, I highly encourage you to check them out. Visit remarkable.com to learn more and grab your paper pro today. One of the most important things will be to have your own philosophy about what humans will do best in general. And in whatever field you're in, what will be the most essential role of humans in that? And to really double down on developing those skills. Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training a high-performance psychologist. And I am humbled to welcome back to the podcast the incomparable Dr. Jamie Metzl for this week's conversation.

Jamie is a leading geopolitical expert and technology futurist. What does that mean exactly? Well, I hope you're excited to find out. His accomplishments are nothing short of extraordinary. Jamie has served in the U.S. National Security Council, the State Department, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the World Health Organization Expert Advisory Committee on Human Genome Editing. He's also been called the original COVID-19 whistleblower as a leading advocate for the full investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, if that wasn't enough. He wrote a best-selling book titled Hacking Darwin, Genetic Engineering and the Future

of Humanity, a groundbreaking exploration of the future of our species. Jamie's profound and provocative inquiry suggests humankind is about to start evolving by new rules as genetic engineering begins to alter the core foundations of our lives. Sex, love, war, and death. In addition to his many impressive degrees, a PhD from Oxford, a law degree from Harvard, an undergraduate degree from Brown, Jamie is an Ironman triathlete and an ultra marathon runner. And he spent time living and working at refugee camps in Cambodia. I mean, geez.

I think it's clear. This human has no shortage of insight when it comes to living a life of high performance. And I'm excited for you to experience his sharp mind as we get into strategies for learning AI, high performance living, the future of humanity, the future of leadership, and so much more. So with that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with Jamie Metzl. Jamie, welcome back to the Finding Mastery podcast. I can't believe it's been three years since you first came on the show. It's just nuts.

When you told me that is before we went live, I really couldn't believe it. But I did the math and it's true, but you don't look a day older. Ditto, my friend. It's been fun watching you influence so many people on your point of view about COVID and the future. And so I'm stoked to just kind of see where your head's at now. And maybe we just start with what's scaring you and what's exciting you when you think about the future? Well, I'll reverse it because I'm an optimist. As you know, Mike, I'm originally from Kansas City and I just can't help my optimism. So I'm pretty excited about a lot of things. But one of the things that I'm most excited is it's not just technology. And for sure, we're going to talk about generative AI. And there's not just technology, and for sure we're going to talk about generative AI,

and there's not just any one technology. What we're experiencing is a super convergence of lots of different technologies where every technology inspires and is inspired by every other technology. And so that's just the tools and capabilities and resources that we have is just amazing. But what does that actually mean? I think a lot about on the human level. So about a hundred years ago, there were 2 billion people on earth and a 15% literacy rate. And so that meant about 300 million people able to share, to participate in the world of knowledge shared beyond their immediate communities. Now we have 6.5 billion people, 85% literacy rate, and we're going towards 10 billion. And I think literacy rates are likely to increase.

And that's certainly a lot of people. But with all of these people empowered with all of these new tools and literacy and the cultural heritage of just our common humanity. I'm just so excited about what we're going to come up with, all the new art and innovation and symphonies and creativity and connectivity and collaboration. It's just incredible story. The story isn't the technology, it's what the technology allows us to do individually and together. And the flip side of that is that these technologies give individuals and even some nefarious states, or maybe sometimes well-intentioned states, the opportunity to inflict a lot of harm. And it's much easier in general to destroy things than

to build things. And so the third piece of this is the challenge. The challenge that we have is to use all of these resources and opportunities to build a more resilient world. And that starts on the individual level, the family level, the community level, the national level, and the global level. Awesome. Okay. So clearly plus one in the optimist column. Yeah. Can't help myself. Let me bridge two things together because right now I'm going to speak to your craft as being a futurist. I think the general narrative from people that are thinking about the future, AI specifically, they're super pessimistic. There's grave concerns. We need to be careful that it's moving so fast.

And there's like a footnote, which is like, this is going to be great for A, B, and C, efficiencies and freeing up creativity, freeing up the mundane tasks for greater creativity. But the general tone, I feel, is pretty pessimistic. It's an alarming thing that's taking place. And I'm not saying we shouldn't be alarmed. That's not my position at all. And I hear you. You have a loud voice and you have a strong, optimistic framework. I do want to hear a little bit more, like, tell me that you're not missing some of the dangers that could be, you know, I almost want to, I'm an optimist as well, but I also want, I want to speak somewhat for people that are like, I'm a realist. And by the way, you can be a realist as a pessimist and

a realist as an optimist. Yeah. So I definitely see myself as, I mean, I actually, there was a time when I was trying to give a name, like there's the world real politic and I'm a real optimist, whatever the thing is. And so I think that part of being an optimist, a real optimist demands that we just look really directly at those negatives. So there is no doubt, and I referenced it before, that the threats that we face are really not just monumental, but even existential, because there have always been threats against humans. There have always been natural threats. The dinosaurs, the non-avian dinosaurs got wiped out by an asteroid 66 million years ago. But the ability of small number of humans to do existential harm or do existential good, to do existential harm, it just grows all the time.

And so with the AI systems, I mean, all of your listeners will be familiar with the Elon Musk et al letter. And those are very real concerns with, as you know, I've been involved with issues of pandemic origins. I think it's most likely the pandemic stems from a lab accident in Wuhan. But even if that's not the case, there's no doubt, and my next book is about this, that we're entering the age of human engineered biology, which has massive implications for everything. And again, doing lots of good, curing cancers, living healthier,

longer lives, making agriculture more productive in our world more sustainable in all sorts of ways. But the dangers are very real. And that's why we have to really look at them. And that's why in my response to the Elon Musk letter, where he was saying, where they were saying, well, let's do a six-month moratorium. There's always people with every one of these transformations recently, at least in recent decades, there's always a group of people who call for a moratorium. And the problem is we don't have a philosophy or I should say a framework for knowing what to do during that period of a moratorium. So as you may have mentioned, and when you're introducing me, I'm founder of an organization called One Shared World, oneshared.world. And that is essentially, I mean, our chances of

success are like 0.0001%. Again, a mark of optimism where somebody says, wow, those are good odds. I'm going to go for it. But basically, as I see it, the biggest challenge we face in our world today is the mismatch between the nature of our greatest challenges, which are global and common, whether it's climate change, pandemics, nuclear weapons, lots of other things, and the absence of a sufficient framework for addressing that entire category of challenges. And in my mind, until we really think on a global systems level, it's going to be very difficult for us to do the right thing, even if we pause, which we actually can't do because of competitive pressures, but even if we could pause for six months. And we've had moments where the world has kind of taken a quantum leap

in organization. We had it after the 30 years war in the middle of the 17th century. We had it after the second world war in the middle of the 20th century. And we must do it now if we are to lay a foundation for at least a safer future. I'm going to pause the conversation here for just a few minutes to talk about our sponsors. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true. Meaningful relationships are at the center of sustained success. And building those relationships, it takes more than effort.

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conditions apply. Finding Mastery is brought to you by David Protein. I'm pretty intentional about what I eat and the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods. And when I'm pretty intentional about what I eat. And the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods. And when I'm traveling or in between meals on a demanding day, certainly I need something quick that will support the way that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David protein bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put them on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them. One a day, one a day.

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Okay. There's some rich things in here. And I want to ask about how you learn relative to frameworks. The other is, I'm curious what you're seeing as the hard problems from your point of view, and you kind of hit them. All right. So one at a time, learning. Learning and creativity are, in my view, the most essential human skills. Lots of us, myself included, have been spending time on chat GPT, asking it to do stuff that seemed hard, and it does it really well. It's not perfect. There's all kinds of hallucinations, but it's pretty amazing compared to what we thought was

possible last October. And it's clear that AI systems are just becoming smarter and better at a whole lot of things. And every time the frontier of what AI can do moves, we say, well, it can do this, but it can't do that. It can beat us at chess, but it can't beat us at Go. It can beat us at Go, but it can't do the hardest problems in biology. All right. It can predict protein folding, but it can't. And now we're thinking, well, it can do all the things that ChatGPT and Prometheus and Bard and Ernie and all these other generative AI systems that are coming are going to be able to do, but it can't do X. And we're going to have to figure out what that X is. And that X is going to be constantly shifting because it's going to be

able to write decent symphonies. It's going to be able to do a lot of pretty incredible things. And what we're going to have to do, as humans have always done, is figure out what's the core of our humanity. And for anybody in any job, if you are competing head to head with an AI system in a domain where AI systems are better than humans, you're going to lose. But if you try to think, well, what do AI systems do better than humans? And what do humans do better than AI? And you gear your growth around that. In my mind, that's a winning formula. It was less than a decade ago when some of the people like Jeff Hinton, some of the greatest inventors essentially of these generative AI systems were saying human radiologists were going to be totally out of business. And it's true. We've seen incredible advances in the ability of AI systems to read just radiological information, whether it's images or data or other stuff.

But actually, human radiologists have gotten a lot better. on the human side of that job, which isn't just hypothesis generation. It's analysis and context and interaction with patients and things like that. And so coming back, Mike, to your first question about learning, what I do for learning is one is to try to be curiosity driven and broad because we live, as I mentioned before, in this world of super convergence where there's so many different knowledge systems coming together. So to understand where just how the world is forming, we really have to be broad, like the world of technology, the world of nature, art, science, philosophy, It's kind of all coming together. And then the second thing that I really love to do is read. And I think people feel like, oh, the world is moving

so fast, it's hard to read longer stuff. But I really, it's such an intimate connection, in my view, with thinkers and writers. And I'm in the middle of writing book number six now. And you realize, right? I know you've written books, Mike, that you just put your soul into it. And that, in my mind, is something that's also kind of very human. So I really love reading a lot of books. And then with all of this information and wisdom, it's almost like I feel like it's like a weaving. And I'm either constantly adding new threads or

constantly taking the threads apart and then weaving them back together. But so many of us, most everybody who you or many of the people listening to this podcast you finish graduate school and you have a set an amount of knowledge that is a wonderful knowledge set but if we're not constantly learning and constantly challenging and constantly growing even the strongest foundation can can become weak. So long way of saying it, I probably used way too many words to say, just reinvesting continually in learning and creativity and thinking about my place in the world is an essential part of at least how I live in the world and how I try to figure out my place in it.

Okay. So, so when you're, let me just drill down right underneath that. So it's curiosity, it's growth, and then you've got a set of activities, reading being one of them. And are you mapping, when you read something net new, are you mapping it to an existing mental model or set of first principles? Or is it more like a scaffolding of your first principles? Or is it you are tearing down the Lego set and building it back up again on a regular basis? Yeah. It's such a great question. And I don't even know if I can honestly answer because the answer is for all of us, I think, you know, we have our armature, which is kind of how we've grown to see the world. In my ideal self, every time I get a new, not every piece of

information, but sometimes you just get some new piece of information that changes your framework about how to see things. And so I like to think that even my most foundational concepts can constantly be renegotiated. I'm sure I'm not as good at it in reality as I am in my aspiration. But what I do think is the way that my mind works and the way that I've trained my mind to work is when I get a new piece of information, I really try to kind of filter it through everything that if this one thing is true, well, what does it mean for everything else? And so right now, I think many people are having this experience because I think a lot of people were kind of shocked when they went on chat GPT for the first time.

I'll give a story about my brother. So I have three brothers. Actually, one of them is a team doctor for the Denver Broncos and an orthopedic surgeon. But another brother who's here in New York, he's a physician at the hospital for special surgery and does all kinds of sports medicine. So similar to you, Mike. And I was telling him about chat GPT and he was saying, oh, no, this is this is Dragon. We use Dragon to dictate charts. And I said, I'm telling you, this is not Dragon. This is not it's not transcribing your lab notes. This is something bigger. And I was saying, well, here's here's what it is and what it means.

And it's going to be like your companion. It's not going to tell you what to do, but it's going to help you process all kinds of information. It's going to make sense of charts. It's going to make sure that anything that you want to do doesn't conflict, whether because of pharmacogenomics or something else. And he was kind of resistant. I said, all right, but let's just sit down. And I kind of said, all right, here's OpenAI, think of your toughest question. And he had this look on his face like, ha, ha, ha. And then he put in like what he thought was a really tough question from his field of sports medicine. And literally in three seconds, Chad Cheap E.T. gave an incredibly

thoughtful, 100% correct answer. And then I said, all right, so now let's talk about what this means and what it will mean for you. And it was like, so for me, it kind of came intuitively. And I think just different people. But for him, once he saw that, and then we were talking about for his medical practice, well, what did it mean? How can you be the best human? And there were all sorts of things. But one of the things was that every single person who steps into your office, their experience

of being loved and cared for is more important than ever. So the person who says, hey, can you fill out this chart? The person who says, hey, I'm going to take you back for an x-ray. Every single person, they need to know that the first thing, the most important part of their job is making every single person who walks in the door feel loved and cared for. Because as a physician, you are part of this thousand, multi-thousand year history of human healers. And I think that we've kind of forgotten that in hospitals. We see people as just kind of units coming through and we have to process them. And so I just think that there are times for all of us where we get some new piece of information and we're forced to kind of work that through the whole system and see what it means.

And my aspiration for myself is that I'm constantly doing that as new things come in. But it's easy to say, it's hard to do. Okay, so let's stay with that idea of easy to say, hard to do. And easy to externalize discernment, especially right now with chat GBT and other generative AI solutions or processes, as well as social media. Whether you've articulated clearly or not to yourself or others, I'm not aware, but you have an incredible ability to discern. So gating out is one part of discerning.

And then thinking deeply is a second part of it, at least from my understanding. And so what do you do to discern? Because if you don't do it yourself, others are going to do it for you. Yeah, it's so important. And so there's a few different things that I do. One is I talked about trying to, it's funny, I looked down. So my computer is on a pile of books so that the camera and my eye are at the same thing. And I just looked down and the book that I have exactly under the computer is How to Cook Everything by

Mark Bittman. And so it's connected to what I'm about to say is like, yes, you could try to cook everything and cook kind of something that they're eating in the Amazonian rainforest and something from Africa and whatever. But most people, when they're even the best cooks in the world, they're trying to say, well, what are the things that I'm most interested in? What are the things that I'm trying to do in the world? So that already is a bit of a gating. I mentioned before trying to learn everything, but I definitely have my areas that I see, well, what are kind of the big drivers of change? And three that I've mentioned before is, and they're all connected, what happens to AI, what happens to engineered biology, and what does it mean to be a human being when those things are changing? Those are kind of three of my big themes. And so then

that kind of narrows it down. And then we all have to decide, well, what are the filters? What are the kinds of sources that we're open to? Because right now, if you just say, all right, I'm interested in AI, bring me everything on AI, you're just going to get bombarded and there's going to be a whole lot of kind of useless crap. But while narrowing it down, it's also important to not get stuck in some kind of bubble, even with the most brilliant people you don't value, but make sure you filter in or keep inside of the filter people and ideas that are different from yours because there are so many pressures on all of us to just get stuck in these cul-de-sacs and it kind of feels good because we're around a lot of people who agree with us. And that in my mind is very dangerous. So I definitely, I think that

gating and filtering process is just really important. And I'm not active on any social media other than Twitter. But on Twitter, it's really easy to fall into a hole. I mean, people like Sam Harris have decided that that was the defining element of Twitter. And so they've left it. I don't feel that way. But you could really just spend your entire life chasing down, you know, responding to somebody who made a comment on your, so I, so I don't have a good answer to your question, Mike, other than to say the, the act of filtering and the philosophy of filtering is it's really, it's essential because if we just say, well, I'm an, I'm open to everything, it's going to be overwhelming and you're going to drown out the good stuff.

But by the good stuff, I think everyone needs to recognize that the good stuff includes good stuff with viewpoints different than yours. Okay, quick pause here to share some of the sponsors of this conversation. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family,

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Plus, they look great. Clean, clear, no funky color distortion. Just good design, great science. And if you're ready to feel the difference for yourself, Felix Gray is offering all Finding Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at checkout. Again, that's felixgray. 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 now back to the conversation. I love the idea of people and ideas being clear, but the people's ideas that have a similar

point of view, but also the ones that have maybe a contrarian or see the world differently and holding those on the inner circle as well. Head coaches, CEOs, people that are running organizations, they've said it for years, like there's a loneliness at the top. And I've experienced it from people that have done first, whatever the first is in the back country or dangerous environments. And they find it lonely for two reasons. One is that people revere what they've done or what they're capable of. So they don't want to get in the way of the geniuses process. And actually what they come back and they say is like,

no, it's bouncing up against contrarian ideas or different points of view that helps me in immense ways to be able to have deeper clarity on how I'm going to go after the thing that I'm pursuing in my life. So there's that bit of it. And then there's the other loneliness is that there's an explorer that says he used Mount Everest. This was not the mountain he climbed though. He says, Mike, imagine if you were the first person to climb Mount Everest. And when you came down trying to describe to people that have never really felt the cold or seen the snow or smelt the things that you smelt or know what it's like to be even close to that level of physical and mental suffering. He goes, it's really, it's lonely. I wonder if you experienced

that. And I don't get that from you, but you're out on the frontier and you're being bold. Even the COVID position you took about Wuhan was bold and it was out there. And you probably got knocked around a bit. I wasn't following at that depth of a level, but do you recognize any loneliness or aloneness, different but related, from being out front? Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. I think it's just part of it. After I ran for Congress, I mean, running for Congress was the most together thing that I've ever done in the sense that we have a team, thousands of people just out every day, meeting so many people and having so many incredible experiences and interactions. But there's also kind of a loneliness in the sense

that this whole kind of system depends on you. Every time somebody says, I'm going to support you, it's like they are saying, well, I want you to be the champion of this cause. That's why I'm supporting you. If somebody gives you, I had actually the woman who cleaned my parents' house when they lived in Kansas City. She was this really great woman, Nancy. And she had like $20 and she went to the boats, the casino boats, and she won $50. And then she came and made that $50 contribution to my campaign. And of course, it guaranteed like 600 years of future employment. But it was like people like that.

And you think, well, I'm not going to let that person down. And so I felt like there was really no amount of pushing myself that was enough. There was just always more to do. And there was kind of a loneliness of that, but it was a loneliness in the context of so many people. In the early days of COVID-19, when I was just looking at the data as I saw it. And I was looking at the media reports and even papers or letters in scientific journals. And there was just a mismatch between the story I was seeing from the data and what I was reading in the newspapers. And I just started speaking out. But at that time, it turned out there were a handful of us around the world who had seen the same thing, but we didn't know each other at that time. And I had friends saying, what are you doing? You're risking your entire reputation. You're supporting Trump in an election

year. What's wrong with you? And for sure, I think any person on any one of these quests, that's why it's hard, is you have to face these things and you have to doubt yourself. And sometimes those doubts can be pretty powerful. And you have to kind of sit with them and not just bat them away, but like same point as before, kind of look at them, understand them, and then kind of figure out how you're going to get around it and keep pushing it. It's hard, but it's also probably the most rewarding thing for myself and many people in the world. You're describing the unique intersection of discernment that's really important for me at least. And discernment wisdom are cousins in many respects, but the ability to think deeply,

to line that up with how your body's speaking to you as well. This is my mapping of discernment. To think deeply, to line it up with the way it feels, and then to gate out a bunch of other doubts or concerns that are clouding the truth, that are clouding the deep insight that is right at the tip of your tongue or at your fingertips. And so when- Can I pause you there, Mike, and ask you a quick question? Because, you know, I, for most of my life, I wasn't a big football fan. I did a lot of sports, but I wasn't a big football fan. But quite recently, over the last couple of years,

I've become a huge football fan and a huge Kansas City Chiefs fan. And there were three reasons, maybe four reasons. One is because my parents, who lived in Kansas City a couple of years ago, moved out of Kansas City. And so rooting for the Chiefs was kind of my connection. Two, as a declared fair weather fan, my side of the bargain was to be a super fan when the Kansas City Chiefs become great. I know real fans reject that, but that's on you. If my shampoo stops working, I'm going to switch shampoos. And the most important is that my dad, in the beginning of this last NFL season, was diagnosed with stage four cancer. And he's doing very well. And I think it's part because he came to the United States as a refugee.

And in those days, people became Americans through sports. In those days, it was more baseball than football. But it kind of that passion morphed into from baseball to football. And so my dad cared to the bottom of his soul about the Kansas City Chiefs. And in the beginning of this diagnosis, when it was really scary and new, I said, Dad, the Kansas City Chiefs are depending on you for your support to win this thing. And you have to be there and you have to be strong for them. And I gave him a Chiefs hat, which he literally almost did not take off of his

head the entire season. And seeing his, I was in Dubai, but we were watching together on video, the Super Bowl, just the joy on his face when they won. So, But from you, when you kind of talk about overcoming the doubt, now that I've become a football fan, I was kind of watching, there's a player named Sky Moore, who's on the Chiefs, and he was a first round draft pick and had been a superstar in college. And this year he kept dropping all of the punt returns. And I think he lost all of his confidence. And in the last game in the Super Bowl, when everybody was injured, he caught the punt and had the run of his life in a punt return that set up winning the whole game. So I imagine for the question that you asked me, I imagine for you and exactly your career, you must have just seen it because again, football and sports,

that thing of overcoming your doubt, being honest about where you are, aspiring to where you want to be in a realistic way that allows you to kind of first just envision it and then build your path from here to there. I mean, you must have just witnessed that in incredible spades. Yeah, thank you. Like, yes, because you just hit on some really important parts of it, which is our minds are so powerful. Like, we don't really understand them. However, we do know that when you close your eyes, you get to run a movie.

And that movie can be anything that you want it to be. You can do it with your eyes open too, but it's a little more dramatic when you say close your eyes. And if you care about something and you play that movie, you become more familiar with it. And it's a forcing function to use your imagination to see a better future, whatever that means for you. It could be better for, I don't know, somebody, you know, that's suffering or it could be better in your life and in whatever the movie is that you want. And so athletes and athletics is a

working laboratory for people to use their technical skills, their physical skills, and most importantly to me, their mental skills. And the imagination is a huge one. And being able to see and feel and being intimate with that is incredible. And then lining your life efforts up to be able to test with great purpose, the skills required to be just a little bit closer to that beautiful movie that you're using in your imagination. And so they design their life to run to the danger, to run to the high heat, high stress, high pressured, forcing moments to be honest. And then they do that publicly day in and day out. So when you said honesty,

I said, oh, yeah, there it is. So imagination, you use the word envisioning, imagination and honesty. But the honesty is so rich that it's a public display about the skills that they don't yet have. And that's really hard for most people because we're trying to present a certain way. And when you're amongst peers that are highly skilled and you come up short and short again and short again and short again, it can really wreak havoc on one's psychology unless you've done a bunch of internal work and you really love the art of unlocking and you're more interested in the unlock than you are in other people's approval or other people's praise. And then you couple that twofold

with, this is a first principle, which is, am I going to allow, this is a question, not a principle yet, am I going to be the person where my external world dictates my internal experience? Or am I going to work from the inside out where my internal experience influences the external world? So there's a directionality that's really important. So for that young athlete who has incredible talent, I mean, Sky is incredible at what he can do. And by the way, just as an aside, you have to be extraordinary just to be the 63rd person on

a roster in the NFL. Your level of talent is like unbelievable. And so I think what was happening for Sky is he was using his most recent, and I don't know Sky, but he was using his most recent experience to determine his psychological state. So if I catch the ball and I rip 20 yards, I'm good. Yeah, let's go. If I drop the ball or if I catch the ball and I feel awkward and I get, you know, a half a yard and I get tackled. So that's when the external world dictates the internal experience. And so I'm hoping, I'm hoping that somebody is doing the work with them where it's the external does not dictate the internal. And that becomes basically confidence training, which is so freeing when you get that ordering right.

And Mike, if that's kind of everything, like every single person on earth, from the best professional athlete to just every person in every job and in every life. Like what you said, it's like the formula for not being stuck, for saying, well, where am I going? How am I going to get there little by little? Imagining and then steps to get from here to there. And now one final word from our sponsors. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down.

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it's really simple. Their products are simple and they reflect the kind of intentional living that I want to build into every part of my day. And they make my morning routine really easy. They've got some great new products I think you'll be interested in. A shampoo, conditioner, and a hair serum. With Caldera Lab, it's not about adding more. It's about choosing better. And when your day demands clarity and energy and presence, the way you prepare for it matters. If you're looking for high quality personal care products that elevate your routine

without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. And with that, let's jump right back into this conversation. That idea is, I love that we're talking about it because that's what I was trying to understand from you on like, how do you get out the information? How do you learn? So it's connected to what I was saying about just really being curiosity driven because I know a lot of people and maybe We're trained to do this. I'm saying oh don't let your mind wander like stay where you are focus I think it's in some way. You don't always have your mind wander

But in some areas it's like giving your mind space to wander is actually a really wonderful thing. And so coming back to kind of how to learn, I also, in that file that I have of these things that I'm printing out to read, it's covered in scribbles. And it's covered because as I put something in there, I'll have a thought and I'll scribble that thought on the file. And then at least in the context of book writing, I'll just kind of go through all the scribbles just to, hey, it's like, did I get that? Did I follow that idea? Did I follow that thought? And so for me, it's connected to basically all of your questions, but your framework question is we kind of have a framework and we kind of grow with it and then sometimes change

the framework and sometimes things morph. But I think it's so important to retain the kind of not just mental, but mental and emotional flexibility so that we can change when that's the message that we're receiving. Yeah, you're just hitting on one of the core elements, which is mindfulness. And I'll say core because it's the golden thread that runs through so much of what happens in psychology and emotions, which is awareness of how it's working, whether it's inside of you or outside of you, awareness of how it's actually being

experienced or how it's happening. And mind wandering is what we would call open monitoring. And it's also called contemplative. It's just watch. Just start with a thought stem or start with nothing perhaps. But without judgment or critique, just watch how thoughts link together. Watch how emotions and those thoughts work together and not critiquing or judging. And that ability just to carve out some time to train that skill is remarkable because you become more aware of how things work. And what I mean by that is how thought one and thought two stitch together and how emotions, you know, with those thoughts work. And so are you doing anything before we kind of round third base here a little bit or get into the red zone if we're going to stay in football?

I'm having so much fun. Let's keep going. No, I'm, so your question is, am I doing mindfulness? Are you meditating? Are you doing any mindfulness internal work like that? This is, you know, when you go on podcasts like this, there's a temptation to kind of present your idealized self. And so my idealized self is spending an hour a day meditating. My actual self is not. I mean, I certainly I'm an ultra marathon. Not certainly. I am an ultra marathon runner. And I've done 13 Ironmans. I don't think I'm probably going to do any more just because I no longer want to spend eight hours on a bicycle in the training cycle. So I like to think, and even then I'm just lying, because I would say I like to think that my running is meditation,

but I've become so addicted to listening to fantastic podcasts like yours on my runs because I learn so much that even that I've kind of crowded out my, my kind of idealized philosophy of, uh, of, uh, of running. So it's one of those things where I really, I know that I would be better off doing it. I've had five private audiences with the Dalai Lama. I've gone to Dharamsala and done trainings with these genius lamas. I wish I did it. And I just don't. I try to be mindful and thoughtful. And I know, I actually, I really do believe that I would be better off doing it. I just can only confess. Yeah. That sounds like so much of my inner dialogue as well. So the research is coming back somewhere around eight minutes a day is yielding some pretty interesting results,

but never going to get us to that deep wisdom that you and I are talking about. I'm sorry. Sorry I keep interrupting you, Mike, with these little stories, but I can't help myself. Anyway, I'll just say, so like six or seven years ago, I'm in New York. And I thought, you know, I really, like many other people,

I always think, well, I should be meditating. And why don't I go for another training? And so I went to the Japan Society, which is here in New York, and they had this Zen master. And so everybody was in the room and they said, all right, you know, everyone got in the meditation position and they hit the little gong and we were trying to meditate. And then somebody hadn't turned off the sound on their iPhone. And like every 30 seconds, they were getting one of those notifications that you've got a new message. And so I was there, I'd try to meditate,

and then you'd hear that noise. And then again, hear the noise. And so I'm like, where's that coming from? I started, don't ever do this in a meditation. I started tapping people next to me, like, hey, is that your phone? And And the look on their face, it was like, what the F are you doing? You're tapping on my shoulder during a meditation. Come on, dude, work with it. Just work with it. That's exactly right. What you said is exactly right. So afterwards, I went to the Zen person. I said, it was so distracting. I was trying to meditate and I kept hearing this thing. And she said, you've missed the entire point. When I hit that gong to start the meditation, that was a reminder to focus. You could have used that noise from the iPhone as another gong

in your meditation. And she said, I know people who do that in the elevator going up at work, that every, between every floor, that's a moment of meditation, even if it's five seconds long. And then the next floor is a gong. And it's exactly what you just said of work with it. I mean, the exact same experience can be a terrible distraction or something that allows you to just refocus yourself. And it wasn't about that other person's phone. It was about me. That is awesome. Okay. So if Finding Mastery listeners knew what you knew. What might we do differently? How would we think about the future maybe for our kids, maybe for business or purpose that we're trying to explore? So as I mentioned earlier, one of the most important things will be to have your own philosophy about what humans will do best in general. And in whatever field

you're in, what will be the most essential role of humans in that? And to really double down on developing those skills. And it's going to be a mix-up because there are certain skills that we value enormously now that are going to be devalued later. I'm actually giving a keynote to the National Association of Physicians' Assistants. And this is one of the things that I'm going to tell. It's like the same thing I told my brother. It very well will be that when people go to a doctor's office or have some kind of health care encounter in the future, the empathy of the health care provider will be the thing that we value most. Some of the analytical skills and even the technical skills that we value so much now

will actually be commoditized. So number one is to really think about what does it mean to be a great human and double down on that. Two, as we've talked about, it's all about creativity and learning and letting yourself be that human. It's so easy for us to get caught up in the things that we're doing day to day. And we have to, because those things are really important. But because the world is changing so rapidly and because our brains aren't set up

on their own for adapting to that kind of change. We really have to, in some ways, force ourselves to really think and learn. And that's why, you know, I know people who are just very, very smart, extremely high functioning people who aren't reading, who are, and I have somebody who I know who's like an incredible journalist and said she hasn't read a book, I think she said 17 years since her child was born. I totally understand it. Even if it's a haiku, I think really kind of thinking differently, reading differently, experiencing different kinds of inputs, certainly arts and culture. It's actually a really practical thing. We talk about connecting with what it means to be a human. When we look at even the football players,

what is it that makes it so beautiful when a wide receiver jumps and kind of catches that ball? They're showing us what we can be, what we humans can be at our best. And everybody has the potential. It's exactly what you were saying in your response to my Skymore question. Everybody can be Skymore running that ball further than maybe other people thought that you could, but it's not going to happen by accident. It's going to happen by setting the intention of, um, of, of doing that thing. And I could, I could really go, go on and on, but those are some of my, my key things. I love this conversation. Um, let's, let's, let me give you a really difficult thing, which is, um, because your ability to discern and, and think deeply, like you've got wonderful

stories and you can map clarity to it as a takeaway. Let me give you a couple little quick hits here. And so this is meant to be a forcing function to have a one or two or three word response. Okay. All right. The key to success is. This is like a stalling tactic where I pretend like I'm asking a follow-on. The key to success is knowing where you'd like to go and putting your heart and soul into getting there,

even recognizing you may not get exactly to where you had intended to go. Success is? Achieving something that is meaningful for you and trying your best to get wherever you would like to go and recognizing that your success isn't something that somebody else can map onto you. It's you striving for realizing your dreams as individual and as part of whatever bigger thing you are or want to be part of. Relationships are? The essence of what it means to be a human being and require a level of investment and honesty that's really difficult for all of us. The most important limits that people face are? The ones they impose upon themselves. It all comes down to?

Hope. And if you could sit with one master, you already kind of dropped in there the Dalai Lama multiple times. If you could sit with one true master, who would that be? And they don't have to be living now, but who would that be?

And if you only had one question, what would it be? racing through all of the options. And then, you know, I have to say, it's such a cliche, and I'm writing a book, but I would just have loved to be with Darwin on the Beagle, just going around. Because in my mind, there are lots of people who could fit this bill. But where you just are going around and just thinking, hey, maybe the entire worldview of every single person I know or ever met is wrong. And what's it going to take to just follow this idea and see if I can prove it? I mean, it's kind of incredible. And there have been others who've done that in the past and I'd love to be with all of them. But I think being with Darwin at that kind of moment

of just thinking differently about the world would have been pretty cool. Oh, that is awesome. And it fits the title of your book, obviously, Hacking Darwin. Okay, so last two questions. Artificial intelligence is? A tool to be used by humans that will redefine in many ways what it means to be alive and to be human. Cool. Very cool. Okay. So bring us home. Folks that are listening and they're

with us right now and they're like, oh, this is so good. Man, make it simple. Make it simple. Like what can I do? Is there like one, two, three things that you say, okay, here's part of my daily practices or here's things that are really important to me, or here's a book I think everyone would benefit for reading. Like wherever you want to take us, like on a couple of key takeaways. So a few things, I mean, one, and then I'll make it a little bit longer

because I don't know if you've had my friend, Brian Johnson on the phone, he's the founder, on the podcast, he's the founder of Kernel. And he's like a spaceman on planet earth. Who's like hacked, trying to hack his entire body, spends like $3 million a year. He sleeps at the same time every day. He has 1,997 calories. Doctors give him his food. He's just trying to hack every organ of his body and measuring everything. I just sent him an email

yesterday saying, it's great that you want to do this, but beyond the physical, there is the story of what it means to be a human. And so if we're going to make our bodies as great as they can be, it's not just about our bodies. It's about, well, what are we going to do with them? But I think for me, it's a starting point. Exercise. I exercise an hour a day. I try to eat as healthy as I can. I try to sleep, even though I'm a terrible sleeper. Starting with just those basics is really important because we are physical beings. We're chemical beings.

So that certainly is one. Dedicate a certain portion of your day to learning. I think people, people with kids, people with stressful jobs, it's really hard to do, but you almost have to have kind of a learning plan. And then I think setting personal goals. I mean, you talked about it, Mike, when you were talking about in football, I mean, with football, it's like back to Sky Moore. All right, I'm picturing catching the ball and then I'm picturing looking forward and I'm going to see where's the gap in the defenders and I'm going to run into that gap with a strategy of how I'm going to get around. Every single person could do that in their life. We don't do it. A mentor of mine, a great friend, Les Gelb, who used to be, was a New York Times columnist and president of the Council on Foreign Relations. He always used to say, and he had a Brooklyn accent, whatever you do, you got to have a strategy. Take a piss, have a strategy. But I think that, I don't know if it's a strategy, but it's kind of a vision of where you would like to go. And that really on every level of life, in your

relationships, in your personal growth, most importantly, and the impact that you'd like to have on the world. And it doesn't mean that it needs to be so fixed, But I just think that a lot of us get trapped in the day-to-day and just taking a step back and articulating intentions and then saying, well, what are the things, what are the commitments that I'm making to myself to get there? And it may be something of in your own personal practice, you mentioned meditation. It may be something in the way that you interact with the people around you. It really could be anything. And you mentioned it. I'm not telling you anything that you don't know better than I do, but it's mindfulness, intentionality, really trying to evaluate how we're doing. And it's kind of simple things, but in my mind, those things, as you know,

Mike, better than most people, really are everything. I love that. That's one of the practices that we do with folks inside of companies is get really clear on your vision. And you can thin slice it, like your vision as a parent, as a leader, as a community member, what fill in the blanks as a son or daughter or whatever, is to get really clear about those visions of what you imagine the future state to be optimized as. And then, so that's a big rock to get in the container. And then like the sand is waking up every morning that you're pouring in the container is like, whether you write it down or somehow be clear about like, what am I getting after today? And have it line up towards that vision and have it bounced up against your core virtues.

And some people would call those their first principles. That doesn't, it's not hard to understand like that idea, but doing that work is special. It's really special. Like we, we go somewhere different when we do the, the very basic block and tackling is what we use another football analogy. The very basics of that take us somewhere pretty special. So Jamie, I love having these conversations with you. I wish we could do more. And, um, uh, again, I love celebrating and seeing when you're, you know, making a splash on CNN or wherever you show up.

And I just want to say thank you for coming on here and sharing your insights and wisdoms. And at the same time, maybe if I just wave a little flag to say, let's do something fun together. I would. So first, thank you. I mean, this is our second conversation. I love the first one. I love this one.

I just love the way that you kind of see the world and the way we interact. And one of the wonderful things about the pandemic is that all these kind of virtual friends, like people who you've met virtually and even had very profound interactions, you kind of meet them. And my feeling is that virtual is real. There's virtual and physical elements of reality. So I just feel like I look forward to meeting you in person. I would absolutely love to do whatever together. Starting with dinner, if you're ever in New York and you're in Seattle. Yeah, no, I'm in LA.

In LA, perfect. That makes it even easier. I'll be out in New York relatively soon. So I'm that person that says, Hey, I'm coming. Let's do it. Where are we going? And all the listeners can come to all right, bro. I really appreciate you and, um, all the best. All right. Thanks so much, Mike. Really enjoyed it. 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.

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