Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Ryan Holiday x Dr. Michael Gervais: The First Rule of Mastery, Stoicism, and Identity (from The Daily Stoic)

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

A couple months back I was in Austin doing some promo for The First Rule of Mastery and had the opportunity to be a guest on Ryan Holiday’s incredible podcast, The Daily Stoic.It’s always such a joy to connect and flow with Ryan – we had a fantastic conversation that I wanted to share here today. This time around was especially fun… not only was the conversation great, but we also got to record it in Ryan’s epic bookstore, The Painted Porch.If you’re in or near Austin… you have to check it out. It is awesome. And you might even find a couple signed copies of The First Rule of Mastery lying around ;)Please enjoy this conversation with me and the ever-insightful Ryan Holiday on The Daily Stoic._________________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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stay present and engaged with my thinking and writing. If you wanna slow down, if you wanna work smarter, I highly encourage you to check them out. Visit remarkable.com to learn more and grab your paper pro today. Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I am your host, Dr. Michael Gervais by trade and training a high-performance psychologist. And today I'm really excited to share something just a little different. A couple months back, I was in Austin doing some promos for the first Rule of Mastery, and I had the opportunity to be a guest on Ryan Holiday's incredible podcast, The Daily Stoic. It's always such a joy to connect and flow with Ryan. And we had a fantastic conversation that

I really wanted to just share that here with you today. So this time around was especially fun. Not only was the conversation great, but we also got to record it in Ryan's epic bookstore, The Painted Porch. If you're in or near Austin, you've got to check it out. It is awesome. And you might even find a couple of signed copies of The First Rule of Mastery lying around. So with that, please enjoy this conversation with me and the ever insightful Ryan Holiday on The Daily Stoic. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast. So the story of my books and professional

sports is that the Patriots read The Obstacles Away in like 2014. That was that famous game, the one yard line, the interception against the Seahawks. The Patriots ended up winning the Super Bowl. The Seahawks heartbreakingly lose the Super Bowl. And I remember I watched that game getting off of a plane and watching it standing in airport because you couldn't, it wasn't, the plane I was on didn't have much streaming back then. And so anyways, I remember watching that game thinking, this is unreal. How could my book, this book about ancient philosophy be in any way connected to that game? And then, you know, several months later, I get this sort of ping and then there's an email and it's a link to a Sports Illustrated article about how now the Seahawks were reading that book. And so I reached out to the person that I knew at the

Patriots and said, how could they have possibly heard about it? And he said, I told them I was there. I told them this was Michael Lombardi. He had passed the book along. And so now these two great NFL teams are reading the books and I was like, is this real life? And the Seahawks invited me out. And while I was there, I got to meet today's guest, Dr. Michael Gervais, who was not just an integral part of that incredible franchise and all the things they did both as a team, but then also as a culture, as an organization, which I think has had an enormous impact both in sports and in business. But he's also one of the world's top high-performance psychologists, period. He's worked with NFL teams, Olympic gold medalists,

top CEOs in the world, huge musicians. And in fact, I've had a number of guests on the show who I go, how did you hear about this stuff? And they go, oh, Michael, you know, Michael Gervais is my performance coach and he passed it along. So Michael and I go way back. I did his podcast many, many years ago. His podcast is called Finding Mastery. And he's just been a great dude, a great friend. He's pointed me to a bunch of stuff over the years. And as I said, been a big fan of the work. And he's just got a fascinating perspective on how one sort of becomes great at what they do. He's also got a very calming voice and calming personality, which I'm sure he's cultivated in

his thousands and thousands of hours sitting across from otherwise very anxious, ambitious, driven, intense people. And I remember when I did his podcast, it was a couple hours. And I just was like, when I left, I was like, that was the most draining, therapeutic show I've ever done. So you can listen to that episode and you can also check out Michael's amazing book, The First Rule of Mastery, Stop Worrying What Other People Think of You. He signed some copies at the Painted Porch. You can follow him on Instagram at Michael Gervais, follow him on YouTube at Finding Mastery. And this was an awesome interview. I'm really glad he came all the way out to the Painted

Porch to do it. I hadn't seen him in several years. And so it was great that he did that. And I think you're really going to like this interview. Well, books are different than like movies or something, right? Where most people see it when it comes out, right? So like a movie, it has like a several month run in a theater, opening weekend matters. But books take a long time. Like people, most of the books that I read are not new. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, right. You get around to them. Yeah, right. And usually they have to like sort of, they have to be like filtered through people that you like or admire. Like I almost never read books when they come out, right? Like certainly not the week they came out right like somebody says certainly not the week they came out because i have other shit that i'm reading yeah that's interesting you know what i mean like so even even if i even if i buy it when it comes out it goes in the pile and then

you get around to it later yeah so like that is how it works for me too you've been working on this thing for like years and years yeah and then you're like, what do you think? And people are like, it's on my to-do list. Yeah, come on. It takes hours. I haven't read it yet. It is so true because my wife hasn't read it yet. So I understand. I really understand.

I don't think my wife reads any of my books anymore. She's like, you've done like 12. She's like, I can't read all of them. It's too many. I live. Yeah. I really understand. I don't think my wife reads any of my books anymore. She's like, you've done like 12. She's like, I can't read all of them. Yeah, right. I live with you. Yeah. First, she's like, yeah, I heard you talking about it for like four years as you were working on it. And then also I read it.

I read an early draft and then I read this chat. It's not like a new thing to me that I'm excited to find out. I think that's healthy. Yeah. It's like, like in sports, they have to come to every game. Like you've been doing this the entire time. It's a little different, but yeah. I mean, there's such electricity at a sporting event, but yeah.

Point taken. So I love this idea in the book. You open with this idea of, what's FOPO? Fear of what other people think. Fear of people's opinion. Fear of people's opinions. I love that idea. And actually, there's a bunch of Stoic quotes about this exact topic, if you believe that. So my favorite from Marcus, which I actually remember thinking about when The Obstacle is the Way came out. So

thinking about how books come out and then what they do. The Obstacle is the Way came out. It did okay the first week. It didn't like blow the Obstacle is the Way came out. It did okay the first week. It didn't blow the doors off. It wasn't a failure. It did okay. And then it got skunked from the bestseller list. It should have hit it, but it didn't. And it did not hit a bestseller list for five additional years.

So it took five years to hit a bestseller list. I mean, I never would have known that. Yeah, it took forever. It's in just about every locker room I've been in. mean, I never would have known that. Yeah. It took forever. It's in just about every locker room I've been in. Yeah. And it was selling very well, but the sort of recognition for the thing was delayed by five years. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. But I remember thinking of this quote when it came out, which is from Marcus Reelis. He says, we love ourselves more than other people. We're all sort of inherently self-interested at the end of the day, or we have this natural instinct towards self-preservation. He says, we love ourselves more than other people. We're all sort of inherently self-interested

at the end of the day, right? We have this natural instinct towards self-preservation. He says, we love ourselves more than other people, but we care about other people's opinions more than our own. And he didn't mean that like, you know, we care about other people's feelings, we're empathetic. What he's saying is that we work really hard on something. We know that it's good.

And we know that it's the best thing that we've ever done. And then we put it out and then we go, did I do a good job? Am I worth it? Did I just waste my time? And so you turn around and you hand over the value of the thing to total strangers who are busy, who are biased, who don't even know you exist. And then you wonder why you feel shitty after you put something out. And then if you attach your identity to it as well, so now it's not just about like, do you value the product, but do you value me? Because you've commingled identity with the performance of whatever matters to you. And that it's a, it's a really dangerous proposition to go through life that way. It's the most dangerous because in the creative fields or the athletic fields or whatever, you're so vulnerable. You have to, you're like this, you're putting yourself out there and you're

doing it in front of other people. If the crowd gets to decide, you know, like the gladiator gives like thumbs up, thumbs down, you get, I mean, you're not going to make it. That's right. Yeah. You have to be doing it from some sort of independent place of self assessment, not do they love me or not. Yeah. Crowdsourcing a sense of self. Yeah. Again, right. Very dangerous. And, and I, I think the most powerful people, and I don't mean that in an obtuse way, but people that have a real sense of self is that the external world doesn't dictate their internal experience. Yes.

So the external world is happening. It could be thumbs up or thumbs down. It could be jeering or booing or whatever it is, celebrations. That is noise to the signal. be thumbs up or thumbs down. It could be jeering or booing or whatever it is, celebrations. That is noise to the signal. And the signal is, was I true to my thoughts, words, and actions? Was I true to my first principles? Did I bring my best efforts into? So that inside out is really what we're pointing to in the book. So the title is The First Rule of Mastery, but the subtitle is Stop Worrying About What People Think. That's not the first rule. So I thought that you would pick that

up. Okay. So the fear of what other people think is not the first rule of mastery. No. Okay. So like, let's say the first rule of health is to stop drinking poison. Sure. You'd say, yeah, that's pretty good if you're drinking poison. Like That sounds like a good first rule, but the poison down. I think the poison that we're drinking is this outsourcing of sense. The poison that we're drinking is the outsourcing of self. So am I okay in the eyes of others? And we're drinking it all day long. Our brains are wired for it. Socially, the need to belong is in the fabric of how we organize ourself. Yeah. And we've gotten lazy.

Yes. And the laziness is, I don't know if I'm okay. I haven't done the inner work. So what do you think? Well, it's a good, like what the crowd thinks, what the market thinks, what sales are, the awards. These are good heuristics of, did you do a good job? But they're not perfect. I would say it's a good heuristic to, did I tap into what they, whatever they is, like? Yeah.

And so there's a utility in that, but it doesn't mean that it's honest to you. Yes. Right? And I just mean, it's a crude metric. So people use it instead of doing the work to figure out what a better metric is, right? Because like for in sports, winning and losing is obviously very important, or you don't get to do it anymore. Like if you lose all the time, that's not great. And they'll probably find, they'll probably try to replace you with someone who they think will win more.

NFL stands for not for long. Yeah. And so that's a reality of it. It happens fast. The weird thing is when you find people who are really great at what they do and have won a lot, is they're actually usually measuring themselves day to day on something usually more strict

or more individualistic than what is the box score say or what are the announcers? Like you find that they're operating on a whole other level of standards that tends to correlate to winning and losing more often than not, but it's also independent of those things. So they could be-

A thousand percent. They could be really pumped with how they did on a game that they lost and they could feel pretty good about themselves on a game. No, sorry. Yeah, they could feel bad when they lost, bad when they won and good when they lost, right? Because they're offering something else. If the tuning fork is honest to their very best.

Yes. So if the tuning fork is tuned to the approval of others or the outcome, then those two matter more. So the tuning fork, when you're tuned to yourself and you know, and it's actually not that hard. We know when we're lying. Sure. All marketers, right? We know when we're telling the truth. We know when we've conformed just a tiny bit for approval. We know it. We know when something feels a bit overwhelming and we choose something to numb it, social or drugs or whatever. We know. So it's like ringing the bell to the signal to noise, have the tuning fork be to the signal, not to the noise. And I love that you're pointing out how the strong,

the extraordinary performers work, because it's not as clean as we might think. So the true performers might not be the seven best in the league, right? They could be middle of the pack, barely hanging on because they're not six foot eight, 265 pounds and jump 42 inches, but they are so pure in their approach and they've got the signal to noise ratio, right. But we just don't know them because they don't get airtime. Same with, you know, a single parent in the middle of somewhere that, you know, has two kids, three kids and no history of college. And they are figuring out the most creative lifestyle that you can imagine with purpose.

But we don't know how to herald them and support them and like honor them because they're not on TV and they're not on the radio or whatever it might be. Yeah, we're all sort of graded on this curve that is our own potential, right? Yes. And it's hard to take someone whose success is totally a matter of their own individual circumstances

and context and hold them up as an example and say, we should all be like this person because we don't necessarily relate to that, right? So it's easier to go like, this is the athlete that's won the most games. This is the entrepreneur that's made the most money. As I said, it's this sort of crude metric. Like it makes sense, but it leaves so much out

and it leaves so many other people feeling like they're failures because they're not that. But actually, again, graded on this curve, you're crushing it because you've done so much more than, it's like, it's not how long you live necessarily. It's how long, like when you were born, the moment in time you were born, the genetics you have, the class that you're in, the country, all these things determine what your life expectancy is. So if your life expectancy was 40 and you lived to be 60, you crushed it. But you might look at someone who's 110 and be like, they did so much better than me. And it's totally different.

And then you add the secondary, probably more important variable there is the quality. Yes, sure. Did you live the quote unquote good life? Yes. Right. Did you have a fire in your belly? And did you really lean in? Yeah. Are you 110 and miserable? Or are you 60 and you feel like you left it all on the table? I mean, that's a real thing for many of us, you know? So, and you know, the other thing is like with elite athletics and sport is you might want to have some

of like the ones that you know, their names, right. You might want to have them over for dinner once. Sure. Yeah. You realize it comes at a cost to be that way. Yeah. Like, you know, like there's an exciting thing that happens with all of that attention, but it tends to be a lot about them. Yeah, sure. And maybe the interests are not exactly aligned. And I say that with some jest because certainly narcissism works in the world of elite anything. But I'm not saying true narcissistic personality disorder. I'm saying that excessive.

But they don't have it buttoned up the way you might or we might think. Sure. They're working to. They're working to know if they're okay. And it's one of the origins of why I write this book is because I was embarrassed as a young kid. I was 16 years old. I saved up a couple summers to get my first truck, Mazda B2000. And it was like three grand or something. And I'm driving and I'm brand new at driving. And I remember I was traveling in a direction, there's

a lane next to me traveling in the same direction. And there's a car coming up on me that's going to slowly pass me. And I thought, oh, I'm going to look cool in this thing. So I grabbed the steering wheel. I kind of got that cool kid lean. And I'm like, when they look over, they're going to see a cool kid. They didn't look over. And so I had this moment like, what did I just do? What is all of that that I just pretended?

And I didn't know this person and I was shape-shifting in a way to look cool. And I was so embarrassed. I knew that that was not the good way, the right way to go through life. I knew that and I was embarrassed by it. I didn't have anyone to talk to about it because... And then I didn't really change. I was still by it. I didn't have anyone to talk to about it because, and then I didn't really change. Right. Like I was still doing it.

And then come to find out with many of the world's best that I've been fortunate to learn with and from and work with, they too have a similar mechanism where they say, I don't want to let people down, man. I don't want to blow it. I don't want to look stupid. You know, like, look, I've got to show up because coach and agent are counting on me and they hold the power, whether I get to do my life the way I want to do it. So this opinion of other people is a real thing.

Yeah, that's one of the things about imposter syndrome, which I've talked about before. But it's like there is this belief that people are paying a lot closer attention to you than they possibly could be. I mean, even like on a football team, like you get this sense like, oh, the coach is out to get me or whatever. It's like, there's 52 players. Like they're not thinking about you at all, really, right? Like most of the time they're thinking about so many other things. They're thinking about travel arrangements.

They're thinking about what people are thinking about. You have this sense that the spotlight is on you and that is your sort of ego and your natural narcissism that, that because it's so important to you, you assume it's important to everyone else. And it's just, it's not that there, it's not that there isn't any attention on you and that the stakes aren't high and that you don't have to perform, but it's just not as intense as you sometimes think it is. And I know you're well aware of the spotlight effect. Professor Gilovich coined that term by just basically finding that this is a fun experiment. Can I talk about the experiment? Yeah. So he's got about 100 kids sitting in, or kids, freshman college usually, right? And so they're sitting in a classroom or auditorium. And he's got a handful of other students that he says, okay. And no one's in on the experiment here. Everyone's part of the experiment, but they're not sure of their roles. And so these handful of kids, he gives the epitome of like uncool, and he gives them a shirt, the Barry Manilow, like a big Barry Manilow shirt on it. Which is probably cool now again.

Yeah, right now it's come back around but at the time you know that you can see this you can see the the freshman going you want me to wear this in front of my like you want me to walk in there yeah and like yeah well and by the way what percentage of people do you think are gonna notice and the ones that are wearing the shirt like oh yeah yeah right a hundred percent oh man like i gotta walk in front of the class in this shirt and then so then they asked uh the group of hundred how many 100, how many of you noticed people walking with the ugly shirt? And it was like 25%, somewhere in that range. So we overestimate with grandiosity about our level of importance.

And so he dubbed it like the spotlight effect. So I've got a spotlight on me thinking about what do you think of my hair and my t-shirt and what I'm saying? And you've got a spotlight on you thinking about your hair and your t-shirt. So like we're these spotlights, not casting on each other, but like casting on ourselves walking around. I remember there was another study that I read about and it was talking about how like in middle school to high school, kids start to pick up this thing, they coined it like the imaginary audience, which is that you start to think

everyone's sort of watching and following you. It's just like this sort of developmental, you're becoming aware of all the things that you were not necessarily aware of when you were younger. And you were a kid and you were just free and you didn't care and you couldn't be embarrassed. You sort of pick that up.

And that's why like, yeah, your pants rip in high school and you think like, my life is over. Because you think people are paying way more attention than they are, which of course they aren't. And the argument was one of the dangerous things about social media is that kids are now picking that up at the same time. And so the imaginary audience, instead of being this developmental phase that you grow out of, just becomes permanently infused with your personality, which is that you really do think you're performing all the time. And I think anyone who has an audience or has done things, it is disorienting and destabilizing. It's not normal or good for you to have an actual fan base, right? Because now there are these people

that you think about and that takes you out of what you're supposed to be doing which is hitting a ball or writing a movie or what you're you're supposed to be thinking about the thing but instead you're thinking about the thing and part of you is also but do they like me what do they think and so we we know that fame is this sort of toxic thing and people talk about all the time the problem is, now everyone else is getting their own version of it. And so it's heightened. Like you see totally regular people that are like, you know, posing for their family photos, not for the Christmas card, but for social media. And it's sort of taking you out of the moment that you're in and turns you into a performer in your own life. Yeah, your highlight reel on public display.

And so the other thing that happens is the imaginary audience is now real. Yes. And we've always been public figures. Yeah. Like if you think about like you had a family and a couple of neighbors and you had 30 some kids in a classroom

or maybe 15, whatever it might be. And so we were community members. We all are, unless you're like run by wolves or something. So we've always been quote unquote public, but it's the extrapolation of the size of it. And then the not knowing, not being able to have a tactile feedback loop about, do I fit in the tribe or not? Yeah. And that fitting in the tribe is foundational to safety.

Like that goes back a couple hundred thousand years because if you and I were in the tribe, right. And, and we're going out and hunting or gathering or doing what we're doing and we're screwing up and we're not performing and we're actually distraction when we come back, the elders are going to say, Hey, Ryan, Mike, you don't want to be the weirdo. You, you gotta go. Yeah. You're out. Yeah. So listen, we're giving you a got to go. Yeah. You're out. Yeah. So listen, we're giving you a warning. Yeah. Give you a second warning. Yeah. Hey, listen, okay, this is the last warning. And then we keep the behavior that's not tuned to the tribe. Yeah. You two got to go. Yeah. Now that's a near death sentence. Yeah. So that's why we are so tuned,

ancient brain and modern times, we're so tuned to the just hint of rejection because that was a near death sentence yeah so that's why when people what's what's the greatest fear for most people public speaking walking on stage those four little steps sure right greater than death greater than jerry seinfeld joke is the number one the number one fear is public speaking and the number two fear is death and he says so most people would rather be in the casket than delivering the eulogy. It's so good, right? Yeah. So, but why is that? It's because we are ancient brain, modern times, we have fused who we are with what we do. And then what we do is in the public court of opinion as opposed. So that's all noise. That's why it's, and look, there's no sniper in row 14 in most public speaking events.

But the eyeballs are really dangerous because if they don't like me, then maybe I don't matter. Yeah. And maybe I'm going to be kicked out of this tribe and I don't know how I'll fend for myself. Yes. That's actually not how modern life works though. Sure. Right? Right.

Right? So, but it's still in our ancient brain. Yes. And it's, as you would recognize, David Foster Wallace says, you know, that the old fish and the two young fish, you know, like the old fish swims by and says to the two young fish, like, how's the water boys? And the two young fish don't say anything for a while and swim away. And then one brave young fish says to the other one, the hell is water? Right. Right. You're just used to it.

So the water that we swim in is so obvious to the elder. And that's what we're trying to point out is the water we're swimming in is really the poison of needing approval from others. Now, the subtitle is Stop Worrying. It's not titled Stop Caring. We do need to care about some people's opinions, like your boss oftentimes could be one of the important ones. I don't have my supervisor in there. I'm an entrepreneur, so that makes it, it's my wife that is my supervisor. No, look, like I was saying, if you sell zero copies of your book, you won't be able to do it again. You don't get to do it again.

Yeah, and also, even permission aside, you did it for someone other than yourself, by definition. Otherwise, it would have looked very different. You wouldn't have put a cover on it. You wouldn't have edited it so closely. I didn't design the cover, by the way, right? Like, somebody much smarter. It would be your diary.

Like that's exactly right. Art is by definition for some, the audience also, right? So that's interesting. I've never heard that. I just, cause I haven't thought about that way. So can, can you deconstruct that a little bit? Yeah. I mean, look, uh, you're doing it for yourself. You're trying to fulfill your vision, but you're conscious of an audience existing or you would do it very differently. I think that that's the civil war inside for the committed creative. Is this true and honest, or is this for approval? Well, I just think people aren't being honest when they go like, I just make it for me. And it's like, really, that's why the sitcom you made is exactly 23 minutes. Like it's 23 minutes because that's the format that it fits in television so they could sell slots. So even though you're saying

the meta, but so I think some of the most creative athletes are the ones that have to figure out how to be creative in the constraints of the system. So you're saying even the meta, the system is designed for approval. Yeah. So football games are less than three hours. Yeah. I just mean like you are, you're like, oh, I just play for the love of the game. Then you'd be playing alone in a park at 2 a.m. Like you're also in it for winning and for team.

Like it's a whole thing. And money is part of the economy. Of course. Of course. It's definitely part of it. Like how I would do the books if I was the only audience would be very different than if, you know, like I, it would be, I would be writing in shorthand to myself. Actually, this is what's so incredible about, I don't know if I have, what's so incredible about Mark Strelitz's Meditations and why it is an unprecedented book is that it's maybe the only— By the way, like what you've done here, like it's ridiculous, dude. Like it's really ridiculous.

There's—honestly, what you've done here, like— Hold on. Before you get to your point, like I've got to just like— Let me go back to like—let's see. 1993. Why didn't I graduate? 1992. 1992 okay i graduated college in 94 and i minored in philosophy yeah and so we go through all the different types and you know it's not just one class but it's a minor so i'm into it yeah and the stoics this is 92 and i'm like man these guys like they're they're on onto something like that's different now. Like, I love this idea. And, and it was always working in the background of my approach. So as a licensed psychologist, like there's philosophy in there somewhere, right? There's a course, best practices, evidence-based, and it's always kind of been in there. And then I come across you. I'm like, holy shit, this is so good.

And you have just caught the attention of literally the sport world and, and, and. And it's, dude, I just want to say it's rare to put philosophy on front stage. And you've done it. And you've done it in a great way. And I hope that you have monetized it as well in all the ways that that celebration can happen. Like, I'm so stoked for what you've done and how people are finding in your community a new way to take control of their wellbeing.

Well, thank you. What I was saying about Marcus, what's incredible about meditations is that it's one of the only books, certainly one of the only philosophy books, that's not written with an audience in mind. It's his private thoughts. So, you know, he goes— Anne Frank, kind of. Yes, of course.

Also an incredible book. Listen, I do not want to spar about authors with you. No, no. But what I'm saying is that very few books survive to us that were not intended to be books. That's cool. Right? So, like, there's little—and you can see in the book, there's obviously things where he's writing to himself. You know, he goes like, like that customs agent that I met.

And he doesn't explain or elaborate. So, he's—only he would know what that means. And if you were writing for an audience, you would phrase it differently. You'd be like, in the year 162 AD, we were traveling, you would sell the story. He is, and it's also, it's not sequential, it's just bulleted. It's basically bulleted number.

We don't know how he did it, but it's just a jumble of thoughts because it was his journal to himself. He was practicing the philosophy, which happens to be a writing. So for him, meditation was having a conversation with himself about these ideas, sort of reminding himself of things. How did that go from private journal to commercial? We don't know. We don't know. Basically, he dies towards the end of the second century AD. Somebody sold them out now.

Somebody got a couple shillings. And probably assumed it would be destroyed. And then we don't hear about it again for like several hundred years. And then it doesn't emerge as like a major philosophical text for many centuries after that as the Western texts are sort of rediscovered.

I mean, we have this thing called the Dark Ages where we forget about everything. And so he would probably be mortified that we're talking about it now, but for him, the process of the philosophy was writing to himself about it. And then that survives. So there's something very specific, very unique about it that makes it general and relatable. But the point is, I would never write a sentence like that because I am writing for publication. That's the nature of the world we live in. If you were to look at my journal though, my diary, it's very different. I'm writing that totally to myself. Um, and it's all

about things that only I know about. Right. And so the definition, uh, when an artist is sitting down, uh, to make something, there's a choice you're making at that very beginning with how you present yourself, how you talk, how you, that is inherently admitting that it's for more than just you. It's got to be for you, of course, but you're also, it's fundamentally for you. So I like your point. It's not, don't worry about it, but you still have to care. Yeah. So you're pointing at the exact center of the internal civil war, the internal crisis, the internal sense of self. Yeah.

And what I want to just highlight here is that there are micro choices that we're making. Yeah. And those micro choices are made in context to the neighborhood, to the culture, to the era, all of that. But it's the context that this other context I think is really important is that how clear are you to your virtues, your core values, your first principles? So if you bundle those together, virtues, values, and first principles, and if those are really clear, you've got some bellwethers. And then

if you've got a purpose lined up, that you're clear about your life purpose or your monthly purpose or your purpose while on the team or purpose of a role that you inhabit as maybe a father or son or whatever. So those are the two big ones that help guide the micro choices. And then if you can, inside of that context, you can access the thing that you want to express. Yes. And if you've got a well-refined craft, like you've got range. And if you're new at it, there's less range.

Well, and I think you care about what the audience thinks, about what the crowd thinks, about what your coaches think, about what the sports writers think, whatever your domain, you have to care about customers in a capitalistic society. But you don't have to go to Marcus's quote about how we love ourselves, but we love other people's opinions more than our own. You just can't care about their opinion more than your own opinion. So if I set out to write a book that's about a certain topic in a certain style, obviously,

I think that's going to resonate with an audience and I want it to resonate with the audience. But if what the audience wants is this totally different thing that doesn't interest me or doesn't excite me, or my editor says, well, what if you did this? I think I have to measure that or check that against my values and my intentions. And I have to decide what's more important to me. And ultimately what you think and what you want to do should be the sort of North star creatively and professionally. Otherwise you're this sort of finger to the wind person who doesn't stand for anything. And fundamentally, whatever you make is insincere

and hollow, right? Like we want a politician to do what they think is right. Of course, we want to be in alignment a lot of the times, but if someone's only doing what the polls are saying in a given moment, we also don't respect and like that person, right? So you have to, you care, but not too much. And then we can sift down. I have a round table of eight.

Yeah, like your sort of board of advisors. Yeah, so those eight that earned a right at my table, And sift down, I have a round table of eight. Yeah. Like your sort of board of advisors. Yeah. So those eight that earned a right at my table, those are the ones that I palpate first. Sure. So tuning fork internal against virtues and purpose. And I'm going to get to the purpose in a minute. Then the next external signal is that eight. Yeah. And to have a seat at the table for me, you can have any level of discernment you want of who makes the table.

Mine is quite simple, is one, they care. Yeah. They've demonstrated that they know my scars. They know my traumas. They know my ambitions. They know my hopes and dreams. They've invested time under tension. Yeah.

And so I need that. So that's the first. That way, when I say, hey, Ryan, if you're at the table, what do you think about this? It's not just an opinion. It's actually thoughtfully, contextually embraced. Like for you, Mike, I might do something different, but for you. And then the second variable is they understand and they've embodied living in a high stress public amphitheater where it's like that context is really important as well. So those are the two variables to me. It's like, you've done some shit and you've got time under tension in this relationship where I know you also care and I care in return. Well, and I think that's so important too, right?

Because feedback is a central part of life. That's right. But if you don't know what you're trying to do, if you don't know your purpose, you're at the mercy of potentially incorrect or inappropriate or ill-timed feedback, right? And feedback can be very, very dangerous. Yes, right. There's low performance feedback, high performance feedback. There's inaccurate. You want to almost create a sanctuary of the people where you get the feedback from.

Yes, because that person could be telling you what they would do or what other people do. And you have to know, well, here's what I'm trying to do. So I'm going to take the parts of that feedback that get me closer to what I'm trying to accomplish that align with my purpose. And then I'm comfortable, confident, ignoring the stuff that's well-intentioned, maybe even right in other circumstances. But for what I'm trying to do, don't make sense. And here's even one more layer of complication of those folks. Many of our closest people like who we are in reflection to who they are. You see where I'm going with this? So let's say that you and I are trying to sort something out and I make $100,000 and you make $100,000 or you make $102,000 and I make $98,000.

So we're in some range here. And you say, hey, Mike, what do you think? I'm thinking about this thing. And that's going to put you on the map to like $100 million. Yeah. And I say, I don't know. That doesn't seem quite right. Yeah.

It's not because the idea isn't right. It's because I'm presenting that the idea seem quite right. Yeah. Like it's not because like, it's not because the idea isn't right. It's because I'm presenting that the idea is not right. But it's really because I don't want to feel a kind of way around you. Yeah. So that reflection of I'm comfortable, I like you because we're kind of close in how we live our lives.

And yeah, your friend comes to you with advice saying, hey, I'm thinking about moving across the country to take this other job. It might be great for them, but you're inherently threatened or saddened by the idea that they were getting up and leaving. And then what does it say about you for staying? It's this whole, we're very complicated people. That's right. I remember I gave a talk to the pirates one time, the Pittsburgh pirates, and I was walking around spring training when they were telling me they

had this interesting rule, which I've thought a lot about since. They were saying one of the rules in the organization is you can't go up to a guy and give feedback. Like you can't give feedback to an athlete unless you have a relationship with that person. That's right. Because they don't want just somebody going around and meddling, not knowing what that person is working on, not knowing what feedback they just got from somebody else 10 minutes ago, not knowing how that person responds to feedback, what's the most conducive way to get feedback. So, you know, information could be correct, but it's lacking the context needed for it to be successful. And so there was this idea of like, you got to give people space and you got to respect each person's sort of individual sanctuary,

especially in a kind of a training or a developmental environment. You can't just go around willy-nilly just, you know, sort of firing feedback out because it could do more harm than good. Oh, it's great. And so that's, I was nine seasons at the Seattle Seahawks and we built a, we had a lot of winning 2012 to 2021. We had a lot of winning in two Super Bowls. One, we won in dramatic fashion. And I like where you go first. And when we lost in dramatic fashion as well, but there was a lot of winning going on. And we only talked about winning once a year. So we were not an outcome focused and we had a really favorable, you know, it's rare to get to the Super Bowl.

Like there's some clubs in the NFL that have never been. And so we put a tall tent pole. What am I trying to say? We put a tall flag down that we are a relationship-based organization. because it's the relationship of knowing the person that you can, in context to who they are, who they're trying to become, that you're able to provide some sort of feedback in that loop. So relationship-based organization first that is developmentally minded. So we're trying to get better, but we're grounded in the relationships. This is not therapy at work, right? That's not what this is. This is getting to know somebody so that you can support, then challenge them to be their

very best, even when it's hard. Yeah. So that's kind of the formula that sits underneath. When I hear you talk about the pirates, I'm like, that sounds familiar. So let's talk about being outcome-based or process-based, because I think that's something I've thought a lot about. Like, I feel like as I have done this longer, I care less and less about results. Care is maybe the wrong word. I think less and less about results. Like with my first book,

how does it do on the bestseller list? How many copies is it selling? And I'm checking all the time. There used to be this tool called NovelRank, and you could see where your book ranked on every Amazon in every country in real time. And thankfully it went away because it wasted so much of my time. But I would say today, I wouldn't even think of checking something like that. Like, I don't know what the sales are on the books. And I am always surprised when I find out. You're like the king.

Feed them all cake. I know a queen said it, but like, you know, like, well, it's going to be a bestseller. Well, I just, I think about it less because what I'm thinking about is what's more in my control which is how is the work that i'm doing right and and you have a great graphic in here let me see if i did it i loved it uh you have this thing which is basically the essence of stoicism uh right yeah the essence of stoicism epictetus says that our chief task in life is separating things into two categories, that which is in our control and that which is not in our control. And ultimately,

effort is in our control and outcomes are not in our control. Outcomes are related to things that we control and often a byproduct of it, but there's not a one-to-one relationship, especially as you get further and further out. So you could be maybe to a certain degree winning is in your control, but people liking or respecting you or recognizing how magnificent your accomplishment was, definitely not, right? And I don't think winning is anywhere in your control. You can influence it in great ways, but ultimately you've got a competitor that is trying to do the same thing. So there's, yeah, I'm not interested in the conversations about winning and losing.

It's deleveraged. I'm now in a deleveraged position if I'm trying to control something that's not in my control. And so to put yourself in the greatest position of leverage, focus on the things. And I would say go one step further than focus. Work on mastering the things that are a hundred percent under your control. Sure. And like, I'd love to have a conversation with you about something that I think stoicism is missed. Oh. Uh-oh.

Let's hear it. Yeah. How dare you? It just got thick in here, didn't it? Is the way that we work with emotions. Okay. And so there's an ordering in stoicism about thoughts. Get your thoughts right.

Sure. You know, work from that place. And I go, yeah, thoughts are upstream. We know from best-in-class modern science that it is biddirectional. Thoughts influence emotions, emotions influence thoughts. And then in between we've got feelings, which is our subjective interpretation of the raw data of emotions. So feelings are like private and they're internal and emotions are public and observable. Sure. So heart pounding is an emotion. Yeah. And then how you label it is your feeling.

Okay. So I think we need more compassion. I think we need to work from emotion because we've numbed them for so long and we've been afraid of them for so long. And I do think at the time of stoicism, it made perfect sense not to be run over by emotions. And look, if you're going to be over-emotional, you can't do and make the hard decisions. I can't count on you because we've got hard decisions to make. I need to kill a hundred thousand people.

Or you could be killed at any moment. Your kid could die of some terrible disease at any moment. And if you panic and you're overrun by emotion, then you can't make the clear decision. Because we do know that emotions cloud judgment. That's a brain structure type of thing. Okay. Now, but if you can dance well with emotion and you can dance well with thoughts and you can play there just a little bit more, I think the world is calling for not an uncontrollable emotional human, but a thoughtful, compassionate, dare I say, person that is working to make something better. That's where purpose is so important. Yeah.

Because purpose tends to be about something that's bigger than you. Sure. Right. And that tends to be about the planet or other people or animals or something, right? Agreed. So, I would love some, I'm caught in this and I've been looking forward to talking to you about this because I think you'll have a point of view here that I'm missing. Well, there's this stereotype of the Stoics being totally emotionless, being robotic,

sort of stuffing it all down, you know, suppressing it or being somehow getting to some monk-like transcendent state where you no longer feel emotions or anything at all, which I think totally misses it. So I did this book a few years ago called Lives of the Stoics, where instead of sort of really like diving into what the Stoics said, I just tried to write these biographies of who they were. Now the Stoics got married, the Stoics had kids, the Stoics made works of art, the Stoics played sports, the Stoics fought

for political causes. There was this whole generation of Stoics called the Stoic Opposition, which was basically a series of resistance fighters who gave their lives in many cases against the tyranny of like several bad emperors in a row, including Nero. So, and there's even one Stoic, there's a Stoic named Chrysippus who died of laughter. Like he was just laughing so hard he was old. He probably had a heart attack and died. So, I think when we actually look at who they were in practice, it's very different than maybe what comes off in the page. And so my sort of take, and maybe this is a modern interpretation,

which I'm also okay with, like they're dead. They can't get mad at me for changing things. But my interpretation is that the Stoics were not about the suppression of the emotion, but about understanding and processing and then hopefully making fewer decisions on those emotions. So I like your distinction between having the emotion and the feeling, like being angry and punching someone because you're angry are different things, right? So to me, stoicism is the stopping yourself before you throw the punch

as opposed to stopping yourself before you get upset that someone called you a terrible name. Yeah, and then the thing that I wrestle with, and just like I said early on, like stoicism is awesome and I've been attracted to it. And I wouldn't attracted to it.

And I wouldn't have thought this probably five years ago, that, wait, we need more compassion. Agreed. And then if you square it with relationship-based. So that's where, at Finding Mastery, we're using that in our culture to be a relationship-based organization as well. And to be in a relationship-based organization, I need to know not only your thoughts. That's good. I need to know your history. I need to know the way you feel about your future and your history.

And it's the feelings that allows for the deeper knowing. And so I just want to ring the bell a little bit here about compassion's a really good thing in a world that is thrashing. Of course. And there's a vulnerability to be compassionate. So the cardinal Stoic virtues are courage, which I think people associate with the Stoics. Then there's discipline, which people associate with the Stoics. Then there's wisdom, which people associate with the Stoics. Then there's wisdom, which people associate with the Stoics. But the fourth one, or I guess it would be the third, is the one I'm writing about now, which I think is less discussed, sort of skipped over, is the virtue of justice, which is where I would put things like compassion and empathy and fairness and kindness and caring

about the world and trying to have a positive impact. That's interesting, yeah. So it's like, it's not like it was this minor afterthought, like a core pillar, like one of the four pillars is this idea of justice. And to me, one of the ways I've thought about this is like, okay, stoicism in what I control says like, hey, try not to go around being offended all the time. Try not to be overwhelmed by your emotions, et cetera. But that doesn't change the fact that other people get offended and other people have emotions. And so I don't see there's anything contradictory about caring about that, right? So stoicism isn't, it's funny, there was this case a few years ago where this guy was just a real asshole at his job and he gets fired for being an asshole.

And he says, he ends up suing, I think this was in the UK, he sues the employer for discriminating against him and his religion, which he said was stoicism. And his stoicism said that he didn't have to care about other people, he could dress how he wanted, he didn't have to, it was basically like he was saying stoicism allowed him to be a jerk, which I think is totally missing the point, right?

Yeah, of course. I don't think there's any contradiction about empathy in stoicism. It's saying, hey, you should probably go around and you yourself should probably not be an open wound that's horribly offended by what other people say all the time. But that doesn't mean that you get to hold other people

to that standard and say, yeah, look, I just call it like I see it, radical candor here. Like, I don't, I'm not polite. You know, so for me, I don't, I think we're probably more in alignment here than people might think. And one of the things that actually gets me upset

and I find myself pushing back on it again to go to our point about not caring what the audience thinks. Like I know if I talk about courage, the audience, the stoic audience likes it. If I talk about self-discipline, the audience likes it. If I talk about wisdom and how to learn and get smart, the audience likes it.

But if I talk about justice, then people get upset, right? And I can see people unsubscribe. I see them get mad. If I present stoicism as here's a recipe for being a better, more productive sociopath, that finds a larger audience and is less upsetting than if I go, hey, it's important that you give a shit about other people.

And it's important that you give a shit about the planet and that ethics matter. So I talk about those things at significant expense to myself because I think they're important. I think it's a really important part of Stoicism. And I think it's why when you look at the lives of the Stoics, you see that they got involved in politics and they participated and they served their country. They were involved. We have this understanding of philosophy as something that withdraws you from the world, which is what the Epicureans did, right? The Epicureans retreat to this garden and they work on sort of perfecting their own development. And stoicism, I think at its core says, that's not right. Somebody has to

be involved because if you seed the field, somebody else takes over. And so long story short, I do think there is a place for emotion, particularly compassion and stoicism. And I think caring and participating is not just like a part of it, but like a key obligation of the philosophy. What do you think the extension of stoicism is? What does that mean? So stoicism was built in a particular era. Sure. And they didn't have access to cognitive psychology. They didn't neuroscience.

They didn't have access to some of the science that we have now. They did a pretty damn good job, you know, in a lot of things. And I just wonder what the next version or the extension of, and you might say, no, they got it right. And I'm doubling down.

I definitely don't say that because here's what's interesting about Stoicism. So Stoicism is founded by this guy named Zeno in the third century BC. So basically the death of Alexander the Great, Zeno washes up in Athens and starts his philosophy. Now Marcus Aurelius is writing meditations like around 160 AD. So here you have 500 plus years just between two well-known Stoics. And I don't say it, I wouldn't say it ends with Marcus Aurelius, but he's sort of the last well-known of the Stoics, right? But so there's five centuries there of evolution. It's not exactly the same.

And in fact, one of the interesting things that scholars sort of note is that there is this kind of, they call it a softening. I would say it's an improvement, but the sort of harsh individualistic Stoicism of Zeno, which is rooted in from his influences in the cynics, softens by the time it gets to Marcus Aurelius because the Stoics take such a prominent role in public life. They serve as diplomats and generals and politicians and then ultimately the culmination of sort of a philosopher king. But they get involved in life and you can't be involved in life and not see that things are complicated. You can't, you know, the Stokes would say the only thing that matters in life is virtue, right? Well, that's true. But like,

if you go around as this sort of self-righteous, holier-than-thou person, you're going to have trouble operating in a political world that requires compromise and collaboration for which there are no perfect solutions. So he says that there's this softening of Stoicism when they have to become more realistic and then to participate in life. So all of which is to say, first off, even in Stoicism, when it was what you might call a living philosophy, there's an immense amount of changes

and each individual Stoic puts their own stamp on it. Now, flash forward 2000 years later, are we obligated to stick with what Seneca talked about? I don't think so at all. Yeah, that's the question, right? Like, what is the neo-Stoicism? What is the avant? I think that stipulates that it was never changing. So one of the things I love about Seneca's writing, Seneca is by no means a perfect person, but Seneca in his writings, the philosopher he quotes the most is Epicurus, who he ostensibly agrees with

or disagrees with way more than he agrees with. And he says, I read like a spy in the enemy's camp. And he says, I'll quote a bad author if the line is good. Oh my God. And so to me, what he's saying there, what we can take from that is that take and use anything that works from anyone as long as it's consistent with the sort of core values

of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. So you think about like, it's not until effectively Gandhi in the middle of the 19th century that the idea of passive resistance or civil disobedience or not solving your problems by killing people is invented. That's an incredible thing, and I think we skip over that. like not solving your problems by killing people is invented. Right. So, so like, that's an incredible thing.

And I think we skip over that. Right. We like people invented, like people invented things that have made just not just invented technological devices, but we invented things like ways of thinking about things that were profoundly changing. That's very cool. Yeah.

And so, so when, when And so for the Stoics, the only way to solve a problem was to go to war. 2,000 years later, it's like, oh, hey, actually you can protest, you can list your grievances, you can resist. There's all these other things you can do. So I think we would be doing the Stoics a disservice if we did not incorporate those things into it.

Again, provided that it is consistent with the core virtues, which I think are pretty expansive. Yeah, I do as well. And I'm reminded of a, this was an early, go back to early days of college for me one more time, is that it was the first, it was the past of like 11 world religions. And so we're studying all 11. Yeah. Sikhism to Zoroastrianism to Judaism. And so we're studying all 11.

And I had this wonderful idea that I was going to stand up and say, you know, if we combined, this is my humble opinion. If we combine this, this, this, there's a commonality here, here, here. And if we cobbled together a couple of these, like these common ideas, like, and so the professor says, thank you.

I just want to make sure I'm understanding your point of view here is that you believe that you've discerned deeper than Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and Muhammad. I just want to make sure. Yeah, sure. Right. In your, you know, six days of class years. So it is so easy to opine from a distance. Of course. As opposed to develop from within.

And this is where I think we come back to that signal to noise ratio. Is for us to understand what the signal is. Yeah. And if the stoic approach can help, awesome. Yeah. And if the stoic approach can help, awesome. And if it's resting on a bed of virtues that are generative rather than self-serving. And so that to me is one of the bedrock of the whole thing. Yeah, and not all the innovations are these massive breakthroughs in like science or psychology or neuroscience. Although there's many of those that we have to incorporate,

but like I'm fond of that idea in recovery groups of, you know, the acronym HALT, like hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. Oh yeah. That you have to think about if you're any of those things before you make a decision. Yeah. So nowhere does Marx realize or Seneca or Epictetus

as they're talking about being rational and not being driven by your emotion. Nowhere do they go like, have you eaten today? But like, that's a huge part of being better at these things. That's right. Right. And so the idea that we're just supposed to stick with what they came up with 2000 years ago is naive, but also that fits pretty seamlessly into the, you know, if they're saying like, hey, you know, don't trust your first impressions, right? Well, that's not just, hey, what do I think about this?

But also we now understand that what we think about it is formed by what's going on inside of our body. That's right. That's the embodied cognition piece. And so I think we have to incorporate all that stuff. Even by our gut biome. Yeah, of course. Yeah, right. Which they didn't have access to the science, but they had great insight and intuition about how things were working.

It also makes you way more empathetic of other people if you understand this, right? Like, so you have kids and you go, my kid's not an asshole. They just skipped their nap, right? My kid's not a monster. Their routine was disrupted. And so you get really good at separating between the behavior and the person. Hopefully, you can give that gift to yourself. But hopefully, definitely, you can realize that things are always happening to people. And if we can be kind and empathetic and separate between the person and the behavior, it allows us to be more empathetic

and then also not be so frustrated, right? Not like, ironically, Socrates said that, you know, nobody does wrong on purpose. And then we have this understanding of, oh, okay, why are people doing things that are wrong? And then we can, it helps us manage our emotions, but then it also helps us understand and appreciate what other people are going through. This is one of the things that my wife and I, we've been married a long time, like we're great friends. And I come from an approach that I don't know anyone that's a villain in their own story.

Yes. Right. And so, so we're looking for reasons why we are slighted or agitated or tired or fatigued. And so that helps me give a pass to people to look at the behavior in a different way and not assault the person. Yeah. And she says, you're making up stories. That's bad behavior. Sure. That is unacceptable. Yeah. Right? Like, I don't care. I don't care what the deal is.

That's not right. And so that's one of our tensions. Sure. And one of her virtues that she thinks is not a healthy virtue is fairness. That fairness is not? A healthy virtue to rest on. And I'm like, yeah. And so, and we've had a lot of talk.

So walk me through that. So fairness, that she feels it's a dangerous duping that we should be in a world of, that we should build our- To insist that things are fair? No, to build children's philosophy that let's work out of fairness. Okay fairness as opposed to, and the reason being is because there's wolves in the world and there's slippery folks that are trying to take advantage.

I happen to believe the world is dangerous and hostile. I don't think it's set up for my success or your success or happiness for all. Like it's a pretty toxically dangerous world. Yeah. Okay. So put a pin in that. So then we, we raise these young babes saying, act out of fairness, but you're, you're, you might be working in tandem with a wolf in sheep's clothing. And so, or a selfish person that's trying to get theirs rather than support yours. So it's an interesting philosophical position about the concept of fairness. Yeah, it is tricky because so you have this virtue of justice and we control whether we behave with justice, but we don't really control whether other people act fairly or rightly. But should we let the fact that other people act that way

make us not act that way? I think that's the tricky part. I think that that's where society is holding together loosely is that many people hold the position of my wife, which is like, well, if that's going to happen, I need to protect myself. Okay. If there's a bunch of wolves out there, I can't just kind of walk out there and say, hey guys, let's share the meat. Let's share the cockers. Can I get some? You know, as opposed to other virtues of maybe kindness, but not fairness is an interesting split between the two. So I, I take your point, which is, um, no, my actions need to be, um, my own, not in only reaction to somebody else's actions. So, yeah.

So I think that is a tension, even in the Stoic texts, is that you have this moral compass, you have this standard you hold yourself to, and then you have to deal with the fact that the vast majority of people in the world, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, do not operate the same way. And there's this great line in Meditations where Marcus goes, remember you do not live in Plato's Republic. And he didn't set up the system. He didn't choose to be in the system.

He has to operate inside the system. And I think there is this idea, for instance, I forget what, maybe it's Kennedy said it. He said like, you know, parents want their kids to be president, but they don't want them to be politicians. And in fact, we need more politicians. Like political success or operating in a political domain is a skill that requires mastery just like any other skill.

And oftentimes what happens is you either have complete monsters who have that skill or you have great human beings who enter that world without any of the skill. And they think they're living in Plato's Republic where the just cause always wins. And if I can just give the right speech, everyone will give me a standing ovation

and then vote to fund Ukraine or whatever. but that's not fucking how it works. And the system we have is set up to mitigate some of those toxic impulses, but they nevertheless exist. And you have to figure out how to be savvy inside them. And I've always found this, like, I'll recommend Robert Green's works and people go, oh, it's so awful. I'm like, if you think that, you're the person who needs to read it more than anyone, because you are saying so awful. I'm like, if you think that, you're the person who needs to read it more than anyone because you are saying that because you don't like something or you don't want it to be true, that it's not true.

And that's not how it is. There's a reaction to the laws of power. Is that the one? Yeah. So are you, do you have your eye on campaign 2032 or something? Like, are you like- I definitely not.

I have zero interest in uh in participating in politics in that sense but um are you are do you do you think of yourself as a philosopher or as a commentary on philosophy i don't know i mean i think there's in the world we live in i feel like there's something a little delusional, grandiose about calling yourself a philosopher. So I prefer to see, I think it's healthier to see myself as a, number one, as a person who's trying to use philosophy in my life. And then number two, as a writer who happens to write about philosophical ideas. And then if somebody else wants to put those two things together and call

me a philosopher, I'm not going to argue with you, but it's not important. And in fact, maybe dangerous for that to be incorporated into my self-identity. So I'm glad we bring it up because we go after in the book, a performance-based identity. Yeah. And that is one of the great on-ramps to a radical fear of people's opinions. Yeah. Right? And it makes perfect sense to me that in certainly the West, we are obsessed with performance. Yes.

Like at age eight, we're given grades. So we like performance now. So it makes perfect sense that people would mingle their identity with performance. And so it's, it's a thing called a performance-based identity and a performance-based identity basically is I am what I do relative to how well you do it. So it's not just, I am what I do, which a healthier version is I am who I am. Okay. But it's, I am what I do relative to how well I do it next to you. Yeah. And that's where it gets really, really tricky because now I need to be better than you. And maybe I'm a friend or maybe

I'm a competitor or whatever. Competitors can be friends as well. So this, this idea of having a performance-based identity, the work is to decouple who I am from what I do. Yes. And that takes a very long time. I heard it in what you just said. Well, my friend, Austin Kleon, who's amazing, he's done a bunch of great books, but he says the problem is too many people

want to be the noun rather than do the verb, right? So I like writer versus author even because what I do is write things, right? And I do it every day. And the fact that those things are at some point packaged together, called a book, and then flung to the public to sell or not sell, each step of that, it's getting further away from what I control. And fundamentally, I think more importantly, getting further away from what I do. Right. And so I think so often, like, are you, do you see yourself as a, as a point guard or do you see yourself as an, an all-star, right. Or an NBA star or a team captain, like you start to get towards

roles as opposed to like jobs or status. I think both of those are equally dangerous. or an NBA star or a team captain, like you start to get towards roles as opposed to like jobs or status. I think both of those are equally dangerous. Yes. You know, which is underneath is, so I, two funny stories. One, well, I'll leave the humor decision up to you. Right, that's not in your control.

Yeah, right. That's right. I'll be the judge. The first one actually is not funny at all. But the second one is, I walked into a fitness gym. Yeah. Right. That's right. The first one actually is not funny at all. But the second one is, um, I walked into a, a, a fitness gym and it was one of those kinds of structured classes, gyms. And the, uh, the person behind the desk comes up and goes, are, are, are you, are you Mike Gervais? Like, and I go, oh, thank you. Yeah. And, and he says, um, man, I don't want to bug you. I know you're going into doing this thing. And, um, but I'd love to, thank you. Yeah. And, and he says, man, I don't want to bug you. I know you're going

into doing this thing. And, but I'd love to talk to you about like, you know, at some point I said, okay, no problem. So I come in a week later, I'm back in there and he says, you know, could you just really quickly, could you tell me how you've become, you know, like what you have to love to do what you do at some point. And I said, oh, no problem. It's like, you know, like, I'd love to do what you do at some point. I said, oh, no problem. It's like, you know, undergraduate, a graduate degree in this, PhD in psychology. Then you got to get licensed. And then you really don't know anything. So you need some real kind of time under attention. And I could see kind of this glazed over look.

I said, it's about 16 to 20 years before you're kind of in the space, right? And of course, I'm pointing to my applied art science of psychology. And he says, wait, to be a podcaster? See what I thought, which has happened to me before is, and this is why audience and fame can be dangerous, right? Is you get like, you get used to people recognizing that you're coming up to you and talking to you, even if it, even if it's not like at some huge level, like the way that like, you know, a world famous person would be, but you get used to occasionally people recognize you. And I remember I was at the airport a couple months ago, and this person sort of comes up to me, and I could see their, anyways, they come up to me, and they start

talking to me out of my headphones. And I thought they were coming up to me as a fan, right? And so you go into like the, this is, when you've identified yourself as a person who gets recognized right yeah I'm going into that interaction right and really they just wanted me to move like I was in the way of something you know what I mean and so you get you it they say fame is a mask that eats at the face it you're I the thing you do you become conscious of your status or role in the world. And then it changes literally how you interpret reality. If I was a regular person, and I am a regular person, but if I didn't have the experiences that I had, my first, my mind would never have even conceived that this person was recognizing me or that I was important.

There's a status differential or whatever. My initial impulse would be, am I in somebody's way? You know? And so, so like when you identify with something or things become normalized to you, it, it fundamentally shapes your, your understanding of reality and usually not in a good way. A hundred percent. That's so good. That's so funny. Oh, cool, man. But that's, I think that in your case, I would, I would say you, you pass the test in the sense that you went towards the harder thing that you do and the training and the work that went into it as opposed to, you know, the easy, because a lot of the, the problem is, and I think Austin's right, people want to do, be the noun, not do the verb. And people want to be famous as opposed to do things

for which the byproduct is some level of fame. Like I'm wearing an Iron Maiden shirt, but one of my favorite quotes from the lead singer of Iron Maiden is he said, he said, fame is the excrement of creativity. He's like, it's the sl long enough that you accumulate an audience of people who have seen you do what you do, then the byproduct of that is fame. You can be a famous astronaut. You could be a famous chemist. You can be famous for many things. So you could say, hey, I need to go do something and I'm going to focus on that process. And hopefully or potentially the byproduct of it is that a large amount of people know who I am, which is not as great as people think it is, but it does happen. Or you could be someone that says, I want a large amount of people to know who I am. And then that's where you get reality TV stars or Donald Trump or whatever, right?

Like not great outcomes. Like I live in LA and it's spits people right out. Of course. Like it's just such a heavy place because they're attracted. So many are attracted to the lights. Yeah. And if you don't have some roots, you know, like you get spun quickly. Or if you don't have a craft that you can fall back on, because again, there's so many things that are outside your control. How, how quick you get traction, how your things do. There's so much between you and, and those things that you are nice to have. Like the Stokes had this great concept they call there's, there's, there's things that are up to us and there's things that are not up to us. But they say

there's kind of this middle category of what they call preferred indifference not indifference ence but indifference like ents right um so that they're like if you work really hard on a book it's the best thing you've ever done and you're so proud of it and um if if i asked you do you want it to sell a million copies or zero copies right well the stoics would say it's not fully in your control so you should should be indifferent. But you obviously have a preference, right? Like, would you prefer to be born really tall or really short? You have a preference, right? Would you rather be poor or rich? You have a preference, right? Now, the Stoic would say you should be able to work with either, right? And it neither says anything about you as a person, but preference.

And so as long as that preference doesn't fundamentally change who you are or make you vulnerable to being unhappy if you don't get that thing, it's, I think, okay to have a preference. Yeah. Preferences are cool. Yeah. And I think if you see it as a preference, then it's great. But the problem is if you see it as a necessity or you see it as a preference, then it's great. But the problem is if you see it as a necessity or you see it as a just reward. Like that was my other thing

when I was thinking about fear of what other people think is Mark Stratus has this line in meditations where he says, stop asking for the third thing. So he says, you've done something good and someone has benefited from it. He says, stop asking for the third thing. So he says, you've done something good and someone has benefited from it. He says, stop asking for the third thing. And he says, the third thing is gratitude, recognition, appreciation, compensation, whatever.

Like the different situations demand different, provoke from us a desire for a different third thing. But I like the idea of like, do the thing, hope it, you know, do the thing so it lands up to you. It's, it's in your control. And then not needing that third thing. That's a pure place to come from. It's a little bit like the Zen insight about the two arrows, the second arrow. So the first arrow, the first arrow that's shot

is something that happens. Like it's something outside of you that happens. And maybe you, you're crossing, you know, your nice little street here and somebody hits you. Right. So that's the first arrow. It's an arrow you get hit with, not an arrow you're shooting. That's right. Yeah. And the second arrow is the one you shoot and it's your, it is your critical or judgmental or hostile or whatever interpretation. So the second arrow is the one you shoot. The first arrow is the one that happens to you and the second arrow is the one you shoot. So the second arrow is suffering. The first arrow might be pain.

And then the second arrow is suffering. So be careful of the second arrow is the thought. And if you square those two insights with the Stoics, it's like you're in control how you shoot the second arrow, whether you shoot it or not. Sure. And so I think it's a pretty cool way of thinking about it. Actually, the Stoic sort of explanation that I knew it, but it was funny.

I saw it when I spoke at the Pirates. They had this on the wall. You know, you go into the NFL. The second arrow, not the second arrow. No, the St on the wall. You know, you go into the NFL- The second era, not the second era. No, the stoic line. You know, you go into like locker rooms and sometimes like it's, all cliches come from something at some point, right? And a lot of these unattributed quotes, actually there is an attribution at some point. So they had it on the wall as just like a line, a commandment inside their organization. They didn't know who said it, but it actually comes

from Epictetus. He says, it's not things that upset us. It's our judgment of things. So of course the first arrow does hurt, but if you tell yourself, it's a metaphorical arrow, right? So it's the telling yourself you've been screwed over, that you've been singled out, that your life is over. It's the story you tell yourself about that thing. That's what the second arrow is. That's right. And I think one of the deepest, most rewarding states, continued states that you

can get into is a love affair with the unfolding present moment, a love affair with experience. And I learned that from a mentor friend, John Kabat-Zinn, the idea that wherever you go, there you are. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like he's such a rich, amazing human, but the idea is, do you have a love affair with the present moment with experience itself? And if you could fall in love with the unfolding, unpredictable, unknown moment as opposed to be anxious, protection, try to control stuff. Just be in love with showing up and experiencing this moment. It's an amazingly powerful way to go through life.

You end up being in life rather than trying to calculate how to achieve or work from an ambitious standpoint. And that does not mean that you're just going to kind of be a tumbling weed or just kind of go wherever the wind flows because you've got some bellwethers, you've got your virtues, you've got your purpose, but do you have a love affair or are you afraid of the unknown present moment? Wait, wait, wait, let me finish this thought. I'm rolling. Is that, I think this is why I love, it became apparent about halfway through working

with the Seahawks is that it became so clear that the way they fundamentally organize their life is to go embrace the unknown and to do it publicly, that we see that. We don't know how the outcome's going to go and they bring all of themselves into it. The ones that are like, I think, noble in the approach. And then one more layer to that is that that's what they do on Wednesday and Thursday and Friday. And they don't do it publicly, but they do it in front of their peers. They get to the messy edge where they could fall into a thousand pieces and they do it in front of people that decide whether they get to play on Sunday or not. Yeah. So people with real power and control and your peers that are, by the way, trying to take your job. Some of them, there's a depth chart, like everyone's trying to get the

starting job. So I have such regard for the fundamental decisions they've made and the fundamental commitment to go to the unknown, the messy edge at the unknown, that to me is way more important than celebrating or thinking that they're born different. Celebrating the achievements, you know, when they're on the podium or whatever, and then thinking that they're born different. They practice fundamentally to be their very best in relatively dangerous environments emotionally, because like you got to get to the edge where you don't know if you're good or not. And there's people watching saying not good enough. Yeah. Cause you brought that up. What it spurred in me was this idea of like, okay, do you love football or basketball or surfing or golf or writing or, you know, trading stocks? Do you love

that? Or do you love winning, right? Do you love being seen as great at those things? And the person who loves all of it, like I just, I love the squeaking of the shoes on the floor and I love getting in the pool at five. If you love the thing, you're gonna do it longer and better and be able to ride the ups and downs of it than the person who, you know, it turns out they've only liked it because it's been going their way a long time.

That's right. And I remember Shaka Smart was talking about this, who we both know. He was at Texas, now he's at Marquette. He was saying that like kids will quit and they'll say they just don't feel the same way about the game anymore. And he's like, is that really true?

Or was what you thought was your feeling about the game, the fact that you were always the best and it always went your way? You were 6'4 as a sophomore in high school and it was easy and you got lots of attention. This is the poison of external recognition. And so if you deconstruct motivation on four variables, you could think about internal and external.

And so the external, there's external rewards and external drivers. And then, so the way we think about is two words, extrinsic and external. Yeah. So, and then you go inside and you go intrinsic external or internal. And so the intrinsic is like, do you have, do you love the unlock? Yeah. Do you love the way it feels to figure something out?

And then internally driven is like, so that's the reward. The internal drive is like, you don't have to wake me up. You don't have to like tap my shoulder to, you know, get ready to go to like, I'm driven, but the rewards are the unlock, the love affair with figuring things out. And if I really love that, I got to keep going to the edge. Yeah. I got to keep getting to the frontier because that's when it, that's where it happens most often. Sure.

But those are, those are harder to come by because the world outside of us is giving us lots of externals. Hey, you need to do this. You need to do that. Oh my God, you're so amazing. Sure. This is like, are you ready for, you know, next week's game against the crosstown rival? You know, all of that external noise definitely clouds the internal signal. Yeah. Right. But so, so the tricky part of that is, so if you have that intrinsic unlock that gets you motivated and then internally motivated, that's what allows you to keep doing it, to do it for a long time.

But then do you find that can also be hard to turn off? Oh yeah. Like how to stop. Well, yeah, there's a near obsession when you really love the unlocking because it's such an electric embodied experience when those ahas happen. Actually, we can see the signature. It's gamma brainwaves take place, which is similar to a flow state experience, but it's the insight. And I think the philosophers were like, they would spend time discerning, thinking deep, going deeper, deeper to try to get to the essence of something. I got it. So that's a gamma

brainwave experience. That's an aha moment. We call it insight and we call it in the performance world and unlock insight, unlock aha. That stuff is so embodied and rich that there's an addiction to that. I only wanted to, I didn't care about working with pro athletes. I only wanted to work with people that were as obsessed as I was at trying to figure out how to get better. I was just thinking there's basically been like one boxer ever who retired like at the right time. So you get this, it's on the one hand being extrinsically and externally motivated. It's great as long as everything goes your way, which is unlikely, but it works. It can work. But so it's better to be

that sort of intrinsically motivated thing. And it's better than being at the mercy of everything going your way. I think you need both high. I don't think, I think it's, before you go to the boxer, I don't think that this Pollyannish approach, is that the right word, Pollyannish?

Pollyannish idea that intrinsic needs to be the number one, as long as it's high. You can have equally high external drivers and rewards. That's cool. If you are the best in the world and people like the thing that you're doing and they want to give you money, that's okay. I remember when my books first started to come out in sports, you called me and you gave me a bunch of advice and you were like, one thing you were like, don't ever talk to a sports team for free. And I was like, why? And I was like, you were like, they're huge multimillion dollar, sometimes billion dollar organizations. And they all pretend like they don't have money, but they do. And you should, if you provide value, you should be paid for it. And I like, cause there's some part of you, if you are intrinsically or internally motivated, you're

like, I'm just happy to be here. Just happy to do what I do. There's an unlock here. Like we're going to figure it out. That's all great. But you should also, you should, you're not doing yourself of one of the things I've learned. You're not doing yourself any favors by not getting paid the most amount you can get paid for that thing. And thing and i want to go back to boxers right and um they're not put if you don't value it yeah in that way they're not going to really value it so it's always anytime i've done less than my fee or not for it i always regret it in that it just turns out to be a disaster like that's right it's it takes a lot it's it's just there's something clean about I show up, you pay me this like businesses. We developed this, these practices for a reason.

That's right. It's nice and clean that way. And so, yeah, man, that's cool. I think about it all the time. That's awesome. Okay, good. Yeah. And I think that for, um, for all of us, like the way i make decisions there's three vectors one is um is there an economic uh reward yeah um does it move the needle towards goodness yeah okay so there's there's something compelling or purposeful that that is is taking place and is it going to be fun yeah is it cool so i need two of those three and i just need to know if i get all three it's awesome yeah but i definitely need two of those three and I just need to know, if I get all three, it's awesome. Yeah. But I definitely need two of those three. Yeah.

I don't like just showing up and taking money. Of course. If it's show up, take money and it's fun. Yeah. Okay, that's cool. And then, but I definitely need the third one, you know, in there as well. So if you can get all three of those together,

I'm like, this is a home run, are you kidding me? But I guess what I'm saying is intrinsic, extrinsic. The point is some people have the problem. They don't have enough motivation. Then other people, you're just, you just do it longer than you should. You can't, you can't stop doing it because you're back to the identifying with being a thing, getting to do a thing as opposed to what's best for you, what's most sustainable, et cetera. Well, so the professional sport world is really electric. And if you have identified yourself with being a performer, whatever the performance is, one, it's really fun. It's electric. Your identity is merged with it. It's a near death sentence. This is why 87% are divorced, divorced broke a mess within two years of retiring yeah it's

because their identity is so merged with what they do sure so most have to get kicked out i think you'd have to kick me out too yeah right and because it's fun it's amazing but you left i did leave so then you didn't have to kick you out no i i left because um there was a pandemic and i had to move my family up to Seattle to be in the bubble. Right. And so logistically it stopped, but it was a perfect time. So that was great though.

I mean, the pandemic was a forcing function for me in a lot of ways. It just, you get so comfortable doing what you've done and just going along with how things go. Sometimes you need something to come in and force you to get back to your first principles or reevaluate some assumptions. And you go, oh, wait, this isn't the way it should go

or I wanted it to go all the time. And what do I want my life to look like? For me, it was like perfect timing. It wasn't easy, but Coach Carol and I, the head coach of the Seahawks, we had built a business taking best practices in sport, how to train your mind to be your very best. And we crosswalk those into enterprise companies and large corporations.

So when the pandemic hit, it was like, I think it's time to go run that thing full time. What do you think, Pete? And coach. And he says, yeah, like this is eloquent. And so that's where I've been the last handful of years doing that. But it's hard. It's hard to stop. And I think your point is, yeah, a lot of times you have to, something either has to

force you out or you have to literally be forced out. A pandemic. Yeah. Yeah, right. And imagine like if I talk about with my wife all the time, again, best friend, great partner. And she's like, we go up, we go up. Like, if that's what you want to do, we'll kind of uproot. I'm so glad I didn't. Yeah. Right. Like I'm, it's, it's when you can have the internal practice to get

down to the truth of things so that you can discern and you can feel your way in there. See what I did? Yeah. Not just think, but you can think and feel your way in there. It's, it just, I think it gets exponentially easier. All right. So I want to talk about finding mastery for a second, then I'm going to come back to Beethoven, who you talk a lot about in the book. But when you say finding mastery, do you think it's an external thing or is it an internal thing? So there's mastery of self and mastery of craft. I'm far more interested in the internal experience,

the commitment to the path to get to the truth of whatever, what you value, right? So whatever you're attending to. And so it's a, the path of mastery is really what it's about. And so what we're, it's like the approach towards trying to better understand it is what finding means in that sense. And so mastery is mastery of craft and mastery of self. I've sat and asked the question to so many people, you included, like, what do you think about mastery? And most people say, there's like two that didn't say this. I don't know. Like I'm, I love it. Yeah. I don't know if I'm on the path. I think I am, you know, like this idea that it's an unfolding as opposed to, there was two people like, yeah, I have mastered my craft. You know, like most people are like, it's this thing. It's a path. It's a process. It's a, it's a becoming, it's an understanding, it's an unlocking and

I'm committed to it. Yeah. And I'm more interested in mastery of self through craft. Sure. Mastery of craft alone feels hollow. Well, because there's a lot of people who are very good at what they do, but also monsters. Yeah, that's exactly. That's well said. Yeah.

So mastery of self through craft. So the craft is the tool or the utility as opposed to the reversing it, mastery of craft and mastery of self. Yeah, don't you think there's kind of a point so you get really good at something, maybe you get really successful at that thing. It usually happens, but not always. So you get really good at something and then you kind of have this crossroads moment

where you go, is this gonna be my whole thing? Is it going to be everything about me and I'm going to sacrifice everything to maintain it or keep going with it? Or now I have this kind of second challenge, which is how do I integrate this mastery and this success into a seemingly normal, healthy, well-adjusted life, relationships, people, happiness. That's right. Yeah. You're hitting the nail on the head. That's why it's self through craft. Yeah. So the craft can actually change. Yeah. So, you know, you think about Anders Ericsson's work on number of hours, you know, it's not 10,000, it's more like

16 to 20,000. Yeah. And which is fun to be that. They just move the goalposts on you. Oops. Twice now. So this idea that you put in some real work towards something and you have the sense of being artistic with the expression of that craft. You don't need to do another 40 years or 20 years.

Like happy to pivot. That's cool. And there can be, I was sitting with the, he was the CEO of PayPal. He's now the CEO of Nike. And John says he was right in the middle of what he was going to do next. And he was an uber successful CEO.

And he says, I feel like I kind of have golden handcuffs on where the world is expecting me to go back and do that thing because I'm so good at it. And I could do it really well wherever I go next. But I might want to just take pictures. I might want to move into photography. I don't know. Which is, it's not using any of the tactical technical skills of CEO ship, but if he could rest on the skills he's worked that are agnostic to the craft, but consistent with self, then you can apply those somewhere else. And of course we get to crosswalk some of

the skills like athletes get to, they know how to be coached. They know how to work hard. They know how to be on time. They know how to be good teammates. You could crosswalk those into lots of organizational or other places as well. to get to do at the professional level. But then you're saying that 87% of those people, like that, you know, the 0.001%, but 87% of them end up divorced, broke, unhappy, all that stuff, right? Within two years of retirement. So I'm saying you kind of face this second challenge. That's right. Of like going, I'm going to be great at this thing and not let it destroy me. Or I'm going to be great at this and I'm going to be happy. I'm going to be great at this thing and not let it destroy me. Or I'm going to be great at this and I'm going to be happy. I'm going to be happily married.

It's a dangerous proposition. It's very hard to navigate. I had a gentleman who was about four months retired. And he came home from not being recognized at the supermarket. So normally when he goes to a local supermarket and everyone's like, ah, you know, and so he's like, I came home and it was so jarring to me that I turned and said to my wife, you know, I don't know how you're going to give me the love of a hundred thousand screaming fans. And he said to me, I knew my life was in shambles,

like relationship was over. It probably never really was because it was more about me, more about my attention. Something else was subsidizing it. That's a good word. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's kind of, that's how slippery this thing at some point flashes

in their face like, oh God, I don't know who I am. And they don't know who I am anymore. Who am I? I went through that this year. Like the book I was working on was basically done in January. And instead of going into production, I pushed it a year just to have some more space

to do more family stuff, just to kind of rest a little bit. And when I pushed it, I was thinking, I'm tired. I don't want to, because I'm doing this four book series. I was like, I don't think I'm't want to, because I'm doing this four book series. I was like, I don't think I'm ready to just finish this and start the next one. And so I was thinking about it like, hey, this is going to be really restful and regenerative. And it's going to be easier to take time off than to just start, you know, training for the next season, so to speak. And I would say that this year has actually been much harder.

It would have been much easier to just stay at your fighting weight. Run the play. Yeah, and then to stop and try to exist more as a functioning person in a world and a relationship and family. Because it didn't just, hey, I was working eight hours a day on this book

and now I'm not. I was like, it was, well, if you're not doing that, you need to pick the kids up from school. Just way more stuff in life, which I have no problem doing. I've loved doing it. But it challenges you. It's easier to be like a finely tuned machine

that sloughs off all the responsibilities of being a functioning, happy person. And also you're just so busy, you don't have to think about, am I happy? Is this how it should go? How do I want things to be? Why was work such a large part of my life? You know, all that stuff. And so weirdly, the year is harder than doing it the hard way. Probably an outsized impact for the health of your life later, you know, like outsized, like a real one and, and yes, harder. Yeah. Cause you know how to run the play of grinding to publish and to get out and you know that. So yeah, that's cool. That's a, that's a, that's a cool moment for you to reflect on too. Well, and then now I,

about in January, I had to start the book that I paused for a year. And so- Now you gotta get back into shape. Well, but can I get back in shape, but also not just swing from one pole to the other, right? Like, can I now get in shape and do the thing? And I'm not out of shape because I just spent more time

kind of slowly working on the other book. It's just different. It's different shape. Right. But like, can I, can I go, can I do a healthier version of a season, you know, in the way that, you know, the first five seasons of someone's career are going to be very unbalanced and totally weighted in one direction. And you would hope a veteran athlete that has a family and commitments and other responsibilities is just more balanced. And you also, you learn stuff about yourself and you learn stuff about the game and hopefully you get more efficient at it also. Yeah. You can see, you have different frames of reference. You can spot things a little sooner. You're working upstream rather than the rapids. And, you know, I also think that

what you're pointing to is under celebrated, which is the power of a partner. And so having a great partner is really important. It took me too long to recognize that. I was early in my career, I was really trying to understand the golden thread of like, what are the commonalities amongst the greats? And I found some kind of interesting, you know, red threads in there, golden threads, but I totally missed looking at my own life and many of them. It's like, they've got great structure and partnerships and they've got people in their corner that believe in them and bet on them. Whether they are in return honoring as well is a

different story. But there's a support mechanism that allows their head to hit the pillow in a good way, a supportive way. Yeah. I think one of the things you find, like people are concerned that being married, having a spouse, whatever, is going to take away or tie them down. And I sort of go, it does. It ties you down to reality. Like you're held down on earth as opposed to floating off into the space of celebrity or greatness or what.

It's keeping you balanced and healthy. I don't know if I could have gone to the agitated edges that I did in my early career, if I would have had two kids. So we started late with kids. So I have great respect for people that have figured out how to do that. And I see it in coaching all the time is they're at the facility 14 hours a day and they're coaching these, let's call it 22 year olds, but they don't know they're at the facility 14 hours a day and they're coaching these, let's call it 22 year olds, but they don't know they're 17 year olds at home and they're 14 and they're 21 year olds. They don't know them

because they're spending 14 hours a day with, so I don't know how I would have done it. And I think I would have unfortunately sacrificed that relationship for my own agitated edge pursuing. You learn by trial and error and it can't survive. Yeah. So I'm really glad that I didn't have that forcing function because I think I would have taken the selfish path and that would have stung me because that's kind of how I was raised.

So I didn't have a great relationship with my folks. Yeah. And I love them. And, you know, but their stuff was more important than my stuff. And their stuff was alcohol and, you know, like codependency. Yeah. Like, so, and so, and again, I love my parents, but I think I would have made that same mistake. Yeah.

Mine wouldn't have been alcohol and drugs and codependency and a narrative outside of the truth. It would have been, Oh, dad's grinding, dad doing his thing, dah, dah, dah. And I just would have missed, you know, kind of changing the generational parenting model. I remember when I visited you at the Seahawks, I asked coach Carol about this cause he's been married a really long time. And I was like, you guys work these insane hours. And I was like, how do you do it?

And he gave me a really good piece of advice that I think about as a parent and as a spouse. He says, you have to find the moments between the moments. And so, you know, a normal person, it's like, hey, you clock in, you clock out, and then you're home. And if you have a more, I don't know, what's the word? Consuming career, you have a calling where there isn't that sort of delineation. You have to figure out a way to integrate family and life into the work.

That's right. And that's one of the things that it's always interested me about sort of sports facilities or the college or professional is just like the families are around, you know? Like they're in. So yeah, you're not coming home for dinner, but they came after school

and they did their homework in your office. That's right. Like you have to find a way to integrate it. And I do think in the business world, there is too much, especially for men, too much of a like, I have a professional life and then I have this secret personal life over here. And only when this one is over, do I go here. And by the way, I actually bring a lot of that with me because I'm just on

my phone while I'm at home. So if you're going to be someone who works a lot and has gone a lot, you have to figure out a way to bring them into what you do and integrate it that way. And I do think it's important that you also model that behavior. Like if the coach or the CEO is like, when do they see their family? If people are saying that, then they think they don't have an excuse to see or bring their family. That's right.

And you have to model what that. Coach Carroll did a great job of like once a week, family coming in and hanging out and like at the facility and did a great job with that. And so that was supported and valued. And it was not like 14 hours, you have to stay here until I leave. No, no, no, go to your kid's game. Now, if you're not done, come back now.

And then for most people that have this radical profession, literally they're seeing their kids, and I recognized it in myself early days, like, I don't know, 15 minutes in the morning and then like 20 minutes at night. Yeah. So I've got less than an hour relationship per day with my son. Yeah. That's not going to get it done now. No.

Like that. No. You've got to figure out how to reorganize your life and your day around what's... Like, I heard this great line. They're like, your kids are not a distraction from your work. Your kids are your work. And so if you think about it that way, or you have these two jobs, you have your professional job and you have to go,

how am I organizing this so one is not being neglected at the expense of the other? I'll bring my wife up one more time. She says to me, this was not that long ago. She says, Mike, you have a really important job. And I like okay cool yeah finally i'm being seen she says she says so i don't give a shit about what you do for a living and she says it's taking care of me and your son and this family and like and i'm i have an important job. I'm here to take care of you and my, and our son. Like, that's a really important job.

And if you are traveling the world and not tuning right here, your job is not working, you know, and it's, has nothing to do with my, my, the, the, the profession that I'm in. And so I just, it was such a grounding moment. I was like, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You know? Well, in one of Seneca's letters, he talks about the problem. He says like, people

are really busy. They pursue their career, you know, money, romance, all this stuff. And then he says, and then philosophy gets like the leftovers. And he says, it should be the other way around. You're sort of, if we can take philosophy to mean self-development, self-improvement, you know, being who you're meant to be as a person. He's like, that should get the main thing. And then the other stuff should get the leftovers. And there can be considerable leftovers, but we have the ratio precisely wrong. So in elite sport, this is another insight behind the velvet rope. There's only three things as humans we can train. We can train our craft, we can train our body, our physical

carriage, and we can train our mind. The best of the best are not leaving the training of the mind up to chance. So training of the mind is not being intellectually stimulated. Training of the mind is like the tools to be focused, the tools that you practice to be confident. Confidence is a skill. Being calm is a skill. And it would be a mistake to think that if you don't prepare yourself with the training of those skills, that you would just magically happen. It would happen one day. So the greats do point to an uncommon, unreasonable, high standard of training craft, training body, and training mind. And so that's what I think many of us didn't get in grade school, high school, da-da-da. But athletes do get that, not just athletes, but in formalized, sophisticated structures,

they've got coaches there, like a one to three ratio, and showing them how to train their mind. And the best coaches in modern times are bringing in strength coaches, sports scientists, nutritionists to support the body and brain, and now sports psychologists. So they're not trying to do it all in a colloquial way. They're being very sophisticated. Whereas we're not getting that in big business. We're not getting that in our professional lives, like inside the rhythm of business of sport in the day, in the hours that you're in the clubhouse, that's where mental training happens. And it's actual training. It's not like, I think they're going to the sport psych,

you know, after, I think they're doing imagery later. I don't know. That's 10 years ago. What's happening now is inside the rhythm of business. And it's not the psychologist at the end of the hallway. It's in the agendas of meetings. That's how we're getting into it. And I think that that's what's going to, that's what I want to ring another bell for in business is that, Hey leaders, you know, people are leaving. That's HR, global HRs will say that. Why are they leaving um they're tired of having the best of them extracted for your bonus yeah for wall street's gain sure they don't know their kids they don't know and they're they're not doing that anymore yeah so the movement is to go from

extracting to unlocking sure so how do how do how does the culture and the structure of leadership enhance the unlocking for individuals to have a life that has meaning and purpose and they've got the psychological skills to be their very best, even in high stress moments. There is a human energy crisis that's taking place. People are tired and fatigued and overwhelmed. And that is the, what'd you call it? The excrement? Excrement. Excrement from the extraction model. Sure. Yeah, yeah. And right. And it's like,

if your people are getting divorced, if their relationships are taxed, if their health is burning out, they're not going to do a good job. No. Just like you're not going to do a good job. No, I don't. When I'm anxious, I'm a bit of a wreck. And so listen, it's not lost on me why I was attracted to this discipline. Like I needed to figure out the skills and tools, because I can use my mind just fine. But if I don't know how to be present and focused

and calm and confident and optimistic, I can't have a love affair with the unfolding moment. Well, I want to talk about Beethoven because I talked about him in Discipline is Destiny. We both sort of locked in on a similar moment, which is you basically have the most talented, most successful person in the world at what they do. And then the unimaginable thing happens, which is he loses what you would think would be the most fundamental part of doing that thing, the most important asset to doing that thing. And I think, you know, you hear about Beethoven as a kid

and go, oh, Beethoven was this great musician and then his hearing went away and he just kept doing it. Isn't that so impressive? And it's weird how we kind of skip over just how devastating and terrible that must have been for him as a person. Even more insidious is his dad manipulated his sense of self by telling the world that he was younger than he actually was. And dad was a radical alcoholic, raging alcoholic as well.

So you can imagine just how unsettled young Beethoven was, is that he needed to have everyone believe he was younger. So he'd be a prodigy and how instable, not only that was, but having an alcoholic father. So like it was a bit of a mess growing up. And then he's herald as the best with an unsettled sense of self. Yeah.

It literally was the emblem of a performance-based identity. Sure. And then how dare somebody like me be so perfect in his craft to lose his hearing? And it was so overwhelming. He was depressed. He was suicidal. He was suicidal. Yeah, he writes a suicide note. That we basically, that it survives.

I mean, I feel like that note should be read in schools to kids. It's pretty radical. Yeah, I have a part of it in Discipline is Destiny. He says, for six years now, I've been hopelessly afflicted, made worse by the senseless doctors. For year to year, deceived with hopes of improvement, finally compelled to face the prospect of a lasting malady whose cure will take years and perhaps be impossible. And it was impossible. He was deluding himself. He said, though born with a fiery active temperament, even susceptible to the versions of society,

I was soon compelled to withdraw myself, to live alone. If at times I was soon compelled to forget all this, oh, how hardly I was flung back by the doubly sad experience of my bad hearing. Yet it was impossible for me to say to people, speak louder, shout, for I am deaf. And he basically was going to kill himself. That's right. And he would pretend for a long time. And he would, so he's a creative genius. Okay. So you can get away with a lot when you've got that title, I guess. People just thought he was really focused. Yeah, and he would call it something.

And I love this. His raptus or raptus? Raptus. And so he would go into his raptus. So people would say, Sir Beethoven, and his friends would be like, oh, he's in his raptus. Even though we're walking along the river. And it was a protection mechanism that he was socially deploying. Yes.

And then when it became just too much, he couldn't hide it. That's when he went away. And that's where he, I'm pointing to, he made a decision. I need to do my music. Yeah. And it's been said, and I don't know if this is the case, but you know, Beethoven, number five, that it actually comes from him banging his fist on the piano. Like, why can't I hear? And so what, what is that? And so that was an insight. Like, so that's, I'm going to make up some liberties and take some liberties in the story that that's where he was like, I need to

do my music. I was making music for was like, I need to do my music. I was making music for the world. I need to do my music. Yeah. And that's where number five and the rest were like some of the best he ever produced. When I think about just sort of, we talk about four or two, we talk about strength, just the sheer strength and character that it takes

to get that low and to be that down and to have that taken from you. And he claws his way back. You know, he doesn't, he doesn't quit on himself. He doesn't quit on the art. And that's part, ironically, part of what keeps him going is he, he, he goes, I think I do still have more good work. That's right. That's an optimist. Yes. So fund, I haven't met a best in the world across multiple disciplines. That's not fundamentally optimistic. They all are. Yeah. Like there's not a best in the world that sees the future being bleak. Yeah.

Okay. Like pessimism is, I don't think this is going to work. Yeah. Optimism is, I think something good is going to take place. I've talked about this because the stereotype of the Stokes is like a little resigned, a little down. I mean, Marx really has people that say, oh, it's been depressing. It must not have smiled a lot. It must not have been joy. And I think a little down. I mean, Marx realized people would say, oh, it's been depressing. It must not have smiled a lot. It must not have been joy. And I think about his life. I mean, this is a guy, he becomes emperor and it's basically like 20 consecutive years

of everything that could go wrong, going wrong. There's a plague, there's floods, there's wars. He buries six children. Six of his kids die. So half of his children die before reaching adulthood. It's just like one after another. And he's betrayed. Some people think his wife cheats on him. It's a horrible life. Like, and he's sick. And also it wouldn't have been fun to live in ancient

Rome. Like life would have been just hard day to day. Like there would have been not enough heat. It would have been too hot, you know? And, and I'm like, how does he get up every morning? Like, how does he get out of bed? Like, again, the, the, the greatness of Michael Jordan in the flu game is one thing, but like the person who's depressed, who feels like their life is falling apart, who's lost something or someone and they keep going and they keep going, not just like for a day, but every day to me, that's, that's also greatness. And it's, as we started earlier, it's harder to celebrate than they scored the most points

in the shortest amount of time, or, you know, they set the scoring record or they ran the fastest time. But that's real greatness, that sort of day-to-day I kept going through. It's just that we don't honor it because there's not a TV set on it. There's not a microphone in front of it. There's not a financial reward. We, we endlessly argue about who's the greatest of all time in whatever sport. And we haven't started the conversation. Who's the greatest mom. Yeah, sure. Who's the greatest dad, which people herald in a naive kind of like throwaway, like it's the hardest job in the world. Yeah. No

kidding. But we don't, we don't really reward it. Yes. Right. Like, and so I don't know, I'd love to know who the best mom or the best dad in the world is. And it's, but, and it's, we don't know what people are going through. So, you know, we're all going through something and we're all going through something. Yeah. And so, so, you know, sometimes that is a tangible or a identifiable thing, like someone loses their hearing or someone loses someone they love in an accident. It's very clear, but just you wake up and you feel shitty

and you feel down and you don't believe in yourself. And to be able to find a way through that is that's a form of greatness. Do you lean on anxiety or depression? More anxiety. More anxiety. Yeah, me too. Do you know depression?

Yeah. Yeah. Like full-on depressive episode or like having some sadness that- Yeah, more like dysthymic, like just sort of a little bit. A little bit, yeah. But yeah, that's the problem with depression, right? Is that like what it actually feels like for the people who are depressed is ineffable. It's like, we can't, we can't fully understand it. And that's why we're so sort of

glib and, and, uh, hard enough, tough enough. Like, come on. It's not that bad. Look, it's not that you can't talk your way out of it like that. You have to feel it seems like you should be able to, right? Cause they've got all these opinions about it. And then you're like, well, let me show you why all those things are incorrect. Yeah. You've got, you can try that. You've got running water, this, that, and the other. And that actually makes a depressed person feel worse because now they say, yeah, they say, well, you're right. I should be happy, but I'm telling you something's not right. And so the thing about feeling deep, even experiences of depression, it's actually really important. The thing about a depressive episode or a disorder of depression is that they're stuck in it. So that's one of the reasons

that I think many of us are afraid to do that. Like if you didn't experience nighttime, you wouldn't know how to experience daytime, right? So the yin yang, the equal opposites, the valley and the mountains, whatever. So we need both to understand. And it's the problem with the disorder is that they're stuck in it and they don't know how to climb back out or get out of it. But it's really important for us. If you really want joy, you've got to understand deep sadness. And it's like, in some respects, the grief that comes as the after effect of a death one, it can help you understand that just a little bit. Sure.

As long as you don't kind of just do the Irish, I got Irish and Italian in me. So like, you know, which is laugh, tell stories, drink and, you know, and cry at the same time. But like understanding the depths of both anxiety and depression is a, is a powerful tool. If you want to really understand what you're capable of. Yeah. You do also. Yeah. Okay. Get in your ice tub. Fine. Fine. Why not go to the depths of sadness? Oh, wait, that's too hard. You're going to macho

up and do the ice bath. Come on. I mean, you're going to grind through that. It's crazy. Honestly, the biggest part, yes, there's physiological benefits of an ice bath, period. That's good. You know what the opportunity in that that I see as a psychologist is the walk to the ice bath is where you meet yourself. Once you get into the ice, you have another opportunity to meet yourself. You got three minutes, you're just sitting there. What do you do at that time? The moment that you get in and you have the shock response, you meet yourself in that moment. Are you trying to escape?

Sure. Or do you settle in and be in it? Sure. Yeah. So it's the walk to, it's the first few seconds. And then when you're actually in it, are you trying to leave or can you be with yourself in a harsh environment?

So there's as much a psychological play as there is physiological in that experience. Well, I would argue that the physiological stuff is, hopefully it's true, you know, and- We're in a cycle, we're in a cycle right now. it seems like it'll be vetted, but we don't know. Right. But even if it isn't true, it's still beneficial. If you're using the walk there and the walk back in the three minutes and you're, and the, just you're, you're wrestling with that part of you that says, I don't want to do that thing. It's hard. That's right. And you say,

I'm going to do that thing because it's hard. And then you get in and it's hard and your mind wants to wander. You want to check the clock and to go, what I'm going to practice here is being in control of what I'm thinking about. Or aware. Yes. East, west, different. But there's different, my word choice is probably operative. But the point is, yeah, hey, different. But there's different, my word choice is probably operative. But the point is, yeah, hey, am I going to actually think about those thoughts and decide what they mean? Or am I just going to, am I going to be lost in what's happening, which is unpleasant and cold? Or am I going to be thinking about how this looks on social media or all this other shit? And there's a danger in it when you're in a harsh, difficult, cold environment in this case.

And I labeled it harsh, but a cold environment. And your reflexive nature is to escape. And let's say you're doing that. I got to get out of here. What am I doing? This sucks. I got to get out. And so now you're pairing, let's call it low-level thinking, escapism, desire for relief with harsh hardness, difficult environments.

So now when you're entering, you're pairing and training. When I'm in a difficult environment, I'm training myself to try to escape. And that's just a shitty experience. They didn't learn anything. It's actually really bad because the unlock happens when you settle in, you make a decision to be in it and to have a love affair with the unfolding moment. So we're still in the Stone Ages in so many ways. Go do the hard thing and suck it up. It's all of the little nuanced, delicate tenderness that happens with the awareness of what's

actually happening and pairing an aware mind, a guided mind in a hostile, rugged, difficult environment. That's the path of mastery. Yeah. And it doesn't have to be in an ice bath. You can also do it as you walk to get your hair cut or, you know what I mean? You can find that, you can practice that skill, that exercise, that sort of getting in touch with yourself or being present or whatever. You can do that anywhere and everywhere. This is amazing, man.

Thanks. I'm so stoked to hang with you. Yeah, it's true. I loved the book. I'm glad you did it. Thank you. It's great. I appreciate you.

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