Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Never Play It Safe – A Practical Guide to Creating a Life You Love | Chase Jarvis
Episode Date: October 16, 2024What if your biggest risk in life is playing it safe? Today, I am stoked to welcome back to the podcast one of the most dynamic voices in the creative world, Chase Jarvis. Chase is ...an award-winning photographer, entrepreneur, and the founder of CreativeLive, a leading online learning platform that has supported millions of creators worldwide. As a thought leader in the creative industry, Chase is dedicated to helping people unlock their potential through creativity, risk-taking, and embracing discomfort for personal growth and fulfillment.He also just released his latest book, Never Play It Safe: A Practical Guide to Freedom, Creativity, and A Life You Love.In this conversation, we dive deep into Chase’s life design – revealing his key insights on how creativity is a skill that can be cultivated and harnessed for personal and professional success. We explore the importance of taking risks, challenging conventional thinking, and embracing vulnerability as part of the creative process.I always love when I get to sit down with Chase and can’t wait for you to learn from his rich perspective and insights._________________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.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Finding Mastery is brought to you by Remarkable.
In a world that's full of distractions,
focused thinking is becoming a rare skill
and a massive competitive advantage.
That's why I've been using the Remarkable Paper Pro,
a digital notebook designed to help you think clearly
and work deliberately.
It's not another device filled with notifications or apps.
It's intentionally built for deep work.
So there's no social media, no email, no noise.
The writing experience, it feels just like pen on paper.
I love it.
And it has the intelligence of digital tools
like converting your handwriting to text,
organizing your notes, tagging files,
and using productivity templates
to help you be more effective.
It is sleek, minimal.
It's incredibly lightweight.
It feels really good.
I take it with me anywhere from meetings to travel
without missing a beat.
What I love most is that it doesn't try to do everything.
It just helps me do one very important thing really well,
stay present and engaged with my thinking and writing.
If you wanna slow down, if you wanna work smarter,
I highly encourage you to check them out. Visit remarkable.com to learn more and grab your paper
pro today. What if your biggest risk in life is playing it safe? Welcome back or welcome to the
Finding Mastery podcast, where we dive into the minds of the world's greatest thinkers and doers.
I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training a high-performance psychologist.
Today, I'm stoked to welcome back to the podcast one of the most dynamic voices in the creative
world, Chase Jarvis. Chase is an award-winning photographer and entrepreneur, and he's the
founder of CreativeLive. It's a leading online learning platform that has supported millions of creators worldwide. He also just released the book,
Never Play It Safe, a practical guide to freedom, creativity, and a life you love.
So with that, let's jump right into this conversation with Chase Jarvis.
Chase, I'm so stoked to sit with you.
It's been a while since we've connected.
It's been a hot minute.
And I love the way you've created your life.
And so I want to do a couple of things.
I want to talk about life design and how you've done that.
Thank you.
And I also want to understand how you've become so skilled at your craft.
So there's a blend there. Okay, happy to talk about that. And you've want to understand how you've become so skilled at your craft. So there's a blend there.
Okay.
Happy to talk about that.
And you've been diving deep into risk.
I have.
Yeah.
And it's the title of your book, which is Playing It Safe.
And so I want to dive into the insights that you've been attending to, which are near and dear to my heart as well.
Yeah.
We are kindred spirits, brothers from another mother.
Yes.
And I'm very,
I mean, you know, I'm hustling a book right now and I'm very excited about it. And yet what it
really means is I get to spend some quality time sitting down, having meaningful conversations
with my friends. So I've been looking forward to this one, but thank you. Ditto. Ditto. All right.
So for folks that might have missed your earlier episode or are unfamiliar with your work. Just give us a quick flyover about what you do and how you come into this world and what you do.
Yeah, it does go back to second grade, Ms. Kelly. I was a super creative kid in second grade. I had
a comic strip that I published every week. I had a magic act, a standup comedy routine.
And at some point early in my second grade year, my, I overheard
Ms. Kelly tell my parents that I wasn't very creative and this entrepreneurial stuff had to
stop and I should really focus on sports. So as a, as a, you know, you are very connected to sports,
so this will resonate with your community. But I did exactly what Ms. Kelly said. I just said,
okay, I guess I'm just going to, that's going to be my identity. And to be fair, Ms. Kelly was not entirely wrong. I was a good
athlete. I ended up, you know, winning all the races in second grade and went on to gain a
division one soccer scholarship, played on the Olympic development team. And when I graduated high school, I was the award that I
got at the senior breakfast was typical senior, which is horrible. Like that's catastrophically
awful in my mind. I didn't know what it meant, but I knew it wasn't good when I got it.
Average in every way.
Exactly. It was predictable. Essentially you followed the
script. And so, um, at some point thereafter, my grandfather, um, passed away, uh, died of a heart
attack immediately on his garage floor. And I was given two things. I was given his watch
and his camera. And at that time I was dabbling in
professional soccer with sort of an eye on if that didn't work, I was going to go to medical school
because I had decided that I needed to, you know, have, have do the thing, please the adults in my
life that were helping me think of, well, if you're talented and hardworking, you should be a
doctor. I mean, of course, pro athlete would be nice. So I had this suite of opportunities before me. And
in order to clear my head, I chucked that camera that my grandfather had given me into a backpack
and with my then girlfriend, now wife, Kate, and went and walked the earth for a year.
And it was in that year that I ended up coming back to that time that to that person
that I was in second grade, which obviously sounds ridiculous, but that person was his second grade
was a curious person who was listening to the beat of their own drum and, and had gotten off course,
basically sort of betrayed myself for a good decade and change.
And I was curious who that person was. And it turned out that person was someone that I really,
really liked. And so on this year walkabout, I taught myself how to take pictures.
And I came back and bailed on medical school, kicked the professional soccer thing to the curb and essentially became a
photographer and my poor parents, right? I'll never forget, you know, telling them this,
like, this is really what I want to do with my life. And I think where that took me was
a place that I could never have imagined. I've lived this, an amazing, beautiful, heart forward, heartfelt, connected, creative life.
And I am a builder of things.
So if I was to articulate to your audience, I consider myself an artist and an entrepreneur.
I've been one of the top commercial photographers in the world for 20 years.
And I am a builder of things that support the creative community.
So I've created the first online streaming platform that helped creatives learn.
We had tens of millions of customers, hundreds of millions of revenue that was acquired just a couple of years ago.
Creative Live.
Yeah, Creative Live.
And it was the first of its kind, venture-backed.
We raised about $60 million.
I've written a handful of books. I've published thousands of podcasts,
not just some of the ones that we're on right now
with many of the world's top experts
who are now largely my friends
based on my photography and directing experience.
I was focused on action sports photography.
So I've worked with 250 of the best athletes in the world
across a number of disciplines.
And we share a lot of that. So I can't wait to talk a little bit about that. But
to me at the end, if you try and connect the dots, looking backwards, I'm an artist and an
entrepreneur, um, a television director, I've got some, some television shows out there and
it's just, it's a big creative soup that I find the difficulty in explaining that is actually part of the joy that I get from it. Because if I can describe what I am in a sentence, it feels to me a little bit stayed. And I'm on the cusp of a new chapter, which is really what this book called Never Play It Safe is about looking backwards, summarizing all that stuff. And then where is this going and how can I be of value to others?
So there's two things I want to highlight. Sure. Thank you. Yeah. And meandering, right?
All the way back from second grade. Yeah. No, actually I saw in what you just did more than what I felt. Okay. Okay. So what I saw you do is walk me through beautifully the narration of your life arc
from two-year-old to like, I had this innocence, I had this way about me, and then I was stepped
on by the expert. That happens. And the expert probably didn't mean to do that. They're probably
earnestly wanting to guide you. and i remember at a young age um having
something different than you and so i want to great before i do that i just want to i just want
to highlight the arc that you just walked me through where your dreams were shattered this
innocent babe these dreams were shattered you went on and had
some success realized that wasn't fulfilling because it wasn't honest yep it wasn't authentically
what you found it was what was handed to you which is a bit of a prescription challenge for modern
um yeah there's a metaphor in there yeah right and so, and then you didn't know kind of, you've met this second
tragedy, which was another love of your life, right? Your grandfather, I'm imagining of all
the people you could have brought up, you brought up your grandfather and, and then you, you went
on the challenge, which was zigging when the world was telling you to zag, go walk the earth, which
is not, not traditional. So just in that,
there's a risk. So the first risk was abandoning what you thought was the path or the way that you
wanted to express yourself, all of this kind of magical creative. So that was the first risk is
saying no to that, but you didn't know better out of fourth grade or whatever it was.
And that's the thing about all of us. We're all getting that message and we get it from people we love, which is why it's confusing.
Okay.
Pin that.
That's going to be a high note for us.
Yeah, copy that.
And then you come back, you travel the earth and you come back and you're like, okay, there's something here.
And so this second hit is like an opening for the next phase of your life. And then you go on to, I mean, if I'm talking right now to one of the,
who's listening right now, one of the best action sport athletes in the world,
they go, oh, I know Chase. Chase shot me. Or, you know, Phil.
For sure. Yeah. I mean, Travis Rice, Snowboarding, Tony Hawk, like surfers, skateboarders.
Yeah. All of them.
My friends know you.
Totally. So then the point of that is that you didn't know you went on this adventure and you came back and
co-created a life that was quite remarkable. Beyond all my expectations. Yeah. Financially,
emotionally fill in the blanks. And that is not without challenges along the way, of course. So I just want to just highlight that the arc that you took me on,
I heard it, but I didn't feel it.
Got it.
Okay.
So what that does for me for calibration is you're trying to find the depth
of our conversation too.
Agreed.
Like how deep do you go in this?
Totally.
Because I know you.
I'm sitting across from a psychologist, everybody.
I know enough to know when to let them lead.
Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions.
In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true.
Meaningful relationships are at the center of sustained success.
And building those relationships, it takes more than effort.
It takes a real caring about your people.
It takes the right tools, the right information at the right time.
And that's where LinkedIn Sales Navigator can come in.
It's a tool designed specifically for thoughtful sales professionals,
helping you find the right people that are ready to engage,
track key account
changes, and connect with key decision makers more effectively. It surfaces real-time signals,
like when someone changes jobs or when an account becomes high priority, so that you can reach out
at exactly the right moment with context and thoroughness that builds trust. It also helps tap into your own network more strategically,
showing you who you already know
that can help you open doors or make a warm introduction.
In other words, it's not about more outreach.
It's about smarter, more human outreach.
And that's something here at Finding Mastery
that our team lives and breathes by.
If you're ready to start building stronger relationships
that actually convert,
try LinkedIn Sales Navigator for free for 60 days
at linkedin.com slash deal.
That's linkedin.com slash deal.
For two full months for free, terms and conditions apply.
Finding Mastery is brought to you by David Protein. I'm pretty
intentional about what I eat, and the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods. And when I'm
traveling or in between meals, on a demanding day certainly, I need something quick that will
support the way that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David Protein
bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery.
In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put 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.
What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here.
Don't tell.
Okay.
All right, look, they're incredibly simple.
They're effective.
28 grams of protein, just 150 calories, and zero grams of sugar. It's rare to find something that fits so conveniently into a performance-based lifestyle and actually tastes good.
Dr. Peter Attia, someone who's been on the show, it's a great
episode by the way, is also their chief science officer. So I know they've done their due diligence
in that category. My favorite flavor right now is the chocolate chip cookie dough. And a few of our
teammates here at Finding Mastery have been loving the fudge brownie and peanut butter. I know,
Stuart, you're still listening here. So getting enough protein matters. And that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity.
And I love that David is making that easier.
So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out.
Get a free variety pack, a $25 value, and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery.
That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery.
And you're just, we're finding our way in kind of what the depth of it is, but I know you to
have depth, to feel, to rattle, to speak truth. And so I just want to
open up that maybe we get some of that in there as well, because that's where I think you as a
frontier pushing emblem for what we are all capable of. We got to have that kind of balance
between intellect that you have and emotional depth and range, which you have. So, and that
doesn't come without a lot of trial and error and experimentation and, and, and, okay. So you want me to layer in some,
how I was feeling at each of those different, like those different, um, I guess, pivot points
or how do you want to proceed? What makes sense to me is first, let's go to the things that you've
learned. Sure. Right. And if we just do another flyover about some of the big lessons you've learned.
Sure.
And I think that that's probably much captured in your book here.
It is.
I really enjoyed.
Thank you.
I liked how you did the chapters.
Great.
So these are your levers.
Yes.
Essentially.
Yeah.
You know, the thoughtfulness of like, here's how you can control things in your life.
So this is good science.
Control what you can is a foundational thing.
But it's to me that control what you can falls far below mastering what's in your control.
And you're saying, here's the levers to put yourself in a greater position of power to really go for it.
Personal power, not power over others.
Correct.
Power within yourself.
It's sort of in what I've learned,
we will sort of unfold that this is how
that sort of the book came to be.
So what I have learned is that all of the best stuff in life
is on the other side of risk,
on the other side of our comfort zone,
on the other side of our fears.
I mean, I would challenge you to tell me one thing
that you would categorize
as a top life experience that did not require you risking something, being uncomfortable,
having fear. But if you had 49% fear, all you needed was 51% courage to do that thing.
Like literally, I have researched this and I have zero examples
of people who would say that the best stuff in life was on this side of their fear and comfort
zone. It's all on the other side of it. Having a child, you know, deciding to commit lifelong to
be the best in the world. And all of those things come with massive risks. And so what I learned is
that all the best stuff is on their side of it.
And yet so much of popular culture on our day-to-day is about keeping us on this side of
the comfort zone. It's about not going for it. It's about playing it safe, essentially. And so
to me, I looked at that as the little, to me, that was my, if I was a scientist, that was my
Petri dish. I looked at all my experiences,
the experiences of more than a thousand guests
that I've had on the podcast,
many of my friends who were the world's top performers.
And it turned out that there were essentially seven
key tools that helped those people, myself,
whenever I was able to do it,
get through, push to the other side of the comfort zone,
push to the other side, take the risk, play through fear in order to get the best stuff in
life. And so those are the seven chapters of the book. And the best thing about those is that this
is not an outside journey. It's an inside journey. All of these things, these attributes, these
levers that I use them in the book, the terminology I use, they are things that naturally reside within us.
And yet through no evil overlord, but they are trained out of us just by virtue of living in a mass culture.
And for example, the first one in the book is about learning how to direct your attention.
Yeah.
And what you pay attention to expands and so that literally
dictates the experience that you have of your life what you pay attention to there's an example in
the book about victor frankl who survived the holocaust and he was in a concentration camp 1942
and he was able to he was also a psychologist help himself and people near to him focused on the positives in that horrific environment
and create meaning out of that. And so if, if Viktor Frankl can do that in a concentration camp,
boy, we ought to be able to do that in a land where we're the political environment,
we're in the social media environment. And so, so training your ability to direct your attention,
super powerful.
Meditation, mindfulness,
there's a lot of things that play into that.
But that is an example of-
Do you have a practice?
I do.
I have had one for a dozen years now.
I'm a practicer of TM, Transcendental Meditation,
but that's not-
Two 20s or one 20?
I do two 20s.
Yeah, two-
I tend to do a 12 and a 21, really.-minute meditation in the morning, a 21-minute. That's
funny. For folks that are not familiar with transcendental meditation, it's one of many
different types of meditation. And the point is that you're carving out somewhere around 40 minutes a day to be able to go within. And the listener
right now knows that my point of view here is that I can't imagine, I cannot imagine living a
quote unquote great life without having some sort of contemplative internal listening awareness
building mechanism,
so that you can spend more time in the present moment,
which is the great unlock for all.
And then when you spend more time in the present moment,
you get to some insights like, oh, that's how this works.
Yeah, that's what, oh, that's what I really want.
Yeah, that, oh, I see how, oh, I see how I work.
Oh, so these insights.
And then from many insights, you get to the place of
wisdom. So wisdom has to be earned and life is different when you have wisdom.
Yeah. Yeah. To the point of what did I learn? I learned through all of that, that all the best
stuff is on their side of comfort zone. There's a handful of tools that are available to all of us.
It's not an outside journey. You don't have to move to france get a new set of friends wear a beret you know climb a mountain you just have to to learn to reawaken these things that are natively
within you and that can happen very very quickly and i would i would preach that it is in fact the
only way that you get to regularly spend a lot of time on the other side of your comfort zone, which is, again, where the best stuff in life is.
So, okay, you sound like a psychologist.
I've trained.
No, I have trained.
As an Olympic development athlete,
we were given access to earlier,
and I'm 100 years old,
so this is like sports psychology in the early 90s.
And I found it incredibly powerful.
And it did pay me.
So you were attracted.
Yeah.
You were attracted to it.
Very, very attracted to the inside game.
Yeah.
Very attracted to it.
Yeah.
I think it's one of the greatest levers that we can have.
That's why attention is the first lever in the book.
That's right.
Because it's so foundational.
And if you're neuroatypical, I'm not
saying attention in the terms of like ADD, if you have ADD, if you, therefore, if you have attention
deficit, you're screwed. No, you have a different set of skills and you need to learn to direct
your attention. You still need to learn how to work with your attention. Like I can't dunk a
basketball. Yep. I can two hand grab at one point, but that was as far as I could get on it. And so
that doesn't mean I can't play basketball. Yep. It means I've got to figure out my other
capabilities. And I'm looking at two very large humans that are like our producers, six, nine.
There you go. They can dunk. What's up Denzel? Yeah. And he's like, yeah, okay. I can, I can
dunk standing. So it doesn't mean that you can't play ball well, you can't play life well.
It means that sort out how to be able to figure out how to jump to your best and how to do other
things that suit your genetic coding. And I think that is a huge part of success in life is working
from the inside out and figuring out how to find the right community
that supports and challenges you
and figure out the right environment
that feels kind of homely to you.
Homie, there's a sense of being at home
with yourself in the environment.
And you can figure those three things out.
How do you get better from the inside out?
How do you find the right environment
to support and challenge you
and the people to support and challenge you?
There's no secrets in quote unquote, living a great life. These are some of the core foundations and you're pointing right to square one, which is the need for attention.
Your mechanism is meditation and? I just have a lot of, I would say,
internal practices. I journal every day and I like to journal on the same thing every day,
which is crazy to a lot of people.
Yeah.
The same thing.
What is it that I really want?
Why?
Why that question?
Cool question, but why that one?
Because you would be surprised at how specific it can get of how it changes.
And to me, being able to listen to your actual desires is a skill because we are as human beings,
you'll appreciate this, Mr. Psychologist. There's a French psychologist named Rene Girard,
who has a theme called mimesis. And as humans and being as social animals, we largely end up
being attracted to just mimicking the things that we see in our field of view,
which, depending on your field of view, could be a pretty narrow set of things.
And so I have trained my body, my mind to think about, of all of the possible things in the world,
what would I like, what would be fulfilling and connecting and enriching to me, not just the things in my
field of view. So it's very difficult to break what there's a saying, you can't be what you
can't see. And to me, the act of going inward and trying to see things beyond what I'm experiencing
in the day-to-day, you can set bigger, loftier goals or destinations for yourself.
So that's another example.
And to me, I'm not-
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,
before you go to the next one, this is so good.
Okay.
So you're talking about widening the aperture.
Yes.
I'm in dangerous territory right now,
talking to a world-class photographer.
But I love the aperture analogy in so many ways.
So you're talking about widening the aperture.
And one of the ways that we do that with World's Best, okay, hold on. Sports psychology is the study of World's Best. So how do those
different ones actually train and develop? Okay. And one of the things that they tend to do more
than others, according to our research, our meaning the, yeah, me and the whole entire community of scientists,
I'm not doing original research to be clear, you know, or much of it at least,
is that they are using their imagination. And you pointed to your head, they're using their
imagination to see and feel and create lifelike movies or images of what could be. And so it's
that mental imagery is the widening, a way to widen the aperture.
Another way-
And it's available to everyone, by the way.
It costs zero dollars.
And you did it when you were three.
Yep.
And you did it when you were six.
And you did it effortlessly.
And then the adults and the adulting of the world gets us task-focused as opposed to imaginary
focus.
So anyways, I think that there's something brilliant about, um, in your writing process, you are actually tuning your language and tuning,
um, your imagination in the same way. And you know, and I know when you're writing,
if what I really want is to bullshit myself to a comfortable answer right now. You know exactly what you're
doing. And I just want, so you're picking up on three really important things for awareness
training, mindfulness, journaling, and conversations with people of wisdom would be the three, what I
think the most important practices for awareness building, which is the cousin to attentional
training. Yeah. And I put those things within that chapter.
To me, these are habits and practices that, again,
the world's top performers in any discipline,
they all have some form of this.
And to me, I'm not actually preaching.
I don't say, you should do TM.
I'm saying, hey, look, our mutual friend or my buddy, Tim Ferriss,
he studied 1,000 people and put them all in his book, Tools of Titans.
And the number one thread of all of these world's performers
from chess masters to insane athletes to Hollywood elite,
was some sort of mindfulness meditation
and or awareness practice.
Number one, the number one thread that combined them all.
So the research is clear that this is valuable.
I'm not being overly prescriptive, but having some sort of practice and being able to choose how your mind works rather than let it run like that organ between our ears.
We got to make that thing work for us.
And there's a very simple set of tools that we can use to do that meditation we've listed many
of them yeah it's awesome and so i you i'll go back to the book for a minute because i want to
just i'm always interested in like the kind of the first kickoff so the first kickoff for me was the
levers and the way that you chose to organize the chapters um let's just actually let me just list
them right now so people can have the seven levers, attention, time, the way you spend your time. Yeah. The way you spend your time,
what happens to it when you're doing something that you actually care about
is it's very, very fluid, right? What if I told you that life is long,
would you behave differently? 99% of people, if I told them, Hey, you're going to live to 300
years old, what would you do differently? Not that we are going to live to 300,
but the point is that we spend so much time scurrying around,
trying to fit it all in that we don't actually go deep on the things that matter.
So time is understanding the relationship that the world's best have with time
is very different than what you're taught.
Clock time is time.
The world is just marching on this endless conveyor belt
and you're going toward your death.
That's not very interesting.
Well, I think we do a funny little bit of mental gymnastics, psychological, emotional
gymnastics, which is I've got more time, which is a bit counter to what I heard you just
say.
So the gymnastics and this denial of the fragility of life
allows us to think that, and we say it in our language,
I'll see you later.
I don't know if I'll see you later, Chase.
So now the gig is up.
When I say goodbye to you, this is a practice of mine.
When I say goodbye to anyone, I mean it.
Like, thank you for our time today.
And it's a weird little moment that I have for myself
to train me to be more present with the people and the things that matter.
The reason that I framed my chapter as such is because I believe that the phrase life is short
is actually pretty dominant in our culture. And I do find the value in what I call short-term
urgency, long-term patience. Yeah, that's right.
I do want to get the tasks done today.
And in doing more tasks, I may learn more.
I may live a richer, more connected life.
And to the 22-year-old who thinks they have to have it all figured out, I'm on my fourth
or fifth career arc, complete transformation, reinvention as a human. And to me, the ability
to think in terms of like, let's just slow down, decide what you want to do rather than taking all
these inputs and feeling that you have to have to figure it out tomorrow. Finding Mastery is
brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team,
raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical
limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body
matters. And that's why I trust Momentus. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers,
their co-founder and CEO, I could tell this was not your average supplement company.
And I was immediately drawn to their mission, helping people achieve performance for life. And to do that, they developed what they call
the Momentus Standard. Every product is formulated with top experts and every batch is third-party
tested, NSF certified for sport or informed sport. So you know exactly what you're getting.
Personally, I'm anchored by what they call the Momentus 3,
protein, creatine, and omega-3. And together, these foundational nutrients support muscle
recovery, brain function, and long-term energy. They're part of my daily routine. And if you're
ready to fuel your brain and body with the best, Momentus has a great new offer just for our
community right here. Use the code FMastery for 35% off your first
subscription order at LiveMomentous.com. Again, that's L-I-V-E Momentous, M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S,
LiveMomentous.com and use the code FindingMastery for 35% off your first subscription order.
Finding Mastery is brought to you by Felix Grey. I spend a lot of time thinking about how we can create the conditions
for high performance. How do we protect our ability to focus, to recover, to be present?
And one of the biggest challenges we face today is our sheer amount of screen time.
It messes with our sleep, our clarity, even our mood. And that's why I've
been using Felix Grey glasses. What I appreciate most about Felix Grey is that they're just not
another wellness product. They're rooted in real science. Developed alongside leading researchers
and ophthalmologists, they've demonstrated these types of glasses boost melatonin,
help you fall asleep faster, and hit deeper stages of rest. When I'm on the road and bouncing around between time zones,
slipping on my Felix Grays in the evening,
it's a simple way to cue my body just to wind down.
And when I'm locked into deep work,
they also help me stay focused for longer without digital fatigue creeping in.
Plus they look great, clean, clear, no funky color distortion,
just good design, great science.
And if you're ready to feel the difference for yourself,
Felix Gray is offering all Finding Mastery listeners 20% off.
Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at checkout.
Again, that's Felix Gray.
You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com
and use the code FindingMastery20 at at Felix gray.com for 20% off.
Yeah. There was a, um, a wave of, um, depth in, in understanding how, when you're writing it,
like, look, you don't, there's no race to the bottom. There's no race to the end,
but you're acting that way. I recognize that in me.
Yeah.
And I also recognize how, how much I want to appreciate the fragility of life.
For sure.
And that helps me to be more present.
Presence is really the core aspect of that chapter. It's like the ability to
be like, there is only now. That's all we have is now tomorrow never comes yesterday. You cannot
affect the outcome of yesterday. So we ought to be really generous with what we do now.
And what pulls your attention out of the present moment as a major theme?
A desire to do it all. Yeah. So you're writing this chapter for you and this book obviously yeah and
i have a hard time doing it from any i'll tell you a short story about this book this book i had
written something else for 13 months and eight weeks before it was due i threw it all in the
trash 55 000 words of a 65 000 word manuscript the trash. And I started from scratch and it was
because it was a book that I wrote for everybody else. And that was going to be nice for the
pundits and would sell well and be represented well as this book that intertwines creativity
and business. And it, to me, it was just radically inauthentic. It wasn't honest.
Yeah, it wasn't honest.
And I wrote this book, every single story,
every single chapter, I had a person,
a human being in mind that I was writing it for.
Sometimes it was me, other times it was my wife,
a peer of mine who was going through some hard times.
And I'm telling you the intimacy that the difference
between those two modes of being when you're
thinking of what would everybody like versus what if I could tell my wife one thing and I would never
see her again, what would I want her to know? Like talk about the framing of your attention.
Like it was a very powerful mechanism. And so yes, I needed to talk to myself about time,
but it turns out I watched so many people get it wrong. And the people who are living their best,
richest, most fulfilled, connected lives, they have a certain way with time and it feels different
to me. And I wanted to call that out. The goal with this book is like, there's a bunch of things
that we think are one way and they're really the other.
So it's a very counterintuitive guide.
And to me, that's helpful because it reframes, there's this feeling that we have in our gut.
And then when we see out in the world and there's dissonance there to me, you know,
I wrote the book to be harmonious.
Yeah.
I love your choice of language, betrayal, native.
These are a couple of words that just kind of risen.
And what was the last one you just said?
I don't know. It was probably excellent though. Harmonious.
Harmonious. Yeah. It was probably excellent.
It was probably excellent. Knowing me.
So do you, you know, that joke is cool in a couple of ways,
but do you feel as though you are a powerful person in this world?
I do. Yeah. You feel like you can, if, when you flex your attention, when you flex your
internal skills, like you can navigate the world pretty well. And is the world dangerous or safe?
The world is the world. Fundamental question. The world is safe and we do the dirty work.
We are the dangerous ones.
We do this to ourselves.
The world is neutral.
In modern times, is the world safe or dangerous?
Not, not nature, but is our, is our global community or speak to the U S are we, is it
safe or dangerous?
I think this is going to be controversial
because I, again, I think that it is neutral
and we do the dirty work.
We say it's safe or we say it's dangerous.
And it's not dissimilar to what you coach athletes.
Like you either scored or you didn't,
or they got the first down and you didn't.
And so it's neutral.
And we are the ones who I would say
get to choose our experience of the world.
That is either a thing that will propel us to do work to change an outcome that we feel like is something that we want to change.
Or we are very happy to just go along with the flow and let the world happen to us rather than for us.
So I'm skeptical about naming something,
but the thing that I do know is that if we are in charge of choosing, we are the ones who are
ascribing the labels. Let's make it a label that we love. And mostly I believe that we do the dirty
work.
We are saying that that is dangerous.
The irony is that the people like your aunt, your grandma, whoever said you should be an accountant, no disrespect to accountants, but you should be at X or Y, something that's safe and does good for the world and you're going to be able to provide for your family.
I would articulate that that actually is a very unsafe path because it doesn't have anything to do with you. It's not truly authentic. If this is your grandma telling you
you should be something because what your grandma knows and sees about this line of work is that it
produces a certain kind of result. And we all know that that is no more of a safe path than going for something that
you really care about. So the reason I asked that, because your book has never played safe,
I wanted to get a fundamental orientation of the way that you see the world.
Sure. Safety is an illusion. I'll put it that way. Safety is an illusion. It doesn't exist in
nature. And so the question is, why do we seek it? And we seek it because we believe that we will get a certain outcome if we choose a
theoretically safe path.
And my point is, you've seen people go for safe paths all the time.
And what kind of a life does that land them in?
It's not a life that they love.
And how safe is that?
That's tragically unsafe.
In fact, it's the riskiest thing you can do.
Yeah. And I don't disagree. I think that the That's tragically unsafe. In fact, it's the riskiest thing you can do. Yeah, and I don't disagree.
I think that the world is dangerous.
Okay.
I think that there are-
I know, I felt you wanting me to say that really bad.
No, I wanted to understand.
Okay, fair, fair.
And I wanted to calibrate with you
that I think the world is dangerous.
Well, maybe it's-
And there's lots of predators and there's lots of-
Yeah, let me align on that.
Because it's dangerous in that it will have you believe
something that is not true.
Yeah, no, I really like your positioning,
which is like, this is what I heard you say,
is that we need to,
I think you were pushing against the question,
which is the framing, is it A or B?
Which is a reductionist
binary thing to try to forcing function to try to get some clarity.
Yeah. But I do think it's dangerous to use your vocabulary because the world will, the world
will have you believe that life is a certain way that if you don't do X, this is going to happen.
And if you don't do Y, this is going to happen. And if you don't do Y,
this is going to happen.
And so I do feel like it's dangerous in that it,
it teaches us to betray ourselves.
Yeah.
That's risky.
Yeah.
So this is,
I think we're coming at it completely different approaches,
which is super stimulating.
Cause I,
I agree 100% with your take on what i'm i would categorize this your your um
your take on my question is more about identity and so i am more interested in like with my 15
year old 16 year old son instead of what do you want to do who do you want to be
okay so that's a different question but we we live in the West, at least, a performance-obsessed culture.
And so, of course, the questions are what do you want to do?
And the performance is you can find safety in certain performance tracks, the chartered accountant type of track. And I find myself being supporting him that direction,
not an accountant,
but like he wants right now,
he wants to do something that has high risk.
And I love that.
And I also want them to have a fallback.
So I'm like,
I'm trying not to prescribe anything.
Yeah.
And I'm listening a lot right now,
but it's confusing for me because I know the
life I chose and then I want him to be safer. And I'm like, that's not it. But hold on,
pin this for a minute because I want to come back. So I think that that's how you're answering
safety, not safety, going for it, not going for it. And I'm asked, I think that there are plenty
of predators in the world. And I think that there are real consequences when you're not aware and
when you don't have the external or internal skills to navigate consequential, dangerous,
high pressured environments. And you can choose how you feel in the world around you. That is a psychological
investment, internal investment that you make, meaning that I see the world as being dangerous
and I feel relatively, if not radically safe in it. And so, but that is based on the way that I've
built my internal skills to navigate what I would say difficult environments.
And I know that if I go through something heavy and it doesn't go
according to plan and the worst of the worst takes place or just less than
the worst,
you know,
the worst of the worst takes place or even whatever.
I was confusing there.
I'll figure the next out too.
So it's resting on a sense of self-efficacy,
which is why I asked you about your sense of internal power. So it's resting on a sense of self-efficacy, which is why I asked you
about your sense of internal power. So now, okay, that was where I was coming from it. I think I got
where you're coming from it. And I think they're reconcilable pretty easily too. I do believe,
because when you started framing your definition, to me, it makes sense. Yes, the world will have
you believe something. And that is a very dangerous place if you don't have the skills to decide not to believe something or not to get pulled into something.
And I 100% track with your POV there.
Yeah.
Okay.
So how would you navigate the beginnings of the arc of my son's kind of next phase?
Right?
Of course.
And so he wants to do something that's high risk um low net
not physically dangerous but like you know and then i want him to have a fallback of course you
do and um go for it and have a fallback i you know and so and he's kind of just like a kind
of big eyed and like okay dad like i'm like I'm listening, you know? And so there's a really
precious moment in our, in our family right now. How would you navigate that? Would, would you say
burn the boats burn? Like, sure. I think this is a fascinating topic. And so the book is called
never play it safe. And the goal of the title of the book is to get you to say, whoa. So I want to
be clear that when I say never, I'm not talking
about seatbelts and sunscreen. I'm not talking about emotional safety or physical safety, all
of which are really important to live a free, you know, free, connected, heartfelt life. So now that
we're clear, most of the other things, safety is an illusion. So one of the reasons that so many of us get talked out of
our dreams is because we're talking to people who've given up on theirs. And I don't know
which advice your son is seeking from you on what topic, but I'd imagine that the topic is not a
thing that you have a lot of experience with. Most of the jobs that the younger generations
are excited about didn't exist when we were growing up and they probably won't exist when
the kids that we're talking to get there. So that just as a sort of backdrop, the world is shifting
radically. And yet this is actually where a lot of challenge comes from because
our parents, the instructions that we get for the world come from a lot of people.
And those people are people we care deeply about. I was jesting about my grandma or my uncle
thinking I should be a lawyer or my uncle loves me. He wants the best for me. He wants me to be
exactly. And so the challenge though, is that if we took
only the experiences of the people who care a lot about us, our parents, our grandparents,
our friends, our peers, our career counselors, we would all have the same eight jobs,
which clearly doesn't work. I'll tell you a moment that was really important in my life and I didn't recognize it.
I was, I had a very against the grain childhood.
I was zigging when people were zagging and like I got a zero on my PSAT and a zero on my SAT
because I went surfing instead.
Got it.
So you can see I've made some interesting choices. I would,
most people would say that's a really bad choice. I had to go a long route to find education.
Small community college moved in, somehow I navigated out of it, which was very hard
to do. I tested into remedial math only because I didn't hold a book, a math book in all of my high school.
So I didn't, I got to education very late. My point about this was that there was this
conversation during my floundering type of years, exploratory years, excuse me.
My parents had a really good friend and he built a company that was built on socialist principles.
It was wildly successful.
He did 80% of the lion's share of work.
He was the deep creative.
You know when you see marble inlays on guitars?
Yeah.
On the frets.
Amazing. doing that and then built it from hand etching those things in Bob Dylan's guitar to CNC
machining big, big contracts across Gibson.
And so I was around this very interesting, grain-pushing, counterculture entrepreneur.
He did 80% of the work and his two other partners received 66% of the revenue.
It was amazing, human.
So he sat me down one day.
We're in my kitchen.
The sun was kind of coming through.
And he sat down and he said, Mike, what do you want to do with your life?
I was a junior in high school.
I said, I don't know, but I want to make a lot of money.
I don't even know where that came from.
Nobody knows.
I didn't have really any interest in making money.
I wanted to travel the world surfing.
And I was perfectly fine with milk crates.
My kitchen table, I imagine, was milk crates with a plywood as the table.
And on top of it, some sort of sheet.
I mean, what the fuck was I doing?
This was my imagination. This is how
I saw my future. But I was going to surf the world. Great. Bare bones, surf the world. It
didn't happen that way. And so he came back and he had a conversation with my parents. My parents
pulled me back a couple of days later and they said, what was that conversation you had? What
was that about? I said, I don't know. And I said, well, why, what was his take?
I was really interested in what he had to say.
And my parents just said, he was just really concerned for you.
And that moment, that moment set me up to think about the difference between the life I wanted to pursue, the one I was just saying to him for whatever reason,
because I saw him being super successful entrepreneur in an entrepreneur way.
And I had this mini little crisis at the 17 years old, like, what am I going to do?
So did you have any of those growing up that kind of set you down a path?
Mike, first of all, I love this question, this framework that you've set up here,
because it's a very important piece of the book.
And I feel like a very important piece on anyone's journey, because right now there are people who are listening that.
I guess what I know about the people who are listening is that we have all betrayed ourselves.
And so there's nothing more than I hate about, say, a business book that's a do perfect thing, a perfect thing, be perfect thing.
See, and then you're going to have this great company, D.E.F. and live happily ever after.
My favorite and I'm using business on purpose here because it's different than what we're talking about.
My favorite one of my favorite business books is one called The Hard Thing About Hard Things from Ben Horowitz.
And the chapters are how to fire your best friend,
how to tell your investors you lost all their money, how to let, you know, 500 employees go.
These are just real things that happen in business versus the perfection that we see,
you know, on social media or that most books, they craft this little gold plated grit story.
Everyone has betrayed themselves. So the goal here is not about not betraying
yourself. It's not about not being in the position that you were in or the challenge
that you're having with your son right now. It is about doing that. And it's about doing it over
and over and over. And when you betray yourself, because we all will, it's just that we get back
on that horse 1% kinder, 1% smarter than we were before.
And that's the journey.
So that's how you're seeing it.
Yes.
So I went in pursuit of medical school, hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt,
knowing the entire time that I had zero interest in being a doctor.
I worked at a hospital.
I did all the volunteer hours.
I knew the place creeped me out.
I watched hip replacement surgeries and knee replacements
and all the things that I was gonna do
as a orthopedic surgeon,
but it sure played well at cocktail parties.
Oh, what does your son,
oh, he's gonna be a professional athlete.
Oh, amazing, tell me about that.
Or, oh, a doctor, incredible, boy, you'd be so great
because you're smart and hardworking
and whatever the bullshit was.
And yet I knew I was lying the whole time.
Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth.
Over the years, I've learned that recovery
doesn't just happen when we sleep.
It starts with how we transition and wind down.
And that's why I've built intentional routines
into the way that I close my day.
And Cozy Earth
has become a new part of that. Their bedding, it's incredibly soft, like next level soft.
And what surprised me the most is how much it actually helps regulate temperature. I tend to
run warm at night and these sheets have helped me sleep cooler and more consistently, which has made
a meaningful difference in how I show up the next day for myself my family and our team here at Finding Mastery. It's become part of my nightly routine throw on their lounge
pants or pajamas crawl into bed under their sheets and my nervous system starts to settle.
They also offer a 100 night sleep trial and a 10-year warranty on all of their bedding which
tells me tells you that they believe in the
long-term value of what they're creating.
If you're ready to upgrade your rest and turn your bed into a better recovery zone,
use the code FINDINGMASTERY for 40% off at CozyEarth.com.
That's a great discount for our community.
Again, the code is FINDINGMASTERY for 40% off at CozyEarth.com.
Finding Mastery is brought to you by Caldera Lab.
I believe that the way we do small things in life is how we do all things.
And for me, that includes how I take care of my body.
I've been using Caldera Lab for years now.
And what keeps me coming back, it's really simple.
Their products are simple.
And they reflect the kind of
intentional living that I want to build into every part of my day. And they make my morning routine
really easy. They've got some great new products I think you'll be interested in. A shampoo,
conditioner, and a hair serum. With Caldera Lab, it's not about adding more. It's about choosing
better. And when your day demands clarity and energy and
presence, the way you prepare for it matters. If you're looking for high quality personal care
products that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check
them out. Head to calderalab.com slash 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. Never play it safe is really about going
for it. Yes. Just getting to the edge of your comfort zone. Yes. This is not about betting
at all on black. No, this is like, like getting to on black no this is like like getting to the edges
of your comfort zones to get to the real rich information and you're saying the great risk
is to swallow a performance-based identity that was handed to you from the larger culture and or
your aunt uncle mom dad neighbor that wanted you to be able to live the safe, secure life
as opposed to the thing that was singing inside of you
and letting that song out.
I'm going to take you on tour with me.
Let's go.
You just said it all perfectly.
And I would add one thing, which is,
oh, by the way, that safe, secure thing,
there's actually a lot of risk in there
because it's hard to estimate where you are right now,
the costs that you will pay
in doing something that you do not love.
Okay, so I wish my wife and I, I wish you and my wife and I were having this conversation
and anyone you want to include. Yeah. I'm coming over afterwards. We're just,
we're going to have this. Because this is like what we talk about a lot about raising a young
man in this world. And in the book that I wrote, I almost had a chapter titled
Making a Case for Broken Bones.
So much, which means like, I want you to go for it.
And then here I am intellectually,
like I want you, and I live that.
And you and I are around people
that when they make mistakes,
very bad things happen
in some of the adventure-based stuff.
And so there's a lot left unsaid here, but it's really jostling
me right now in two ways. I'm doing seven things really well or reasonably well. I want to do three
things exceptionally well. So I'm not even listening to my own. To me to let go of four
things that I'm doing pretty well, to work on the arc of mastery and the things I really want to do means that I've got to play it a little bit. I've got to take more risk and not play it as safe.
Exactly.
So how can I give guidance to my son when I'm designing a life where I'm holding onto too many ropes and I should swing on a couple of them. Honestly, I feel like your son and I've learned this time and again, having this level and
this type of conversation with anyone who will be present with you for it is the education
that none of us are getting.
Yeah.
And this is why I wrote the book to be fair.
Like this is the book that I wish I had because two things, one, it would attune me more
toward the things that I should be going for.
It would give me the skills to talk to the people
who I didn't want to do the things
that they wanted me to do.
And I would realize that this is actually
the journey we're on and I shouldn't be ashamed
or scared or frightened of it,
that this is actually what life equals.
That's cool.
And so now this is how I'm approaching it.
And I think that you're gonna love this is that, okay, look, this comfort zone, comfort zone, learning zone, panic zone,
think about those three arcs for a minute. Comfort zone is on the couch, flipping through
whatever is going to kind of numb yourself. Best in the world. They get out in the,
or no really high performers get out in the learning zone a lot and they don't really like
the comfort zone that much. They take it because we all need high ground.
We all need to dry off.
We all need a place to get a little sunshine.
You know, like, okay.
Rest.
Yes.
And that's a comfort zone.
But the true intrepid frontier pushing explorers of potential,
they get on the edge of that learning zone
into what most of us would feel like is a panic zone.
And that's where really rich data comes from. And that is so emotionally and physically
overwhelming and taxing that most of us reflexively pull back. They stay in it just a
little bit longer. And therein lies where adaptation, as hard as that is, takes place.
How do you, yourself, orientate your life to get right to that edge and stay in it just a
little bit longer? What are your practices to do that? To me, having the articulation that you just
very clearly laid out front and center, that this is actually an objective, that this is, when I look around,
this is what the, not just the highest performers, but I would say the most fulfilled people do.
Yeah. I'm going past high performance. I'm saying that that is a crock of bullshit, actually.
Totally. And the people who are fulfilled, and this can be from any walk of life, any discipline, they are aware of the rings that you just articulated
and they knowingly make a habit
of staying in that uncomfortable ring
just a little bit longer than most.
And to me, that is how I want to train myself.
And I think you and I,
this might be an interesting place to take this conversation.
Part of the thing that helps me understand this
is having had a front row seat
to people who do that for a living.
As a lifelong artist and entrepreneur,
one of my mentors is Richard Branson. He
invested in my last company, consider him a friend, a mentor. I've got a lot of really
important advice from him. And the advice is not what you would think it is, but Richard has,
I mean, the first plane that he bought to start Virgin Airlines was a 747,
cost him $200 million. Like, and so that sounds like beyond the comfort zone to the, what was
that last zone that you called it? The panic zone that makes most people panic. And then the
beautiful thing about Richard and I hope this example lands is that what most people don't
know and what he will tell you if you're having pasta with him, is I pre-negotiated the price at which I would
sell that plane back to Boeing. And so what I was actually risking was a very, very narrow set,
but I put myself in there. I saw myself as taking a big risk. The world saw it as a big risk that sent a big, powerful signal.
And I also knew that I was protected.
My downside was protected.
And so this is not an unhealthy act.
This is a very healthy- Okay, so for example, bought it for 200 million,
but I was gonna, if things went sideways,
I was gonna sell it back for 150.
Or 195.
Yeah, right.
So whatever the numbers were, great.
Yeah.
That I'm actually risking in that case, 5 million.
Sure.
And so, okay, that's different than a $200 million stupid swing.
Yeah.
Most of world's best in adventure-based programs, they take incredible risks, but they are
exceptional.
Now, hold on.
They take incredible risks and- Yeah, exceptional. Now, hold on. They take incredible risks and-
Yeah, I was just going to say and.
And they're exceptional at managing the interpretation, the perception of the challenge in front of them, the risk in front of them, and the skills inside of them.
Yes. And their ability to execute or to, to do the calculus between those two is so
finely tuned because they know if that's out of whack, it's a short life.
Totally. Yeah. So that's where I think most of us fall very short.
Very short. And to me, this, I mean, I hate to just point to the book that is exactly
the framing of this, that I am going for. And this is a knowable skill that if we are aware
of it, we can navigate this so much more elegantly. And it's not a bet at all on black. I'll just use
for this risk reward conversation. And it's very easy for me to land this for relevant for anybody.
The risk reward that you just talked about, life and death, I'll just use my friend
Travis Rice, who's the best big mountain snowboarder in the world, hands down. Legend.
And somebody who has given back to the world in incredible ways.
Incredible ways.
Yeah, POW.
Totally.
Protector winners.
Protector winners, him and Jeremy Jones, they do so much work in the space. So hat tip to those
gents. Trav, and I articulate this in the book,
it's a great story about when they're filming these segments for Red Bull or many of the world's
top snowboard films, they actually have a philosophy. Everyone who operates at that
level is so highly attuned. Like you said, they're constantly doing the calculus
that if anyone on the crew,
this is why who you surround yourself with matters,
anyone on the crew has a hesitation about the day,
about the task at hand.
If they lean back, if momentum leaves the building
in any way, that's the decision for the day they're done.
Who's done the whole project? The whole project, the whole, the day of filming done. Who's done the whole, the whole project,
the whole project, the whole, the day of filming today's the slope is unsafe, the weather, the,
the, so here's, here's where the, and I'm, you and I've worked in these projects. So I know that,
that, um, there's, there's a couple of different ways of going about it that way.
And let me do upside downside process. So that way, if anybody has hesitation, speak up.
Right.
Okay.
So the important part here is listen to your intuition.
You're doing some calculus, which I know intuition is one of the levers.
Listen to your intuition.
Do that calculus, what I'm talking about.
And we have to create the right level of safety.
Yes.
For you to speak truth to power. The whole, all of us are vibing, let's go,
this is going to be great. And then I'm the one that says, guys, I don't know.
Like, what? What do you mean you don't know? You better come strong. It's a feeling. Well,
what do you mean it's a feeling? Is that your stuff or is that a calculus?
Is that you're like, you're just kind of feeling something because you don't have the skills or do you think that me, Travis or whatever, Travis doesn't have it?
Like, what are you saying here?
So that is a very complicated thing to do to be able to be so tuned and have the right
culture, the right safety to speak truth to power.
And that is what's different in adventure-based, even some traditional stick and ball sports.
Yeah.
But adventure-based teams that is wildly and markedly much more advanced than what's happening inside of boardrooms.
Sure.
And yet, it's happening in boardrooms too.
Like, to me, I, as a, again, I was a CEO of a venture-backed company.
We talked briefly about that.
Not my favorite line of work.
And yet, like I experienced all of those things and I would try and create a culture.
This is what you talked about just a moment ago.
What's the culture?
What's the crew at that moment? This is why if you look at the world's top performers,
just think of the mentality inside the locker room of a McGregor fight.
Or what was the, when Felix jumped out of the strata,
like what was the environment of the people that were closest to him?
I'll tell you what they said to me.
Yeah.
So I came in four years to the project.
Okay.
Okay. They were already going at it and he tell you what they said to me. Yeah. So I came in four years to the project. Okay. Okay.
They were already going at it
and he raised his hand and said, I'm out.
So then they called me
and I spent four years after that with the project.
But it was kind of day one
where the old guard sat me down.
Now, these are some of the brightest minds in aerospace.
Felix was not in the room.
And they said, look, no offense to you.
We're not with you.
We do not want blood on our hands.
We don't know what you do.
And we do not want you convincing him.
I'm like, oh my God, this is not how this works.
I'm going to arm him with some ridiculously strong psychological skills that
are backed in evidence and dah, dah, dah. And then it's up to him to be able to navigate this
hostile environment if he wants to. And they're like, we're not with you because we don't want
blood on our hands. So for them to kind of point to me to say, listen, we're not with you.
Before you go in there, kid, listen.
Yeah, right. And uh i had a moment
where i said well what do you need to know to move forward and they say they said he needs to be in
the capsule in a safe environment for five hours to navigate the the gas exchange and once we can
see that then we can move on so great well for me it's the same thing you know extinguishing fear is
extinguishing fear which is what we needed to do. So the idea that
to speak truth, because everybody wanted it to work, but they didn't want blood on their hands,
which is so intimately real that I love those honest environments.
Yes. And that's what I'm actually advocating for.
Which is what?
Yeah. Creating those honest environments where these kinds of conversations
can thrive. And, and let's take this out of that environment and put it into the person who's
listening and watching right now, like whether you're at a boardroom or in the room of a team
of arrow, you know, aerospace engineers and psychologists trying to plan a stunt,
your life can feel the same. And we want you to get in a position where you're thinking
about it through this lens. And this is why the, the, the things that you think matter and you can,
you're in charge of those. This is why the people that you spend time with that matters. And you
were in charge of that, the things that you decide to do, it matters and you are in charge of that.
So to me, what I'm trying to cook up here is a recipe that looks a lot like the environments that the world's top experts plan available for every one of us.
It's so good.
Yeah.
I really love what you're doing and the language that you're choosing and the intentionality
of your practices and what you're pointing to in concrete ways.
So much so that I
just want to read these the chapter headings one more time attention time intuition constraints
play this is the year play for me by the way that's my intention for this year failure practice
and you you give concrete examples of how you can practice each one of these.
Yes.
And the conclusion is a life played well.
And so let's kind of round home base here.
Sure.
And I want to read back to you the quote that you decided to start the book off with by Helen Keller.
Security is mostly a superstition.
It is not, it does not exist in nature,
nor did the children of men as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run
than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
And I'd love for you to comment on that
and speak directly to the listener
about what you would hope that they could become
and practice after listening to you
and reading your book, hopefully.
Happy to do it.
First of all, again, thank you so much for having me on the show.
This is like the intellectual stimulation and connection that I feel around this stuff.
It's really easy.
It's meaningful.
And to the listener, I know through my own experience and deconstructing the lives of many of the most successful, happy,
and I would really argue not just great performers but fulfilled human beings, that all of the best stuff in life is on the other side of our comfort zone. It's on the other side of risk. And yet, that ought to make it so that this is our goal. basis in a, what I would consider a reasonable fashion, not disillumined to the Richard Branson
example. This is not about throwing caution to the wind. It's not about ignoring, you know,
seatbelts and sunscreen. This is about a practice that will routinely give you the ability to go
beyond your fear and tap into the best stuff in life. To me, there are a handful of very simple tools
that reside naturally within us
that if we pay attention to those
and we can get 1% better
on some sort of a regular cadence about these things,
if our awareness of these things is front and center,
that that will unlock all of the best stuff in your life. And I would say
that if you looked backwards, that is how you actually got there. You got there by trusting
your intuition, by dedicating and focusing your attention, by desire to fulfill that part of you,
that playful part of yourself that can imagine a future that you deserve. That's where the best stuff is. And my goal is to give you a framework for accessing it
whenever you want.
I love it. You know, when we watch some of the best in the world,
I'm thinking of a big wave surfer right now who is surfing 80 to 100 foot waves.
Insane.
And looks like risk taking. There's certainly risk in it,
and there's a lot of risk management that's taking place.
And you had said earlier, we were talking about one thing.
I was asking for one thing,
and it just flashed up as you were just sharing what you're saying,
is that in my conversations with them,
the risk-taking that they're taking
during the emotionally charged
conversations rivals just about any risk-taking I can imagine because they are choosing and I'm
watching them choose. Do I go for explaining my deepest fears, the things that I'm most embarrassed by. Do I unpack this stuff or do I not? And my
job is to give them a hundred micro choices to open the door or not. And we do it together.
We go through it together. And I can just feel my heart swells, right? And my throat swells just
thinking about how radically courageous they are to be at the emotional edge
in a conversation no different than what we're having. And they step into it and step into it.
They're very practiced at it. Yes. It's a muscle. It is a muscle.
I want that for, I feel that you live that way.
I do. But it is not for lack of a thousand tiny betrayals before it. That's like, that's the thing that my favorite part about the book is that it is a reminder
that this is not a try it.
It works.
Everything is hunky dory.
And anything that's trying to sell you that is fiction.
This is an internal journey and it is about getting 1% better.
And it is not about avoiding mistakes.
It's about recovering quickly and having the confidence to do it anyway. How do you think
about defining or articulating who's playing it safe? Whether we know it or not, we have a really
great barometer about what feels risky and what feels safe for us. So what feels safe for someone might be X and somebody else
might be Y. My goal is to get you to attune to what that is for you. And then you are the one
that has to take you beyond that risk. So again, I advocate that all the best stuff in life is on
the other side of our comfort zone and what your comfort zone is, what your tolerance is, what your available risk profile, that's up to you to decide.
And that's where we go wrong. We take that information from so many other sources in the
world. And these are people that care deeply about us. And yet we all know the goal is to
get quiet enough to listen to who we really are in our heart and then go one step beyond our comfort zone
to the best stuff in life.
Love it, man.
Chase.
Are we finding mastery here?
Never play it safe.
Must be, must be the title of your book.
Thank you, mate, for going on the adventure today with me.
It's a treat.
I love the show, have loved it for so long.
And thank you for having me back on. Uh, and, and great job. You're, you're serving in a community that needs
and very much benefits from the work that you do. Thank you. Awesome. Where's the best place for you
to, to, for our community? Sure. Um, again, neverplayitsafe.com is, you know, the book is
wherever books are sold. If you go there, there's a bunch of really cool bonus stuff that you get access to.
And I'm just Chase Jarvis everywhere on the internet at Insta and YouTube and all that stuff.
You can find me.
J-A-R-V-I-S, Chase Jarvis.
You got it.
You know, what's funny is that my first gig in hockey,
so my last name is Gervais,
and I was never nervous Jarvis.
I don't know where that came from. So we go Jarvis
and Jervis. All right, man. Appreciate you. Thanks again for hosting. Appreciate you, buddy.
Yes. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us.
Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you.
We really appreciate you being part of this community.
And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe
or follow button wherever you're listening.
Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify.
We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback.
If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter
we send out every Wednesday. Punch over to findingmastery.com slash newsletter to sign up.
The show wouldn't be possible without our sponsors and we take our recommendations seriously.
And the team is very thoughtful about making sure we love and endorse every product you hear on the
show. If you want to check out any of our sponsor offers you heard about in this episode,
you can find those deals at findingmastery.com
slash sponsors.
And remember, no one does it alone.
The door here at Finding Mastery is always open
to those looking to explore the edges
and the reaches of their potential
so that they can help others do the same.
So join our community,
share your favorite episode with a friend,
and let us know how we can continue to show up for you. Lastly, as a quick reminder,
information in this podcast and from any material on the Finding Mastery website and social channels
is for information purposes only. If you're looking for meaningful support, which we all need,
one of the best things you can do is to talk to a licensed
professional. So seek assistance from your healthcare providers. Again, a sincere thank
you for listening. Until next episode, be well, think well, keep exploring.