Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Pat LaFontaine: Being Ignited and Igniting Others (Part 1)

Episode Date: May 25, 2016

There are no short cuts on the path of mastery and those that carve a path - that has yet be carved - have much to teach us about pushing the accepted norms of what most people think is possible. Pat LaFontaine has done both. In This Episode: -Growing up surrounded by a hard working family -Being the youngest on his youth hockey teams -What ignited his love for hockey -His role models growing up - Setting an initial goal of getting a college scholarship -The moment he realized American players could make it -His legendary Michigan youth club team -The impact Canadian hockey had on his drive to become better -Importance of mindset and being even keel -Having no regrets -Why positive self-talk makes a difference -Allowing experiences to pass through you -The dark place concussions brought him to_________________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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protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. And this conversation with Pat LaFontaine, it's a classic example of a man who's living with this relentless pursuit to understand more and to do more with what he's come to understand. He had this raw talent that he was born with, but the really important part is this rich physical and mental skill development that he's dedicated his life toward. And there's a thread in this conversation about humility. And it's just so recognizable that that is how he sees himself and the world around him. He's humble, he's grateful, and it's just a wonderful conversation with a wonderful man. And Pat is known as one of, if not the best American hockey player to ever play the game. And he was inducted

into the hall of fame. He on average scored 1.17 points per game. And he was inducted into the Hall of Fame. He, on average, scored 1.17 points per game. And that totaled, over 865 games, 1,013 points. And that's the best among American-born ice hockey players, active and or retired. It's a phenomenal record and a wonderful way to see the mark that he left on the game. But he not only did that in the game, whether it was in the NHL or the Olympics, but also with kids, also with military. And he started a charity. It's called Champions in Courage, and it's technology centers and hospitals for kids. And if you're interested in this at the end of the conversation or even now,

go check out cic16.org. And then if we, you know, the brag sheet just rolls with him. In 2000, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society best have the access that we all would hope that the generation of now does have. And so he's got this wonderful insight, this really cool insight. It's about towards the end of our conversation, but he talks about how our body links our mind and our mind links our body. It's really clear and really crisp the way that he has challenged himself to grow and how he's used his mind on that journey. Okay, so we get into some of the weeds about how he grew up and his family structure and how hard

working they were and how he understood the value of hard work, how he was up and his family structure and how hardworking they were and how he understood the value of hard work, how he was the youngest on his youth hockey team. And I think that's really important to think about is that it doesn't always go the way that we would hope when we are young playing up. And there's a cost-risk analysis to go through there, but it worked for him. And we also talk about the word being ignited and he talks about the spark and being ignited and how that started in hockey for him. And you can see once he felt that ignition that he just was looking for more of those experiences and it's really clear. Okay. So I hope you enjoy this conversation. We jump into stuff about positive

self-talk and how it makes a difference and how important it is to allow things to pass through you. We also touch on the dark side. He was one of the first premier players to suffer from concussions in such a way that the league had to pivot and alter the way that they were working with the concepts and the practices around concussion. And so with all transparency, he talked about the real challenge he had with that. And we need to pay attention to this. And it's really important that we take care of ourselves and take care of the other people around us because our brains are fragile and our minds are, you know, and our bodies are so impacted by the quality and texture of our brain functioning. So we talk about how relationships and his self-understanding of himself were compromised during that time. And he was working and he worked

so well to be able to move through that. And that's where he comes from this sense of humility and gratitude. And enough of me rambling about this. Let's jump right into this with Pat LaFontaine. Pat, welcome to The Finding Mastery. Good to be here. Yeah, this is going to be great. So I've been looking forward to this. And the reason I'm looking forward to it is because there's only a handful of people that have been able to do what you've done and to represent in the way that you've represented what it means to be a professional all the way across from inside of sport, but more importantly, outside of sport. So as a hockey Hall of Famer and then a world class human being, I can't wait to see where this conversation goes. I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah, it is great. So tell what, what do I, or we need to understand or know about your history that led you to the path of mastery? Like, what is it unique about how you became so good and so interested in being good at what you've done? Well, I guess the first thing I'll say that the word mastery seems way above me, humbly speaking, because I still look at myself. I guess I'm proud of the accomplishments. I have a tremendous amount of gratitude for where I am today and the experiences. I have a lot of people to thank. So I guess for me, putting the word mastery, I guess for me, it was more just the words passion, love, authentic. Some other people might say other words. But for me, what got me to where I am today was the passion, was the love of

what I was doing, was the support of the people around me, was the experiences I've learned from. And so I hope to be a good example to those who might look at you as a player and as a person. I think we all have a responsibility to try to be authentic, do the right things in life and to pass it on to the next generation. I think there's a sense of purpose. I've always said hockey was a stepping stone to do what I'm doing today. Did you have that insight when you were younger, when you're like, go way back into juniors? Did you have a sense that hockey was everything or was it something that was leading you somewhere else i think it's it evolved it was a process i do i truly believe that um

you go with your heart you go with your gut you go with your passion and your um what you what you love to do um i was given a good foundation of support from my parents what was that like? Like, how did they support you? Well, you know, I've been telling this story recently because I'm in the process of working on mom six months home pregnant with myself and a six month old son, my brother, John's son. And he was looking to get a job as a foreman on the line with Chrysler. And I can't imagine what that would be like today. And he got the position and my mom came down a few months later. And actually, you know, I was born in St. Louis a month after that.

So that was 1965. And my dad was one of six other brothers or seven boys born in Tecumseh, Windsor. None of them at the time had gone through college. And eight years later, my dad had gone to school, put himself through night school, got his master's in business. So none of his brothers went to school, any college, and then he took it all the way through to a master's degree? He got his master's in business, went to night school as he worked his way up from a foreman on the line and through the process of what an automotive plant would look like. And then how old were you during that time? So I was born in 65. So that was, I would have been eight years of age when

he finally got his master's, but he had been working with Chrysler at the time. So this would have been the early seventies. So you were watching your dad work during the day work at night like that was part of your early formative years yeah the irony was i don't remember a lot just when dad was around he would put his hockey jacket on and take us to practice kiss my mom we'd have dinner and i was off to skate but um but you fast forward 30 32 years later, he ran seven of Chrysler's 12 plants and used to report to Lee Iacocca. And so, you know, you often talk about the examples around you and the people and support. to raise a family and to allow my dad to get that degree and to work himself up through the business and really self-made. My other uncles went into, they had a family landscape business.

My oldest uncle kept that business going with my cousins and his family. And unfortunately, he had passed away from cancer and was a great man, my Uncle Richard. And then I had another uncle who was in the lawnmower type snapper business, but he also started the turf school at Michigan State, which now is all the superintendents that go to country clubs and work on the agriculture and the greens and all the different types of processes. Okay. So you saw dad and brothers working on progression, working on getting better, working on improvement, basically.

There wasn't a status quo that was okay. It's like they were grinders in some kind of sense. There's a culture in the family, the hard work and work ethic and set your bar, set your standards high. And my other four uncles have 17 dealerships now in Michigan, car dealerships they own. Got it, yeah. So the seeds were planted early that nothing's handed to you. You have to work hard, and you don't give up. I was always the smallest, the youngest. I first started playing hockey when I was five.

I actually put skates on when I was four and double runners, and I went to go out and skate in an outdoor rink in Kirkwood, Missouri, and everybody was going around. It looked so easy,. I kept falling down. I remember getting discouraged and crying. I couldn't do it. It wasn't until a year later that it brought me back out on the ice. My dad took

me and took a windmill and just kind of shot me around. I was gliding and I felt the wind in my hair and I thought, this is really cool. That was the ignition four that was probably four that was four okay and then i finally put a hockey stick in my hand at five and we would go with the rink owners family the mckenna family at 5 a.m every saturday and

sunday and it's pitch dark my brother and i my dad and their three boys and and mr mckenna and he would resurface the ice. So we'd play shinny in the dark, and they'd turn on the lights from 5.30 until 7.30 a.m. every Saturday and Sunday until the leagues, the minor leagues started, you know, the youth hockey. And that was my first, that was the impetus to falling in love with the game. And then we moved to Michigan. My dad was transferred through Chrysler.

He started working at one of the plants in Michigan. A rink went up a mile from our house that same year, and we lived on Williams Lake. And so then it became a culture of being on the ice, playing hockey. I played two weeks for a farm team. And then my mom and dad were thinking, this is going to be tough with your, your older brothers on a travel team. My dad was helping. You know what? I think you should just come up. And I was,

Oh, I was, I guess you could say good enough at the time at seven to play with eight, nine year olds. And from that moment on, I always played with guys who were a year to two years older until I was 16. And I, so I was always taught, even though you're youngest, the smallest, you figure out a way to survive. And so I had to work on my skating. I had to work on staying strong because at a very early age, I was playing against kids who were bigger and older and stronger. So sometimes, okay, there's like three things I want to pull apart here. One is this thought about what ignited you. That's a really cool phrase that you felt wind across your face on the pond and that ignited you. And so I just want to say that so we don't forget it. And then the

second is early specialization. I'd love to get your take on whether you think that, you know, that's a, that's a good thing to do for kids is get them in young and keep them, keep them the long game, um, costs and benefits of that as well. And then, uh, this, the third idea is playing up, right. Being able to play against older people that can go both ways. And it went the right way for you, right. It, it sounds like it instilled a competitive drive. It instilled a hunger to get better so that you could stay and hang with your brother and his friends and your peers at that time. So that could go terribly wrong as well, where on the other side of it, you're competing against kids that are older than you and they're shutting you down. They're, you know, punking you, and you just can't quite ever get your mojo, you know, just right, and you never can express yourself. So I'd love to pull on those three things, and I know that's a lot, but just maybe you start with one of those, and then we'll see where we can go. Sure. I think, and it's a very good observation. You have a mastery at listening. I think the igniting part is kind of kids when they're younger,

you have to find out what, as I've heard it once, it's kind of the romance phase. You either fall in love with a sport or you don't and it's so important to um pull out the things that are great about that sport so what ignited me was the fact that the feeling of what it meant to skate and feel free in the air and the wind it went i want i want to learn how to skate this is really cool this is something that touched my soul touched the authentic part of me that just fell in love with it passion so okay do you think it was the freedom that you felt or was it that your brothers were doing it or your dad did it

and it was it was the exhilaration of being gliding at a speed um with the wind and i guess somewhat the the the feeling of what that felt like, how cool that was. And then I said, I want to learn how to do this. I want to learn how to skate. There's something about gliding and floating through the air that was just magical to me. And it kind of touched me in a way that I want to learn how to do this. And so that ignited that passion of, I want to learn how to skate. This is really cool. There's something about gliding and picking up speed and then feeling the wind in your hair. And so we were outdoors at the time. So that was very, very cool. Did you do if you go back to that experience, do you remember feeling in control

or out of control or right on the borderline of control? I was. Yeah. And I think that was the sensation was that not that I'm a thrill seeker, although there was a fearlessness about it. But at the same time, there was this exhilarating feeling of, you know, you were kind of in control, but out of control, but in control. And then the air was hitting you and you're like, you're thinking to yourself, this is very cool. And I'm a young, I'm young.

So it's very young that you're feeling this. And I would guess it would be like being on a roller coaster for the first time. This is really cool. You're scared, you're out of control, you're in control, you're fearless, you're scared to death. And then all of a sudden it's all over and what an exhilarating ride. That was really exciting. And you said, let's go on it again and again and again. Yeah, this is fun. I love this. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentus. From the moment

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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. Did you find what you're looking for? Like if that was the ignition that, that really got the spark going throughout your career, your life, maybe, did you find what you're looking for through your career, through your, the way that you've organized your life from that moment? Yeah. If that was the thing that was pure, I would say that that was a piece of the driving factor of why, you know, then obviously you take that piece and you then compile it into the game. So now there's stick handling and now there's passing and there's checking and there's scoring.

But the base and the core of everything was skating. You know, that was the impetus and that was the ignition. And then now all of these other pieces that come along with the game of hockey is pretty exciting too. So that's just one skill that you had to adapt with. You know, one thing about hockey is that, you know, you're not really multitask at a high level so that the frequency at which you're able to process and react is at a high, high level because you're skating, you're stopping, you're looking around you, you're stick handling. Should you shoot? Should you pass? Guys coming from behind you, you're going to get hit. There's so many elements, and not to diminish any other type of sports, but there are some when you're out in the field in baseball where you either get hit the ball and you've got to catch it and throw it,

or you're running. In hockey, there's a constant, your brain, the synopsis are just firing, all kinds of things. And sports are all great, but you have to really, really, and to top it off, you're wearing skates. Right. Yeah. Which is, starts off with somewhat foreign. Every other sport, most of the time you're, you're wearing shoes.

You're wearing tennis shoes or you're wearing sneakers or you're wearing, you know, cleats, what, you know, but it's something that comes natural. There you go. Okay. And then for you, when we keep going, who are the people, starting young again, who are your dad? But I guess my question is, who are the people and events that really were important in shaping both direction and form of who you are? Well, I think your caretakers, your role models, and of course your parents have so much, the way they live their lives, the everyday visuals that you're seeing, what you're hearing, what you're seeing, their actions, how to react to things have a huge impact on the person you are today, whether you like it or not, whether you deal with it or you don't. I mean, I think you take that lens that they give you. And at one point you might take it off and adjust the prescription, but in life, you know, that's a big piece of how you see the world. And I think as caretakers myself, my wife and I, we try to pass on the best way we have been brought up to values and morals

and seeing things in perspective and the way we behave and act. You hope that you do your best to pass that on. Now, as you get older and you have your own kids, things adjust. But my parents were big. When I was younger too, I started watching and falling in love with the game when I was five and playing shinny. We called it shinny, which was just for fun with the McKenna family. And then, of course, when I was seven, I went to an organized sports. And every step of the way, the passion and the love of the game grew and became more exciting. And then it became this real, you know, love of, of wanting to, to do this. It became that.

And I think probably was eight, nine, 10. Then you looked at players. I started to follow the game at the NHL level. And then there becomes the, the, the examples of, wow, I would love to be skate like him one day. And I remember watching the Russians play. And if I told my dad, when I was 12, I wanted love to be skate like him one day. And I remember watching the Russians play. And if I told my dad when I was 12, I wanted to move to Russia because I want to skate like those guys. Okay. Yeah.

And then, and then all of a sudden, you know, Guy Lafleur and Gilbert Perrault, those were my idols. So I'd watch Hockey Night in Canada. So Guy Lafleur was my idol, Gilbert Perrault, and they could skate. And I just watched everything they did. And then of course, course from 1980 they won the olympics and you know a 15 year old kid it was the night of my 15th birthday and Ruzioni scores the game-winning goal against the Russians and don't tell me that wouldn't ignite a whole country

to now want to become an olympian my wildest, did I think I would play four years later? No, not at that moment. Wow, yeah. The bar wasn't set for players in the United States yet. It really wasn't. There was this strong Canadian influence. There was some European. There was a little bit of an American, but until the 80 team blew the doors open, and then some of those players started going on and doing well, and then a player by the name of Bobby Carpenter was drafted in 81 first as third pick or the first third pick overall, one of those third pick overall. Now all of a sudden there is this understanding that players from the United States, they can play.

And not only can they play, they can play at the highest levels. And as each step went along, because... And how old were you when that took place? Was that like 12, 13? I was 15 when they won the gold medal in 1980. And then probably when I was 17, bobby carpenter then came in and had came in in 81 but his second year i believe was 82 he had this real breakout year and he was an american and he was and so that shifted something for you you being an american saying oh well okay

it's not just russians and canadians and you know europeans that are on the world stage, one of us can do it as well. And then so you later on become drafted third overall pick. Yeah, I followed in those footsteps. And I would go back probably till I was 16. So they won the gold medal in 80. And then I always played up with my brother and his own age group until I was 16. And that year, we decided they're putting a team together, my dad, Raul Turcotte, and Pete Carmanos, who own CompuWare.

We put together an elite U16 team, and we thought let's just pull all the kids together and we'll put together a travel elite team, see what happens. So now I honestly believe that keep the kids local, keep them in their local communities as long as you can, let them have their role models, let them have their family around them. We don't need to do doing all this crazy traveling if you don't have to. And then by 16, you know, now it's like you got to decide. So that was the age we put this team together. And all of us were sitting there thinking, if we could get a college scholarship even after they won the olympics so olympics would be way over here on the bar but if we could get a college scholarship and not the minimum diminishing that at all too because

it's an amazing feat but that was our goal because nobody really still at 16 was a prominent NHL player yet. We were just seeing a few of the Olympians starting to play in the NHL. That year we started 60-0. 6-0? Yep. And we went in. Wait, you won 60 games in a row? 79-2.

And we played and won all the tournaments in Canada. Was it a freak little pocket of talent that you had at your hometown, or was it you? No. It was – well, here's what's interesting was we put this group together. And this was local? This was a Michigan within 30 miles of kids. Which is a hub. Which is a hub. Great skating.

But had never kind of put it together, and that was the year you do it. U-16 major hockey was big because then it's junior you get drafted college pro was michigan a hub at the time or were you at the beginning with the beginning you were shaping that very beginning oh there you go okay you're smiling with this grin like well the fun the neat thing about it was that looking back you know we finished 79-2. Seven kids got drafted in the National Hockey League from that team. Four of us played, and four played D1 in college hockey.

But if you would have said at the start of that season. Now, the manager went on to buy Hartford, Pete Carmanis, the Hartford Whalers, which moved him to Carolina, won a Stanley Cup in Carolina. He used to sit in the van scheduling games. So here we were back in 1981, 82. We were this bunch of group of 15, a few 15-year-olds, but mostly 16-year-old kids coming together, hoping to get recognized and maybe get a college scholarship. We were lucky.

All of a sudden, a year later, two years later, we got seven drafted. And then what came to follow was Jimmy Carson, the Hatcher brothers, Mike Madano. All of these kids started coming through that pipeline. And the CompuWare name, the Little Caesars, the Honeybake, that was the impetus in the beginning of all those kind of teams. And so there was a little group of you guys that had moderate goals, which was college, right? It depends on how you say moderate because at the time it was major and I still think for any kid – So it felt appropriately major at that point.

Because it was only – we didn't know a lot of guys, guys if any that made it to the pro from the area there you go okay so it was still pushing a limit so in canada is raising the bar in canada every single town has a guy that played so if you're from this town you know there's somebody that lived here that played but we couldn't say that about the state of Michigan for the most part. We couldn't even really say that for the country still for the most part. So we were the preppetists of- Okay. Can you teach us what your thoughts were like back then when you've got this neighboring country where they're really good, like they're setting standards, global standards. And then you've got this town that you're growing, growing up in, but you have an

awareness that in America, there wasn't somebody that was blowing the doors off of the NHL. Okay. So what were, but there was one guy that sparked, sparked this possibility for you as an American, what were your thoughts? Like, you know, what were the types of ways that you were thinking about getting better or where you were going or that you had some sort of right or ability to go the distance to pursue your goal well it's funny because i never got ahead of myself i really never i i i had a i had a goal and a dream um but I think, you know, I always approach things as though, you know, just like I ended up at 16, we had that year. And to me,

that was really the stepping stone to want to leave to play junior hockey in Montreal. And the irony was that 16 was the foundation the launching plaid to 17 and all of a sudden 17 ignited and was the launching plaid to 18 which was the olympics in pro and then right when i turned 19 i joined the new york islanders and so if you would have said that when the when they won the gold medal at 15 in four years you you're going to play on an Olympic team, you're going to lead a team in Montreal, and then you're going to play on the 84 team

and join the New York Islanders who just won four cups right after that. Well, you're crazy because that's like you can't do that. It's unheard of. So I don't think anyone thought that way. I think we kept our goals in mind and we stayed focused to what we loved and we just challenged ourselves. And I don't think – I think what happened when we were 16, we went up and we played in all these Canadian tournaments

and we were getting droves of fans saying, we got to come out and watch this final game. It's a bunch of American kids. And then we were winning. So what happened was we proved to ourselves at 16, we can go up against the best in the countries and we could, we can compete, not only compete, but we can win together. So I think that gave us a little bit of a mindset that it is possible, but breaking through something that hasn't kind of been established is not an easy task. And I think it took a group of kids and it took a – and it was ripe. I told you the impetus was the 80 team.

And that kind of opened the gates and was a spark point. Meaning the mental gates, like that's possible. Possible. All of a sudden, we're watching a bunch of amateur kids beat the russians and then win a gold medal and we're thinking wow who would have ever thought and then now those kids guys are playing in the pros and then bobby carpenter comes along and scores 50 goals or so a second year or something like then the gates open up further then all of a sudden the droves of scouts started coming down and then it became it just everything

Blew right open and then it was just a matter of a bunch of kids now thinking we can do this Look at look what we did at 16. Look what we're doing now at 17 So it's like you had some credibility for your dialogue you were able to credibly talk through things because you had some sort of evidence that the next most logical step is possible. Not this big, you know, irresponsibly large goal, but like these properly placed. Yeah, I always say don't try to climb the mountain and make it little hills every day. Just, you know, go over little hills and before you know it, you'll be. And I think what happened too is nothing's handed to you.

The work ethic and the belief of the inner confidence, the belief, hey, I can do this, but then you do it at every level, and then you do it at the 16 level against the best, and you say, wait a second, if we can do this at 16, why can't we do it at 17? And I have a big belief. I always say that the difference between being good and being great is only this much. I hold my fingers about an inch apart.

And what I tell kids is I said, this is what you call consistency. And the philosophy, the mental philosophy was basically, if you can do it for one game, why can't you do it for two? And if you can do it for two, why can't you do it for five? And if you can do it for five, why can't you do it for two and if you can do it for two why can't you do it for five and if you can do it for five why can't you do it for a month 10 games why can't you do it and hold this together and then the focus was to try to bring your your a game on a consistent level and that becomes your average so mentally the piece of it was why can't you be able to bring that level of a game? So if you do it once, how do you figure out how to do it twice?

And then how do you replicate that? And then what is the mindset? So Mike Bossy said something to me early in my career that I forget. And he looked at me and said, don't you want to be great? Don't you want to be the best you can be? That was what he said. Exact words? Don't you want to be the best you can be? That was what he said. Exact words. Don't you want to be the best you can be? And I said, absolutely, I want to. And then he said, well, it's all about mindset and it's about an even keel. If you're going to let the highs get too high, the lows are going to be a lot lower and longer find your mindset where you're you know you have an even keel whether

things are going good or going bad and you can find that then if you can find a consistent mindset why can't you find a consistent play set and then you put the two two together then you have that little piece i was talking about and that's challenging yourself to be ready mentally, physically, emotionally, every single time that puck's ready to go, that you're able to bring your average. And when your average is an A, not an A+, because nobody's perfect, but when you can bring your average up, that you're trying to bring your best game up on a regular basis, then you've really made it. Because I tell kids when we talk to the

rookie orientation program that we have for all the next up and coming NHLers, I said, guys, all due respect, congratulations. What an amazing accomplishment. And I said, but now that's easy. Because I'm going to tell you what's hard. You're going to go through a process for the next three years, maybe four, where you're going to try to become a hockey player, a great hockey player or a really good hockey player. And I said, what I mean by that is, is that getting here now is easy because you're all here. You just have to decide if you want to be a pro who's here for three or four

years and gets a cup of coffee and you get your, get to pat yourself on the back. I said, because that is easy too. Now that you're here, I'll tell you what's really hard. What's really hard is being a pro who a coach knows who comes consistently night after night after night and brings his a game and he does it year after year after year that's when you've really made it and i said with all that said guys i wish you all the best but you can be in physically great shape you can be skill-wise unbelievable but if you don't learn to become mentally tough and have an even keel about you really truly believe you can become that player, then you've really done something. And when I say that to them, I don't want to diminish their accomplishments to date,

but I want to also challenge them to say, when you look back at your life and your career, don't look back with any regrets. Look back and say, I gave every ounce of energy and everything I had in my heart and my soul and my mind until they told me you can't do this anymore. And then you can walk away and say, I squeezed everything out of this experience that, and I've loved it because I think a lot of people want to settle for where the bar is. And the ones who go to the very top of the mountain are the ones who are always constantly challenging themselves to do more than what they thought they could do. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't

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checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. So there's a phrase that a friend of mine speaks about often and he ran SEALS Team 5 and he says, people have no idea how much they can actually do. And he speaks of it like in this really grounded way because he's gone further than he thought ever possible. And he sees all of his peers doing that in special operations. And it feels like you're saying something very similar to that, which is, you know, compress the intensity, compress with intensity in the short time you have wherever you are, whether it's in juniors or you're in college or you're at the majors or you're in an entrepreneurship and you're going for it and you're chipping all in what do you think what okay so that's a really crisp idea is to

compress your intensity and really go for it while you have a chance now how is it what gets in the way and then how do people do that how did you do that day in and day out five is saying that you know don't let the mind tell the body what it can't do and and we we we always seem to how how you talk to yourself is so critical and so key yeah if you keep telling yourself well i can't do this well you know you've never pushed yourself to try and it's like i'll tell you a story and you're going to laugh at this, but I made a promise to myself. And it was after I retired, I was 34 and I saw a nun and a priest finish an Ironman. Is this a joke? This is true. This is the beginning of a joke, right? An Irish man and a priest yeah okay really he was 72 and she was 66 i think it was sister mary or sister elizabeth i love it and

i remember watching finish late it was dark and i'm thinking 34 years old i just retired i love this game before i'm 40 i made a promise to myself that i would do an iron man now i promised myself i would do it because i thought I was inspired by watching these two. And I said, if they can do it at 66 and 70, why can't I do it? And why wouldn't I do it? So 39 comes along and I'm thinking, oh, if you can't keep a promise to yourself, who can you keep one to? So I went to look onto it and I found out that there was this amazing charitable aspect that you could actually do it and then raise money and there's matching funds.

So now there was a purpose. There's a reason why, because I don't need to do it for myself or my ego, but I need to do it because I made a promise. But now if I do this, some good can come out of it. Now there's a win,win-win got it yeah so i inquire about it and pay to get in one of the you know i was with a buddy of mine pete smith at the time what kind of shape are you in uh i was in pretty good shape because i you know i retired because of concussions and i probably still could have played until i was 40 in an ideal world but

but somebody had said you know and thank god they said i got great advice from dr james kelly he said you know i cleared you to play once and knowing what i know and so i got great advice i wasn't going to go start driving race cars or jumping out of airplanes but i could live a good life and i had my um i had my in fact he just texted me oh that what what's the irony of that literally james kelly just text you i have yeah i'm looking I had my, in fact, he just texted me. What's the irony of that? Literally, James Kelly just texted you. I have.

Yeah, I'm looking at it. Yeah. That's cool. So there's a little, it happens a lot. Do you believe, like, how do you make sense of things like that, where we're just talking about James and then he texts you? He tells me I am where I'm supposed to be at the moment. Okay. Yeah. So I go with that so do you have a spiritual foundation connected to that yeah yeah I believe that strong yeah is

that do you believe is that a god-based belief or something else that it's a higher power base yeah I'm Roman Catholic but I I just believe in the spiritual soul piece of your life and that there are no coincidences in life and things are going to happen to you. You're supposed to learn from them. You can't control them. Just kind of do the best you can to kind of navigate and then hopefully inspire others and you still enjoy all the wonderful things that are in this world um don't let them define you but learn from them and let them pass

through you and then move forward pass through you yeah so experience it let experiences pass through you yeah you're supposed to you're supposed to feel them but you're not supposed to hold on to them and let them dictate your life. That's a really cool thought. Yeah. You're supposed to, in my opinion, feel the sorrow, the pain, the happiness, the joy. It's amazing how we can let joy and happiness pass through us, but we hold on to pain and anger and resentment, and it defines us if we allow it to. Fear. People are afraid of fear they're

afraid of pain they're afraid and unfortunately you either put a wall or a box around it and you hold it in some deep place and then and then every decision you make is determined upon not wanting to go there but it's still there whereas if joy happiness and all that comes through you you feel it you enjoy it for the moment and you let it go well we have to learn how to release the others too you know it's interesting as a concept of the filter like being a filter and letting it pass through you and I found that joy is really overwhelming for people as well I don't know if you've had that experience but there's a razor's edge to love and joy where we'll tamper it where we'll kind of maybe not go the full distance because it, to me, when I really get tapped into it, it feels overwhelming.

Now, it's wonderful, but it is almost like an out of control feeling when you really go the depths of joy and love and inner peace. So for me, I'm not so sure they're that different, but certainly the pain and the anger and frustration, it feels like we can keep it in where we can't really keep that joy in as easily. Yeah, and I think it's, to me, joy, happiness, and those feelings are to teach us how to let them pass through you because you could choose to live a life with happiness. But you have to evolve, I think, through –

I think joy teaches you that it will pass through you. What a great thing it is. What a great moment that you're feeling this. What a great thing it is. What a great moment that you're feeling this. What a joyful, now how you choose to experience it. But if we only learned how to take joy and put it in a box, like we do anger and fear and resentment and all that other stuff, and that takes our life, but it can't because it passes through you. So finding joy all the time is – you could find joy in the littlest things or you can also find the other side of things. And I think your experience is what happened to you in your life. They dictate how you choose to live your life.

So there's a lot of things we can't control. Where did you just go just now? Well, I went to a place where you can't control what happens to you, although we want to. But where did you go just now? Like there was something that you just – Sparked? I don't know. Like you just went to a place.

I don't know if it was like you were thinking about pain or you're thinking about joy, but you just went somewhere. I think to me it's more of a spark to say that we are all going to go through experiences in our lives that we can't control. We're going to lose people. We're going gonna find happy times you're gonna find joyful times but the only thing as spiritually have an opportunity to decide is whether it's too painful and I can't feel it so I'm gonna just push it off to the side and put a box around it but it's still there how do you how do you personally do it? When, how do you become this filter to feel? Well, it's a process you're always learning,

but, but when it happens, you can almost sit back and realize, I really don't have control over what's happening, but how I choose to get caught up in it, I kind of can sit back and watch that in a sense that everybody has a choice in how they react to things. You're really clear about that, aren't you? Yeah, I'm learning that. I've evolved, I think, to a point where, and I'm still learning and growing,

it's all part of a process in life. But I think I've come to a point where, and I'm still learning and growing, it's just, it's all part of a process of life. But I think I've come to a point having gone through concussions and know what it's like to go to the dark places in your life and have a second going to come back because I hit my head so many times and so hard so that it's, it's gave me a perspective on life that, uh, I don't think I would have if I didn't know what it was like to kind of lose your mind and go through that. Is that what happened for you? Yeah. It was a, it was a deep, long, dark, you know, depression of what it's like to hit your head multiple times and things get really strange and what the spark was that made you who you are it was taken away from you then you couldn't find it that's the is that what happened for you yeah it's a light went out and for how long well twice for six months the first time was pretty bad. And I think I didn't know if you don't know if your brain's ever going to reconnect through concussions.

And I was blessed in that over a period of time, it got plugged back in and the joy came back and the enthusiasm, the excitement, the passion came back. But it wasn't there for a long time. And I know what that's like so you know experience is a great teacher in life but then you start to realize that the biggest thing i probably learned from that was we really don't have much control and the sooner you're able to let go of that the sooner you realize that something like this would happen. James texting you seconds after you mentioned his name. Yeah. And so there are things around us all the time, whether you're conscious, I think it's consciousness because we, we things happen to us in our lives and they could be so painful that we never want to feel them again. And so we put a blanket over them or a box.

And then every decision we make going forward is to avoid that. But yet we're still holding on to it. Do you have a recommendation on is the right recipe to pull off the blanket and face that dark stuff? Yeah, to feel that. Feel the pain yeah yeah really you know basically because we've all got this stuff inside of us right it's kind of the feel relax and release i mean you have to feel it it's painful feel relax release is that like a process or is that those are words when you hear of meditation and you hear of if you really truly are conscious, your mind links your body, your body links your mind.

We store stuff. We store things in ourselves that come out and manifest themselves in our physicality or mentally or emotionally. A lot of it's unresolved stuff. Do you have a process that you practice for mindfulness or meditation or sitting or? Learning to, I mean, I used to do, I used to love like do yoga. I need to do more of that. But I think more of my, I think more mentally, I, I think the morning time and late at night are the times you really have a chance to be with yourself where you're constantly have things to do during the day which

is great it's part of your life but if you don't take those times to kind of center and kind of reflect and feel and kind of go through it i mean it listen it's it's it's an evolving process um but i think having learned someone once to me, it was one of my favorite movies, The Natural, you know, there are two lives we live, the one we learn from and the one we choose to live with what we've learned, something like that extent. And a lot of people, so the other quote, I live by some quotes that are pretty strong, but to know and not to do is never to know at all. So if you supposedly learn something, you don't apply it, then you really never learned. And I think that happens a lot in life. And I think there's constant learning

every day that is around us. And there's constant beauty and excitement. But we're so caught up in the psyche all the time that we rarely take the voice that's in our head. We could be walking down a beautiful street with beautiful flowers and buildings and stuff, but we didn't even see it because why we're thinking about what we were supposed to say or do and some fight that you had. And I think we miss consciously what's really around us because we're caught up in that, the melodrama versus the moment. And we're a society now that's doing this on our phones and we're so distracted from what's happening in life. So we're not really living life. We're letting life dictate us. I'm really concerned for the next generation for those reasons, right? Is that if you just not,

I think it was two days ago, I was walking through an airport and I was down by baggage claim and I was waiting for a car. And I look as I'm walking to my car, every group of people that had just gotten off a plane are waiting for their bags. They all have this 45 degree arc in their head as they're looking at their phones in pockets, right? And it's not, I mean, everyone listening knows that, that that's what is happening for us. But it's a concern because

of what you just described, the melodrama, I think you said, as opposed to the moment. That's a really cool thought. Okay, so that's about the best place we could find to button up the first half of this conversation with Pat. And the rest of the conversation can be downloaded as well. But we wanted to find a place that had somewhat of a rhythm to allow us to breathe into this. And the next 45 minutes will be downloaded at another time. And again, I just want to thank Pat for sharing his insights, his honesty, his clarity of thinking. And I just love this conversation.

And I hope that we're able to pull out of here, you know, more about who he is, but how he's organized his life. And if you enjoyed this conversation, please punch over to iTunes and write a review. It's been great. It's helped create and generate a lot of momentum for us. And we're grateful for that. And then you can also find us at Michael Gervais, which is for Twitter and Facebook. And then also finding mastery.net is a place where you can get all the resources

that we've talked about and obviously download other guests as well. And then also on facebook.com forge slash finding mastery. Okay, so thank you for everything. The reviews keep helping build the momentum around iTunes. It's wonderful.

At some point, we're going to pull the pin and find some, not find some, but activate some sponsors that have already expressed interest. So thank you for helping build that community so we can keep going. And if you want to check out more work on Pat LaFontaine, he's easy to find online. And there's so many ways that you can support him. Number one being CIC16.org. And that's his foundation for giving back to children. Okay. So thank you very much and look forward to next time we have the chance to connect. All the best. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback.

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