Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Overcoming Depression and Improving Mental Health | Olympic Runner, Alexi Pappas

Episode Date: January 20, 2021

This week’s conversation is with Alexi Pappas, an Olympic runner and an award-winning actor and writer.A Greek-American, Alexi is the Greek national record holder in the 10,000 meters.She graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth College and also ran for the University of Oregon as a 5th year, leading the team to two NCAA victories.Alexi has been profiled on the cover of the New York Times Sports Page, in Rolling Stone, on NPR's All Things Considered, and was also featured on the cover of Runner's World Magazine's 50th anniversary issu, named as one of the two faces of the "new boom" in running.Her memoir-in-essays, "Bravey," with a foreword by Maya Rudolph was just released – and it’s the reason I wanted to have this conversation.Now more than ever – mental health is at the forefront of what so many of us are dealing with.My hope is that Alexi’s story – one of overcoming depression and seeing a grander version of what her future could look like can help you or a loved one get through any challenges of your own.This is not an easy time... but maybe… this conversation inspires you, that you have more inside you, and reminds you that you’re not alone in this._________________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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A Greek-American, Alexi is the Greek national record holder in the 10,000 meters. And what does that mean? 10,000 meters is about 25 laps around an Olympic-level track. And it's also equivalent to just over six miles, if you're trying to kind of get your head around what 10,000 meters is. So she graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth College and also ran for the University of Oregon as a fifth year, leading the team to two NCAA victories. And so that just kind of sets up that she's got brains in bronze and she really understands what it means to perform at the highest level. So she's at the Olympics. So this context is really creating and begging the question, how? How did she do it? And to take it just a little bit further, she's been profiled on the cover of the New York Times sports page

in Rolling Stone on NPR's All Things Considered. It was also featured on the cover of Runner's World Magazine 50th anniversary issue, named as one of the two faces of the new boom in running. Her memoir and essay, Bravey, with a foreword by Maya Rudolph, was just released. And it's the reason I wanted to have this conversation, because now more than ever, mental wellness is at the forefront of what so many of us are working through and dealing with. It's not that all of a sudden mental wellness and mental health is important, but it's becoming so apparent to so many of us that the foundations for us to live well, you know, from an inside out perspective is being challenged. And it's being challenged because the world around us is changing right underneath of our feet. But also it's demonstrating that many of us did not have, because we were not taught the essential psychological skills to deal with complex, emotional, emotionally charged conversations, environments, and circumstances, especially when we're in the field of, stress, political stress. There's just so much, including physical health

as well. So my hope is that Alexi's story, one of overcoming depression and seeing a grander vision of what her future could look like, can help you or maybe a loved one get through any challenge that you're facing as well. So the insights that she holds are incredible. But what I want to encourage you to do is listen for how did she come to those insights? Now, the insights, again, like I said, are potentially game changing for you. But if you really want to get into the root of it, it's like, where was she coming from to be able to have that insight? And I want to encourage you to travel into those places, to really examine, to deeply explore, to understand who you are. And I don't say that lightly. To really understand who you are. Not just the Instagram glossy version that you want people to understand of you, but really, who are you?

And this is not an easy time. There is so much change, and there is so much emotion connected to the changes that are taking place. But maybe, maybe this conversation inspires you, that you have more inside you. I know that you know that, but sometimes it gets clouded. Even if you are kicking ass right now and you are firing on all cylinders, there's still more to go. There's still more to give. And so this is also a note for those of us that might be struggling in this time, that you're not alone. That there are so many people that have faced down these inner experiences

and come through the other side better than what they even could imagine at the time that there was pain and struggle. So I hope that this conversation does breathe some life into you in a way that you go, yes, there is more. And I hope that you invest equally in the psychological skills to help you get there. With that, let's jump right into this conversation with Alexi. Alexi, how are you? I'm doing great. How are you? Yeah, I'm good. Yeah. It's a tough question to answer right now because so many people are struggling and I don't want to say it insensitively, but my life is good right now. I've got health and I've got some vibrance behind it and I've got some green pastures that I'm trying to run toward. And so for me, thank you for asking, like, yeah, I'm doing well.

And so if we double click for you, like, really, how are you? I truly do feel similarly, like there are some seeds that I've planted and tried my best to plant in 2020, which was like a challenging dirt to be planting seeds in that are going to be blooming in 2021. And I think that's probably something that you and I have in common is the determination to, or maybe it's the stubbornness to do things in a challenging time so that our later selves will be able to rewrite that history as to like why or what we did during that, you know, to become, to feel like winners, even in a challenging time. Okay. You're not slipping this one by like, all right. So this is part of your framework, right? Which is you, you have an idea of what your future self could be. Is that correct? Yeah, I think that if we, I think sometimes looking at our

now self can be really limiting. And it, it can give us the impression that, that we'll always feel the way we feel right now. And I think to sometimes I have to think about my, my later self, um, to, I think I have to think about doing something for my later self and knowing that the later, the tomorrow Alexi will be different than the today Alexi. Okay. Who introduced that to you? And then I'm going to double click on like, how do you do it? But where did that first come from? Because you've got a storied history and I want to unpack as much of that as we can, but who introduced or where did you first learn that there's a future self, there's a now self, and that gap in between is up to a large part of what I do, right? There's other events that take place that influence that future self, but for a large part, it's what I do. And so where did you first come across the importance of this process? filmmaking and acting that was inherently challenging and painful in any one moment

like you know the our sport is your sports punishment um quote is true like it's running is painful and so I think I knew because of the sport I chose that it was going to be um many many grains of sand of work that would add up to a sandcastle that I wouldn't see for a long time. But I guess to, so there's one thing I chose a sport and a career that, that meant that, you know, my dream was going to come true very, very slowly and then all at once. But then, um, I had to learn this lesson also the very hard way after I competed in the Olympics and had a post-Olympic depression. And that was when, how I felt in a moment, I've never felt worse. Like I had this, this time when I was convinced that I would feel bad forever. And I think to believe that was like,

one, not true. Like we're never going to feel the way we feel forever. But two, it was important that I believed that I could feel differently for a later, there was a later Alexi to save my own life, I think. And so I think I learned it at a very young age when I chose running. And then I had to learn it again when I faced this like post-Olympic depression that so many Olympians face, whether they win gold or, or get last, you know? Okay. I'm glad we're talking about this because mental health is obviously at the center of my life, you know, using the mind to be able to excel, but also we need the foundation of health to be able to do that properly. And so did you have a community that you could go to or

talk to at the time that you felt depression or that you experienced depression? Uh, so, well, I think I did have a community, but I, I didn't have the, the understanding to, um, believe that like my brain might need help, just like my body needed help. And, you know, as an athlete and as an Olympian, I have tons of resources available to me, right? I have a team, I have coaches, but I think what, where the gap was, was in me, was in me recognizing that my brain was like a body part that could need the same kind of help that my body might need that my brain was part of my body. Right. Um, and so I, maybe I had a community that I wasn't like willing to reach out to, but at the same time, once I

realized I needed help, the truth is it was really, really hard even for an Olympian to get access to those resources. Like it took asking favors really to get an appointment. Breaks my heart. And it's true. And it's part of it's an access. Part of it is, you know, people are full, you know, like practices of psychologists are full right now because people are struggling so much. And the other part is like, the first part is the bigger barrier, which is you're addressing, which is like, I didn't know exactly how to say I need help because I'm supposed to be the strong one. I'm supposed to be the fit one. I'm supposed to be the one that does difficult things. And here I am being, feeling kind of wimpy that I'm feeling unmotivated, but it's not that depression is very different. And did you have mild, moderate or severe depression? So I was diagnosed with not

to laugh, but like the highest high risk depression a person can have when, when I had it. And that makes sense to me because I have like a strong history of mental illness in my family, my mom, and even her brother, they both took their own life. And so I was aware that it was possible for me to feel that way, but mine was a situational depression, which I think maybe a lot of high achievers, like maybe that's the type that we're like prone to where like everything can be fine. And then a series of things happens or changes in our life. And then we kind of feel like we're falling, we fall off a cliff. And I would say the hardest part was that exactly what you said, that the way that the world sees us and the way that we think

we should feel is like the opposite of the way that we feel. And I think the reason why it might have happened to me was because I'd spent so much of my time chasing this goal, this singular goal and never planned for the moment after, which is, which is fine because if you plan for the moment after, which is fine because if you planned for the moment after the Olympics, you might not get there. But also that once it was over, I immediately wanted to know what the next goal was and didn't respect that there might be another term or period of time of just respecting the adrenal fatigue that it took to get there in the first place. So I just want to keep going. Yeah. So let's stay here for a moment because the way that I use the analogy is that when the circus leaves town, there's a mess that they leave behind often.

Oh, I love that. Right? And so it's all fun in the Olympics and there's a circus to it. And whether it's a world championship or somebody else's large event that they're looking forward to, like a wedding or a birth or something, you know, like it, but then there can be some trash that's behind that's left unkept. And it's not like, it's not purposeful. It's just part of the way that it works. And I'm wondering for you, if your depression was hormonal, if it was psychological, meaning you earned it by saying things to yourself that are depressing and sad, if it was psychological, meaning you earned it by saying things to yourself that are

depressing and sad, if it was something more biological, which is like it was underneath, running underneath the surface, because it's part of your unique family history and DNA, you know, how do you think about the, or was it a true kind of unique constellation, call it episodic, if you will, a unique constellation that took place where it's like, oh, wow, I just stepped in it and I feel awful. Yeah. I mean, first of all, I love that metaphor of the circus. And it reminds me of, there's this Paul Thomas Anderson movie, Phantom Thread. And there's one scene in it after there was like a big ball like the big beautiful dance ball and there was a scene that they filmed that they didn't plan on filming which was after they were cleaning up the scene that they filmed at the ball and it was all the balloons on the floor and the you know half strung lights and things like that kind of coming down and they filmed

this like beautiful scene and I think it's so telling that they didn't plan that scene because they didn't imagine like what how beautiful or or how how very um real the scene was right afterwards and and I think that like that mess if we um it's a real scene it's a real full it has its moment and like uh I just love that so what a wonderful image and and it's playful the way that you say it like a circus I think there's like a sadness to the idea of a circus leaving but there's also like an amusement and a jolliness to it and had had I been more prepared to expect it and to like have that mess, I might've like approached it a little bit differently. And I think to your question, for me, I think it was a combination of things. And I think going, falling into a depression and coming out of it are similarly like a lot like a soup where

we, we don't know exactly what ingredient made it the best, like made it really made it that soup, which I felt like about my healing where I put ingredients in and I didn't know what actions really led to the healing. And just like, I think with, with getting sick in the first place, I think it was a combination of things. And, and, um, you know, looking at the body metaphor again, of like, what leads to an injury in our leg? Like, okay, we, if it, if it's a trauma, then, you know, like I got hit by whatever, you know, that happened, I fell down. But if it's a injury that runners often get, it's overuse. And that can be any combination of things from lack of sleep to overtraining to a million other things, right?

Imbalances in your body. And I think for me, the depression was more like that. It was overuse over time and it became unsustainable. And the real sign for me was I stopped sleeping. That was like the first horrible symptom that I really, I didn't pause when it happened. I just kept going and it led to other things. But when you stop sleeping, I think there's some indication that something is off, right? Yeah. So it sounds like the overtraining under recovery, high stress, you know, at all costs, get to the Olympics. I don't know if it was win at the Olympics or be an Olympian. I'm not sure what the goal was for you. We'll double click on that in a second. And then, so that was, sounds like an, an under-recovery, overtraining, adrenal fatigue, burnout, hormonal thing that took place. And I don't mean horm. And we're not even sure in the field, in the science, like does sleep beget depression or does depression beget sleep? But we know that

they can go hand in hand. And it's a little bit of a snake eating its tail. That if you're not sleeping and you feel awful and you start to see the world through this depressed lens. And I don't know if you went down this path, but it's like, I suck, you suck, the world sucks. It's always going to suck. Why bother? Yeah. And then something else happens. It's like, sorry. And it's like, you suck. I suck. The world sucks. It's always going to suck. Like this, this, this is shitty. Like why bother? Which goes back to your question of like the later self of like, believe that you know yourself in five years that is like the biggest red flag is if you think you know the future which i think depressed people

think they know they think that's it yes it's gonna right and you're like that's the that's the future right yeah exactly that's the insidious nature is like it becomes this gripping lens that we view the world through that it's it's always going to be this way. You know what's wild about this condition is that we start to think about why this is the case now and all we can find are the reasons why we feel shitty. And so it's like we gate out somehow the balloons and the circus and the fun and the enjoyment and we gate those things out and all we see is the the half-eaten cake that somebody stepped on we go see people don't care yeah back to the party metaphor yeah back to our party yeah well and you know with this like adrenal fatigue i think it's easy to feel like that is a symptom

or that is like a symptom that only an athlete would experience. But I think, you know, those adrenals are like, it's anybody chasing a big dream. It's anybody who's high achieving. And it's particularly anybody who's looking to solve like an internal problem with an external accomplishment, which is something that I think I, I was at fault for, for doing probably since I was like five years old and lost my mom to suicide because it made me feel like I didn't matter enough for her to stay. I mean, that's like a childish point of view, but I was a child and I saw some really difficult things. And so my response was to chase things in the world that made me know that I mattered.

And the easiest way to do that is to chase an external achievement like the Olympics or like getting good grades or things that can make you feel like you definitely matter. And that's great. It got me really, really far. But then you get to those pinnacle, you get to those big moments and you realize, oh my God, this is never going to solve that void. It's never really going to solve that problem because it wasn't the right approach in the first place. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be

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G-R-A-Y.com and use the code findingmastery20 at felixgray.com for 20% off. First, I was wondering if you were going to come back around to that initial trauma in your life. And you did, and you did it eloquently. So I can tell you've done some work there. You've done some probably deep work there. And the way that you described solving the internal problem with external results or external conditions, that's it. That's the false gold, right? That's the false wealth. That's the false mattering, if you will. And the opposite holds true in a weird way too, is that when you know that you matter, independent of the external results, is where we start to get freedom. How do you, like, I'm genuinely, I don't mean to

cut you off, but when, when you sense that like an athlete is on that path or a person that you are guiding or helping or, you know, mentoring, what do you, like, before it gets bad, what do you, how do you equip them to reverse that? Like, how do you do that? You know, early in my career, I didn't recognize that frame because I didn't, I didn't have enough frames of reference to just go, oh, this is like an over index on the outcome. This is an over index on like, they don't matter unless they get the results or they won't think they matter. So the way now that I help course correct it is it's going to sound counterintuitive, but we work really hard to make the goals that we're setting to be completely controllable.

And so we're measuring against controllable goals rather than external possible things that are outside of your control. So we start early on on putting the elite performer in a condition of control. So they co-determine their experience in life as opposed to some other condition determining their experience in life. So that's one small way. And then the counterintuitive part is we start talking about post Olympics really early. So what did, yeah. So, but, but athletes don't want to hear it. Really? I mean, yeah, I guess that's true. Why are we talking about what, I don't know what I want to do after the games. Like, why are we talking about this? Like I've got, I'm trying to keep my head above water now with training and money and, you know, this upcoming competition and placements. And why are we talking about next? Because it keeps the horizon out in front, you know, and being that emblem and real material person in their life that

isn't wrapped up in the external, but seeing them for who they are and holding that in a tender way and having an unconditional positive loving regard for the person independent of what they bring back from race day or training day. And so that establishes like, Oh, and it's a real experience. Like, Oh, like I matter because I breathe. I matter because the way that I explore ideas matter, not that I just have hardware. So those are at least three ways that I think about it. I like that. I really liked the first part about the, you know, setting goals that you're in control of, because it is, I mean, we're very, I think we like to tick boxes and we'd like to have boxes we can tick every day. And that's, it's satisfying. And it also makes sense. And it's doable. Like these are,

these are doable, right? It's simple. The art is you want to make those controllables hard you know like right outside of your strike zone today and it's not because the last thing we want to do is like always be 100 but it's like because then we probably didn't set the goals high enough right they're not hard enough yeah so there's an art to that and yeah um yeah there's an art to that. And yeah, yeah, there's an art to that, I would say. But can we rewind just a little bit and go back to, I want to make sure I didn't say this in an insensitive way when I said your first trauma. And yeah, like, I just want to make sure. Yeah, because I have incredible respect and regard for the human experience because yours is different than mine.

It's different than somebody's. And they're so unique. But I do know this. Nobody's getting through this world without trauma. Trauma with a big T or trauma with a small T. So you've had some big T trauma. Can you teach how you worked? And I don't want to be insensitive because it might be too

raw, but it didn't sound like it when you're describing it, but can you teach how you work with trauma and how you work with the most difficult emotional experiences? Yeah. So it's, I'm very comfortable talking about it. I was, you know, I'm like 30 now, and that was a long time ago. That doesn't mean that it is automatically resolved. But I think that the fact that some of my earliest memories were really like, they will never, they were the most challenging things I've seen or faced in my whole life, which was just watching my mom, like quite literally hurt herself in front of me. It's much more detailed in my book, Bravey, and I won't, I'll spare people the details, but basically when I was born, my mom was like already on this spiral.

She was manic depressive. She was addicted to drugs and she was in mental hospitals, drug rehab, just in and out of my life really. And when she was in my life, like when she was allowed to come home, I, um, I have the, just four memories of her and three of them are really, really bad. And, um, the, the bad ones, um, I think gave me this, that feeling of, um, well, they, they introduced me to bad ones, I think, gave me this, that feeling of, well, they introduced me to bad pain, which is like, I think, this idea of, you know, hurting yourself in a bad way. And I think they gave me a vantage point to look at the opposite kind of pain, which is good pain, which I associate with pushing yourself, doing sports, like there's good pain and there's bad pain. And I think that introduced me to not only bad pain, but also this feeling that I would be on my own and that I didn't matter. And I think what it did and how I coped with it was one,

you know, this concept that we talked about a few minutes ago about chasing external achievements, which I would eventually learn was unsustainable. But two, I think it also taught me to use my imagination for my benefit. Because for example, when I saw, you know, my mom, like I had an experience walking in on her trying to, you know, really take her own life basically. And I was young and I, I saved her life that day. I didn't really understand it, but I did what I instinctually knew how to do, which was to get help. But what I needed to do in that moment to save my own life was to decide what that moment meant for me. And I think, you know, on the hard side, it maybe made me feel like I didn't matter.

But on the really positive side, it made me feel like, okay, if the most unimaginably bad things are possible, because it really truly felt like impossibly wildly impossible to walk in on something like that, then surely the most unimaginably good things are possible. And so I think by trying to just always using experiences to in my favor or to decide what is the what's the most useful way to look at this situation. And the most useful thing was to decide that good things were possible too. Like the very opposite end of the spectrum must be possible too. And so I've always had this like deep, deep belief in myself and in the magic of the world.

And that, yes, the world might take something from me, but it is also abundant and it will give to me in spades in the other ways. And so I felt almost like entitled to like wonderful things and to people being available to me besides her. And so I think it birthed an incredible propensity towards finding mentorship and believing that like really, really impossible magic things are also possible. So that was a survival mechanism because otherwise you could take the opposite point of view and be like, the world is going to take things from me. It's going to continue to take things from me and I'm undeserving.

And I just couldn't think that way because it wasn't useful. How did you learn that? By watching cartoons, I think, because they're like – I watched a lot of cartoons growing up. I did not expect that. So wait, hold on. What were the cartoons? What do you remember? Was this like Bugs Bunny? No.

It was Bugs Bunny. Yeah, exactly. no it was like funny yeah yeah exactly so um so what i mean people will read this i guess but if they decide to read it but there was like a this theme or this on um trope in bugs bunny shows where the bugs bunny or someone in the show would use like a saw to like um to sabotage another character like they would like cut down a log and then someone, the roadrunner would trip or, you know, there was always like this sabotage and it had the saw image. And I had experienced my mom using a saw to hurt herself.

And so I literally, I just remember being like, okay, like my mom is doing this crazy thing with a saw, but so are the Bugs Bunny characters. And I know that cartoons are not real. Like, you know, you know at your core that they're made up, but you kind of like, because the real life situation felt so unbelievably unreal, the cartoon situation felt like it was also like perhaps possible. And so I think it just was a very child instinct and it was a very imaginative instinct. And it felt like that was the only way to make sense of this. And nobody talked to me about it, to your point about, do you have a team? You know, my dad is incredible.

He's incredible. And he did a great job raising us on his own, but he definitely is an engineer and we didn't talk about these experiences ever. And so it was up to me to make sense of them on my own in the ways that I knew how. And yes, Bugs Bunny did help me. Amazing. Okay. I'm imagining this little five-year-old Lexi trying to figure out life and turning to cartoons and then keeping a bunch in. And it's not lost on me how eloquent you are with your words that you have practiced somewhere, both in writing as well as in words, you know, expressed in this conversation. So how did, how did you do that? And when I say, how did you do that? How did you practice to get clear on ideas and words that match?

Because you're so busy running at a world-class pace, you know, which is so physically taxing to your earliest point, which is your sport is what most people dread doing for their sport. So you're so busy, you know, progressing into a world-class time physically, where did you find the bandwidth? Because I don't want to chalk it up to you've got a big brain, which I can tell you do, you know, the way that you eloquently find words is a function of intelligence, but also I think you've had to work at it because you would naturally have constricted as that five-year-old brilliant little Lexi. So how did you figure out how to use words?

I love that you are, that we're talking about words because they're my favorite thing. And I was truthfully, so I've always been of the mindset and I talk about this a bit in the book when I met, there's an experience where I met president Obama, when my, my brother worked for him and there's a name dropper right here. But when I met him, he had this, um, made this comment to me that because I was of this level at running, surely I was born to do it. And I remember having this feeling, and it'll come back to your word question, that he thought that, you know, I was just gifted. And I always had this feeling growing up that maybe I had these gifts, but I was also a very hard worker and that that mattered just as much. And with words in particular, I've always loved, you know, finding the words to communicate, but I've always felt that just like sport, learning how to write and learning how to communicate an experience, not just have an experience, but communicate it was something I could learn too.

And in college at Dartmouth, I studied poetry. And I think that. Name dropper. Name dropper. Dartmouth. Yeah. Oh, look at you. I knew you had a big brain in there.

This is the truth. You can tell. This is the truth. I went to Dartmouth. Okay. At the school that I went to in New Hampshire. All the truth. I love it.

In college. Could have been any college. I did not get to go to an Ivy. I'm absolutely lockstep with you. I love all of this. Well, I went to college one time and during that time I studied poetry and what that gave me was this time when I really focused on words because poems, all the crafts in the world have this incredible attention and economy of words. And so I took in words and became a student

of poetry, just like I feel that I'm a student of running. I don't think either are like gifts that you're just born with or that that's really good enough. And so I studied a lot of words and my advisors made me, you know, write a hundred poems to get like three or four good ones. And so I think that mindset gave me an attention to words and appreciation for words. And in writing this book, I think the greatest challenge was finding the right words to communicate an experience that I had and to be really specific about it, as specific as I could. And I think also you almost hit a gem, which is that explaining or putting words to an experience. And the easy thing for me to think about is like your experience from an early child. But I think, tell me if I'm, wave me off if I'm wrong here.

I think that after your run or your training or whatever, that you would work with your coaches to explain how your body felt, what you experienced. So I think you probably practiced finding words to match your experience as a lifelong approach. And that was kind of embedded underneath you getting so good at what you decided to do in life. That's really interesting to think about as a unique quality to like athletes with coaches, because because like what a cool thing to think about because really even if you think about like an actor and a director for example it's not like the actor's job or it's not you don't really need to communicate exactly how that felt to a director like you maybe some have that relationship but you don't have to. And in most crafts or like most circumstances,

you don't actually need to communicate that. Um, so that's really interesting. Cause I never thought about like, you know, you think about an athlete, Oh, they've learned hard work. They've learned like how to plan the blah, blah, blah, but they've also had to learn how to communicate. Um, well, we've also had to learn how to, uh, subjectively describe our own experience and circumstances where we don't want to be perfectly honest, which is like another interesting thing. And I don't know if you work with people on that, where like when you have an interview after a race, it's not your responsibility to be completely transparent.

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calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. Sometimes the public life is at odds with the inner life and it can get really confusing, like really confusing. Yeah. Yeah. So, so was I, was I off on the, that you had practiced with your coach explaining your experience or, um, I don't want to be right because I to be right no but i want to track i want

to try to track so i think you're right like i will try to explain to a coach but a really really good coach also if you have the privilege to be in person with them i think we'll have an eye for helping you push to your absolute edge and understanding when to pull you back so that is something that I think is unique to like excellent coaches where you actually just feel like you can give it your all with your full integrity and they will be there to, to also evaluate that for you. I think sometimes when a coach, either they haven't had the experience themselves or they they don't have the eye or they're not with you they don't give you that gift of like full throttle I will you can try your best and you

can trust that they will be the ones to hold you back and I know that that sounds like oh you're an athlete you should be able to hold yourself back but sometimes we just want to be able to try our best and have somebody else you know decide that we don't need that last rep because we've already done the work that we wanted to be doing that day. I love that because one of the things I've also learned about excellent coaching and excellent coaches is that they ask a lot of questions. And so they understand what it's like to be in the dark cave, you know, whatever that dark cave is, the edges of suffering, whether it's physical or be in the dark cave, you know, whatever that dark cave is, the edges of suffering, whether it's physical or emotional, they've been there. And you can't,

you have to earn that. You have to go there. You have to have the vulnerability and the courage to experience that. But then to ask questions, to probe, to get the other, the athlete or performer to respond so that there's an information sharing. I feel like is this flywheel effect where all of a sudden, like the two become something greater than, than they could ever do alone. Oh man. Yeah. It's amazing to watch like, or to experience, like, I just wish for everybody, like any level of any chasing, any dream athletic or otherwise that they have some some partner or mentor or coach that feels like that perfect that puzzle piece um because it is truly remarkable and oh it's so it's like a it's a love it's a kind of love honestly that is different than like a

parent child and it's different than than other relationships i think a coach athlete or a coach mentee or whatever is like truly um it's truly something right yeah creating that sanctuary to truly explore without um hidden agendas it's just yeah like yeah that okay To the hidden agenda point, doesn't it require that whoever is the coach or the mentor needs to not have like an ego where right. Like the accomplishment of the athlete or the person does not determine the wellbeing or the livelihood of the coach or the mentor. And I think that was like a big distinction is when I've had coaches where like, whether I win or lose or make it to the coach or the mentor. And I think that was like a big distinction is when I've had coaches where like, whether

I win or lose or make it to the Olympics or not, they're going to be the same. Their stability, their foundation is still there. It has made such a difference. You can feel when like they're squeezing too tight. I've asked thousands of people to describe doing an exercise to try to get at the characteristics of what make great coaches great. And hands down, one of the things that never makes the list, matter of fact, it always makes the low list, if you will, is that the coach was in it for the coach. That's never come up for a great coach that they're in it. It always comes up that the great coaches are in it

for the other, not for themselves. Yeah. And so totally. So I want to go to one other place with you because you hinted at it. And I think you came alive with the analogy of the circus, but you hinted at it that you use your future self like as a bit of a North Star. And I think you use imagery or as the scientists in me will call it a representation. So you use your mind to create a representation, an image of something. And did you practice imagery or is this something that you get lost in the images that come to your mind and you love them and you water them and you explore them and you just fill in the holes because it's a love fest with images and ideas that support it. But can you talk to me about your imagination? Yeah. So I think it would be a miss, like, it's, it's not true that I'm just like

bloody blood, like just thinking about thing. Like, I think I've always been very driven and like focused to the point where it's every, you know, visualization is, is driven at a certain purpose and it's to help me. And, you know, from that very early, early imagery or visualization as a child, I think that was for survival. Right. And now, you know, I learned visualization or, you know, imagining the future self from, um, I had a college coach who was, he was an Olympian himself, and he explained to us about how we could visualize. And that was when I started to learn that there was that running, you know, there were, there were mental muscles I could grow, not just physical muscles. And he told us to imagine, uh, circum circumstances as specifically as we could, that we imagined.

Um, and this is, this is to face challenges in particular. There's also like imagining how you want to feel and who you want to be, but, to face a challenge he would try to get us to imagine as best we could uh challenges we supposed we would probably face so if it was a if it was a running race you know and you know there's going to be a hill on the course you know that's going to be a challenge right and so he would have us visualize a couple days ahead of the race not right before because it can be exhausting, um, ourselves actually like, you know, going through the practice of running up that Hill and getting through it so that when we had the actual experience, we already decided that we could do it and we'd already seen ourselves do it.

So it was just like a repetition of something we'd already done. And that is a good approach to pain, right? Where the more we can come to expect it, the more we feel, we feel less offended when it inevitably comes. So that's like, that's another survival mechanism. But with imagining like a future self, you know, I think the nuance here is that, and it comes back to your point about not chasing external accomplishments, but rather gettable goals. I think when we try to imagine where we'll be like five years from now, specifically, meaning like I want to accomplish X, Y, Z, we can often limit ourselves in what we're capable of. If we plan too far in advance and we decide what we think we're capable of, we're just so, I think we're so likely to sell ourselves short.

And so I've always tried to plan like no more than a year in advance. And if I'm thinking beyond that, it's more about how I want to feel rather than what I'm actually doing. I love it. I would double down on the science part of that and the practical application. The science is that people tend to overestimate their daily goals that they can get done and underestimate what could happen for a lifetime. Oh, I believe that. Yeah. For some reason, we sell ourselves short for a life goal, but overindulge in what we think we can get done today. And then the feeling part right on the money. I think that's way more important to me for me, not necessarily where I'm going to be, but who am I going to be?

And then if I can put that together with circumstances that I know are likely to happen, like a presentation or in a world-class event or whatever, I do it every morning, you know, including this conversation. What do you do? It's a four-step process I do in the morning before I get out of bed. And my body wakes up, my physical body wakes up, but I want to wake up my mind and my brain. And so I take one or many breaths to send a signal to my brain that like, hey, listen, we haven't even got out of bed. We're safe. Right? So one or many breaths and it's a long exhale. That's kind of the trigger to the ancient brain that we're safe. The second is the thought of gratitude. So I just get connected and open up that network in my brain that like, there's good. There's a lot of good. And because our

brains are well-designed to find all the bad. You know, that's a survival tactic, as you all understand. And then the third is, I said, an intention. So an intention is how do I want to be and feel and experience me today? And if I can map it to particular events that are going to take place, I feel like that's imagery, you know? And so those are the three. And the fourth is I take my sheets off and I'm just present where my body is. And I used to say, like, be where my feet are.

And then I've come to learn that not everybody has feet. And so I'm shaping my, I'm upgrading my language to say, just be where my body is. And so those are the four steps in the morning. Sometimes I take 60 seconds. Sometimes I take six minutes, 16 minutes, whatever. But those are the four things I do in the morning. What about like, I'm curious, because you're like, this is how I want to feel today. And you try to link it to certain things. What about like, if you're going to be meeting with someone or you are leading a team or whatever, you know, like we're often interacting with other people during the day. Do you think about, and I'm genuinely curious, because like, when we go into, I don't know, when we go into a meeting to pitch like a movie, for example, I think about this, and I don't know

if it's healthy or not, but just how I want other people to feel. And that helps me like walk into a room and be like a bullion, but I don't know what you think about that. And I'm genuinely curious. Yeah, I think you're onto something really interesting. There's a dance here. Yeah. Right. Which is, let's go upstream for a minute. Okay. So first it needs to come from purpose. Like what is your purpose in life? And then this exercise gets much easier. Right. And so I'm going to pin that for a minute because I want to come back to your purpose. The best you can articulate it. And then, but now if we go one level down, which is let's do performance imagery for a minute, like you as an athlete, I recommend 85, 15, 85% of the time, seeing yourself kick an ass in complicated situations, right?

15% of your time using your imagination to see yourself in very compromised, difficult, bad situations. I'm lacking a word other than bad right now, where it's really stacked against you, okay? And then trying to sort those solutions out. But the 85-15 is the point that I'm trying to make. So when you go into, let's say a pitch meeting, I would imagine that you could use something like an 85-15. Like the 15% of your time is like, well, what is, what do I want to see in their faces or how do I want them to feel? But I wouldn't get lost there at all because then you might play the game of dancing like something on a stage to get their approvals or their reactions. But then I would spend 85%, 90% of my time going,

where do I want to come from and what does it feel like? Where do my pauses take place? You know, what is my body posture? What is, what is for me, what is that thing behind my eye? And what is that thing full in my heart? If I can get those two things lined up and I've got some imagery to support it, I feel like I've got some targets. And if they are just stone cold, I'm not bothered by it. I came and delivered me at my very best. When you say imagery, do you mean like, because I'm like, when do you literally imagine you're, are you like watching yourself in a room, like being radiant? Or like, what is, you know, like, what is your image there you are with your words yes um i would not use that word for me but yes um so there's two ways at least there's like if you're doing this imagery you're

creating a representation of a world that you want to experience later and there's two ways to get into it one is it's like you're in your own body looking through your eyes. And then the other to your reference is like you're kind of watching from a fan's perspective, if it's sport or like another person's perspective of you and your partner walking into a room. And I go back and forth between the two. When I do a lot of it, when I know I'm going to be tested in like, say surf, that's a little bit above my pay grade and I know I'm going to get into it, I'll make sure that I'm in my body and I'm actually kind of moving at a slow pace the way and I'll do, um, like, how do I want to be getting ready? And so that, that, that can be from different angles as well. So mixing some metaphors, but I hope that answers, um, the question. Did you not do that in sport? I, when I really, I haven't really thought about how I did it until just now, really. And I think when it's a sport challenge, I most often think about it from my point of view, like overcoming the actual barrier.

When it's not on that stage, when it's like a different stage, I think I do more of the like 50-50 of like I'm in my own body. And then I'm also like observing it happen. Although I will say when I felt the greatest I've ever felt athletically, like when my mind and body were on the exact same page in the most like euphoric way I've ever experienced, it was at, it was at the Olympics. It was in the race. And it did really feel like I was both running the race and watching the race happen at the same time. And it was just a real privilege because that was where my body could do whatever my mind wanted it to do. It was just really amazing. We call it easy speed. Yes. Easy speed. Yeah. Easy speed. Yeah. So if the world knew what you knew, what, what would we, how would we act? How would we engage in life? Like, I know it's a really general question, but if the world knew what you knew,

I think that the world would focus. If they knew what I knew, they would go to the word useful a lot more often. That's a word that I actually learned from my psychiatrist when I was really sick, which was he just, he had me focus one on my actions, but two, to decide what actions, whether it's like, what do I do today? Or what do I do with my life to, to think about that word? What is useful? And, um, you know, that could be anything from who am I going to share this mental health journey with, which nobody knew about except for my dad, my psychiatrist and my husband, really, because it wouldn't have been useful to share it with the world when I was going through it. But anyway, I think that that that that word is like a guiding light is like pretty useful. The word useful is useful. I love that.

Yeah, that's really good. Because when you said it earlier, I was like, Oh, it's so crystal clear, because you decide, is this the word I want to choose the thought I want to choose the behavior I want to take? Is that useful for me? Yeah, and it's useful in towards something. So can we ladder back up to your purpose, what your, how you would articulate your purpose in life? Yeah, well, I haven't really been asked this question. So I don't, I don't have like a good elevator pitch answer to my purpose in life. We can be messy. Yeah, it's good. Life is messy. Well, I think as a, as a me pre 2016 would have said that my purpose is to matter. I think it's still to matter. I think it's like, it's a good, it's a good like North star.

However, I think that I've come to realize that I, that I do matter. And I think now my purpose is more to manifest the like greatest expression of myself. And I know that that will inherently do good in the world. As long as I'm not like hurting anyone or doing bad, manifesting the greatest version of myself is a good thing. And it's good for me. and it's good for the world, you know? It's cool. So there's three components to purpose. One is it has to matter to you. Nobody can give you purpose. You know, I can't say your purpose should be like, that's the word

should is problematic in and of itself, but so it has to matter to you too. It needs to be bigger than you. And which is like, it's good for others. And three, and then I think you could probably crystallize that part a bit, like what makes it good for others. And that will help to even materialize the North Star just a little bit more. And then the third component is that it's future oriented. It's not like, you know, I've got to work towards it, you know? Okay, that's helpful. It's not like, you know, I've got to work towards it, you know? Okay. Yeah. So you've got, you've got all three components. And then I think that the middle one, as we're being exploratory in this conversation, like, okay, in what way, when you are able to live your highest, truest, most authentic self, how does that help others? And do you have, do you have a sense of how you would answer that now? Yeah. I mean, I think it's like a good energy in the world. I think it's inspiring to see someone who's like

their most like express self. I think that's one thing, but I think it's only like, it's only, it's the best if you're truly, if I am truly committed in chasing my goal or manifesting my greatest version of myself. And I think what gives chasing dreams a bad rep reputation with parents or with anyone is when people don't do it all the way. And so I think, uh, some people are like, they think they're committed to a goal or manifesting their greatest expression. And they're actually just interested because at the first moment that it feels hard or challenging, they'll see that as a reason why they're that it was impossible.

And I think that's like not a great, that's not good in the world because things are not as impossible as we might narrate them to be. And that is like, if we can bring it full purpose, that full purpose, like wrapping it back around is like when people set too high and hard of goals, that it's, there's an escape hatch that they're building in. If it's too big, they go, yeah, you know, that's like a different version of sandbagging. It's exactly it. It's exactly. Yeah. Cause I always, like, you know, you think of sandbagging as like, oh, I like had a beer

last night and that's probably why I didn't do my best. And, but they really had the beer so that they would have that reason. But what you're saying is setting too big of a dream is another form of sandbagging. Yeah. And because there's an escape hatch on both of them. Right. And that escape hatch is escape hatch on both of them, right? And that escape hatch is a self-esteem saving mechanism. And so if it's too big and you kind of know that when you said it, you're like, eh, eh,

you know, like that's okay. So this and that and that happened. And that's why that, you know, it's not me. It's all these other things. Same with drinking the beer or pulling it all night or whatever. Yeah, that's exactly it. Listen, I've loved this conversation. And so I think we could go on and on and on.

And my hope is that maybe there's a project we can figure out later to do together. Because the place that you're coming from is pure and it's true. And it shows up in the words that you choose. The way that you link ideas together, your curiosity. You can't fake that you've been through hard things and you can't fake that you've been committed to learning. And so I want to say thank you for the breath of fresh air and the spirit that you've brought into this conversation. I hope that there's more that we can figure out at some point, but where, before that, where can people find you and be part of what you're doing? Yeah. Well, I like, like many people I'm on Instagram and my name is Alexi

Pappas, but I think that the book does a better job of telling this whole story. I think social media can be very, they're good for updates and fragments, but I think it's so important to share a whole story. And I also want to express my gratitude because I feel that when I've lived in like remote training camps in the middle of Mammoth Lakes, or, you know, I got stuck in Greece for five months during COVID and podcasts and audio books were truly the way that I felt connected to mentorship. And that's been like something that I really, really need and seek out like a fisherman in my life. And I think when you can't have it in real person, which I guess is also apt during a pandemic, you can find it in ways like this.

So I really appreciate that this exists and that you exist as well. Oh, you added that last little piece that I found. You matter. Oh, thank you. That's sweet. Really kind. Okay. So did you slip in there that you had COVID?

No, I got stuck in Greece when the pandemic started. So in February, I went over there for a training camp and I was trying to qualify for the Olympics. And I often go over there for these training camps and then everything shut down because Greece is right next to Italy. And I was stuck there for almost five months during their country shutdown, which was like a huge life shift for me was suddenly living there for almost half a year. It was fun. It was just like really unexpected and the Olympics were postponed during that time. So it was a, it was a big life change.

So are you again, like you never quite know what's coming down the pipe. Like you were one of those Americans that got caught in a foreign country. Well, I'm a dual citizen. So it actually was kind of cool because I'm Greek American. And I've never been there for longer than like a month at a time. So I honestly felt like it was a good way to be like, what is it to really live in greece you know like i needed to i had an apartment i had a bank that's cool yeah that's cool my computer broke and i had to go get it fixed at a local place you know so i figured it out by necessity are you competing

for a spot on the 2021 so i'm yes and i'm greek american i ran the 10 000 for greece in rio and i'm trying to run the marathon which which is a different event and a whole different beast. So it's really challenging, to be honest, because there aren't so many races right now. And I totally understand it's not the right time to have a road race where you shut down an entire chunk of a city and people are running in the streets. That just doesn't make sense right now but I think like many Olympic hopefuls I'm not sure when those things will happen again and and I understand why but I'm just trying to you know be agile and and think of other ways to use my time you know building on weaknesses writing a book you know, building on weaknesses, writing a book, you know, doing other things. So

that later my later self is like, okay, that's what happened during that, that year, you know, nice work, bravey. I hope people pick it up, you know? And so, um, and I hope people, you know, find you on social and follow along. And I hope that maybe there's something that we can figure out to do together in this shared space of, I don't know, human potential. So I'm happy. And I hope that more athletes are able to work with you before it's like a necessity. You know, I think it's like this act of prehab that we're so used to with our bodies and we don't really do with our minds. So what a wonderful resource. Awesome. You're doing it right now for people. Nice work. Okay. Thank you for your time, your intelligence, and just the way that you articulate your soul in this conversation. So I appreciate you. You too. Thank you.

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