Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Olympian Swimmer Anthony Ervin - Finding His Authentic Self

Episode Date: August 10, 2016

Anthony Ervin is a U.S. Olympic Gold Medalist, former world record holder in the 50 freestyle, and former World Champion in the 50 and 100 freestyle. In This Episode: -His relationships with others and the water -Family structure growing up and why he wanted to stand out as the middle child -Suffering from turrets and struggling to control his own body -Channeling his anxiety into swimming -What a good coach means to him -Winning a gold medal at 19 and not being ready for the spotlight -How he saw himself vs. the way the media portrayed him -Drugs and alcohol impacting his ability to perform -Expecting to win his first Gold medal in the relay and letting down his teammates -Approaching competition with an optimistic vs. pessimistic mindset -How he became free of past failure -The cost of his success -His contribution to the sport of swimming_________________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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davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. Now this conversation is with Anthony Irvin, who is extremely nuanced as a human being. He's created a, I mean, just a unique path towards discovery. I mean, it seems like that's really what he's about. And I'm not sure how well we and he and me in particular, I mean, captured who he really is. There's just beautiful layers about him. And so I just flat out love to sit down with him again. So hopefully we can make that happen. But on the achievement side of what he's done, um, it's phenomenal. He's won an Olympic gold medal. He's the former world record holder in the 50 freestyle and swimming. And he's also the former world champion in the 50 and 100 freestyle. Yup. All of those. I mean, those are, those are all significant and serious in a sport that is like very sophisticated. Swimming is a very sophisticated sport where people are very skilled at it. So he's known in the swimming community as having one of the most pure strokes. He's just flat out raw talent. And when he swims, people pay attention. It's beautiful. And when he was in his prime, this is the part that's

particularly interesting. He walked away from his sport to explore himself and to explore the world, which just like you'd imagine from those who really go for it, he threw himself into discovery as well. Then when he decided to return to a sport, he returned just about where he left off. I mean, in swimming, that's something that just doesn't happen. At least, I don't know about it. So, most coaches and athletes recognize that progression in sport moves so fast. And at the same time, deconditioning in swimming, but most sports as well, that happens even faster. So we all, we, we know that we could start to decondition after about three days of not moving and stressing the

body, but on the world stage, like three days is important, but three months, years, like that's really unheard of. And anyways, um, most, most athletes, when they walk away like that, it's just flat out retirement. However, he's competing in Rio at a really high level, obviously. And I hope you enjoy learning more about him and watching him go for it and celebrating him, you know, letting it rip. And that's just what he knows. So it's going to obviously happen there. He's got a memoir that I think that you'll flat out enjoy. So find his book as well.

And if you enjoyed him here, you can also check him out on the Rich Roll podcast. And that was a great conversation as well. I enjoy the way that Rich engages in his guests and pulls just really insightful stuff out. Okay, so this episode, it's brought to you by Gary de Blasio. Now he's been a mentor of mine for a long time and Gary taught me how to embrace the wild within and the journey toward intuition and holding both of those true. And at the same time, you know, because I'm, I tend to be pretty intense is to not take myself and life so freaking seriously. So with that, let's jump right into this conversation with Anthony Irvin. And let's go USA.

Anthony, how are you? Doing well. How are you, Michael? I'm doing great. So thank you for coming in and spending some time to figure out how we can understand your path of mastery and even what that means to you. So as we get going, I'm excited to figure out what the early part of your career was like and now as the swan song, you know, in your career. And it's a really unique perspective because I think so many people think about, did I have what it takes to keep going? And you're in that frame, fame, fame or phrase. You're in that phase right now. OK, cool. So one of the best swimmers in your craft and for a long time and celebrated as an Olympian and a medalist. And you've you've done the thing might have been for you at a young age?

Pretty much right out the gate. My very first competition, like swim race, I think I was seven years old, seven or eight years old. And right away, you know, I, I swam my first race and I did exceptionally well and qualified. Like I jumped two steps from like the next bigger local meet to the regional meet. Okay. So very first time. Were you one of the natural? I was a natural. You're an athlete that had a natural gift. Yes. Okay, cool. Because some people that we've been able to learn from, they didn't have the genetic coding and they indexed on outgritty, outworking. Well, that's not me. I was more of the talented, which I often will say that when people reduce something to talent, it's their way of explaining something they can't explain themselves this is coming from people who are coaches who would know it's like

it's like talent so if someone said it has a bunch of talent is it's like they can do something that you don't fully understand okay that's like an acknowledgement of mysterious power from somebody who who has the knowledge or should have the knowledge that's my take on it at least yeah and i hear the same thing when people talk about heart and they it's like they don't know and i don't know really what it means either like i ask athletes often like what does it mean to be have heart because we talk about that phrase a lot they've just got a you know lion's heart or killer heart or whatever it might be and yeah so i that and i think they're trying to capture like grit or determination or doggedness they're trying to capture something there but anyway so i interrupt let's keep rolling

you're seven oh i mean you got me uh i mean that's a good place to the heart not something i feel like i generally hear a lot of in my sport or at least for me it's like oh you've got to have more heart something like that but um for me heart has always been the emotion okay yeah and that's that's shared emotion it's not love for oneself but you know heart is how you you reflect what somebody else is doing that you care about okay so for you so heart means the way that you care for others or the way that you are sharing an experience with someone else? Is that how you think of it? Yes. So does that have much to do with sport or not much to do with sport?

Only in so much as my peers, teammates, when they perform well, when they do something great, then there's outpouring of heart for me for them. Yeah, got it. Okay. How important is connectivity and being on a team where people are competing for the same spot? It is very important. Very important. Individual sport or team sport for you? Swimming?

It's a bit of both. Is it? It's a bit of both is it it's a bit of both and you know i often like to reduce swimming to my swimming to my relationship with the water and to move forward from that it's my swimming has been all about my relationship to other people you know the good and the bad and it's always been a celebration for me. You know, I've known many an athlete or swimmer who their life can be turning to shambles around them, their home life, you know, whether it's parents or school, um, anything, and they can get that

razor focus and let that drive them to train harder and better than they've ever done before. And then they rise up from that set of adversities to become better because of it. That's not me. I've always done perform my best when my relationships to my coaches, my teammates were at their best. And when things were rocky in my personal life, then my performances athletically were bad. Because if my relationships in life are bad, then my relationship to the water is disconnected as well. And then when did you start to realize the importance of relationships?

Was that young or was that when you started to get into your teenage years or as an adult? I think it's always been there, but largely reflection and being asking myself or being asked to write about my success in sport and to reflect on what I've done coming up to the now, it's really there that I really started making that connection that it really has been all about that and bringing it back to the original thought of this is my swan song that I have one foot in and one foot out the competitive gate that I've really trying to cherish those relationships as they've come from past to present. And I'm returning to a lot of them. Are you like coaches and or coaches, family members, family members, teammates. Okay. So before we, before we get present, what's the last one?

Teammates past and present. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Okay. So before we get into that part of the relationship, cause I want to really understand that at age seven, it was easy. It was easy, but okay. You know, in swimming, we do a lot of events and this one event I showed my excellence. Uh, and then it became this, this social factor where the coaches were beaming. My parents were like, Oh wow. And my teammates were just like, wow. You know, and that became this reinforcement or genesis of this competitive zeal, this pursuit of achievement, because you get that. No kidding. Okay. How old were you? Seven, seven or eight years old. Okay. At seven or eight years old, you had the idea that achievement was recognized by you or by others and it became important for you?

No, no, no. I did not recognize that consciously at seven. I'm deconstructing it from the now. Okay. At the time, when you're a kid, you're completely at the beck and call of your instincts, emotions, and feelings. What was your identity like as a seven, eight, 9, 10-year-old in those young years? Was it about being an athlete or was it about just being a kid? I think it was about being a kid, pushing the limits of always running up against forms of control and barriers, whether that be parents or rules and frequently trying to get through those or climb over that. So you had a little bit of a counterculture approach?

I was definitely an angsty kid. Okay. And yeah, I was mischievous rather than devious. What kind of family structure did you have? Did you have mom and dad in the house? Did you have siblings? Yeah, mom and dad dad are in the house mom and dad are still together didn't there were definitely times where i didn't think that was going to to be the case but they made it so and for that i'm very grateful and and now it's definitely something that when i meet or

try to meet a significant other a potential significant other or something i kind of like go to is like are your parents still together? As a model. Yeah. Cause it, if they're not, then you bring a whole nother set, a whole nother like architecture of how you relate to people into it. And that might be too much work for me. So I need somebody a little bit more like what I've been through.

Okay. All right. So parents, did you have siblings? Yes. I have two brothers, one older, one younger. And then I have a few, um, half siblings on my dad's side who are, who are much older. I didn't grow up with them. So half siblings. So dad was previously married. Dad was previously married. Dad was previously, uh, in the military. Okay. And so, okay. Got it. All right. Okay. And so. Okay.

Got it. All right. So he traveled around a bunch. He traveled around a bunch. And yet you said two half brothers. No, I got one half brother and two halves, maybe three half sisters. I'm not even, I'm not even certain. Okay.

So, but it's the family unit feels closer with you and your two brothers. I really. Yeah. Me and my two brothers i really yeah me and my two brothers we grew up together um and since i mean i do have relationships with uh my half brother because he kind of came to the picture really late nobody even really knew about him oh my dad or him as a matter of fact until just like um like like eight years ago. Oh, so new relationship, new relationship. Okay. Yeah. What was it like, you know, so your dad seems like he was a bit of a, um, I don't know, not a Rolling Stone, but like he traveled a bunch, he got around and lived life, you know, fully and took some risks and chances and maybe loved women. I don't know, but I'm making some of this up, you know,

being kind of a military, military, from a military framework. But what was it like growing up being the middle son, being the middle kid, and with your mom and your dad? Well, my older brother's got six years on me. So he was a rather large skip up of authority. He seemed much closer to my parents than he necessarily did to me because, you know, I mean, he went away to college before I'd even started high school. I hadn't even hit puberty yet when he was kind of gone.

And there's a thought that five years after five years, it feels like you're an only child. You know, if your sibling is five years older, I wouldn't say that. Cause I do remember a lot of him being there and doing a lot of you know taking care of me when my mom or dad couldn't okay so so no i wouldn't say that okay i mean he was still there but it was that there was never any like for me and my younger brother who there's only two years between us there was a lot of uh social groups sharing growing up so he knew a lot of my friends and was friends with them and i knew a lot of my friends and was friends with them. And I knew a lot of his friends and was friends with them. Okay. Got it. All right. And then what was it like being a middle child? I've, I've, I've heard people say that I'm like classic, just,

um, you know, overachieving in one sense, but not nest, not independent. You know, my older brother is definitely independent and, um, you know, like responsible in a lot of those more adult ways that came to him a lot sooner. And for me, you know, I'm still feel like I'm somewhat of a Peter Pan at 34. I haven't completely embraced full responsibility yet. And then, you know, my younger brother is kind of like the baby who always, you know, he always had that safety net was closest to his bottom than it was for me. I feel like, yeah. And then in football, you hear coaches really value the middle child because there's just a little toughness. There's a little something different about them. And so I don't know if you've got that toughness as well, like that

type of scrappiness, but I mean, maybe i think toughness or scrappiness can come in any number of ways for sure yeah there was certainly an effort um like a vapid you know it's kind of hollow and shallow um but to try to set myself aside of everybody else not just my siblings, but everybody I saw around me. Yeah. That was the focus to be better than others. Better certainly, but always different. And that came with highs and lows. Keep going.

Um, well, you know, like achievement and success is on the higher end of being special. Uh, and then you can be different where people don't treat you well for it, but they can shun, um, or, you know, well, okay. I'll just get specific. I write about it at length in, in, in the book, but now I was diagnosed with Tourette syndrome, chasing water, chasing water. Yes. Chasing water, elegy of an olympian okay and um yeah so at the onset of puberty i was i was diagnosed with Tourette's you know and i my main primary symptom was i couldn't

stop blinking i'll just be like and it prevented me from really doing anything so so just like that was really fast like you're blinking like i don't know like in three seconds you just blinked like three thirty times is that like like that was pervasive for you it was pervasive and i mean i i turn it on you know because obviously that fast twitch muscle thing which we can get back to later okay is built into me from those years um but and your sport is a 50 which is the fast switch swimming yeah it's the closest thing to an absolute sprint we have yep yeah okay and where was i okay so diagnosis of puberty yeah and that's not that's the kind of special nobody wants to be you know like all of a sudden i've i feel like i'm brain damaged or that i'm like retarded and even a lot of my friends didn't know how to deal with it and while they weren't outright hostile to me a lot of them pulled away they retreated from whatever

friendship relationship we had so it just turned on you didn't have it when you were 10 nope and then 14 ish it's like 12 13 it just something happened and yeah whatever the wiring or neurochemistry and this unique mix for this uncontrollable twitch that you had and then what so you just said brain damage like did it feel like something was wrong with your brain is that what the way you internalized it? Well, yeah. I mean, the way it was explained to me is that it's a neurological disorder. Yeah. And I lost control. I mean, if we try to abstract it, I'm losing control of my own body. And that has become an ongoing theme throughout my life.

And it still is very, very important to me. And powers that be and people will very, very important to me. And I'll, you know, and powers that be, and people will try to do that to everybody. I see it happen all the time where they try to actually control another person's body, whether that becomes physical or by putting the uniform on them or trying to just constrict their behavior in some sense. Wow. So from a very, very young age, I was, I was taking control of my body in a way that belonged to everybody else. Meaning that they could move away from you based on what your body? No, no. Meaning that I couldn't control the movements in my own body.

Okay. And that is, I was a huge, it was a huge struggle as a kid. What was harder? Like, uh, was the social aspect the hardest part or was it the feeling out of control? It was the feeling out of control. Okay. What did you do when you felt out of control? What were your strategies? Well, I largely just stuck to myself most times. So I wouldn't have to deal with the social, um, pressures or, or, you know, retreat. So, and I was always a bookworm. I grew up reading a ton and that was always kind of my outlet, you know, like if I was grounded or something, or if I was on my own and even that became something I couldn't really do because of the

blinking, I couldn't keep reading. I'd lose where I was on the page whenever the fit would end. And I tried to get back and it just seemed useless. That was my one thing that I was able to escape with all the time. Jeez. Okay. And what about swimming when you're in the pool? Okay. And this is what, this is what's bringing us back in here. My teammates and my friends on the swim team did not retreat. Maybe it was the order and the discipline and the workouts and the train elements, but we were all together through it. And they didn't retreat from me. They didn't treat me differently. I was still on the team. It was different than at school, where there's a lot more space to move around. There wasn't as much space in the swimming pool, in that athletic environment. And moreover, because the Tourette's is it's largely a build up an excess of Oh, did that that go? Yeah.

We're trying to film at the same time and it looks like the tide. No worries. Yeah. And excess of nervous energy of a neuro like excitement that while in training i can channel it force it into like doing my technique and just working hard so my symptoms would go away during training training yes yeah i've seen um some incredible athletes that have have done exactly the same thing and they've and so they poured into sport and became very good at it. And anxiety, oddly enough, anxiousness and anxiety will exasperate or kick on some of these symptoms possibly. But while doing the activity, they seem to go away or become less

noticeable to the person and others. So for you, was it a safe haven and that's why you invested? Or was it that it was relief that you didn't have to have this, you know, fluttering of eyes that was so distracting to you? It was a safe haven as long as I was performing well. Okay. It didn't seem, it didn't seem as safe a haven when I hit those valleys. So I hit a strong peak when I was a kid before this happened. And then pretty much with the onset of the Tourette's, I hit this trough where I was not performing well. All my teammates would surpass me. And I was kind of like the bottom rung of the totem pole at that point. Did your talent go away?

Or could you not access your talent or was it a natural dip in the evolution of skill development that was taking it was just a natural dip okay as far as i know everybody i've talked to every everybody's had difficult times where just things didn't seem to be working sure they used to yeah yeah and when i swung back up towards the end of high school you know i had I had even, I switched strokes, had switched events. What was my best thing before was no longer my best type of swimming. It was this other kind. Okay. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous.

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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 Greys 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 FelixGray.com for 20% off. Okay. All right. And how does this stitch or hook around to relationships?

Because I'm imagining this idea that you had a thing and people moved away from you. And when they moved away from you, that was really difficult to manage. So relationships early on became maybe painful or noticeable that there's some set conditions to have people stay close to you and I don't I'm just curious how relationships hook around or

wrap around your relationship with swimming as when we first started well obviously my teammates growing up and you know a couple of those guys are still my best friends. You know, I still talk to them and see them as often as possible. So they have, they have stood the test of time, you know, 34 years later. So that's rock solid. And, um, you know, and they were there for me when I was bottomed out, you know, so I never forgot that. Now to look at relationships of authority, my coach during that time was a caring, sympathetic woman. She knew that I was struggling, that not achieving like I used to was a terrible burden, but that she also knew that when I was happiest was when I was hanging with my friends on the team. And that the training did provide an outlet for this excess of energy I had. I mean, I can't even really imagine

what a catastrophe it would have been if I had been allowed to leave swimming and had no outlet for that at that age. That would have been disastrous. And now we're talking about high school. We're talking about like the beginnings, the very beginnings of high school or, um, the end of junior high and when your high school really changed a lot of things because I had two coaches in high school. I had my competitive team coach who was very much achievement driven and he would totally tear people apart, um, for, for not performing in a way he wanted them to. What part of the world are we talking about? What part of the world? What city? What? Oh, we're, we're up in, uh, wanted them to. What part of the world are we talking about? What part of the world? What city?

We're up in Santa Clarita. Okay. So Valencia. California. Valencia, California. Yeah. And he was a good coach. He got results, but he treated swimmers like objects rather than like people.

Okay. And did that work for you or not work for you? No, definitely not. It didn't seem like it would. Did it work for anyone that you knew? It worked. It did. It did.

It did work for some people. Okay. And, you know, but to give you like an anecdotal story of that for me would be, I went to junior nationals and, you know, this event I had been focusing on a lot. I swam it. I won junior nationals and qualified for like us nationals, the main meet where the best in the country would be. And I was seated first in the event the next day. And, you know, I, for me, I had done what I came

there to do and I totally just tanked it and, you know, did poorly. And I was fine with that. Why would you be fine with that? Because I didn't want that. You didn't want what? I didn't want to achieve at that event. I knew what I wanted to achieve at and what was not meaningful to me. Got it.

Okay. So there was inside of the meat, there was one event that you cared about and you did well. And there was another event that you didn't care about. Yeah. So you, okay. Did you purposely shut it down? Like if your you did well and there's another event that you didn't care about yeah so you okay did you purposely shut it down like if your heart well that's the word if your heart is not in it it you will not do anything okay it's impossible and so i had no heart and um you know i tanked and i was but i was fine with it. I wasn't bombed. I didn't beat myself up for it. I knew it.

I knew it. And my coach came. He just walked up to me, just like pointed at me in the eye. And he's like, that was pathetic. And he threw his paper in his hands on the ground and walked away. And I never did that event again. And I was like, maybe the right educator or leader could have worked around it and brought me back to it. It could have showed me why that could have been meaningful for me just because I didn't see it for myself at the time. What question or what do you wish you would have said looking back now as a 15-year-old?

No regrets. No do-overs. It's fine. I'm just saying. If I was ever in a similar situation as a coach with a swimmer, I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't try to put them down. So not a do-over. But knowing that that didn't work for you, right?

And there was a course trajectory that you took differently. But I'm thinking about for coaching. And what would you wish if there's lots of coaches that listen and there's lots of parents that are trying to be better parents and lots of corporate leaders that are trying to be better leaders. And when they see something that is not to standard. So this coach saw something in you that was not to standard. What do you what looking back with hindsight, what do you wish he could have done or said to be able to help you understand a better version of yourself? That's tough because I know nobody's a mind reader, you know, but that's what I would have expected. You know, um,

maybe a little bit more empathy, a little bit more just be like, well, you know, clearly you weren't, you weren't ready to do that. You know, let's try to find out why. And, uh, let's find out if you actually do want it or if there's something else going on got it yeah so just try to understand you more rather than just be about achievement yeah sounds like okay all right keep rolling um so yeah so that's my story of how you know i had this achievement oriented coach yeah and you know i was already kind of bottomed out going into high school you know i was kind of doing it just socially at that point.

But on the other end, in high school, I had a coach at Hart High in Newhall. Hart, H-A-R-T? H-A-R-T. Not the Hart we're talking about? No, no, yeah. William S. Hart. I believe he started in some old westerns or something. Classic.

And he cared about achievement too. But he was dealing also with a lot of swimmers that were not at the club level. Swimmers that did summer league and enjoyed it. And it was a good exercise. And he did inspire people to try to be better. Better for themselves. Not just a better swimmer, but better for themselves, you know, uh, not just a better swimmer, but better for themselves. And he really was able to celebrate those connections and relationships. And it allowed me and my swimming to really thrive, even though I didn't train with him,

you know, being with the team, you know, before and after school, uh, going to high school dual meets and racing and standing up with relays with those guys, it became much more meaningful instead of this very isolating and often lonely and cold route, which is that road of achievement to an individual gold medal. Okay. So you called that cold? I think it's very cold. Yeah. How do you warm it up? Now? Well, yeah. Looking back with all of cold. Yeah. How do you warm it up? Now?

Well, yeah. Looking back with all of, yeah. But because you're living it now, I'm imagining with, with the insight that you gained from being able to be on that cold path and be successful at it, you know, you don't get to the Olympics easily. Anyone, especially coming through the American. Yeah, I did it. I got to the Olympics. I won a gold medal. And to even get to the olympics in the american swimming program is significant so true so you did it the cold traditional maybe not traditional but the colder route how do you warm it up now well it was the people around me okay you know i had i had the right coaches and the right teammates that

that that warmed it then or now are we talking? Then. Then. That's why I achieved it. There you go. I didn't achieve it on my own. I was lifted up by these people. How did they do that?

What are some concrete ways or memories that you have of people helping you be lifted? Well, being one who frequently likes to, uh, test and transgress boundaries. Um, and a lot of times I think it was subconsciously I was doing this to see what kind of reaction I could elicit from like my coach and his response to it was what I described earlier of just trying to figure it out of of just trying to establish that rapport and understanding that it is a partnership. It's not a, I tell you, you do it.

And I was telling a mentor of mine just yesterday that swimming in and of itself, pursuing achievement in swimming means nothing. The swimmer means everything. I coach now, and I mentor many athletes on the national team, and that's what it's about for me. Person first? Person first. Then craft? Yeah. Well, if they're anything like me, which is all I can really stand by, then person first and the craft will follow suit. And then achievement would be whatever extension of getting those two right.

Right. So you don't talk about winning very much, it sounds like. No. No, generally winning in that absolute sense has been great for a moment. And then my expectations of what it was supposed to have been like get shattered by realities. being on the podium with the national anthem playing to mean or to be for you when you were prior to you being crowned as the fastest in the world at the 50? I don't even know anymore. You know, that was such, the expectation before was so amorphous and vague and it was just a striving to reach that summit that it wasn't about at all actually trying to take in the view.

It was just about getting up there. It wasn't about trying to appreciate the view once I got there. What was it like when you're up there? Well, for one being so young, I was only 19 and definitely the youngest to win a gold medal at that games. I wasn't prepared for the media monster. You know, you have an entity that demands a story. And being so young, I didn't really have one. And I certainly, or if I had one, I didn't have control of it. I wasn't the author of my own story at 19. They were writing it for me.

And that created immediately... Who is the... The media. Media. The media is an entity. And there are individual people in there. And that's person to person is one thing. But just as an idea of the media, it's a monster that needs to be fed. And so you can either learn about that and figure out ways to feed it, or it'll come and just eat you alive, eat you whole. There's a phrase from somebody that has a rich insight similar to you about media, and this person shares with me, just make sure you always wag the dog media being the dog and use

the tail to wag it, which is, I don't, I don't even know really what he means, but I think it's exactly what you just said, which is if you don't understand your place in media, your story will be written for you or written over you, you know, as people are just trying to get their story. And I think it's really tricky. You know, you, you know it better people are just trying to, you know, get their story. And I think it's really tricky. You know, you, you know it better than certainly me, but I've had my share of like backlash from certain things that, you know, are, are announced or celebrated and it is, it's a tricky little place to operate. And so can you teach, I'd love to learn what you learned. And so. Well, well, certainly, I mean, and, you know, there's forgiveness all the way around because

they, you know, the media doesn't know any better necessarily that this is just a kid who doesn't know himself yet and wasn't. And also in their defense they um you know i came about this in an unlikely way the most common route would be i show up to that olympics learn go back the next time and win instead i come out 19 never been on the world stage at all never really even been heard of by anybody in my own country to dethrone who were the um the favorites just come out of it i was a complete dark horse i came out of nowhere and won the gold medal who were they who were the favorites of that race you remember um there were a lot of guys guy there was a guy bill pilchuk who was the world champion before you know gary hall jr who i actually tied with and he was my teammate.

He was the Olympic silver medalist the year before. There was Neil Walker, who was the collegiate, like 20 billion time champion in multiple events, just super talented. And then there was Jason Lezak, you know, who would eventually become the living legend who only because of his effort did Michael Phelps pull off that eight gold medal run you know so there were a lot of people and well-known people and i just come out of nowhere just a teenager and just snatch it away so if i had had more time i may have learned this process a little bit more the traditional route and i wouldn't have been wouldn't have experienced what i had to go through which when the story gets written for you and you're not prepared for it you're not educated about it and to be clear you know like athletes aren't the most socially conscious people you know they don't spend time in the books learning how group think and in societies define themselves

through like us and them kind of identities you don't get into that kind of analysis and deconstruction you know so as a result when that's happening to me uh a huge cognitive dissonance you're dropping some really cool words group thing cognitive dissonance like have you studied some psychology or um no i mean i study i studied literature and i've you know i've brushed up on a lot of social theories okay i mean i was in graduate school for for a little while you did for psychology or something else no in education but the graduate school of education in berkeley is housed in the same building as the psychology department so there's some influence there probably is definitely yeah so cognitive dissonance meaning that tension that we have internally when we are thinking it should be another way.

Yeah. Well, I mean, the way I would be using it would be the tension that's created between my sense of self, the quote real me, and the Anthony Irvin that's conceived in the imagination of the public. Perfect. Nice. Okay. And so teach us how to use media properly, where, because you had that cognitive dissonance as you're, as you're capturing it, is that there was a public image and a private image. There's an authentic image and a public image. And that got confusing. Well, the quest for authenticity kind of, it started there after being kind of

separated from myself in that way. How far off were they from the real you? It's not that they were so far off, but they started erecting a building that I knew I couldn't live in. So then to shoot you straight, you know, they told me, they came out. Well, the first question they asked me after winning the gold medal was so we saw you twitching behind the blocks was that your Tourette's and I thought nobody knew about this I had been heavily medicating for years to suppress any of my symptoms and all of a sudden I'm in the staring to that cold camera I back you know and looking at everybody in the entire damn country is watching this.

And I just freeze deer in the headlights. Oh, geez. And so finally, the broadcaster, whoever, I was like, you want me to ask another question? I just kind of numbly nod. And then he asked me, so what's it like to be the first person of African American descent to win a gold medal? Wow. So, you know, we aren't filming right now, but I'm not exactly the darkest individual you've ever met. And, and I learned later, you know, that, you know, swimming is just a very, very, very, very white sport, much to their chagrin. And those who, you know, control the federation or the bureaucracies of it, they don't want it that way. It's just unfortunately it is right now.

And they are trying to do things to change it. In the media as well. It's just a very, very, very white in an abstract sense. Not necessarily Caucasian, but whiteness in the scholarly sense. Okay. And what does that mean? Does that mean like in the Puritan values that American has? Is that kind of the...

I wouldn't lay this at the feet of the Puritans. More so, you know, the plantation. Okay. The plantation owners in the original colonies. And there was this idea of hypodescent, which is like essentially one drop rule. If you have one drop of Negro blood, ergo, you are black. And you identify with three ethnicities, three heritage lineages. Is that right? No, I mean, I certainly, I,

my father came from a long line of, of African-Americans, but being very fair skin as well. Part of the research of the book was finding ancestors that had fought in both the civil war and American revolution. So I very much feel tied to the American land as an original invader, even if it was against the will of my forebears to be brought over on some kind of slave ship. So there is that. And then my mother is Jewish. Did I read Samoan?

No. Samoan? Did I read that? No. Unfortunately, no Samoan. That would be pretty cool. Yeah. No.

Okay. So two. Two. Okay. no unfortunately no Simone that would be pretty cool yeah but no so two so Jewish and African American and Caucasian maybe that's what I was thinking of course it's going to be a ton of European influences a lot of North African influences

so I'm going to not know the answer to this question and I feel like I knew it at one time or forgotten out of laziness or something. When I think of Judaism, I think of the religion and I think of the culture. And I think that there's a separation for most people between the two of them. And so do you practice Judaism? No.

Okay, so it's not a practice. I do, but I do it in my own way okay so what you were just talking about just now was like an ethnic you know cultural identification for sure for the I'll lay that out for you sure you know they they say the Jewish people say that if your mother is Jewish you're Jewish it's kind of that's that's unique across the board as far as like religions um but that also that ties in blood and when you speak of culture it's the culture of how you raise your child as a jewish mother that becomes your religion okay all right so mom did she practice uh you know she no you know like her favorite holiday is christmas okay you, like get the family together.

We all exchange gifts. It's her favorite. Okay. So you guys didn't read the Torah and go to temple. No, no, no, no, no. Okay. And then never been to temple, never had a bar mitzvah. And you identify with that cultural ethos.

Yes. Okay. Not the, not the religious, but the cultural part. I identify with being raised by my mother. That's right. I mean, it's both very simple and very profound. Yeah. I appreciate that. Okay. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't

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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 findingmastery and use the code 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. So then let's go back. So then your first question out of the gates was, what's it like? Do you have Tourette's? Is that what we saw? And the second was, what's it like to be an

African-American, the first African American to win? Yeah. Which at 19 I translate is like, what's it like to be black? Wow. And then, so what'd you do with that question? I, you know, I, I had heard it one or two other times in the months coming up to it. Always kind of confused by it, but thought a safe answer was, well, you know, I love my family and wherever they came from, you know, I'm thankful for it. But then to be labeled as and try to be heralded and, and paraded and become a banner man for

this disenfranchised group of people in a sport where they're largely non-existent, at least on an, on an achievement base. That's what they wanted. They wanted somebody to be like, come on, all of you people, you can get here too. And I was not in any way, shape or form prepared to send that message. And it became troublesome right out the gate where I felt like I had to convince people of who I was. Like, no, no, no, I am. I am.

It's like, but you don't look it. No, you're not. It's like on one end, I'm not black enough for the quote unquote real blacks out there. But then for white people, it's like all of a sudden i'm an exotic other it's like oh i didn't know god you're not like us so it's so it's with family it was always fine yeah no family and like my cousins you know i look at them and you know like i can see it and they can see it and that was never an issue but that's not that's not the group that these these very very white leadership trying to tap into a population is thinking about so what what do you identify mostly with jewish um european um american american the mutt of

of of all yeah yeah okay so that's what that's what you, that's what you, I think I heard you say is like identify with the kind of the first landowners that came over. Is that not the land owners? Definitely not the landowners, the land workers, the war fighters. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Like people, people have been in like every war for my family. As far as I know, even, even my dad and my uncles, you know, they all went to Vietnam or Korea, you know? So while I didn't go into the military and none of us did actually, none of my brothers, um, it's still, it still looms very large in that historical, the way that i was thrown into this universe and how

i understand from where i came yeah okay um i i feel like i i wish i had a better question because i want to understand this more and i i don't know the right question to ask you you know and it's because i don't know what it's really like to identify with Italian roots, some Native American roots, some Irish roots. And, you know, I wish I could understand what it's like a little bit more to be you. But what I'm hearing is that you had an identity, you had a true self, you didn't know it well enough. And then it was thrust on you that you were this other thing. And then that created a bit of a, um, uh, a building that you couldn't live in or couldn't hold up or whatever, however phrase, however you phrase that. So is there a question that I'm missing here that would,

that would, or a statement that you can, or story you can help me understand this part of it better? Hmm. I mean, you, I, I think you kind of get it okay all right you know that who i am whether i knew it or not at the time you know that was for me and to to think to presume that somebody other than me um knew who i was and uh see what would be like I want to come up with an example but I feel like it would be politically incorrect it would be like a let's say

a let's go with German I'll say a German trying to tell a specific German trying to tell his people let's go with the German. I'll say a German, uh, trying to tell, uh, you know, a specific German trying to tell his people,

his German people that, uh, uh, or no, to go to America, to the native Americans and be like, all right, now all you got to do is dress up in a headdress,

make a, you know, wave a tomahawk around and go, and then you'll be just like them. Got it. Okay. around and go and then you'll be just like them got it which is actually what happened to a lot of Native Americans as soon as Hollywood got involved right yeah yeah yeah okay the butchering of culture I and I know we're going kind of deep into this but the Irish community was just stripped from the European culture all of their identity.

And when I think about, I don't know if you have the chance to visit that part of Europe, but what they went through, I have such tremendous respect for. They took their land, they took their family names, they took the names of the streets and really changed everything, stripped them from their heritage. And so anyways, I think we you know, we're going down a rat hole, but I think it's really important about identity. And this conversation that we're having right now is like, you didn't know who you were and then someone layered on top of you who you were supposed to be. And then so now go here. Right. Yeah. And be be this. Yeah. And that feels like it's a common experience more so than we might imagine. And shape magazine does it muscle and fitness magazine does it, um, celebrity TV does it,

you know, this is what you're supposed to look like and act like and think like, and, um, and if you're not that you're not okay, you had a little bit different, you know, cold lens with a red dot in front of you. Yeah. Which was a little bit more pointed. And, you know, but the slow decay of knowing who you're supposed to be is that feels like it's something that really challenges a lot of us. Yeah. Okay.

So I think a lot of people go through it, whether they realize it or not. A lot of people are totally comfortable not needing to confront it whatsoever. So how'd you figure out who you are? Very important. Yeah. So how'd you figure this out? Who, who you are? Well, I, first of all, well, I made it through college, uh, as an athlete. I made it, I used my, all my NCAA eligibility, um, more for my teammates and friends than out of any desire to continue to achieve more. And then I dropped out of school and kind of tried to, you know, blank slate myself. You know, tabula rasa, just walked away. It's a great phrase, isn't it?

Tabula rasa. Tabula rasa, yeah. Blank slate. Yeah. I mean, it was a good attempt. It's never fully real, you know, but I tried. I tried and, you know, I started branching out into all different places. And even, you know, you can take a look at me.

I mean, I've got a bunch of tattoos. And in a way, that became a very literal translation of reclaiming my own skin, of doing with it what I would myself, as opposed to letting somebody else decide what my skin means for me. Cool. What are the more meaningful tattoos that you have? Well, they're all meaningful. They're all kind of locked in time,

but how meaningful and what they mean changes and evolves and grows as I do. So do you have your back done? Not yet. I was going to do my back after this journey is complete. Okay. And so what are your sleeves? What is the images that you have here? Oh, I was got a bunch of stuff. Um, you know, my left arm is, it's a style based off of a surrealist HR Geiger. It's kind of an inversion of the body. So it looks like a lot of bones and stuff on the outside with some soft tissue areas to be protected underneath, uh, as opposed to the bone being on the inside, some soft tissue areas to be protected underneath as opposed to

the bone being on the inside you know and um you know i got some song lyrics from my favorite band um some some images of nature i got i know some leaves and flowers as well and uh you know my other arm what does it say dream of your dream of your own life and where's that What's that from? It's from a song called Rocket by the Smashing Pumpkins. What does that mean to you? Dream of your own life. Take control of your own dream.

How have you done that? Through the choices I make. Directions that I go. Did you have a vision or an idea or like did you create a scenario in your mind of what you wanted your who you wanted to be and what you wanted to do or like oh i've had i've created a lot of those in my mind for a while my imagination ran rampant it was wild and you know perhaps i was fueled by um you know the booze and drugs um but it was good for that it allowed me to kind of shuck uh the shell of my older self uh the self that i was i

felt was i was thrown into this world with uh in order to kind of recreate myself in a sense as something that i wanted to how far down the rabbit hole did you go with drugs and drinking and um I wouldn't say I hit like these rock bottoms um I didn't I mean there were there were some pretty deep wells I fell down that were definitely scary and uh they worked as wake-up calls to prevent me from going that deep again. But I, I, I largely stayed away from anything that had the power of like the physiological addiction. So no,

no, no serious adventures with opiates or uppers. I was generally more into serious adventures, no serious adventures, just some dabbling. Um, but I, I did do a

lot of psychedelics that was my thing i did a lot of psychedelics i smoked a lot of weed which helps it's almost like it it allows you when you get high on thc for me at least it's um it's almost like a memory of being on other drugs okay yeah it's the memory it allows you to kind of relive it to a degree. And, uh, and obviously, you know, drinking is, um, it was, I drank a lot, you know, when I was coming of age, like in college and stuff. Uh, but then I largely got control of that as I grew up. And were you drinking going into your first Olympics? Yes. Drinking and drugging both or just drinking?

Just drinking. I had, um, no smoking, no smoking, smoking pot regularly. Um, but you know, I, you know, I'd clean up so that I wouldn't fail any drug tests at competition and whatnot. So it wasn't like, it didn't feel like it had hooks in me, you know, cause like I would stop for a purpose. Um, and I, did that help you in any way, be a better athlete or did it, did it definitely slow you down? I think it, I think it can help and it does help a little bit, but then there's a definite point of not only diminishing returns, but a point where like it really starts to get

in the way. No doubt. What parts did it help you? I think that sense of experimentation when you're trying to find ways of getting yourself better at your craft, you know, and you know, like I said before that, you know, swimming is my relationship to the water.

So just trying to release these subconscious feelings in the water and try to replace them with something a little bit more honest, something a little more appropriate to make myself faster. I really like to think that I used it like a scientist initially, but then it became just a crutch to keep myself in my own mind and away from other responsibilities. Feeling or thinking or doing doing i've there's definitely a lack of doing when i when i would when i would like be doing drugs or something yeah yeah definitely a lack of doing yeah all right um okay cool so then see if you could maybe decode a little bit the process of how you are dreaming to become you and putting that dream into some sort of plan or actions to help you get closer, closing that gap between the idea image and the practice of it.

So you did ask a question earlier about, so how does somebody close that gap in the cognitive dissonance? Yeah. And the short answer is, well, well learn to write learn to express yourself uh in in written form and that prepares you to better talk about it um it allows you depth of perception and analysis you know and but you know it was a long road for me to get to that point. Cause initially I was like, I want to be a musician. Music does something. It allows, it invokes a feeling that I synergize with that gets me. And so I want to be able to do that. And so I got into music. I learned to play an instrument, you know, and I was writing songs and because I didn't know what I was trying to get at, it became this creative process of

kind of this gyre of spinning around what you're actually getting to, but never quite getting there. You hover around it and live in that space. Until ultimately, you know, I did go back to school and I studied English literature and acquired or began acquiring the tools to express myself in the written and spoken word. Okay. And so journaling, if in the less sophisticated way, just getting your ideas out of your head, externalizing your ideas and getting them on some sort of documentation. For sure. Journaling is very valuable. I'm not, and I'm not the guy I'm not telling anybody because I certainly am not going to do it do like go and journal every day but when it hits me I just do it you know and I'll do I'll I'll keep a journal for two weeks at a time and then I'll drop off for months and then I'll do it again but just

the exercise of going through yourself and presenting it before you and you know sometimes you may miss the mark and for me you know it's as it certainly has become with writing and uh sometimes it becomes less about substance and more about style cool yeah all right and i think something happens when you're forced to choose words and you know that there's a compression of options and that forcing of choosing words is really important for clarity and that happens sometimes for people in intense conversations that they don't have a long time to marinate into, you know, into trying to find exactly the right way to capture something. And there's a compression of time. And that's why that oftentimes people feel pressured or stress around public speaking or job interviews.

Right. Right. Is that there's a compression of time and there's a particular, um, uh, selection of words to try to capture the, just the right understanding that a person has. And so what it sounds like to me is that writing is your way to, to force yourself to choose words. Well, my vocabulary, you know, is one thing and I can, I consider it very limited, you know, compared to people in the fields that I studied, you know, like I'm not that good. I didn't score that hard, that high in the, uh, that part of the GRE or the SAT. It's not like that at all. Um, and it's less about finding the words so much as, as long as you know that the word

you're about to use doesn't quite get it. And you say that you're still getting the job done. Cool. And in writing, isn't so much about acquiring or expanding upon that word horde as it was referred to in Beowulf. But just staring at the man in the mirror and doing it with words. Gotcha. Okay.

Is that the most potent process that you use for insight is writing? Or do you do anything else that, you know, any sort of mindfulness or meditation or any sort of practice that helps you become more clear? Well, I definitely was a practitioner and actually I made like a, what I thought was a formal, um, you know, conversion to Buddhism when I was in college. Uh, so meditation was definitely something I was into of just being very much locked into the moment and not let, uh, exogenous, uh, thoughts. I said that word wrong. Exogenous thoughts, uh, stay in the mind. Now you've got the wrong word stuck in my head too. Exogenous. Is it exogenous? No. What the hell are we saying right now? Whatever. A word that's outside that doesn't need to be inside. Okay. Okay. You can let those thoughts remain in your head and you can let them fester and you can, you know, like obsess over something. When I really felt

that the qualities and practice of meditation was to just let things go, let them happen. You know, don't, don't try to throw them away. Just them run away let them flow over you like you are a stone and the water from overhead of a waterfall pours over you and each thought is a drop and that drop hits you maybe you acknowledge it and then it flows away because that was a practice that i really thought was useful for a lot of things but at the time it was definitely a lot was about performance in the game about to race of staying in the moment and prepared to do what you had been training for and do you still practice now or is that something you spend a lot of time with at one time and then not in a formal setting not in a formal setting i don't like have a cushion you know or i don't go to a temple and like sit and meditate or anything like that

and i remember and an adage i was told at the time which was you know the um you know the neophyte of the student can study in the temple um you know the the journeyman can study on the top of a mountain or not study, but meditate on the top of mountain. But the master can meditate while walking through the busiest intersection of the largest city in the world. That's right. Yeah. So that was like a certain point. I'm like, you know what? Well, I don't want to be kept in the coddles of just the temple.

I need to go out. And so, you know, life is a living meditation for me, even if I'm not always mindful of that, but it certainly sounds good to say it. Your laugh is great. Yeah. And there's times when you're not your best and there's times when you are your best and likely the times that you are your best, you're more, you are more aware of the choices that you're making and the, the, the, um, words that you're using and the actions that you're taking, you know, and sometimes not. Well, ideally, like if you can strip that away and you're operating from like more of a pure place, it certainly is, you know, no mind would be the ultimate attainment, right?

Where there is, there are no thoughts and it's a pure, a purity between and a flow between this, uh, your inner and outer experience. That's rare. It's rare. And you know, the idea to increase the frequency of it is rad. You know, like what are the strategies that you do to increase it? Sometimes for people it's risk, sometimes it's quiet, you know, and sometimes it's training, you know, and it sounds like you've had a lot, all of those risk-taking training and mindfulness says, you know, ways that you've experimented on how to be you. So is there a word or a phrase that guide you like your philosophy? No. Yeah.

Is there a word that cuts to the center of what you understand most? It's so hard, you know, to try to come up with one word. Even with something as, you know, it's just a book. I wrote a book, and it seemed really meaningful at one point, and since it's become smaller and smaller and smaller, and now I see it as like it's just a book. It's a book of things I did. Me and my friend put it together. It's become smaller and smaller and smaller. And now I see it as like it's just a book. It's a book of things I did. Me and my friend put it together.

It's cool. It can be a learning experience. And just the back and forth with the title, deciding what to call it. And at some point, it's just like, yeah, all right, this is it. Let's just let it go with that. It doesn't need to be any more or any less. Let's just leave it there. So chasing water. What does that mean to you? I know it's the title of your book, but what does it mean to you? Well, it's got a few entendres in there. The working title

was initially Chasing the Water Dragon, which is an homage to the opiate trying to get achieve that first high again. And so there's the element of that initial high that I got or felt like I should have got from winning the gold medal of trying to get back there again, even though you never really can, you can never do anything the first time again. You know, water being that, that is my elements. There is that flow. It is a place of freedom and containment and I'm chasing it. I'm chasing it. I'm not trying to break through it. I'm not trying to overwhelm it. I'm trying to get after it. You know, I'm trying to let it drag me forward with it as I chase it. Um, and as well, you know, well, you know, there's, you know, there's the idea of if you're chasing something, you know, if you have like a shot of whiskey or bourbon, you know, you chase it with a

little beer if it's just a little too sour, you know? So someone was like following through my experiences with the water. It's like, what do I, what do I chase it with? How do I chase the athlete life? What do you get? What comes next? What is that for you right now? What do you have your mind or heart set on next?

Well, I mean, a lot of things. I've got a lot of ideas. Certainly some choices have to be made eventually. Um, but you know, it's been,

it's been a lot of time in the pool. So at least as far as the element goes, I want to take it's been, it's been a lot of time in the pool. So at least as far as the element goes, I want to take it to a little bit more of a hostile and romantic waters, take it to the sea, to the ocean a bit, spend a little more time there. Um, that's all I know for sure. Does that mean swimming or does that mean boating? Does that mean being a waterman? Always wanted to learn to sail. So want to do some of that. That means surfing, body surfing, scuba, pearl diving, who knows? These are all ideas that I've had that mystify me in a lot of ways. So yeah. Did you have the goal of being a podium, of being on the podium? Yes. You had that. That was clear for you. It was clear for me at 19 at 19. And no one knew your name. No one knew my name.

How did you do that? How did I get on the podium? I went really fast. No. How did you have the sense that you could be on the podium? You didn't have any pedigree or history or real credentials behind you to say, listen, I've already been there once I get the game. Basically you're saying, I'm going to go do something that nobody's expecting or believing I can do. I haven't even seen what this thing looks like and feels like, and, but I'm gonna do it. Well, interestingly, I thought I would ride coattails there. What does that mean? Well, I'll tell you. So I qualified for this relay. You know, it's four of us.

It's a real team effort. And that's always been something that I was passionate about, you know, all the way through high school. It was the thing I loved was, you know, racing together to accomplish the goal. And I qualified to be on the usa relay a relay in an event that we had never lost oh so there wasn't it was like once i got on that relay it was entitlement what does that mean so like i heard like i believe like that gold medal belonged to me before i'd even earned it. So you didn't have a framework of like, don't blow it.

Well, there was definitely a don't blow it, but I knew that we do things the way we're supposed to. We can't help but win. Love it. Okay, keep going. And then the unthinkable happened. The unthinkable happened. I let off. I was the young guy, the rookie. They led me off.

And the Australian team right next to us in Australia, the guy just blows me away, breaks the world record. And I come in at his feet and I climb out, you know, devastated. I had lost my game plan. I didn't swim the way I had planned to because I let this other guy's performance derail me, which was a learning lesson of its own. And then one after the other, the Americans, they jump in. They race to catch up to this guy in the lead, only to fade back.

It was like a broken record of horror. And so the last guy, you know, is Gary Hall Jr., you know, my teammate, versus Ian Thorpe, the torpedo and right under the flags with five meters to go, like the last two strokes, he pulls ahead of Gary and out touches them. And you know, however many 15,000 people or whatever that were there in Australia and Australia, so it means like the biggest. It's bigger than basketball or football. It's the equivalent of those sports here, swimming. And all those people just erupted.

And I just felt complete defeat. Not like I'd accomplished a great thing. I felt like I let down the country. It was the worst. Everything that way was supposed to happen didn't happen. And that was supposed to have been my olympic moment my gold medal um so the story that's often can be told by those in my position is you take that adversity you focus it you don't let anything get in your way for the next time around and so when i got to my individual event in the 50 freestyle, like four days later, you know, I don't even remember doing it.

I just remember everything leading up to the moment the race starts. And I remember finishing and turning around and seeing the result that I had a one next to my name. And so did my teammate Gary. and we both got gold medals, you know, but it was just like, you know, you talk that no mind state. It was like I had programmed in everything, all the things that can go right, all the things that can go wrong. And I'd patterned every movement so that when it came to actually execute that program, I just opened up and there was nothing to control.

It just happened of its own accord almost. And then it was over. What an experience. Yeah. Wow. Let's go back to the first one when your team was out-touched and you knew that you struggled. You did not bring enough to set your team up for touched and you knew that you, you know, you struggled, you did not bring enough to set your team up for success, right? That was my fault, man.

And how are you, how are you dealing with that now? And yeah, let's start there. What's that like for you to say out loud, to repeat that story to something that was probably difficult for a long time. Oh yeah. It's still, it's almost a visceral experience to, yeah, just the memory of it is still like bad, even though I know everything around it and can package it, uh, nicely and understand that we were still great. You know,

we still broke the old world record, you know, like, uh, I know all that stuff, but it was still, you know, that was like, there was, there was a certain kind of death that happened in that moment where everything fell away. And, um, you know, like I can't try to explain the gold medal story of winning the gold medal without going through that for the listener. Whether it's a group of kids or otherwise, like there was a, it was a direct, you know, for some people that's, that's a, it's a four year gap between those feelings. For me, it was in like four days. Is it letting others down?

Is that, was that the most difficult part or was it letting yourself down? At some point, the boundary blurs when you're up or there's a representation? Where do you feel in your body when you recapture it now? Hmm. That's very interesting question. I think my brain, my brain does the work, but my heart, you know, fills, fills the experience for my mouth as I actually project it out. Choose the words. Yeah. Is there, is that fullness of heart?

Is that a heaviness or is that, is there still sadness in there or is it still like fuel? Cause you used it as fuel. Yeah. Right. in there or is it still like fuel because you used it as fuel yeah right like somehow you converted that pain to get free which we got to decode that because that's pretty phenomenal a lot of people feel pain and can't get out of their own way or they they burst into aggression as opposed to you know just open the gate as you kind of have described, like just open up the flood panel and it happened. So what you did there is probably, no, what you did there is significant, right? On, on the inner game, as I'm talking over the

three or four or 15 different questions, what is it that you felt in your heart heaviness or, or fullness at the time? No, just now. Oh, just now. Yeah. Uh, full, you know, like there, there is that welling, um, or there, there are forces, you know, beyond you and, um, they're coming through you. Uh, they're, they're, uh, you know, they burst forth violently and you're kind of just in shock of it with the devastation of the loss um but then there's also the shining when you do accomplish it you know that it wasn't you that did it all along well what does that mean? Well, the relationships, you know, those relationships. Yeah. So what did you just do to not cry? To not cry? Yeah. To not, to not open up that channel and feel all that pain. What did you do there? I don't know. I'm not a big crier. And even at

the time when we, when we were quote defeated, I became quiet and reserved. Like I was, I was afraid to say anything to the media. I'm glad, you know, the, there were the older guys on the team, the veterans who said all the right things and congratulated the Australians and what they had done. Because I, if I had been asked to talk, I would have, who knows what would have come out. I was certainly afraid of it. And so it became a very much internalized.

I became hollow. Hollow as in empty? Empty. Like you couldn't access anything? It was that, okay. Like a dark closet without anything in it? Almost like I was a ghost. I wanted to be a ghost uh yeah just um there was

nothing in there i couldn't trust myself to use any kind of agency at that point so use not at all and then the trial was in being patient not letting because there was still an immense immense amount of energy stored up in there that it wasn't even prepared for initially but that was the energy it took ultimately to get there and i had to hold that together for for four days before i can be free of it and let it come through me i bet those are you couldn't wait to get back for another shot. I mean, I certainly don't remember it that way that I couldn't wait, but it was just like me just, just looking just like it's there. It's there. It's there. It's there. Step-by-step. I'm getting, I'm getting closer to it. And how much of that, not, not necessarily the gold medal, but to my

performance. That's right. Yeah. I get to that. And then how much of it was Not necessarily the gold medal, but to my performance. That's right. Yeah. Get to that. And then how much of it was don't blow it again. And how much of it was I get another shot. Let me get to that. Well, there was a, there was a, the fact that there was another, that there is another shot. There is another shot. I knew that right away.

Instantly. Okay. I have another shot. It knew that right away, instantly. Okay. I have another shot. It's not over yet. Okay. And what was the first, what was the first question that you asked? I know I did. I didn't do a very good job with this. No, no, it was, um, it was a good one too. We're going from your heart. And I was wondering what mechanisms you were using to kind of keep your, keep it from spilling over even in this conversation. Cause I knew you're feeling a lot, right? But you, you somehow, Oh, how do I, how much of it was don't mess up again?

Oh, that part. Yeah. How much, how much was it like, don't, don't screw up versus I, I can do it again. There was, there was that. Okay. But it was only half of it. Okay. It was more be prepared for something to go wrong as opposed to where I felt like that's where I got blindsided in the first race was I was not prepared for this other guy to do that. Even though it had nothing to do with me, it still rattled me and it took me out of my game. It's like, be prepared for everything, no matter what it could be. It's like, be prepared for that.

And so by the time in my mind what was moving really fast, it was going through a lot, sleeping was really hard for those those those handful of days. But I really felt like I had done a calculus on every permutation of what could happen to the moment that I step up on those blocks. And did that help in preparation? I don't know. Yeah. But I'll tell you that it's definitely what happened. Yeah. Really cool. And so the idea for you to be able to go from pain to do the advanced calculus to see every different angle and point of view of what could go wrong and what could happen.

Yeah. What could go right. What could, what could happen well. And then to commit to the letting it rip and getting out of your way was sounds like what you did in this compressed cycle of four days to be able to access one of your best times. In the moment. Yeah, it was one of my best times. What does that mean? Well, since I came out of retirement, I've I've eclipsed those times significantly. Yeah. Up until that point. Right. Yeah. There you go. Okay. And then, and then, so let's go right into that. Then you, you, you go away for some time, you get lost in New York city. No, not New York city in, um, yeah, yeah, for sure. New York city too. Yeah. But, um,

what was the city outside of it that you spend a lot of time in? Okay. Well, I want to, I want to take us back just for a moment. I want to elucidate on something. Um, not only did I prepare myself to allow for anybody else to do anything that could ruin my game, my day, but also for myself, but then what could go right for me that could prepare me. So it became a very, you have to inherently become very selfish and self-centered and narcissistic. You have to really gaze into yourself to the point that you blind yourself to others. So there is a cost. There is a cost to what you have to go through to get these kinds of achievements.

Let's talk about the dark side. What was it for you or what has it been for you? The dark side of pursuing being one of the best or your very best? The dark side was losing control of this, this, uh, this identity that got thrown out into a much larger piece of the world. You know, before that it was, my world was just my town and, you know, my team at college. And now a bunch of people knew me and I put a lot more value in that than I probably necessarily should have. Um, and the kind of the corruption that

ensued from that cognitive dissonance. And that, I mean, that led in my mind, at least that, that led to everything else. A lot of the harsher choices, a lot of the more wild decisions, uh, the dangerous things I did. Um, and a lot of it is just me too so yeah like i don't know how much of it i can parse from having achieved that but and i don't want to use it as a crutch it's just my life you know and i do my best like everybody else yeah okay and then yeah there's a lot there's a lot of thoughtfulness about this. And then I think what you're also having an internal dialogue about is that this narcissistic self-focused to get yourself right. It's like if we're not careful, we lose track that this is not a pursuit. Athletics is not a pursuit of solving cancer or solving AIDS or solving famine, you know, or disease in, in countries that can't afford medicine. Like it's, it is in and of itself a really self-absorbed, um, self-aggrandizing process. Well, you can, that's the achievement end of it, but you can emerge from that. And there is that, you know, to a degree, uh, to a very large degree,

you know, one thing I've done quite a bit of talking about is that accidental drowning is the number one cause of accidental or childhood. Yeah. Accidental cause of death for young children like under five. It's like number one or number two at a certain point because of car accidents. So learning to swim is an important life-saving skill that everybody should get at some point. The earlier, the better. Do you have some passion around helping kids and parents understand safety around the pool and proficiency in the pool? Yeah. As a guy who's got a water lifestyle and career, know i have maybe have more importance to it than others but if you just just looking at the numbers you know if that is like one of the larger threats

looming over the head of your child like do something about it that's wild yeah and what are basic strategies um teaching kids how to swim or yeah or gates and pools and you know gates around pools that type of stuff well gates around pools kind of work, but they don't necessarily solve the problem. They may prevent the problem from happening, but they don't solve it. Do you work as hard as everyone else and you have a genetic coding

that is a predisposition to speed? I think by most metrics, the way coaches and stuff would like to look at people and measure how hard they work. No, I do not work harder than everybody else. But I'm better at working hard my own way than anybody else is by far. And, you know, I have contributed certain things to the sport. So it's not – that doesn't say everything just because if a lot of coaches can look at the way I do things, they're like, he doesn't work very hard. That's what they might say.

That's what they might say. That's what they've said. I've heard people say it. What's that like for you? When I was younger, it was really frustrating and then I started to believe it. And it sounds like you don't swallow that now. Oh, when I was younger, that was, it was really, uh, frustrating. And then I started to believe it. And you sounds like you don't swallow that now. Oh, hell no. I don't let anybody control me anymore.

Well, I take that back. I will let them, but when I do, it's a gift. It's not because I'm powerless. It sounds like that is like an, a purposeful act act of love like giving yourself to another person yeah wow okay so let's riff on a couple things really quickly pressure comes from pressure comes from well your environment keep going pressure comes from your environment and you are the vessel for the pressure. And you, um,

you steer that ship. So pressure comes from, you can, you can send that ship into the reef and shipwreck it, or you can send it. So, you know, to the new world.

So pressure comes from outside sources. And then you are, you being the captain of the ship ship determine how you respond to pressure. Yep. Is that what it sounds like? Okay. It all comes down to? It all comes down to, I don't know.

Got nothing for you on that one. Yeah. Is that a tough one? Yeah. I don't know what to say. Because I don't know. I don't know what it all comes down to i think that that's probably the beautiful response i don't know what it all comes down to and that's really cool because i know how much work you've done on introspection and try it and yeah all that work and i've arrived nowhere

at least i'm comfortable in nowhere again and again again. That's what it feels like for me. Okay. Love. Love. Time. What is the most important part of the inner game, the mental game? Is it a skill? Is it a mindset? What is the most important part of the inner game, the mental game? Is it a skill? Is it a mindset?

What is the most important part? Most important part of the skill? Well, skill, well, a curiosity and inquisitiveness to always be pursuing a way of getting better. To just keep going with that. Like, you can't settle into the way of things you are. You can't settle or you regress. There's no, like, staying put. You're either moving forward or you're sliding back. You can't settle or you regress. There's no staying put. You're either moving forward or you're sliding back, even if that sliding back is really slow.

And you can't be afraid. I think a lot of people, they achieve success and they're afraid to do something different to make that success even more successful. And I think I've hit those barriers too. John Donahoe, who was the former CEO of eBay, we had a conversation with him on, on finding mastery. He said the same exact thing that at a certain level of great success, it's like for you, like swimming, it's hard to say at some point, you know what, I'm going to go become, um, i don't know a a photographer like you certainly can but you know it's difficult to do that and so is that what we're talking about are you talking about

that same thing like with the the label a label comes with success and breaking that label can be challenging um no i think i was speaking just more generally about, you know, like if I swam this fast and one world championships because of it, um, that I need to do it that way again, that I shouldn't try to improve, uh, a part of my technique or my start or my turn or, you and these are elements of the swim i mean for any other sport i'm sure there's a whole arsenal of skills you need to have yeah and to think that your skills as good as it's going to get in that area and to be afraid to try to do things differently you can't do that you always got to be striving to get further if you're going to keep going further that's what i was trying to get to with that. If there was one belief that you could install for the younger version of you or you now to make sure that you actually got totally wired or to the next generation, like where they could all get this, what would that most important, significant, whatever belief be?

Relationships, man. People, family, friends, coaches. And then there's relationships with your body to whatever it is you're working with. Whether it's a ball or water or other bodies. That's what it's all about. That's's really cool i've got a phrase that guides my life as well which is through relationships we become and through relationships with you know a spiritual center ourself through nature with others like it's through relationships we become and it's understanding those relationships our responses it, and also the co-creation of creating those relationships.

We're not passive in them. No. They're like living things of their own. Becoming. It's, you know, it's. That's right. Keeps going. It's an interesting, it's an interesting word, choice of words, becoming the relationship we become.

And you just picked up on that as a whole nother thought process of it. No, it's not about becoming. It's about being right. And so I hear that as I say it out loud. I hear that. I think you picked up on it as well. These are linguistical arguments. You know, being can sound finite. Yeah. Where, you know, becoming is like, it's a limit as you approach infinity. It's cool. It just keeps going. Yeah. Okay. Your take or thoughts around mastery, and then I want to ask where people can follow you on your journey. Okay.

Mastery. I think of mastery in the canonical sense, so from my literature background. So there's a thing called the Canon, which is basically all the books that have stood the test of time and that we still read today, even if they were written a long time ago, whether it's the Bible or Shakespeare or, you know,

we were familiar with a lot of them, even if we haven't read them, but they're part of this Canon and the Canon is its own entity. And mastery would be that you are contributing to it. I love it. Is there a canon in sport? For sure. And is that world records? It's world records, but it could also be just advances in how things have changed. You know,

like if it's baseball, maybe the first guy that decides to wear gloves how things have changed. You know, like if it's baseball, maybe the first guy that decides to wear gloves, whether it's bat, you know, game changer or something like that. And that's a really cool thought. And you said earlier, just maybe a few minutes ago, that you've added to the sport. In particular, what have you added? Well, perhaps I can be challenged on this,

but at a bare minimum, I know that, or at least I think I know that I am the first sprinter to compete or to complete my race and win without breathing a single time. Oh yeah. Really? Yeah. I do no breath. I go the whole, the whole way. I'm pretty sure everybody before that has to breathe somewhere along the way. Can you still do that? Oh, yeah. Now just about everybody does it. Okay.

And so this is on the 15th. So there has been somewhat of a paradigm shift because of that. Why did you think that was going to be more effective? I just didn't think you needed to. I believe that you don't need oxygen for just 20 seconds of effort. And then when you're, because when you're in the water, there's a lot at stake. If you, for one, you have to breathe out all the air that you had in you to breathe in again. And when you breathe out, you know, there's a buoyancy factor. You're like, you'll start, you'll gradually sink under the water.

And when you breathe in, you rise up. So like all of a sudden, what may have been a straight line becomes a wavy line. And as we know, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Really cool. Do you do breath breathing training? Breath control, like hypoxic work? Yeah.

Yeah, you do? Yeah. Do you have a particular cadence that you found to be useful? Yeah, you know, just gradual. You know, I move slow for one, you found to be useful yeah you know just gradual you know i move slow for one you know i move real slow and just hold my breath for the distance because a lot of it's just it's just mental like your your brain it will want to go into panic mode that it's like oh you don't don't take this risk it's learned through the millions billions of years or whatever of evolution that you got to be able to breathe at

some point. And those warning signs come a little bit earlier than necessary. If you have a very specific purpose, I'm not telling people to go out there and like, I don't want anybody's death on my hands. Yeah. But however, there is like, and neither do I by any means, but a quick breath up a pinch and a hold. Tell me how this is different for you. This is one of the ways I pinch and a hold tell me how this is different for you this is one of the ways i practice and a long exhale and then on that exhale get past one or two maybe impulses to breathe and so the way that's one of the ways that i do it and it's more not more i'm not looking for a gas exchange i'm looking for to be able to hold my breath longer underwater i'm looking more for the ability to notice how my mind works at the point of the desire to want to breathe in and right one one breath like one impulse like listen we got so much more breath that we can hold you know and even two right

for most people at least is that close to what you're thinking about or do you do this differently yeah well i i do it a little bit differently because i'm i i contain my training to just that distance so just the 50 meters so i i work with distance as opposed to time because that's that's the triggers that my body goes through as i move through this distance you know i'm following that black line at the bottom. And you're right about that impulse. If you start worrying about needing to breathe, you're not worrying about swimming faster. You're not worrying about holding together or being still or being present, whatever. Yeah. It pulls your attention. It's a really cool strategy. Yeah. So you got to overcome those things that are. It pulls your attention. It's a really cool strategy. Yeah. So you got

to overcome those things that are capable of pulling your attention. I love that thought. I'm right. I'm right there with you on that. Okay. Where can we find out more about what you're doing? How can we follow you on your journey? Is there something fun that you can challenge us to do? Like there's, there's plenty of folks listening that are going to be interested in what you're doing and can you challenge us in the next, I don know i don't know maybe we'll come back to this but is there something we can do and or follow you on the path okay well how could i challenge you okay we didn't really touch on it a lot but i mean i i retired from swimming didn't touch the water didn't work out at all for like nine years and from the time of uh you know i really just't touch the water, didn't work out at all for like nine years.

And from the time of, uh, you know, I really just got into the water and started swimming again to quit cigarettes because the powerful habit, habit, the habit control of, of cigarettes. And that's become, that's really how I look at addiction in a lot of ways. It's the habit, the behavior habit that you have trying to overcome that or replace that. I got back into the water. It wasn't about a desire to be competitive again. And a year and a half later from that time, I was on the Olympic team. Wow. At 31 years old. So if you're out there, people, you want to be challenged,

if there was something that you always had, you know that you can always get it back. At least I am proof of that. So if there was something in your younger years. Yeah, if there was something you can do, if there was some skill you had and maybe you think you're too old to do it now, that's not true. God. Nor is it too late to learn. I mean, I taught myself guitar at 22. You're never too old to learn either. Nor are you too old to try to achieve. I love that challenge. That really

crisp challenge. Like, is there something in your younger years when you were maybe more pure, maybe more played more often play? Yeah. Oh, the importance of play is important is radical so is there something that took place then that has been following you around like this little you know story in the back of your mind that would be rad that would be and then and then where can we find you on social so they can tell you they can tell me they can we can celebrate together we can maybe you and i can go challenge them right right start issuing. I will follow your lead on that. You got your hands full. Yeah. It's just not generally part of my, it's not, it's not part of my being, but I could totally support you in doing that. I love it. Um, yeah. Uh, you can find

me on Facebook and there's, uh, you know, Anthony Irvin and I'm on Instagram as Anthony Irvin and I'm on Twitter as Anthony Irvin and I'm on Twitter as Anthony Irvin. And I have a website, Anthony Irvin.com where you can buy the book chasing water, LGBT and Olympian. You can also get that on Amazon, but also on my website, we have some pretty cool swim briefs for the more serious swimmers amongst you.

Those who aren't afraid to strap on the old banana hammock. Are they tight? Oh, they're let's just say they're more you gotta be a little more european friendly and stylings they're not shorts all right so anthony irvin e-r-v-i-n follow him find him it's a really cool story about being able to um rekindle the thing that you once were really good at or had passion around even as a person who has gone down many different roads to be able to maybe refire up some of those um playful and skillful

experiences that you had can't stress enough how important is the rediscovery of play yeah play in the child sense play in the sense of discovery and experimentation, uh, and play in the sense of expression, uh, that brought me back to what I am gifted with. And now I'm giving it to all you, for those who want to read it. Very cool. Okay. Anthony, thank you. Um, great. I think we went all over the map on this one and, um And the takeaways are bright. The importance of play, the importance of being able to listen, to write, to reflect, to be able to understand emotions and channel them and harness them, and to not let mistakes and failure and let downs define what's possible for you. Like there's some really bright lines that I want to thank you for. And then the importance of not letting others, um, layer skin on top of your origins, which you've done physically through your tats. And then also spiritually from, you know, you being able to understand who you really are going on that journey. So Anthony, thank you. Um,

I appreciate it. I'm looking forward to, you know, just being able to follow from a distance, what you're doing. So thank you for inviting us into your journey. So Anthony, thank you. I appreciate it. I'm looking forward to, you know, just being able to follow from a distance what you're doing. So thank you for inviting us into your journey. Well, thank you very much for having me, Michael. That was a great conversation. Yeah, thank you. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of 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.

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