Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Living with Urgency —Why Tomorrow Isn't Promised | Dr. David Fajgenbaum

Episode Date: May 13, 2020

This week’s conversation is with Dr. David Fajgenbaum, a groundbreaking physician-scientist and disease hunter.The timing of his insights is incredibly relevant for us right now.David is best known as the ‘doctor who cured himself’ – he received his last rites while in medical school and nearly died four more times battling Castleman disease.To try to save his own life, he spearheaded an innovative approach to research through the Castleman Disease Collaborative Network and discovered a treatment that has put him into his longest remission ever.Now, he is spreading this approach to other diseases like COVID19.David is also one of the youngest individuals ever appointed to the faculty at Penn Medicine and the top 1 percent youngest grant awardees of a highly-competitive National Institute’s of Health grant.As someone who’s been on the verge of death multiple times, David has a unique perspective… he shares how it’s altered his approach to life.David likes to refer to it as playing in “overtime.”In his words:I’ve been in overtime ever since I had my last rights read to me. Think about overtime in sports. In overtime, all of a sudden there's this incredible clarity and purpose that comes with every tick of the clock. You can make a mistake in the first quarter of a game and you can make up for it, but if you make one wrong move in overtime the game's over. And I think that's the perfect analogy for how I feel every day of life. It’s not that I'm afraid to make a mistake or a paralyzing feeling, but it actually gives me clarity. I can hear the clock ticking, I know that I have this awful disease, but it helps me to focus on what's important and what's not important.And that really sets the tone for this conversation.We discuss the preciousness of life and why it really comes down to having clarity of purpose and making sure you take the proper actions to back it up.David also shares how his lab is approaching finding a cure for COVID-19._________________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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for. And so now I'm just totally addicted to this concept of turning hope into action, that if we should just reflect on what we're hoping for, what are we hoping for? Every day, all of us hope for things all the time. Okay, well, what are we hoping for? What are we praying for? What are we wishing for?

All right, well, what can we do today and tomorrow and the next day to get closer to what we're hoping for. Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais and by trade and training, I'm a sport and performance psychologist, as well as the co-founder of Compete to Create. And the whole idea behind this podcast, behind these conversations, is to learn from people who have committed their life efforts to the nuances of the thing that they are most fascinated by. And so what we're finding in this

path of mastery, and by the way, the goal is the path. It's not some end game that we're looking for here. But what we're finding is that there's mastery of self and there's mastery of craft. And when there is a convergence or sometimes an explosion between the two, it's really amazing. And that collision or that convergence is something rare. And so what we're trying to understand is what are the psychological frameworks that people are working from? Like, how do they explain who they are, what the future might hold?

How do they make sense of events that happen? You know, what is the sturdiness of their frameworks? What are the commonalities amongst people? And that's really where the psychology piece folds in. And then we also want to understand the mental skills that they use to build and refine their craft. 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.

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For two full months for free, terms and conditions apply. Finding Mastery is brought to you by David Protein. I'm pretty intentional about what I eat, and the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods. And when I'm traveling or in between meals, on a demanding day certainly, I need something quick that will support the way

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you're still listening here. So getting enough protein matters. And that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value, and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Okay, this week's conversation is with Dr. David Fagenbaum. You know what he is? He's amazing.

Wait until you hear this story. And wait until you hear the way that he chooses his words to articulate what he's trying to understand and what he does understand. He's turned his professional life into being a disease hunter. And the timing of this podcast, this conversation, his insights, man, it is incredibly relevant for us right now. And so what he's done, he's breaking ground as a physician scientist patient, best known as the doctor who cured himself. So he received his last rites while in medical school. And he nearly died four more times after that, battling Castleman disease.

And you might not be familiar with it. So that is immaterial really for this conversation. Obviously, it's not to him and people that have it. But what is so material about this is how he's organized his life with incredible passion and purpose. And so when he realized he had the diagnosis, he tried to save his own life. So he spearheaded an innovative approach to research through the Castleman Disease Collaborative Network. And in doing so, he discovered a treatment that has

put him into the longest remission ever for the disease. He knows his stuff now. This is awesome. And the reason it's so important right now is because his practices relate to COVID-19. So David is one of the youngest individuals to ever be appointed to the faculty at Penn Medicine, and he's in the top 1% of youngest grant awardees of the highly competitive National Institutes of Health grant. And I want you to imagine what it must be like for him to be on the verge of death multiple times. And so he has this obviously unique perspective. And that perspective has altered his life approach. And he shares how he shifted. He shared why he shifted. He shared the philosophical underpinnings of it and the

actual steps he takes. And this stuff is available to all of us. And so we talk through the practical ways that we can all enhance our relationship with life and living well. So David likes to refer to his life right now as if he's playing in overtime. How good is that? So listen to how he describes it. He says, I've been in overtime ever since I had my last rights read to me. Think about overtime in sports. In overtime, all of a sudden there's this incredible clarity and purpose that comes

with every tick of the clock. You can make a mistake in the first quarter of a game and you can make up for it. But if you make one wrong move in overtime, the game's over. And I think that's the perfect analogy for how I feel every day of my life. It's not that I'm afraid to make a mistake, but it actually gives me clarity. I can hear the clock ticking. I know that I have this awful disease, but it helps me to focus on what's important and what's not important. And that insight, that insight really sets the tone for this conversation. So we discuss the preciousness

of life and why it comes down to having clarity and purpose and making sure that you take the proper actions to back it up. Those are things that we know. If you're part of this community, if you've been part of many of these conversations, you know that. So this is an intense reminder, a deep reminder. And it's one thing to know something intellectually. It's a whole different thing to organize your life around that thing that you know, or that you want to know better. So he shares how he's done that, but also he shares how his lab is approaching finding a cure for COVID-19. Okay. So with that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with Dr. David Fagenbaum. David, how are you?

I'm doing well. Thanks for having me on today. Oh, for sure. Okay. First of all, congratulations on solving one of the main issues in your life, which is your life. So I've never, I've never like from a physical standpoint, I've never had a conversation with somebody who literally took their life in their own hands and solved, um, a medical condition that was terminal. Um, and so congratulations. Like I've never, I'm seriously, I'm blown away by it. Well, thank you. I am. I know you and I had spoken on this before, but I honestly didn't think that when I set out to take my disease on that I would actually make any bit of a difference. I just really wanted to go out swinging, to be honest. I wanted to do

everything I could to make a difference in the time that I had. And trust me, I never thought that six years later I'd be sitting here talking to you about how we've been able to beat this thing back. Okay, so let's start. Let's give some context to your life. Let's start with the chapters in your life. But before we jump into it, can you describe the disease and the moment when you were first diagnosed?

And then we'll get into chapters of your life. Sure. So I have a disease called idiopathic multicentric Castleman disease, where my immune system becomes hyperactivated and then attacks and shuts down my body's vital organs through what's called a cytokine storm. Unfortunately, for idiopathic multicentric Castle calcium disease patients like me, we don't know what causes it. And about a third of us will die within five years of diagnosis. Another third will die within 10 years of diagnosis. And so it was absolutely terrifying to get this diagnosis. The moment that I got it was 11 weeks into my illness. And I was so sick that the

doctors did not think that I would survive. So they had actually told my family to say their goodbyes to me and a priest had come in to administer my last rites to me. That's how sick I was. So it literally, the diagnosis literally came at the very last moment possible. But thankfully it came when it did, because with the diagnosis came chemotherapy, which saved my life. But unfortunately I would have a number of relapses. Okay. I don't know many people that have been read their last rights and then have come back. I did a little bit of small research with some folks long ago that had near death experiences, but you know, so there's that, that's a game changing

perspective experience, but not what you've gone through. So, um, I can't wait to understand how you think about life and you think about the future and you think about the present. That's really what I want to understand with you. But so let's do this. Let's start with chapters of your life. Bring us back to I nearly died for the first time. And when I had my last rights read to me the very first time, but I'm in my fifth overtime because unfortunately that happened four more times. So, so I can easily break up my life into first half, second half and those overtimes. So, um, the first half of my life was growing up in Raleigh, North Carolina. My parents are from Trinidad in the Caribbean, and they had moved to America and into Raleigh. And I was raised with my two older sisters. And for me, that first half

of my life was all about football. I was completely obsessed with and focused on playing college football. That was my dream. All I wanted to do was play college football. I trained all day, every day. I had charts all over my walls of my throwing accuracy and distance. It was all about football. And I ended up getting recruited by a number of schools my junior year and super excited going to my senior year of high school about where I would end up. And I broke my collarbone in the third play of the first game and ended up being able to come back and ended up going to play football at Georgetown. And so for me, it was kind of like that first half of my life was like, yes, I achieved this goal. I'm going to play college football at Georgetown.

And I got to Georgetown. And a couple of weeks after I got there, I found out that my mom was diagnosed with brain cancer. And that just changed everything in my life. It's halftime of my life because really just broke me to my core. And my life went from being all about all I could think about is playing quarterback for a division one football team to all I can think about is becoming a doctor so I can treat people like my mom. I want to dedicate my life to hunting diseases because I wanted revenge on cancer. My mom bravely battled cancer for the next 15 months, but passed away from her disease. And before she passed, I promised her that I would dedicate my life to taking on diseases like cancer. And I also promised her I'd start an organization in her memory to help college students coping with the illness or death of a loved one. Her name was

Ann Marie Fagenbaum. Her initials were AMF. And so I started the group. It was called AMF for actively moving forward. And there are now chapters on campuses all around the country. And it still goes on, though I'm no longer involved with it. But so the second half of my life was all about being pre-med, getting ready for med school, building AMF. And you could kind of say I had gotten to the pinnacle of that. I'm a third year medical student at Penn. If you fast forward a few years, I'm delivering babies in the OBGYN unit because, you know, that's the part of medical school I was in. I'm, you know, kind of what's better than that, right? You're kind of at the pinnacle of helping to bring

life into the world, training to become a cancer doctor when I first became ill and when I nearly died for the first time. And that's when overtime number one started. And then unfortunately, I've had a number of overtimes since then. Okay. So let's go back to chapter one, first half, if you will. How did sport end for you? Mom, mom got sick. And then did you put down the football or was there a natural transition? Like how did that actually happen for you? So I continued to play football for the next four years at Georgetown. So I played all four years at Georgetown. But, um, as you know, uh, being an athlete requires such a level of intense focus and being, well, and I guess you don't have to be anything that focused to be an athlete.

You have to be a good athlete. You have to be really focused to be good at anything as a parent. Right. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And so for me, my focus went from that's all I could think about to football was was the third or fourth thing I thought about. And so I still played and I'm so happy I was a part of the team. But it was just nowhere near the focus that had been. And as a result, my performance was nowhere near where it had been. But I was okay with that, because I knew that I had a certain amount of hours in the day. And I was completely maxing those hours on pre med. So I could one day be a doctor and growing AMF in memory of my mom. And I still played football, but I did it kind of the minimum amount of hours. And so when I graduated from Georgetown, I thought my football playing career would end there.

But I went to Oxford for grad school and I actually played American football at Oxford, where you may not realize that they play football there. But just like how we play rugby here in the States, they play American football in the UK. So it was fun to have kind of an extra year of football. And then I hung up the cleats. Okay. So if we double click on, you're using the word focus, which is a good word. And if we double click underneath of that, though, the thing that you're talking about is purpose. So your purpose changed. Your purpose went from all I thought about, in other words, purpose, right? What mattered to me most.

So there's three components to purpose. And it has to matter to you. The second is that it's bigger than you. And the third component is that it's future oriented. And so you were experiencing from an early age, the lifestyle approach, the fundamental commitment to purpose. And then, so when you had, I don't know, you got knocked sideways a bit, you know, by, by your mom and you said, well, let me just shift purpose. But you had all the same capabilities, which is deep focus, commitment, fundamental orientation, right? Using your, applying your internal skills, mustering your external skills or resources to go towards that thing.

And so, all right, now I get why you, the football transition piece. And it's nice to drop in names like Georgetown and Oxford. That's kind of fun too. You know, just world-class universities and institutions. So you got a big horsepower inside your skull is that right you're smart i i i think i think i've been for i was fortunate yeah and it's a hard question to answer isn't it but yeah it is a hard question but it's one of your it's one of your crown jewels though so i want to i mean let's not dance around it like

you got a good brain right right? That can solve things. Yes. I have a good brain that can solve things. And I have, um, a work ethic that, um, that helps me to feel like I can, I can maximize the potential of the brain that I was given. I can outwork anyone. Um, and, and, and that has helped me to achieve things that, that I wouldn't have been able to achieve if it was just for my, either my level of intelligence or, or kind of an average, uh, work ethic. Yeah. It's definitely that combination. Like, yeah. Have you heard that the phrase in sport, uh, it's translated out though, which is, um, talent beats skill or I'm sorry, skill beats talent until talent wants to work. It's something along those lines, right? You know, like, yeah. Like if talent wants to work. It's something along those lines, right? You know, like, yeah. Like if talent wants to work hard, forget about it. Yeah. You know, right. That's the kind of the thing. All right. Good. Okay. So then, uh, overtime one, is that how you're capturing it? Overtimes?

Yep. Overtime one. Exactly. Yes. I've been in overtime ever since I had my last rights read to me and think about overtime in sports. So, overtime, all of a sudden, there's this incredible clarity and purpose that comes with every tick of the clock. You can make a mistake in the first quarter of a game, and you can make up for it. But if you make one wrong move in overtime, the game's over. And I think that's the perfect analogy for how I feel every day of life. And it's not that I'm afraid to make a mistake, or it's not that there's this kind of paralyzing feeling, but actually it gives me clarity. I can hear the clock ticking. I know that I have this awful disease, but it helps me to focus on what's important and what's not important. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus.

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at FelixGray.com for 20% off. The ancient wisdom that has been fundamental to me is that, well, how do you capture it in a sentence? You know, it's more than this sentence that I'm about to share because this is going to sound trite to you or not maybe to you, but many, which is life happens in the present moment, super trite, super overused experience, but the unfolding,

unpredictable unknown, which is the next moment is uncertain. And so when we strip it back, uncertainty is a buzzword right now that we're all experiencing the uncertainty of whatever shit you live in this for a minute. And I'm going to tell and remind like everyone I can that all of us have been living with uncertainty. We've been, we've been lazy because the future has worked out. Right. But we've really been lazy because the preciousness of this moment is fleeting. And I haven't had the last rites. So I want to honor your unique experience in recalibrating the present moment.

So take us there. Yeah, absolutely. One thing before I jump right into that moment that I want to highlight is that I didn't know any of these things before I went through them. And now I feel like I'm in overtime, but I have this incredible sense that I want to share the sense of overtime with other people. And I think, like you said, we've always all been in overtime, but we're only now aware that we're in overtime because of what COVID-19 has done. We know that a loved one or we can get infected with this disease out of nowhere. But the reality is, is that life has always been this precious. Um, but it's taken this sort of an experience to, to help us to realize how precious it is. So yeah, I can, I can take us

back to that, that, that moment when I had my last rights read to me and I nearly died for the first time. I, it was, it was a dark room. Um, I w I was in the hospital and at that stage I've been hospitalized for about 11 weeks and, um, no diagnosis, no one knew what was going on. And, um, I just said goodbye to my family and friends, my liver and my kidneys weren't working. So as a result, um, I was very confused because your liver and kidneys help with cleaning your blood. And so I was very confused. But I remember the priest coming in the room and I remember knowing what that meant. I mean, generally knowing what it meant.

This was it. And I remember thinking about my life. And again, I was very confused. So it wasn't the most nuanced thinking, but it was basically, what do I regret? And what did I do that I'm proud of? What did I do that I regret? And I immediately focused on regrets. And I didn't regret anything that I had done. What I regretted were things that I had not done or had not said to the people that I loved. And that for me, at the time, it wasn't very profound, because I was just like fighting for every breath. But in hindsight, it became so important to me to realize that I didn't regret things I had done, I regretted the things I hadn't done, or I hadn't said and hadn't told the people that I loved. And so when I left the hospital, and thank God, chemotherapy saved my life. But when I left, I said, if I think of things, I'm going to do those things.

And so the motto I have is think it, do it. And, you know, don't let the things that you regret. And this is somewhat cliche, you know, about not regretting things on your deathbed. But for me, it's not just it's about action. And it's about how, yes, some of us will regret actions we take on our deathbed because sometimes we take bad actions for sure. I'm not saying that all actions are good, but I am saying that at least for me, it was inaction that really pained me on my deathbed. I don't want to jump over it because I think that it is cliche and trite to talk about living without regrets, you know? Um, for me, I think about the relationships in my life, like family members and stuff that

are strained, that are challenging, that are difficult. And, um, but there's not a clear pathway through it, you know? So like, how did you have any of those yeah I did and actually um I dated a girl for a couple years before I got sick and um we'd broken up just a few months before I became ill and I and I really didn't fight for our relationship because I I said to myself and I said to her I said we're 25 years old we've got all the time in the world. If this is meant to be, it's meant to be. And then there I was six months later in the ICU having my last rites read to me, realizing actually we didn't have all the time in the world. And this is a girl that I love, that I could picture a future with, and I didn't spend

the time that I could have with her. And thankfully, that same girl was having some of the same feelings about me while I was so sick. She actually came to visit me three times. So I almost died three times in the first six months of my illness. And she came during the first two of those. And I didn't want her to see me. And so I actually told my sisters to not let her in the room to see me because I didn't want her to see me so sick, and I didn't want those to be her final memories because each time I have almost died,

I didn't think that I was going to make it through. No one did. My family didn't. Each time it was, well, this is the time. And so I didn't want her to see me like that. And when I survived the third time't want her to see me like that. And, um, when I survived the third time, um, and she came to see me, uh, I just kind of divulged all of these feelings I had when I was so sick and all the regrets I had that I hadn't fought for our relationship. And, um, and we got

back together and there's, uh, uh, I think an image that maybe will make you laugh. And so when we started dating again, I just undergone many rounds of chemotherapy. And I had a huge belly from all of the fluid from my organs not working. And my girlfriend, so Caitlin, just didn't bat an eye. I was totally ready for us to get back together. But just to tell you how bad I looked, about two weeks before her and I started dating again, it was New Year's Eve 2010. And my dad and I went for a walk around the hematology oncology floor. And I've got my big belly and I've got a bald head because the chemo made me lose all my hair. And I've got my pole of chemo. And we're walking around the the floor and we passed a drunk guy who was sitting

in the family waiting area he was kind of like swaying in his chair and on our next lap this guy had fallen onto the ground and so my dad helped him back into his chair and he looked at my dad and I and he said thanks so much good luck to you and your wife we're like wife what is he talking about and I looked at my belt he thought I was my dad's pregnant wife. And he thought we were walking laps to deliver our baby that night on New Year's Eve. Man, you've got an ugly wife. The two of us laughed so hard. And so I tell you that story because two weeks later, there I am.

This amazing girl, Caitlin, wants to start dating me again., just to give you a concept for what I looked like, but the other piece of it is that we had to find some humor in the midst of this really tough time. I mean, when you're coping with really hard stuff, sometimes you just have to find things to laugh about now. Okay. So when you didn't want her to come in your room, was that because you were giving her a grace because you didn't want her to live with that memory? Or is it because you didn't want to be perceived a certain way? You didn't want to look a certain way? Yeah, I think that it was mostly the former. I have so many good memories of my mom when she was healthy, but I do also have some really tough

memories from when she was really sick. And I kept thinking about that. I kept thinking, this is the memory that is going to be stuck in Caitlin's mind. Um, I think that was most of it, but I think that you're probably onto something in the sense that I think there probably was something in there that was, um, I don't want to be remembered this way. Or it's not just that I don't want her to have me as this memory, but I don't want to be remembered this way. Even as maybe shallow as that might seem, that I wanted to be remembered as a healthy version of myself. But she proved to me when I started to feel better that the way I look didn't matter. And none of that mattered. Okay. And then what is your relationship with other people's opinions of you?

What do you mean? When you think about what people might be thinking about you, does that take up a large part of your mental power or is that a very small or even non-existent? Like where on the scale? I'd say small to non-existent. I think that I have such a focus on this disease and on just unmasking the immune system generally and, and, and solving diseases that it's kind of pushed out room for, for concerns about things like that. And I guess I would even say that maybe even before when I used to be so focused on football, I think that, I think that my, um, whether it's, we call it purpose or focus, um, being so intense on whatever that thing is in front of me, it's enabled me to really kind of

push out the other stuff about perceptions or concerns. For me, there's just not enough room or energy to go there. So you didn't have that before either? No, I didn't really have that before either. You're actually speaking to something that I think is the number one constrictor of human potential is the fear of failure, the fear of success, the fear, fear, fear, fear, but really was at the center is the fear of what others might be thinking of us. And that's the thing that holds us back. And what we know from a brain perspective, I'm imagining you might be familiar with the default mode network in the brain. So the default mode network is a circuitry that is just like it says, it's the default. It's what's happening most of the time running in the background, unless you have deep focus on

something. And that default mode network is, hey, am I okay? Is this okay? Are we okay? Does he think we're okay? Am I okay? So it's a checking to see if you're okay. And I think it's at the, like, it's one of the core seeds of suffering is when the default mode network is running loud. So how do we inoculate that? Deep focus. Yes. Right. That's why mindfulness is a deep focus practice. That's why being passionate about something when you're reading something and you're all in. Yeah. Right. That's why mindfulness is a deep focus practice. That's why being passionate about something, when you're reading something and you're all in, that's why as a receiver is coming across the middle and they're not thinking, well, if they are thinking, what are people going to think about me dropping the ball? Yeah, their focus is off because the default mode network is larger than the single focus network. And that single focus network has to be on for proper learning and engagement. And when that's attuned, the other stuff fades away,

which is what you said early on, but like you can train this. Yeah, we can train this purpose matters. Oh, I totally agree. Yeah. You're an emblem for this. I totally agree. And I can even experience on the other side when it isn't something that is my purpose, when it isn't something that has my focus, then yeah, absolutely. You know, it can, it's, it's hard to, it's hard to, to not let all that other stuff come in, but when it is your focus, when it is your purpose, you don't hear anything else. Yeah. Okay. All right. Um, you on your deathbed, you, well, it's not, it sounds so vulgar because you didn't die.

On your, when you're getting your rites of passage, no, what's it called? Last rites. Last rites, yeah. Rites of passage. Hey, it was rite of passage.

There is one there, yeah. When you're getting your last rites, what other questions, like what are the right questions? Either that sprung from that moment, some of it was about regret, but then as you are years from that, what are the right questions to grok with in life? What are the big ones that entertain you that are compelling to you?

I think number one that comes to mind is around hope and the various forms of hope. So when I was on my deathbed, I was hoping for things. I was hoping for another day. I was hoping for a chance to tell Caitlin, my girlfriend, how I felt. I was hoping for time with friends and family. And it was a passive kind of hope. It was a hope that I hoped it would happen, but there wasn't anything I could do about it. And as I kind of continued in my journey, and I've hoped many times about many different things, that experience of being totally unable to do anything about that, which I was hoping for, has led me to say that when I am able to do something that I'm hoping for, I better do it. And it's and it's not. Sometimes I

think that when I do, you know, take on a challenge like, you know, trying to take on my disease, there was probably a one in a million chance that I was actually going to make progress against my disease. But I knew there was a zero in a million chance that I was going to make progress if I didn't do something. And so I think that I learned in such black and white as I laid in that bed that I can't physically do anything right now. So all I can do is hope. And once I could actually start moving muscles and my brain could start working, all of a

sudden I could actually do things about the things I was hoping for. And so now I'm just totally addicted to this concept of turning hope into action, that if we should just reflect on what we're hoping for, what are we hoping for? Every day, all of us hope for things all the time. OK, well, what are we hoping for? What are we praying for? What are we wishing for? All right, well, what can we do today and tomorrow and the next day to get closer to what we're hoping for? Oh, David. Yeah, Leah, when you put it in simple terms like that, it's so compelling because it's so good. And then I'm listening. And in the background, there's really good science that you're attaching to it, like psychological science that you might be familiar with. That I'm not even aware of.

Yeah. So what you're talking about, like there's a theory that sits right underneath. There's two, self-efficacy, Albert Pandora. I can string on that in a second. But self-determination theory, right? And there's three components to it. Do you have competence?

Okay, so what is your competence to take some action? Do you have the autonomy to make some decisions so this is from hope to action and then you have the relationships to support uh the purpose along the way so the most motivated people they have some sort of competency they have some autonomy and then they've got relationships that matter to them and then it's like that that's the fuel yeah so you're right there in it okay so. So, okay, hold on. Let's do this. Let's shift over to man. If everybody that's listening, that's part of our community could, could take what you've experienced and not have to be their, their last rights administered. My goodness. Okay.

That's why I wrote chasing my cure is like that exact reason. It's like I didn't know this stuff before. And you might say to me, OK, you've got a terminal illness. You've nearly died five times. Why would you spend a year of your life, you know, putting this onto paper? Why would you that year might be your last year? And for me, it 100 percent is I am here right now. I learned these secrets about life that I feel like I have to get to other people. So it might be my last year on earth, but I'm going to put it into a book in this

last year on earth. And then, you know, I may have a day afterwards, but, but, but I'm thankfully I'm still here, but, but that's exactly it. I feel like I've been kind of like led into these like secrets about life that I just want to get out to the world. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day.

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And for me, that includes how I take care of my body. I've been using Caldera Lab for years now. And what keeps me coming back, it's really simple. Their products are simple and they reflect the kind of intentional living that I wanna 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. Your authenticity about this is so refreshing because there are so many

folks that are saying secrets, hacks, tricks, tips, shortcuts, whatever. And it's nauseating to me because I'm saying there are none. Like there's no shortcut to getting a medical degree. There's no, maybe there is, but I don't want my doctor to be a medical hack. Right. And there's no hacks to insight and wisdom. There, there, there aren't any. And if you had them, it's probably not durable. All that being said is I want to challenge you on the secrets word. And cause I know you're using it passionately. I don't think there are any secrets. I think that the narrative about, hey, if you're on your deathbed, more people have regrets than not. I think they know them. I think I know them. And I don't think

they're secrets. But what I think is extraordinary is that you have taken ideas, what you hope for, and put them into action. And then you fundamentally organized your life for them. Yeah, that's right. You didn't take any shortcuts. You're like, listen, I'm going to fundamentally orientate my life around my purpose. I don't think there's any secrets, dude. But people need to hear it from you because they look at you and they're like, Ooh, I can trust him to hear you. Ooh, I could trust him. Ooh, he's, he's close enough proximity to me that it's like, I could be that person too.

You know? And then we need, we need every color, every creed, every cultural icon, you know, or emblem to say the same stuff. Like, come on, take, take your shit and put it into action. Yeah. Okay. All right. So dude, you're a breath of fresh air to me. Um, can you, can you speak to immunity and COVID and, um, your lab at UPenn? Can you speak to that intersection right now? Sure. So, you know, as we talked earlier, my disease causes a cytokine storm where my immune system attacks itself for an unknown cause. The cytokine storm in Castleman disease is very, very similar to the cytokine storm that we see in COVID-19. And so as a result, a number of

Castleman's drugs are being tried against COVID-19 patients and labs like mine have decided to focus effort on COVID-19, obviously for a million reasons that I know you're well aware of why this is so important. And so for me personally, the reason that I made the shift over is that not only have I dealt with the disease, but I'm on a drug based on research that I did that had never been tried before for my disease. This drug, serolimus, that's saving my life that I started myself on a little bit over six years ago, this drug, no one had ever thought to try against this disease. The research we did made us think that it could save my life. When you think about a disease like COVID-19 that didn't exist more

than four months ago, there of course are no FDA approved drugs. The best hope we have is that we can take a drug that was developed for something else and to repurpose it for COVID-19. So the work that my lab and that I'm doing is really around trying to identify existing drugs that we can repurpose and reapply towards COVID-19. And amazingly, in our last seven weeks that we've been on the case, we've identified and built a database, identified data from 11,000 COVID patients that have received 150 different drugs. So doctors are trying drugs against COVID patients. And some things are working, some things aren't working. But unfortunately, before our database that we built, there was no central registry tracking all these drugs being tried. And you can think, I often think in almost in like warlike terms and we're in the midst of a war against COVID-19.

And you can imagine that basically our front lines have all fought against COVID-19. All these doctors have, have tried drugs. Some things have worked, some things haven't yet. We weren't tracking which of those weapons were working and which weren't. So now we've got our second line that's coming in and they're fighting blindly. They don't know what worked. They don't know what didn't work. They don't even know what was tried the first time around. So, so our lab

is trying to arm the second line of physicians and scientists with data on what worked and what didn't. Okay. And what are you finding? So I'm finding, you know, number one takeaway is that a lot of things have been tried. Um, the number two takeaway is that nothing seems to be a silver bullet right now. So a lot of stuff's been tried. The things that have been tried thus far, a number of them seem to have activity, meaning they seem to be able to control the disease to some extent. None of them are slam dunks. What I think that we're also finding is that the disease is very heterogeneous. So you have some patients that are asymptomatic, they never get sick, other patients that end up in ICU, and they die from the disease, and the kind of patients all along that spectrum. So our research and our data suggests

that we'll likely end up needing to, the term is personalized medicine, personalized treatment. So it's not going to be that there's this one drug that works for everyone, but it's likely going to be that people with the hyper cytokine storm response need one drug and people with a weakened immune system need another drug and, and that some patients maybe need, need a combination of drugs. And so I think that that makes this problem a little bit more complicated than I think we all hoped. We hope there's, you know, one shot, we're going to figure this thing out in no time. But I think it's actually going to be more complicated. But thankfully, there are labs like mine and others that have been studying cytokine storms for years. And this is our opportunity to take the work that we've been doing on a small scale for one disease or another

disease and hopefully apply it on a bigger scale. So not everybody that has COVID-19 has a cytokine storm. That's exactly right. Yeah. In fact, 80% of patients will not develop a cytokine storm. It's the ones who go on to get hospitalized and die who get one. And there's no precursor. There's no pre-identifiers to say, hey, you're a likely candidate for a storm. Is that correct? Not yet, but that's really critical. That's what we need. You're right, because we don't have that yet.

There are a couple of lab tests that you can do when someone first gets sick, and you can help to predict based on these lab tests. But we don't have, let's say, a genetic marker that we can look across our whole population and say, you, you, and you are likely to get a cytokine storm. So we need to either isolate you or we need to start treating you right away. Maybe with like the drug that I'm on, that's preventing a cytokine storm for me. Yeah. Cause once those antecedents are predictable or can be tagged and identified, then we could save lives. Correct. Oh, big time. Right. Yeah. But right now, you know, we're still trying to manage this thing on the front line, which is like,

how do we stop the spread of it? You're right. And so on the immune system, those that have, um, let's imagine if you will, that, Oh, let's leave the percentage up for debate right now, but a healthy percentage of people are, um, under recovered and overstressed. Okay. They're not sleeping, right. They're not eating right. And they're not using their mind properly to manage stress. And they're, they're under a chronic state of, uh, anxiousness and fatigue. Yes. Okay. Wonderful picture. Now let's call that in a compromised immune system. Yes. Teach like, okay, I I'm going to say sleep, eat, move in optimized ways, but we can use some technology from that as well to say, well, what is ideal sleep? What is ideal moving? What is ideal

nutrition? But where, what would you do if there was big rocks in the container to help people boost their immune system? Yeah. So, I mean, you hit on the three big ones, sleep, diet, and exercise. So I think that people generally know what to do in those three areas. They don't necessarily do what they know. Just like you said, with regrets, I think some of us know how to avoid having regrets on our deathbed. That doesn't mean we do them. But I do think that certain things can catalyze us towards being more action-oriented. And so hearing about others' journeys that have put them on their deathbed and what they experienced, maybe that can catalyze them to actually put what they know into practice. And here, seeing what's happening to individuals that get really sick from COVID-19

will hopefully catalyze some folks towards saying, okay, you know, I'm going to start, you know, trying to get my seven to eight hours a night of sleep. I'm going to start getting my 30 minutes of exercise a day. I'm going to start eating healthier, maybe limiting alcohol consumption. So I think that we don't know enough about COVID-19 to say that there's certain diets or exercise regimens that are going to be, you know, going to optimize you perfectly for COVID-19. Because the other thing that I mentioned earlier, that's really complicated about COVID-19 is that the people who are dying or are not dying because they had this like weakened response to the virus.

In fact, the ones that are dying had this hyper response to the virus. And now it may be that it was ineffective. So it may be that if they had like, you can almost, again, I'm going to go back to a military analogy. If you had, if If you had if you're an immune system and you're trying to kill a virus and you have great sniper shots and you're able to take out just the cells that are infected with the virus and nothing else, then you can just neutralize, control the virus with just a few sniper shots. But let's say your immune system

isn't well calibrated and it's not functioning 100% and your sniper shots are missing. So you say, okay, I can't use sniper. I'm going to start using a grenade launcher. And so you start shooting grenade launchers at cells. And so then you start hitting a lot of nearby cells and there's collateral damage and that leads to more inflammation and you get a cytokine storm. And so, so maybe if the early shots had been a little bit more effective and more targeted than maybe you wouldn't get the cytokine storm. And so, so maybe if the early shots had been a little bit more effective and more targeted, then maybe you wouldn't get the cytokine storm. But, but generally the problem that we're facing is this hyper response, um, which, which we need to control typically pharmacologically. Okay. And what if it's not pharmacological? What if it is, um,

I mean, are there some other modalities that we can take a look at, you know, like some basic stuff? And I'm thinking about prevention more than treatment. Yes. You know, so I don't want to get in the way of medical advancements. I think that that's going to be the save in this whole thing. But I'm thinking like the stuff I've been reading on vitamin D, some of the early research, and this is some of the unpublished stuff that's coming out, like, like just flooded the science, um, you know, minds right now. So there's a couple interesting, um, uh, bacteria that, you know, from a probiotic prebiotic, uh, probiotic standpoint, that has been super interesting, but what about like vitamin D? What are some of those basic stuff

that, what are you finding there? Yes, it's, these are great questions. And I think there's no doubt. I don't, I don't think anyone has, there's any question that not having appropriate vitamin D levels is really bad for immune system. The one question that we're still kind of grappling with as a medical community is, is how much extra advantage you get from higher vitamin D levels. So, you know, you need to have enough. But, for example, I took those vitamin D bombs for a long time, where it was tons. I mean, like, literally they were called vitamin D bombs.

And they were called bombs for a reason because it was, like, crazy high doses. But as the clinical trials have been coming out from these studies of cancer prevention and cardiovascular disease prevention and a number of different diseases that they haven't turned out to be as effective or are effective, frankly, um, in these other conditions, that doesn't mean that it wouldn't be effective for COVID-19. Maybe just the right disease hasn't been, hasn't presented itself that could really benefit from a, from vitamin D bombs. So I don't think we should.

And as I said earlier with COVID-19, no turn, no stone should be left unturned. presented itself that could really benefit from vitamin D bombs. So I don't think we should, and as I said earlier with COVID-19, no stone should be left unturned. We need to look at every option. But it's just hard to know. We know that you need enough, but is doubling enough giving you an advantage over just enough? Yeah. I mean, that's where the science pays dividends, right? Because we don't know. And there's some danger with vitamin D. Like too much vitamin D, we're going to calcify. We're going to find some problems in other ways. Tremors. You can get confusion. Absolutely. thousand, uh, I use like something like that a day about, so I just kind of ramped it up a little bit, but I'm normally doing about 1500. Um, I actually, I I'm, I'm taking a responsible route. I take some blood draws to see what I've got, you know? Um, but that's fair response. The bomb is where you do 10,000 once a week. And so, um, so that, you know, that's like, I guess 10,000 once a week ends up being, you know, around what you were doing when you were doing 1500 a day. And so now you're getting a little bit more than that. Yeah. So, and then the other

ones, what about alpha lipoic acid? Do you have any thoughts about that? So certainly anti-inflammatory effects. Um, obviously, uh, another one of these things where getting enough is critical, um, to being healthy. Again, the question is, is more than enough additive? And that I think, you know, what's unclear with a number of these. And because so little is unknown and because there's basically no downside, you know, why not, you know, really optimize your dosing? Why not really, you know, during a crisis like this, we should be doing everything to optimize our health. So can you talk a little bit about alcohol and the immune system? Because there's been an

uptick in alcohol from a purchase standpoint. And then it's not totally clear to me because for a long time, the research that I would point to would say, yeah, alcohol is problematic for immune systems because it immediately triggers the liver system. We've got a poison on board. Let's start processing, get that poison out because you can die alcohol poisoning, right? You can die from it. And so if there's a decision that the system has to make, do I process the nutrients from the fish and vegetables I just bought or just consumed? Or do I process this alcohol and get it out that there's some sort of resource allocation that just makes sense that the brain's going to say, Hey, yeah,

get the, get the poison out, take that other nutrient stuff. Uh, that's so important right now. And so compromise the nutrients for, you know, poison processing. So, um, but it's a social lubricant. There's, there's other benefits to it. So can you speak on that a little bit about where your head's at with this uptick in alcohol and the immune battle that we're in right now? Sure. So you're exactly right. There is some what seems to be pretty compelling or at least basic data to suggest that alcohol consumption, certainly excess alcohol consumption, no question about it, does have effects on suppressing the immune system. Again, it's kind of what's that level that we were talking about earlier, where is one drink probably okay, but is it five drinks?

What is that level where it becomes really detrimental? Because at the other side, as you said, there are some social, maybe, I don't know if benefits is the other side, as you said, there is there, there are some social, you know, maybe I don't know if benefits are the right word, but there's some social aspects to alcohol that can, that can be positive. And so I do think that in the setting of a global pandemic, anything that is weakening any of our immune systems in any way, it's probably a good thing for us to minimize. I think especially the fact that alcohol oftentimes results in us maybe not taking as many precautions as we normally would take. Maybe you make decisions leaving your house, doing things that you wouldn't normally have

done. And so I think that's another reason to potentially limit alcohol during this time. But I don't think that there's enough evidence, in my opinion, to say that, that having, you know, a few drinks is going to, is going to put you at significant risk of COVID-19. I don't think that that exists. Okay. So you're one of the few people that are living with a disease that is terminal and you're also treating it. And so I want to get it. I want to get like a better understanding because people talk about empathy and the value of it. And empathy really is the idea that I understand what you're feeling and I can convey that back to you. And so we can calibrate. So empathy is a calibration mechanism. And so it's hard though, because there's some leaps of faith that we have to, to jump if we don't actually know exactly what the other person is feeling.

And so that calibration is part of the art. And I want to tell you a quick story, but I want to get your intake is that it was my PhD training and there was two classes combined and it was like 15, 20 people in the class. And it was about the, we knew the science, that was about the art. And so two people would come into the center of the room. One was the clinician acting like a clinician, right? We're not trained yet. And then the other person was a patient. It was a fellow student doing real work. And I was terrified. I was so terrified by it. And it was like the last day I was like the second to the last person. And

the professor was like, get your ass up. You know, that was a mess, right? And he goes, which one do you want to do? And, um, and I'll tell you, David, the reason I was such a mess is because I came into the school with this big reputation that I was already working with some pro athletes. I mean, I was so stupid looking back. It was just so, um, small in the whole approach to the whole thing, you know, but I'm glad I went through it. And so I'm like sweating in the middle of the room, you know, and the gal in front of me says, uh, yeah, I I'll go, I'll be the patient.

I got something I want to work out. And I says to him, I said to myself, oh my gosh, how am I going to do this? Like, okay, okay. Come on, Mike. Come on, come on. Be there, be there, be there. But I was so overwhelmed with my stuff that I couldn't really calibrate at all. And she, she goes, um, right into this time when she was raped. And I said, how in the world, what do I do? I've never. And so I hit the panic button and the professor could see it. And the panic button for me was just, I clammed up and I didn't know how to relate. And I really wanted to David, I really wanted to, you know, like, and so he comes over, the prof comes over, grabs him by my shoulders and says,

Mike, what do you think she's feeling? I said, shit, I don't know. He says, what are you feeling? I feel like I'm totally out of control. And he says, yeah, that's probably how she felt. And I said, oh my God. And he says, when was the last time you felt out of control? And I came up with this narrative about this time I was really scared, right? And I was out of control. And he goes, let your heart come from there. And it was my first real big heavy lift on empathy. Okay. So I set all of that up to say, David, I want to know what it's like to really understand, you know, from that level, the people that you're working with that they could die in a relatively short order. And so like, can you talk about like that aspect of what makes your relationship with your patients so unique? Because all of us have the ability to deeply relate.

We all have that capacity. And I'm hoping that I can hear how you do it. Yeah, it's a great question. I think that it's almost a question that I guess I haven't really thought about that much because it's just, it's I have this disease, they have this disease, and my life is all about, you know, solving this disease. And so I don't think I've necessarily reflected on it enough. But I can say that there are a few experiences that maybe highlight this to some extent. I mean, the first experience I'm thinking about was, so I mentioned I'm on this drug, serolimus, that had never been used before for my disease. I was out of options.

And what I didn't share, but to pull it back to some of the things I mentioned earlier, that girl that I was telling you about, Caitlin, we got back together. I shared that. And we eventually got engaged. And I knew that if I didn't identify a drug, that I wouldn't make it to our wedding day. And that if I wanted us to get married, that I needed to find a drug. And so I found that drug. And basically because we had this data in front of us,

that gave me the courage to start taking it. And so I took it and I made it to our wedding day. And thankfully, I'm still in remission. Did the wedding happen? The wedding happened. Absolutely. Oh, God. Okay. I made it to our wedding day and it was the most amazing wedding. And I think that you can certainly relate to this from your area of expertise.

But because of how low things were just months before, I think that meant that the kind of delta happiness, I mean, they went from the lowest of lows to the highest of highs within a few months, meant that the highest of highs felt even higher than they would have if I hadn't just been in ICU a few months before and hadn't just been afraid to make this decision to start this drug. But what really, what I think about when I hear your story, I think about two stories. The first is of a young patient, 13 years old, is in the hospital right next to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, right next door to where my office and lab is, and find out that he's not responding to first-line therapy or second-line therapy or third-line therapy. Basically, all of the drugs that have, you know, that are known to work. And at this stage, we'd given the drug that I'm on to a few other patients, but it's still very experimental. And with

basically no other options, decided to give this 13-year-old the same drug that I'm on. And he had the most incredible response. Within two days, you've got this kid who's laying in bed all day, his labs look awful, has, he is so sick, to start seeing his blood tests getting better. And I could see it in black and white, like I would get the reports every day. And it's just kind of like, the feeling to see these numbers changing day to day and to know that it was based on this work that, that for me, it was, I just wanted to make to to my wedding day. Like I wasn't looking for heroics. I wasn't trying to live forever or, or, or even to find a drug that was necessarily

going to help everyone. I hope it would, but I didn't know. I just, I just wanted to make it to May 24, 2014. And here we are with this young patient whose life he's getting his life back from this drug. And so that, again, we talked about the highs of highs. That was right up there at the highs of highs. This young patient's doing really well today. It's been about a year and a half since then, and he's still doing really well. And right around that time was when there was another patient in Colorado who, another young patient who happened to be 14 years old, and Castleman disease can affect individuals of all ages, but the most severe cases tend to be young patients for whatever other reason, we don't know why. And so this one young girl, 14 years old, almost identical position to this, to this young boy, so sick.

And based on what we had seen with this young boy and this other, this, this patient in Colorado was not getting better on anything that they were giving her. We said, well, let's try serolimus. And because it was kind of coming on the heels of this patient in Philadelphia, I was very hopeful that this is going to turn things around. And they gave her the drug and we kind of waited and waited and it didn't work for her. And within a few days, she passed away. And the level of, you know, devastation that comes from, you know, knowing that you're trying everything you can, and it still wasn't enough. And what things like that do to me and to my team, it, of course, it breaks our heart for the patient and for their family. It also really focuses us and hones our

purpose around what it is that we're doing on a day-to-day basis. And that's that we're trying to understand how to better treat this disease so that patients like Lisa don't die from this disease. And it's been so focused on Castleman disease and some of these related rare cytokine storm disorders. But the reality is, is that some of these drugs we're now trying against COVID-19. So that young patient, Lisa or Sergio or Joey, who either die or survive, these were measured in the hundreds or thousands. Now, unfortunately, because of where we are with COVID-19, some of these drugs we're trying in what could potentially be a lot larger numbers and trying to keep that same sort of personalized empathy focus on saying, okay, we need to make progress for these COVID patients. Hmm. Okay. So you have incredible insights about battling a disease without a cure. And that word disease is interesting, right? Dis-ease.

Yeah. lives, we have a dis-ease potentially about time that it's either we're living in a make-believe world that I'll see you later. Yeah. Right. That's a make-believe thought. I'll see you later. And, but it's socially appropriate and convenient to say, I'll see you later. And it makes us feel at ease, but really it's not real. We don't know. Okay. All that being said is we are working to treat this dis-ease of time. And so you're a unique emblem for people that are capturing time with purpose, on purpose. And can you speak to if I knew what you knew about living well, what would I know? And then what would I do to amplify and make sure that that is a consistent experience? And I'm looking for some habits that you have, some things that you do to be more resilient, to be more animated with the spirit of life.

Mm-hmm. I think the first thing that you would find yourself doing, um, is that often throughout the day, we, we, we think about a, a reality that, that doesn't yet exist. We think about, we hope for something, we wish for something, we say, I wish this were to be the case. Um, And then we typically either talk ourselves out of it as to why we can't create that reality, or we just dismiss it. And I found in my case, and what I think, in your case, you would do differently, is that you would really be mindful and pay attention to the things that you're hoping for. Because if you're hoping for it, then it probably is something that's important to you. And it's hoping for it, then then it probably something that's

important to you. And it's not a current reality. So it's something that maybe could help you or help someone else if that reality could become or if that thing you're hoping for could become reality. So I think you'd find yourself doing a lot more paying attention to the things that you're hoping for and trying to come up with specific plans. I mean, I've got lists upon lists. I've targeted like this and then this and then this. And basically it's what are you wishing for at a high level? And then what are the 1,000 steps that it's going to take to get from that wish to reality? And so I think that it's both being wishful and kind of high level,

but it's also being incredibly granular on one step at a time. If you had told me, um, back in 2012, when I decided to take on my disease, the things that I would, I would need to do to make progress. And, um, and I looked at it just from like a high level of what I would need to do. I, I would have crumbled and said, you know, there's no way that, that I would be able to do those things. I'm a medical student. No one's doing any work here. But if you break down all of these things into, you know, single steps, you know, there was a meeting and an email and there was reading this paper and then that paper. But even within the paper, there was reading this sentence. And it's like, you break it down into that. And all of a sudden, it becomes a billion manageable things. And those billion,

very manageable things have come together to be this one thing, which is a new reality where patients diagnosed with my disease have a fighting chance against this disease because of the work that we've done. They have treatments that they can get because of our work. They don't work for everyone and we still have work to do. But this new reality, I dreamed of it eight years ago. I didn't actually believe that it was necessarily going to become true. So I think it's about thinking about what you're hoping for. It's about breaking down those hopes into a billion actionable steps. Hopefully not a billion because that feels overwhelming in itself, maybe a thousand actionable steps. And then, in my opinion, it's about having no excuses as far as why you are or not, you know,

doing those manageable steps. It's about, I've set this goal because I believe in this vision that I've been hoping for. I've come up with my plan and I'm going to be relentless and I'm not going to let excuses get in the way to doing those things because the clock's ticking. I love it. Okay, brother. I appreciate you, David. Like I said it a few times, you're this breath of fresh air because of your ability to be

purpose-driven and actually organize your life towards something that matters to you and the lives of people that you're saving. So where can people follow you? Where can people be connected? Where can they get your book? You know, like share some notes there for us. Sure. Well, first I have to just say, thanks so much for having me on.

This has been so fun. I've just loved jiving with you on this. This has been awesome. Ditto. Yeah. Maybe we do something together. I'd love it. live well. And then my life purpose, which is to help people live in the present moment more often, because that's where all things that are true, beautiful and good are experienced. It's where wisdom is revealed and high performance expressed. I know it's a mouthful, but, um, and then, so my, my thought is like, my mission is to help people train their minds. The purpose is for what I just shared. And the vision is that we live more engaged. We live more animated and

alive and in return, more lovingly, you know? So maybe there's something we do, you know, I'm not sure, but maybe there's something we can play with anyways, where can people find you? So you can go to chasing my cure.com that basically has my social handles and all that kind of stuff of stuff. My last name is Fagenbaum, which is not very easy to spell. So when we get out of the quarantine, you can pop by your favorite local bookstore or you can order from Amazon. Um, but, uh, I just love the idea of being able to do something with you and to think through, um, what seems to be kind of our, our dual missions in life, which is you have come to this through your training and your experience and working with these people who have really mastered areas of their life.

And I've come to this from, you know, having, you know, my last rights read five times and saying, oh, my gosh, you know, this is how I need to live. And I would just love to bring the two together. And it makes me excited to think about your listeners checking out Chasing My Cure and that the stories and the lessons in that could actually be helpful today. Okay. So let's do this. We're going to figure something out. We'll do it offline. You've got a really important mission right now today to go solve this COVID thing. So we'll put a little space in there, but like, I love the

thought. And then, um, I want to buy half a dozen of your books and do like a giveaway. That'd be awesome. Yeah. So, uh, let's do this. Send an, send an email to, um, let's go info at finding mastery.net and put, put chasing my cure in the subject title. And if you write down your purpose in life, okay. And just like David's got clarity of his purpose, your purpose and how you're actually going to take that idea from an image and a hope, and then translate it into life efforts and what you're maybe what you're doing right now. So listen, I don't have, I don't want to read 15, you know, paragraphs. I want to read, it's got to be less than like six lines. Okay. And then I'm going to give six books out. Right. And, and then we're going to kind of like give a little giveaway of your books there. Okay.

All right, brother. And then I'm going to encourage, please go buy the book. You know, we're going to help you out with six books, a little competition. Like that's fun, but chasing my cure, go check them out. All right, brother. Appreciate you. This has been awesome. Thanks so much. 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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