Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - The Essence of Becoming | Dr. Krista Scott-Dixon

Episode Date: September 25, 2019

This week’s conversation is with Dr. Krista Scott-Dixon, a former university professor and researcher who now designs curriculum for Precision Nutrition.She focuses on helping people make meaningful change through the Precision Nutrition Coaching and coaching Certification programs.Krista is also the author or co-author of several books, with the latest being Why Me Want Eat: Fixing Your Food Fuckedupitude.Krista likes to think of nutrition coaching as this pathway into a larger life project of being a human being, so while her expertise may lie in nutrition, this conversation is about so much more than that.It’s about the essence of becoming… how she came to better understand herself through her own journey and why she now is focused on helping others do the same.Krista believes it all centers around the stories we tell ourselves.In her words, “The mind is a jail built out of bullshit. I’ve seen the pain that stories can cause. If you look around you and you think about the people in your life or even the things that happen in the world, you can see that so many things occur because people are deep in their stories, and don't realize that they are stories.”I couldn’t agree more and I think you’ll be amazed at Krista’s insights and perspective on what really matters in life._________________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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create. And the whole idea behind this podcast really was to have conversations with extraordinary people and the most extraordinary thinkers and doers across the globe. And the thought guiding it was like, let's learn from them, but not like turn them over by their ankles and shake out the tactics and the secrets. There are no secrets. There's no tricks. There's no tips and hacks. It's like, let's just really learn the deep stuff. What are they searching for? How do they organize their inner life? And what are the mental skills that they've used to build, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true. Meaningful relationships are at the center of sustained success. And building those relationships, it takes more than effort. It takes a real caring about your people. It takes the right tools, the right information

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that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life. When you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery, that's David D A V I D protein P RE-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Now this week's conversation is with Dr. Krista Scott Dixon, and she's a former university professor and researcher who now designs curriculum for precision nutrition. Precision nutrition is one of our partners on the podcast. I'm so bullish on this product. For those of you who want to invest and understand

the mechanics underneath how to structure your life to get the right nutrition in place, as well as like, what is right nutrition for you? So they've got a full curriculum. It's beautifully designed. It is thoughtful in that it's the user experience that matters most to them. They've got all the science and all the good stuff backed in, you know, to make that thing work. But the user experience and the learning experience is extraordinary. So Krista focuses on helping people make meaningful change through the precision nutrition coaching and coaching certification programs. She is also the author and co-author of several books, which the latest being Why Me Want to Eat? Fixing Your Food Fucked Up-itude. That's right. That's what she put in the title. So that gives you a little flavor for who she is and how she

thinks and like the fun she wants to have, but also like the seriousness of it. So Krista likes to think of nutrition coaching as a pathway into a larger life project of being a human being and waiting to hear how she thinks. It is unbelievable. It really is. You'll hear it in here. I loved it. I loved how she organized her inner life. And so, you know, it's the essence of this is about becoming. And for her, it's how she became to better understand herself through her own journey, through her own adventure. And that's why she's now focused on helping others do the very same. And she believes that it all centers around stories we tell ourselves. And in her words, this is how she put it. The mind is a jail built out of bullshit.

I've seen the pain that stories can cause. If you look around you and you think about the people in your life or even the things that happen in the world, you can see so many things occur because people are deep in their stories and don't realize they are stories. It's cool. And I couldn't agree more. I love the idea of the narrative that we shape, that that has a direct impact on our behaviors and our psychology and the lenses that we see the world through. So this is a fun conversation for me. I was really surprised. I wanted this conversation to take place because I wanted to learn about curriculum design, kind of the mechanical part. And this conversation was so much further, so much better and deeper than just the mechanics of curriculum design. Okay. So with

that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with Dr. Krista Scott-Dixon. Krista, how are you? I'm good. How are you doing? Yeah, really good. Thank you for spending some time to explore both your craft and then how you've developed as a person. So, you know, super looking forward to this conversation with you.

Oh, me too. Yeah, good. So we haven't met yet, but our paths have been intertwined with mutual friend and a company that I'm super stoked to be able to partner with on the podcast. And so precision nutrition is where you've been for the last 12 years and have been designing curriculum amongst many other things. And so how, how long has precision nutrition been around? where you've been for the last 12 years and have been designing curriculum, amongst many other things. And so how long has Precision Nutrition been around? Well, I think it's been around in different iterations for around 15 years. So in the beginning, I think it sort of grew out of ScienceLink and johnberardi.com. So John Berardi is one of the co-founders along with Phil Caravaggio. So it's kind of hard to say exactly when johnberardi.com ended and Precision Nutrition per se began, but it was probably somewhere around 12 or 13 years ago, I would think.

Okay, for folks that aren't familiar with Precision Nutrition, what's the top line that you use to be able to explain what you guys are doing and your mission and what you're going after? Yeah, well, we say that we are the world's leading online coaching company, the online nutrition coaching, and the leading nutrition coaching certification company. So we both coach clients, and we coach the coaches that coach clients. So it's sort of a two-prong thing that we do. I love that you say, we say that we're the world's leading. That's funny. But you like objectively, um, this is why like, I'm stoked to be able to work with

you guys and knowing John and I from a long time ago, the work that you're doing is purposeful. It's thoughtful. It's meaningful. It's right at the center of you're doing is purposeful, it's thoughtful, it's meaningful, it's right at the center of human flourishing. And so, so I say that because even though you say we say, it really feels like you are at ground zero with it. So congratulations, seriously, congratulations on what you guys have built. Well, thank you. And yeah, I mean, feel free to come and argue with us about any other world leading nutrition coaching company. But you know, I'm so glad you use this word flourishing, because I think that so many people imagine that nutrition coaching is about telling people what to eat in this very concrete, like, eat this, don't eat that kind of way, or giving people numbers like,

oh, you need to eat this percentage of something or this many grams of whatever. And we have taken it in a completely different direction that I think a lot of people wouldn't necessarily expect. And we really are concerned with this concept of flourishing or thriving or, you know, how can we get people running on all cylinders of their lives, not just the food they put in their mouth, but, you know, how they feel as human beings and what they do in a day and how their relationships are and how their environments are and, you know, who they are in the world. So we like to think of nutrition coaching as like this pathway into a kind of a larger life project of being a human being. Yeah, there you go. Okay. And where did that start for you guys? Because nutrition coaching does seem super mechanical, right? Like some sort of, I don't know, basic algorithm where it's like, what do you burn?

What do you consume? And how do you maximize high quality dense nutrients or whatever? But like, that is not what you guys are doing. And so where did you first come online where it's like, let's use the art and science of nutrition to help people flourish? Well, I think it comes from a few places. One of those places is going through our own journeys as human beings, as people who were trying to transform our own bodies. And I think pretty quickly into a body transformation project, you start realizing that this is not about the grams and the percentages. It's about who I am as a person and what I want to be, especially when

you run into setbacks with that transformation project, right? Because change is almost never easy or straightforward. And so we all start with the best of intentions on January the 1st with our New Year's resolutions. And then by January 4th or 16th or whatever, it's kind of started to go pear-shaped. And so, I mean, change is not easy, but it also asks us to come up against ourselves and our lives and how we are doing things and how we're thinking. So if you've been on any kind of transformation journey of your own, you know that it's not about the food or it's not just about the food or the eating or the exercise. And especially if you have setbacks.

So maybe you get food, eating, exercise all in line for six weeks or six months or whatever. But aging has its way with us all, as does life. Right. And something will inevitably happen to change the course of whatever you're doing. And so you're forced to grapple with this idea that you're not engaged in a perfect process and that you have to have other tools in your toolbox beyond grants and percentages. So I think that's number one. Number two is that all of us were really interested in reading other kinds of literature, whether that was behavioral economics. For me, it was a lot of counseling psychology um you know just things outside this strict discipline of nutritional science that gave us insight even art and literature

i mean my background is in cultural studies and visual arts and films and i mean these are things that tell us about ourselves as well right they tell us stories so we were thinking about other things and noticing the parallels in our coaching work. And then finally, the third piece is working with actual people. I mean, like in my career as a university professor and then coach, like thinking about this this morning, I think I've probably worked with at least 2000 people, probably more, and gotten to know each one of them. Like, what are they like? What are they not like? Who are they as people? And so you learn pretty quickly when you start working with actual people that, like, any kind of paradigmatic perfection that you have breaks down super quickly when you're confronted with an actual human being. And then, you know, in our online programs, we've had about 100,000 clients go through.

So that's a lot of data points about about human beings. And so, yeah, I think that's where a lot of that comes from is just experience, expertise like, it was really good. And I, so I took a mental note, but then you kept going and it got incrementally better. And so I just want to say like a reflection, my reflection as to hearing what you just said was that you've been on the journey. And I don't think you have, I don't think your PhD is in nutrition science. And is that right? Yes, it is completely unrelated to nutrition science. And I will tell you one more thing. When I was actually a university professor, I was openly mocked by my colleagues for having an interest in health and fitness. It was not seen as cool among academics when I was there.

It was seen as either diversion, but yeah. Yeah. Again, it keeps getting better. Okay. So this is why I think I've been so attracted to the DNA of your company is that you guys are real people interested in the real essence of a human experience and the iteration of becoming. And something you said so clear in point one was, there's two parts of it. One, we went on a journey ourselves. Okay, great. And the second was who I am in reference to who I want to be, in reference to how I adjust to internal and external setbacks, obstacles, you called them. And, you know, like that is

in a very succinct, heavy loaded way. That's the essence of becoming. Those three pillars. And so when you say it like that, I don't want to run over it because it's so rich and so deep. I want to pull on that thread just a little bit. How did you come to understand that so simply? I know you didn't read it in a textbook. Here's the three variables about becoming. I know you didn't do that. And even if I had, I mean, it would have been useless, right? Because it has this experiential dimension to it. And I think like what you're gesturing towards is first of all, just being an alive human being more than anything else. But not everyone has the same level of awareness and

curiosity about what it is to be a human being. So I think you have to combine just being alive with a kind of intentionality about discovery, like an ongoing curiosity about like, what is all happening here? What does it mean? Who am I in this, like constantly surfacing these questions or this curiosity or this awareness of like, you know, what's unfolding here? And how am I constantly testing my propositions about reality in this experience? So I don't think everyone has the capacity for that. I think that what I'm picking up for you is there's a texture that is a texture to the way you're talking about the dimensionality of being. It's not, it's really thoughtful.

I was going to say it's not scratchy or edgy or it's not, it's not full of anxiety, right? And I don't know if once one part of your life you were anxious or you still are, but it doesn't come off that way. It comes off as really curious and authentic, to use your words, exploration of the human experience. And you're using yourself as that vehicle to better understand. And do I have that frame, right? You do. And it's interesting, you mentioned the anxiety piece, because actually, I used to be super anxious. And, and that gets burned away with transformative experiences, right, where you deliberately put yourself in

harm's way, whether that's, you know, existential or physical, or life puts you, life just dumps you in that place. So anxiety really gets burned away in the kind of crucible of particular life experiences. And so if, and it's not accidental, I mean, there's a deliberate practice around it, right? You continually seek to get to that next place of human development. And what does happen after these repeated exposures is you do become less anxious because you, first of all, build the database about the world and what's possible in it. And you start to realize, okay, there are very few things that I cannot handle. But you also start to trust your own resilience, and you start to kind of care less. Like you start to give way fewer shits about like, oh my god, you know, what do people think? Or how am I here? Did I do the right thing? Because I

mean, these are the kinds of questions that provoke anxiety, right? The dissonance between here's the image that I want to present to myself or the world versus what's actually happening. I think if you can acquaint yourself more intimately with reality as it unfolds, you do become less anxious because you're just like, well, this is happening. And there's no story on top of it. It's just full frontal reality. Again, it keeps getting better. Okay, Krista, where did you, I keep wanting to go back to origins because for me, it's really important, but even more important is the texture I'm picking up. I can't get a better word in my mind right

now because sometimes I'm in these conversations and I feel like somebody knows all the buzzwords and they string them together. And then it sounds like this esoteric psychobabble mumbo-jumbo and I don't get that from you right I get okay these words are purposeful they're succinct and they're connected to something that is more primary and can you maybe maybe we could do it this way. And this is me trying to really understand not what you mean by what you just said, but where it comes from. Because I understood everything you just said. Like it's super clear and crisp. Is there a story that comes to mind where you've been thrusted or purposely put yourself in an environment that has been hard and you've come

through it eventually saying oh god what why do i care so much like why i i gotta stop giving two shits so like is there a story that comes to mind where you're like i i got tested and this was hard well you know it's i've been thinking about this because i've been working on a book about resilience and i think when we think about resilience we think of the heroes, right? We think of the person who climbed some mountain or achieved some great thing or had some indomitable force of will. But I think there's another story about resilience that we don't hear as much, which is like all of the highly sensitive, anxious, easily overstimulated, you know, milquetoast whiner babies of the world, which I include myself in there, who like for whom the world is this incredibly jarring, jangly,

too loud, too busy experience. And so like much of our time and effort and attention consists of just like managing our own self regulation and neurological overwhelm. And so, like, my origin story was I was that little kid that was, you know, just so overwhelmed by the demands of the world, yet was continually thrust into them because I grew up in the 70s. And, you know, in the 70s, it was a very big thing to stick your kid into every kind of enrichment program that you could. I mean, in 2019, it's still sort of the same. But there was this idea that you had to do everything super early. So I started violin lessons at age two. I started piano lessons at age three. And things just kind of went along like that for much of my early life. So I was constantly trying to figure out how to deal

with and manage these experiences that were like turn you know redlining my brain at all times and and so like there was this kind of constant process of like being thrust into these situations with all my all my figurative skin stripped off and and trying to figure out like just how to stay alive in them. What did you do then? How did you manage that? I don't even know. I like I really don't even know it was just you just sort of show up and get through and, and this is the essence of resilience, right? Yeah, you did something really interesting. One, I bet you do know, like, I bet a lot of money if we spent some time here, and we don't need to, but I would bet you could figure that out. And I want to I want to peck a little bit into this, because I think there's something fertile right below the surface. And the second thing you did that was interesting is that you said, you like you distance yourself from that experience. And do you do you do that as a mechanism to create some

psychological safety? Or, or is there another reason you would distance yourself at that moment from the story? That's a terrific question. I think in part, because it feels like and I don't know if everyone else has this experience, but it feels like there have been multiple selves. So I can stand aside from like little Krista and say, oh, yes, that is little Krista. That's two-year-old Krista hiding under the chair at the violin lesson and getting in trouble for it because, you know, that's what two-year-olds do. But I can see these as almost like distinct and separate selves. itself. And I think in part, to go back to the idea of this nonlinear career trajectory, it does feel like a different person was inhabiting these different times in my life. They had different thoughts and they did different actions. So there may be a distancing there like of identity. Like I don't feel like that person anymore. I don't align with that person. I

recognize them as part of, it's not fully dissociative, but that person feels like a closed chapter in the book. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentous. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers, their co-founder and CEO, I could tell this was not your average supplement company.

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difference for yourself, Felix Gray is offering all Finding Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code FINDINGMASTERY20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FINDINGMASTERY20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. So do you feel integrated with early experiences, some with a trauma with a small T and some trauma with a big t and i don't know if you've had trauma with a big t but like do you feel integrated or is it more like there's these parallel maybe it's not parallel but maybe beginnings and endings of chapters and almost like an upgraded system or a book stacking experience. Yeah, I like the book stacking metaphor. Like the image that comes

to mind for me is adding passengers to my bus. So those selves are not driving, they're on the bus with me. And when a new one gets on the bus, or, you know, moves back a row, you know, we kind of high five, and I know they're all there. And we sing along or whatever. But they're not driving. I think that's the important piece. So they're integrated in the sense that we're all contained together on the bus. And I remember them. And I remember how I felt, even though it feels distant. But they're not driving anymore.

Wow. That's okay. So, okay. Do you have multiple personality disorder? No, but I grasp the idea of people who do. Like, it makes complete sense. Yeah, right. I didn't. That was a little tongue in cheek, but I just want to make sure I wasn't being disrespectful. Yeah, no, you know, and so but that image is really cool. No one's ever explained it from like a health perspective. You know, obviously, we have that lens and the

question mark does multiple personality disorder dissoci dissociative disorders, does that, you know, is there a thing there? Right. And what you just described from a health perspective is, no, I've got many different dimensions and parts to me. The adult right now is doing most of the driving because I've worked on that, that wise woman to be able to drive, but sometimes a two-year-old drives, I'm sorry. Sometimes a two-year-old jumps in the front seat and I feel like hiding, you know, behind the chair when there's pressure to perform. And maybe I just added that for, you know, a little bit of a stretch, but I love the, I love the, the image that you create. Well, the word hiding, I think is super key and interesting there because actually for most of my life, I did feel like I was hiding

in some way or another. And I think all of us, you know, selectively choose what to bring for like what to bring into focus and what to allow to recede. I mean, we know what stories are appropriate to tell at cocktail parties and not right. But for much of my life, I did feel like I was hiding aspects of myself that were either just not acceptable or, you know, the adults around me were sort of uninterested in them. So there was a conscious desire to hide. And it's like one of the more emblematic photos of my childhood was me hiding, like having fallen asleep behind a door, like the door kind of opened into this corner of the room. So there was a perfect place for like a little three-year-old to tuck themselves. But I'd fallen asleep there.

So there was a photo of me like sleeping behind this door with my stuffed animal as like my little fort and safe space. And I think that's a really, you know, significant metaphor for how much of my life was. And maybe this is why I'm so now preoccupied with this question of authenticity and helping other people become more authentic. Because, you know, there are consequences for hiding. And I mean, it's a good survival mechanism. But there are also consequences for it. So there are real significant trade offs to it. What do you imagine you were craving as in your formative years, like up to the age 1112? You know, what were you craving more than anything? Um, unconditional acceptance, because when you grow up as a little smart, weird kid, um, you know, like very few people get it. They want you to be either normal or they don't

understand like why you like the things that you do or why you use big words or, you know, just whatever, in whatever way you're a weird little kid, most folks around you are not going to get it. So I think unconditional acceptance would have been tremendous from the adults in my life to say, hey, man, whatever you're into, you're into, and that's cool, and we see you. And maybe we don't always get you, but whatever you're doing is okay. And when you think about that gift that you weren't able to quite experience, how did you manage? Like if we could go, this is me now pecking, cleverly pecking, not so clever, back to the origins. Like how did you deal with when you would do something and people would look funny at you?

Or they would roll their eyes or say, no, no, no, no, or that's not good enough or whatever the thing was. If you can come up with a real experience that you had, I'd love to hear about that. Well, in a lot of ways, I learned to escape and become invisible. So for example, I was cutting class by grade three or four, because I was so bored. And where I would go, because I was super cool, was to the library. So I would sneak out of class and go to the library and be in the library. And just so my survival strategy was just to go invisible. I just I couldn't just wouldn't be found.

And what, what did that do for you? It, it was a protection mechanism because I think what you're talking about is more pervasive, more common, um, more cunning in with adults in social settings than people want to acknowledge, right? I think what you're talking about is right at the center of many people trying to figure out how to be themselves. Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, sure. Sure. I mean, I think a lot of kids intuitively realize that a lot of adults are idiots. In some ways, adults somehow don't, don't see them, or don't get them or aren't really on board with with that space that they've got, or have forgotten how to see things, right. And, and, and so I think there's kind of an intuitive understanding that no one's going to get this, like, there's just no way that I can adequately

explain this. No one's going to get this, I'm kind of on my own here. But also the library is a place that embraces you, right? Like anything you want to know. And I mean, that's how I later got into health and fitness was, I mean, if you think the local library is a fun place let me tell you about the university library like that is just mind-melting goodness um and and so you know the library has always been the place where like you have access to infinite knowledge and the library never rejects you it's always welcoming and you can just show up there and learn whatever you want. I mean, like, what a concept. Yeah, that is, you're the first person to talk about that. And it's, you're recalling a memory for me when I was in college. I'm married

to my, the woman I was dating at the time. And she just looked like fascinated, like, why do you like to be here? You know, like, what is it? Because there was other, she had other interests, but I love dragging my hands across these volumes of science and wisdom and deep discerning thought. And I don't, it sounds like this is the first time I've talked about this. And you, but you're recalling something. it sounds like you had that same type of, I don't know, familiarity isn't quite it, like a homeness, hominess to it. Yes. And actually, as you said, dragging my hands across the volumes, like I actually got chills, because it was partially the physical, like somatic or tactile experience of the library to

like actually touching the books and smelling them and like in the 70s and 80s there was always that everything smelled of corkboard is that really distinctive corkboard smell i think it's blue no silverfish who knows what it is right um but there was also that's very tactile in this stuff like touching the books and feeling the books and yeah exactly what you're describing so it's cool that we have that in common. Okay, so you would use the mechanism to hide to leave to remove yourself, which was a survival esque strategy. But at the same time, it doesn't allow you to kind of harden and become resilient and nimble eventually to the stressors of the world. It gets you smart if you're going

to places that you can read a lot. So where did you go in your middle years? Let's call it 12, 13 and those identity formation years. What happened there? And there's a reason I want to ask you about this because I'm fascinated by the DNA of your company. The leaders in your company have the same very approach to life. And there's something about the culture that you guys have created together that illuminates this process of discovery. And it's not lost to me. That's why you have over 100,000 people that have spent good amount of time and good amounts of money to become better, you know, from a nutritional standpoint. So where'd you go in those formative years, identity formation years 12 to 21, 18, somewhere in there.

Yeah, it's interesting, you mentioned those years, too. And you mentioned little t trauma earlier, like, you know, if I think back on on childhood stuff, I think there's this kind of protective layer that you have in childhood where, you know, things may happen to you and whatever. But on some level, you're less aware of other human beings. Like you're still egocentric enough that you can still be more in your own world. Whereas, again, when that 11, 12, 13 period hits, all of a sudden you become painfully and acutely aware of others and social judgments and, you know, testing yourself about whether you measure up. And I think for me, like, if I think back to the, like, the feelings that emerge around that, like, of differentness, that's when those were, like, most strong. That's

when I found out, like, oh my gosh, I really am an uncool weirdo. Like I really do not fit in. Like, like I don't even like, I'm not even in the same universe as anyone that could ever be popular. Like it's just, it just hit me so hard during that period. But you know, the saving grace was going to university and discovering, oh my gosh, there's a bunch of other weirdos just like me. And cause I started in fine arts, I lived in a fine arts residence. And so like everyone there was some kind of nutcase in all the best, in all the best ways. And so there's something really empowering about all of a sudden you get around your own kind and you're like, oh, okay, like there's more, there's more people like me and that's cool and and this like we

can communicate and we can share some kind of intellectual production and we can have fun and we can explore and we can innovate so um yeah i mean that that's what it was for me and that that really kicked off and universities i mean i always love teaching university because i think it's just such a wonderful transformative time i mean you're old enough to have a sense of identity and to be asking adult questions, but you're still like really unformed in lots of ways. So I loved teaching undergrads. That was a wonderful time to both teach and to be. And so, yeah, like, so it was it was kind of like two halves of the coin, right? Or two sides of the coin. Like the early years were like, oh, my gosh, I suck and I'm alone. And then the later years were like, oh, no, no, I don't suck and I'm not alone.

And that's that's really cool. But the university for me is this incredible place where, again, you can learn anything. You can do anything and and find out anything. And if you have a question, there's someone who can answer it. So as a student, university is awesome. At least that's how I found it. Now, working in the university as an academic or faculty or grad student, that's a completely different situation. But to be an undergraduate is amazing. Okay. So, all right. I think I've got the picture and then I've, it feels like to me, you're more of an artist than a scientist, but your, your, obviously your advanced degree, your PhD is in science and you're writing curriculum, which is very science-based, but the DNA of you is very much like an artist, like an exploratory expressionist of authenticity. And, and, but I want to calibrate that with you. Is that right? Or, or it's not a yes or no black

or white, you know, reductionist model, but how close to the pulse am I on that? Yeah, I think you've got it correct. I mean, I'm not so far into the science end of things that, um, you know, I'm like a quantified self kind of person that would derive like a ton of joy from that. But, you know, the thing that a PhD teaches you is to really assess research and think a lot about knowledge. And I actually specialized a lot in like epistemology and methodologies and like, you know, really critical looks at how do we know what we know? What assumptions are we making? What stories are we telling? What is the evidence that supports it? Which to me is also the essence of the scientific method. Right. So really, whatever your discipline is, and there's lots of disciplinary conversations happening in the academy, which I think are mostly useless. But, you know, that training, it's less about the

specific field that you're in and more about the perspective that it gives you on knowledge production and creation and use. So I would say I lean more into the science than the artistic end of things, because I am concerned with evidence. And I don't know if I would say correctness, because there are some questions that don't have a correct answer per se. But I am concerned with accuracy and precision and, you know, moving towards an answer that is relatively legitimate and continually interrogating how we know what we know, rather than buying into like faith based stories about how we know what we know, rather than buying into like faith-based stories about how we know what we do. And there's plenty of those in nutrition, right? I mean, lots of people have their own nutritional religion that is very emotional reasoning based. And my gosh, they're going to hang on to that no matter what. How do you describe the world right now? Because it was dangerous and overwhelming at a young age. And then you met your environment and you met yourself through that environment of like-minded folks. How do you describe the world now?

The world to me feels like a very friendly place now, no matter what happens. So, like, the world has all kinds of terrible things in it. It has wonderful things in it. It has mostly banal things in it. But all of that is friendly. I mean, Carl Rogers, the great psychotherapist, said, you know, the facts are friendly. And I believe that reality is generally friendly if we are friendly to it. And it means that we meet difficult experiences with an acceptance, a mindset of acceptance of reality. You know, people die, bad things happen. You know, hurricanes ravage things. We don't have to love that. can hate it but i don't know if we if we make friends with reality somehow everything becomes so much less threatening very cool okay

okay so this is this is a treat for me because one i studied epistemology it was my minor carl rogers was um kind of the core humanistic approach in my PhD program that and very much CBT mix. So humanism, CBT mixed with mindfulness was my PhD program, all blended in sport and performance approaches. So I feel like really cool levels. We're speaking about some of the same and exploring some of the same domains of being human. You've chosen the curriculum based approach and the coaching approach to help coaches be better and to help people be better with their nutrition. Can you, I struggle with how to get 10 pounds of stuff into a five pound bag. And the five pound bag is the amount of time and energy people have to want to be better. And but there's 10 pounds of stuff we got to get in there. And so how have you

shaped your model of coaching in your curriculum? And that's a big question. And I'm curious where you actually will take it. Well, I would first start with questioning the assumption that we have to get 10 pounds of stuff into a five pound bag. Like what if we only needed one ounce in the five pound bag to stimulate change? right? But for me, one of the games of coaching and curriculum is saying, and mastery of coaching is asking myself, what is the one question that I can ask someone or the one tiny task that I can have them do that will stimulate growth? And that's the game. Can I distill 10 pounds down to one ounce or one gram? What is the essence of what I need here to make something happen? Very cool. Nice reframe on there.

That's really cool. So then when you're designing the curriculum, how long is your curriculum? Our PN coaching one is a year long and people get daily lessons. Okay. So PN precision nutrition and it's level one. Is that correct? Yeah. Okay, so PN, Precision Nutrition, and it's level one. Is that correct? Yeah, well, okay. So our Precision Nutrition coaching program,

so that would be for someone who wants to change their body or get more fit or whatever. That is a year-long program with daily lessons. Then our certification program, which is what you would take to become a better coach, the level one is self-paced. So you could do that in a month, six months, a year, five years. It's totally up to you.

Level two is also a year-long program and same idea. You get lessons every day. Okay. And what do you hope people learn when they go through, let's say the, what is your more interesting market to you? Is it individuals working on themselves or is it individuals working on themselves? Or is it individuals working on themselves to be coaches? That's a great question. I actually think it's

both. Because the person that interests me most is the person that is ready for it. And then they might not know they're ready for it, they might come in all grumpy and resistant and, you know, kick and scream the whole way. But something in them like organically pushes them to grow, whether they want to or not. So to me, that's the most interesting kind of client. And that can be just a regular, you know, body transformation client or it can be a coach. But that being said, I do love roping in coaches who think they just want to be coaches, like they just want to be told, you know, how do I work with a client? And, you know, disgorging them at the other end of the program as a better human being. To me, that is super fun. And a lot of them realize that this is

happening as it's happening, but they aren't sad about it. Because I think generally, if you're someone who's drawn to coaching, on some level, you have to be drawn to growth and evolution and human development. Like you have to buy into that in some way or your longevity as a coach is going to be extremely limited. And so I love when the light bulb goes on for people where they're like, oh, wait a minute. I'm the same kind of person as a client. And I have to use the same kind of tools, I have to make the same kind of leaps, or incremental crawling, as they do. And in order to do this work, I have to become a slightly more evolved human being than I expected. Because I think about coaching as being like an interpersonal

athlete, or being like an emotional athlete. So you have all your workouts, your trainings and your competition and your on season and your off season and the things that will knock you out of the game. It's the same thing as being a physical athlete, but I don't think a lot of coaches realize it. I think their starting paradigm is, oh, I'm a nice person who likes helping other people and I'm going to go and I'm going to go fix these other people. It's, you know, yeah, that was one of these like really wonderful questions that one of my professors asked me early in the training is he says, um, to the class. And then he looks at each one of us for an answer. He says, what makes you, this is like a bunch of budding psychologists. What makes you think you can help another human? And I was like, hmm. And then he follows up and he says, no, seriously,

Mike, what gives you the right to be in a position to help somebody? Who do you think you are? I was like, oh my God, what's happening here? And it's the fundamental right question to examine. And eventually where most of us get to, I think, is, oh yeah, I don't have the answers, they do. And I'm on this journey with them. And, you know, sometimes they hold the flashlight and sometimes I hold the flashlight and we're charting, you know, this uncharted territory together. And it becomes this eloquent exchange of information and curiosity and frameworks to help people reveal and clarify what they're really about. That's at least how I like to think about it. And for when you guys go through your work, at what percentage are you helping them through a self-discovery process versus the technical

knowledge that they need to be a good nutrition quote expert slash coach? Well, originally I designed our level two programs that was almost completely perfectly 50 50. So things were offered in two week blocks, like units were offered in two week blocks. And the first week was work on your own stuff using this concept. And then the second week was, okay, now apply that to a client. So there was this oscillation back and forth. The level one, we've brought it up much more. It's probably not completely 50-50, but it's approaching there because it's now much more experiential than we had before where we say, okay, here is a tool that you might use with a client.

But before you do that, go and try it on yourself. Or, hey, guess what? You think you're such a hot shot with your own nutrition? Here's a little self-assessment of the fundamental core skills and level of consistency that it would take to be excellent or masterful. How are you doing with that? So we've really tried to push for making it roughly equivalent, I would say, coach development and client work. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines

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There's so many different, let's call it diets. I don't like the word at all, but there's as a placeholder for approaches for nutrition, right? And just like there's so many different approaches for psychological growth. So whether it's, I don't even know what the buzzwords are nowadays. What are some of the buzz, fad, trends, diets that people are familiar with? Well, the one that's making a nice little resurgence, it comes up every 10 or 20 years is keto dieting. So ketogenic dieting. It was Atkins yeah it was atkins and yeah it's been it's been around since hippocrates but anyway uh and then fasting is a thing now not eating not eating is a thing

that we do um plant-based eating uh whether people call it vegetarianism veganism whatever um paleo i think is sort sort of moving out of fashion, but I like this concept of ancestral-style eating. That feels nice to me. There's sort of the carnivore diet, which is a little bit of a fringe thing. That would be the opposite of the plant-based eating. There's what I would call a macronutrient-based approach where people try to get certain percentages of fat, carbohydrate and

protein. Those are the big ones these days. Okay, so do you take a point of view? Or do you help your clients understand all of them? So they can make an informed decision? Or is it some other approach that you have? Yeah, we like to say that we're diet agnostic. And so like, but that doesn't presume a false equivalency right it's not like oh everything goes it's more like here are the here are the questions you can ask yourself we call it building their owner's manual so you start in the coaching process you start writing this owner's manual of yourself so when i did this i noticed that happened when i ate this food, I felt this way, I performed this way, whatever. And so over time, we get people to collect the data about themselves and their own experience, especially attuning to their physical experience, how I felt, how I recovered, how I performed, how I slept,

how my pain was, that kind of stuff. And over time, the picture begins to crystallize about what works best for them or what trade-offs they're making. So for example, I often have talks with athletes about whether they should do a plant-based diet. So many of them, you know, want to move towards a more plant-based diet for environmental reasons or ethical reasons or whatever. But they struggle to find the sweet spot between plant-based eating and performance or recovery. Works for some people, not for others. And so we talk about, okay, what is the trade-off? What do you want to prioritize right now? Do you want to prioritize your performance? Do you want to prioritize your ethical concerns? You know, what for you is coming to the forefront as the

hill you want to die on right now? And, you know, I think of all of these conversations as really helping people approach what I call a provisionally ethical or provisionally appropriate decision for them, because there's no perfect diet that is going to give you all the things that you want all the time. So it's helping people understand what are the questions that I should be asking here? What are the principles that govern good nutrition? And what's the feedback that I'm getting about what I'm doing? And where do I want to go with that? So can I have, I can't have it all. I can't have a humanistic, compassionate, environmental friendly diet, and also have world-class performance i would imagine

i could get both of those like and i think that that's much harder than you know uh junk protein shakes with um you know whatever but like so walk me through that because i want i want it all i want exactly what i just described yeah and you deserve it. And you also deserve, you know, things that taste good and being able to eat whatever you want, whenever you want. I mean, right. But I mean, so there, but there are also trade-offs that I think a lot of people forget about. It's, it's, you know, you, we really want to consider all of the consequences and the costs. So let's say for example, I want to eat the best nutrition quality that I possibly can. The most humanely raised, the most organic. Okay, now I need money.

Oh, that's a trade-off I'm going to have to make. I also need perhaps time spent on shopping, on food preparation, right? I love how practical you are because it's so true. Like the organic blueberries versus the not like the price is crazy. It's ridiculous. And I'm not even sure it's worth it but i wait i choose organic because you know whatever um but i'm not even sure it's totally worth it like can you can you support me saying but yeah choose organic for the most part um sometimes yes sometimes no oh god okay good i gotta get smarter okay the answer to everything in nutrition is it depends, right? But like, I mean, to think

about a high performance athlete, like, what does their day involve? Like basically involves eating, sleeping, training and doing laundry and maybe traveling. So does this person have the time, the energy, the attention, the money? Athletes have to be sponsored, right? Do they have the money? Like, do they have all of the things that they need to get that super perfect diet? Some of them do. Some of them don't. You know, athletes spend as much time on buses, trains and planes as the rest of us because they're traveling, they're busy, they're training, they're tired.

A lot of them are young. You know, they need an entourage around them to achieve this perfect diet. So if we talk about dietary tradeoffs, there are quite a lot that we really have to think about, which some of them are nutritional or physiological. Others are social, environmental. Do you want to negotiate with your family? Do you want to go out with your friends? Oh, you're overwhelming. Yeah. It's so, you're so

right with all of these because like, okay, here's a little nexus I have. I've got two basic go, maybe three go-to breakfasts, right? And it's either some like an avocado type egg thing, or it is oatmeal with some protein mixed in it with some nuts and some berries right on top. And let's just say those two. And, you know, I don't want to have to make it. I don't want to have to think about it. I know I need more variety in my diet, but they're go-tos. They're easy.

When I shop, I don't have to spend a whole lot of attention just reaching for those similar products. But I know variety would be better. I don't have to spend a whole lot of attention just reaching for those similar products. But I know variety would be better. And I'd rather have somebody chef it up, prepare it, and send it to my home. But there's high sodium. There's high costs in it. There's compromises there that I haven't quite been able to sort out. So how would you practically say, Mike, start with this?

Or would you say, stay the course. Those two are fine. Yeah. I mean, I guess my first question would be, is there a need to change? I don't know. This is like the challenge with subjective science is like, I don't know when I, I don't know. I don't know how to measure it. I do plenty of blood works to kind of see how I'm doing and they look pretty good, but I'm not sure that what better, what I could do to have better analysis. Well, and I guess like one of my questions is, I, this is how I explain it to clients train through an injury. If you're on the last leg of your Olympic gold medal run, if you're skiing down the hill and it's like your last, you know, few seconds and something breaks in your leg, keep going. Otherwise, if you're just a regular gym goer,

respond to the pain and be smart about it, right? So there's times to push and there's times not to push. There's times to extract that last 0.1% and there's times not to. And I think we have this obsession in North America with finding the best thing, the optimal thing, the perfect combination of hacks or whatever. We forget that it's absolutely unnecessary for the vast majority of us most of the time. And even high performance athletes don't need it most of the time. What we forget about, to bring it back around to the concept of mastery, is consistency and repetition. And what is actually going to give you that performance very likely is the 80% good enough that you do every single day rather than like the mythical 100% perfect. Because this thing does not

exist. Yeah, there's freedom in what you just said and you know i had this question underneath while you're talking which is like how often do you make a choice to eat something that is high sugary something whatever you know like how often do you when you know better and deviate from that because you want something that is more gluttonous. Well, isn't that an interesting frame that you put on it? Gluttonous. Yeah. Like something, um, something that you, when you know that it's not good for you, but it tastes really good. Or that it is also part of a broader experience that you want to have. Oh, cool. Yeah. Keep going on that.

The experience I want is I want health and vibrance and, you know, like I want all that, but sometimes, you know, like, I don't know something that's, I don't even know what it is, but like, it's more of a temporary pleasure as opposed to something that is more enduring? Well, I mean, I mean, here, here's an example. Let's say I once went to a Sikh wedding, which was, if you've never been to a Sikh wedding, basically the amount of food at these things, I mean, it's like a Russian wedding or an Italian wedding. Like there are certain cultures where, where weddings are all about, like, it's not how much you want to eat. It's all you can eat. And I remember being, you know, kind of shy about going, but so immediately welcomed and so immediately

embraced to be part of this experience. And so like, you walk in, and there's like things to look at, and there's smells, and there's sparkly things, and there's candles, and there's people dancing, and people are like, it's just the most unbelievable party you could imagine. And so, like, whatever I choose, whatever food I choose in that experience, and I guarantee none of it is health promoting, is going to be inextricably linked with having that whole holistic experience of being part of a group of people, or environment, or a happening, or like a, you know, set of emotions that's unfolding. So like, I really cannot dissociate the food itself or the nutrients that it contains from the entire holistic experience. Now, here's a more banal

example. I have discovered much to my delight that my partner is really good at making homemade fudge and the first time i discovered this i came home and he created this pan of homemade fudge no i've never really been i mean fudge is like like that's just straight sugar but i came home and this pan of like homemade fudge was on the counter i was like oh my god what is this amazing thing and like embedded in that experience so we sat and ate it And like embedded in that experience. So we sat and ate it, right? And embedded in that experience was like being in this relationship and having someone make something for me and sharing something together and talking about how good it was. So like you can't dissociate the food choice that you made from the environment that you're in or the emotions and the thoughts that you had around it.

I love it. I love the simplicity of it. And, you know, you're talking very much about an embodied experience in life and not this rigid, I don't know, ledger that if you eat this, then this, then if you don't do that, then there's this. And if somebody makes it for you and you push it back over, they're saying, I don't eat that. Then there's a cost to relationship and the elegance that can come with the fruitful relationship you want to have. So I love the nuanced texture that you have with it. And I can see why people would be drawn to it at the same time. You know what I'm craving from you? Like something like this. If you knew Mike, what I knew about these two, three foods, you wouldn't eat them. And so like, what would be some of that stuff? Some much like if I, if I could hold your hand to something more mechanical, what would it be?

And I'm not, I'm not a reductionist or I don't really value mechanics, but I know that there's something value valuable in, valuable in the concrete. Gosh, you just want me to tell you that you're doing something bad, don't you? No, no, no, no, no. I actually like, I actually really, yeah, I appreciate that. I really like my diet. Like, I think my nutritional approach in life feels really good. And like, but I'm wondering, like, I don't know, I, there's so much buzz about white stuff and bread and rice and this and that and the other. Is it right? Yeah, I mean, that's, that's totally a fair question. And I and I appreciate the desire for concreteness. And I mean, we so we we use a

couple of concepts at at Precision Nutrition. So one of them is the continuum, right? So there's like a best end of things, which is really, I mean, you could kind of like use your imagination to come up with like an infinite best. Okay, sure. And then there's a worst end of the continuum, right? Which I tend to put like non food items in like broken glass or newspaper. Come on. Okay. You can put whatever in the best and worst ends of things that you want. So first of all, we try to get people thinking along a continuum. Listen, you just answered it. Like that's really – Yeah, that's a really concrete frame that I can use.

Like where is it on this continuum? And to just be clear, then I can make an informed decision. Well, let me tell you about the other one, which I think is also super helpful. We use red, yellow, green light, like a traffic light concept, right? And so the red light foods are foods that are bad foods for you. They don't augment your performance. They make you feel bad. You can't eat them sanely. Maybe you have a food intolerance. You know, you don't like them maybe. For whatever reason, they're just bad news, no go for you. Yellow foods are contextually

good or like in some form you can eat eat them in some form, you can't, you can eat maybe a little bit of them, but or, you know, whatever. So there's some kind of like conditional situation. Yeah. And green light is like, always go always good. They make me feel good. They always boost my energy, I can eat them sanely. I enjoy them, I know how to prep them. So that's, that's what we use. And I mean, what we tend to find, of course, once we pull a bunch of clients is that everyone has more or less the same red light foods. Yellow lights are a little bit interesting, but everyone has more or less the same green light foods.

Wow. No kidding. So where's spinach for most people? For most people, it's a green light food. Yeah. Yeah. Where's avocado? For most people, green light, unless you have a food intolerance.

Many people can't digest it. So for many people, it's either a red or a yellow, only because it's usually a digestion thing. Yeah. Okay, good. So what are some of the other greens? So typically, the greens are fruits and vegetables, most fruits and vegetables, especially colorful ones, lean protein, you know, whether that's plant or animal, beans and legumes. For some people, whole grains are green foods. Some people have an intolerance, can't digest them well. And generally, whatever falls into the category of whole, unprocessed,

or relatively unprocessed, fresh food, you know, with lots of nutrients. That's pretty much what people find in the green light category. Yeah, that's, I mean, basic, right? Really basic. And then the reds are probably stuff that are processed. Yeah, typically highly processed or something that you might be allergic to. Yeah, right. And that's stuff that comes from a plant or you have a bad reaction to. When I say a plant, I don't mean plant-based, like comes from a manufacturing plant. That's correct. Yeah, and where do you put like protein bars? Again, there's probably continuum

and some are probably healthier than others, but where do you think about that stuff? For me, a protein bar is generally garbage. Like if I look on the label, the label ingredients is what tell me, right? And so I look on them like there's glycerin in here, there's usually sugar. Like if you look on the, if I look on the label, the label ingredients is what tell me, right? And so I look on, I'm like, there's glycerin in here. There's usually sugar. Like if you look at the ingredients and it's like low end crap quality protein. Um, if you think about the quality of the ingredients and what had to go into its production, if you, most protein bars are not much better than a candy

bar to be told. they might have a few grams of protein but at what cost right what's what's the trade-off so for me most protein bars crap wouldn't bother unless i was starving yeah right there you go okay really cool so um gosh i feel like i could keep going for a long time with you about, you know, how you've become and then the knowledge that you know is fascinating to me. But I want to get to some really crisp stuff about how you think about becoming. And, you know, I also want to celebrate some of the work that you've archived, like your books and whatnot. So help me go to this place first. Is there a phrase that guides your life? And this is really a, maybe a not so secretive way to talk about philosophy. Like, do you have a philosophy

that guides you? I don't, but I recently read a line in a book that I wish I had had earlier, because it's now governing my life. It's by Brad Blanton, who wrote Radical Honesty. You probably know this book. He has a whole series of radical honesty books. And the line is, the mind is a jail built out of bullshit. And I'm just like, yes, that is a mantra for all of us in 2019. Nice job. There you go. Okay, so what do you do with that? Yeah, and I mean, you know, a lot of this paradigm, which is what we've seen in clients, it kind of comes back to this owner's manual idea, right? You must constantly test yourself

against reality, especially the physical reality or the felt sense reality, the somatic reality, because your mind will create all kinds of stories and assumptions and beliefs and castles in the sky and magical thinking. I mean, the mind just likes making things. That's what it does. It sees patterns where none exist. It likes to make stories. But most of that is bullshit, or it's either only loosely based on reality or it twists reality or it selectively filters reality. So we have to kind of keep returning over and over and over to our lived, real physical experience to grasp how the world actually is. And it is this like iterative process because we get caught up in our stories again. And then we have to go, oh, no, no, wait, that is a story. That is not a directly factually

correct statement about observable reality. So, you know, I find myself in this kind of constantly iterative process of testing, noticing, observing, and really trying to be critical about like, well, how am I perceiving this situation right now? And is that factually accurate? That's really rich. Are you familiar with the OODA loop? Yes, for sure. It sounds like you're, yeah, you know, orientate, observe, orientate, decide, and act, which is a, it's a really cool iterative, you know, flywheel decision making process. Yeah, and I think there's, there's probably lots of variations on it. But I think, you know, most importantly, you want to be as often as possible in direct and immediate

contact with observable reality. There you go. I mean, it's beyond, that statement is beyond the tactile nature of it. And it's really rich. You know, it's really a deep thought. It sounds like you're organizing your life around that principle for sure. I really try to because I've seen the pain that stories can cause, right? And if you look around you and you think about the people in your life, or even the things that happen in the

world, you can see that so many things occur because people are deep in their stories and don't realize that they are stories. Krista, how do you get in your own way? oh my gosh well you know um i recently discovered i i was i went back temporarily to do another master's in counseling psychology um before i realized i remembered that academia sucked i was like oh yeah i forgot about that um but i when i was working in there i was doing something on on attention i was really interested in, like my own attention felt so fragmented, but I'd never been tested for attention deficit. So I was like, oh, I'm going to just do this little clinical instrument on attention deficit, you know, disorder, ha ha ha. And I just scored off the charts. And I was like, wow, I didn't expect that. Because I think I'm a fairly functional human being, you know,

I can find my wallet and my keys and my socks. And, you know, my life is reasonably well organized. But I was trying to figure out an answer for why my brain felt so scrambled and fragmented. And so, like discovering that, you know, I scored so high on this clinical instrument for attention deficit was like, oh, my goodness, that explains so many things. And so since then, I really tried to think a lot about like being intentional about being intentional with my attention. Where is my attention going? How's it getting pulled? How's it getting fragmented? You know, how is this task switching that I'm attempting to do, scrambling my own brain. So that's a really big one is kind of fragmenting my own focus. That's really cool. And what is it that you're most hungry for or

craving? Or what is the underlying deep pursuit that you're, that you have? Um, I would say growth and learning are the two biggest ones. And that's why not having good attention is so troubling because you need focus to really, really learn. So like my, my thing that I love huffing is my addiction is growth and learning. Like I just, it's, it, I wouldn't say it's like an obsession, but it's just something I can't not do. If you were to ask a question to somebody, if you had, this is super reductionist, but if you had the chance to sit with somebody who's a true master, whether it's craft or self or both, and you had one question, you know, this thirst for learning and growth, what question would you ask them?

You know, I am not even sure I would ask them a question. I feel like I would sit and be present with them. I mean, it would depend on what their mastery was, right? But to me, like the most incredible experience of mastery is an experiencing and watching it. And if I think about my experience in martial arts and like watching the judo black belts do what they do, I mean, you can learn about mastery so much by just experiencing them. If you work with the black belt, they just magically do things. And you're like, oh my gosh, how does that even work? There's some 80-year-old guy who hobbles on the mat and says, oh, my knees aren't so good. Let's take it easy. And then just crushes you with a single finger. To me, that is a more elegant demonstration of mastery. I don't even know if I'd want to soil it with a question.

Look at you. Okay. All right. The first person to say that, that's interesting. Okay. And so you'd rather observe and learn as opposed to insert from a curious perspective, something that you'd want more information on. Yes, because I think, I mean, obviously, of course, I want to ask them all the questions, right? I'd want to spend 20 years with them asking all the questions. But to me, when you see someone expressing mastery, questions seem so superficial. Like, how did you do that? How did you do that technique? How did you know that? These questions just seem so trivial in the face of someone who obviously has this

like, deep, holistic grasp of something that is entirely almost unexplainable. So funny that you say that, because I'm thinking back, I had the chance to sit with one of most dignified buddhist monks in buddhism and uh like as i don't know i can't even recall what his title was but it was like way up there in the first rung right reports directly to the dalai and it was this moment where he says that you know he, he goes, um, we had four to five minutes before we're going to, uh, we're doing a keynotes together and, uh, we have this wonderful exchange. And so I said, Hey, can I ask you a question? And he says, yeah. Um, anything you want. He had an interpreter with him. And I said, is it true? Like, do I, am I thinking about this? Right. That thoughts and actions are the same for you? He says, yes. I said, so can I ask you a sexually charged question? And he laughs like, you know, like, yeah, of course. I said, so if you were

to think about, and I said, you've taken the vow of celibacy, right? And he says, yes. I said, so if you were to think about a woman that was naked or having sex in your mind with a woman. That's the same as doing it." And he looks and he goes, yeah, like this look like, yeah. And I said, so how do you do that? How are you so disciplined with your thought? And as soon as I said it, I was like, man, Mike, what are you doing? You know, I had this, like, why are you asking this question? But I'm really, I'm very curious about the discipline to be principle-based, mission-minded, and to have that type of commitment in life. And so he says two ways. He says it's a bit like corralling a thousand Mustangs.

He laughed. And then the second, he says it's a bit like corralling a thousand Mustangs. He laughed. And then the second, he says, it's also like an itch. At first, you want to scratch it a bunch, but then over time, the itch goes away. And I thought, oh, man, look at that. So to your point, I felt my experience was like, this is really good. And then the second part was like, gosh, that's a silly question. Because he was just living it and so there was this much deeper peace that he had about things rather than this

musing sexually charged you know question trying to get at the discernment between thought and action and so i just thought i'd share that with you i'm not sure why but it was a it was um i much appreciate your approach like i think the best thing is just to observe. Well, and it's, I mean, it is like, the Buddhism thing is very appropriate, right? Cause it's the whole chop wood, carry water, the thing that you do. And there's a good, you know, analogy to martial arts. Like the thing that you do on day one is the thing that you do as a master. And I think this is what people don't understand. They're looking for like, okay, you know, at some point I'm going to learn the secret touch of death technique, right? Like I'm going to learn the next level stuff. At some point it's

going to happen. And hopefully it dawns on you that the reason that someone is a master is because they can do the most essential things with an incredible amount of skill. They can do them excellently, right? So even where they place their balance or where they place their hand or hold their fingers or shift their weight, like these are things you learn on day one, but they do them at such an incredible level of depth and skill. So there's no secret, like the things you're chopping wood and carrying water, like that is the foundation of Zen. And, and it is in the doing that you get to the mastery. Okay, so when I asked you, what is mastery? Did you just say it? I might have.

Mm hmm. Yeah. I mean, you know, for me, mastery is, is also is also about knowing exactly what is important and know more than that. So I don't need to do fancy stuff to be a master. In fact, I can strip it down to its absolute essence and have this kind of deep, intuitive, felt sense for things. I mean, I can talk about them. I can certainly articulate them. But there's a depth to it, which is, again, kind of holistic and intuitive. It's almost like a complete integration of all the ways that anyone could know something, whether that's, you know,

abstract and cognitive, or extremely deep, and intuitive. It doesn't, your answer does not surprise me, it fits. Oh, good. Eloquently fits. Yeah, good. It eloquently fits. Yeah, it's good. How would you answer this? Like it all comes down to? It all comes down to.

Oh, my goodness. It all comes down to the willingness to show up. So there's two pieces there, willingness and showing up. Very cool. And then if you were to put another lens on it, success is? Success is not what people expect it to be. i i think that when especially in north america when we talk about success we talk about you know winning the trophy making the money living in the house having the car you know enjoying some kind of perceived social status within a particular

system but if i ask myself who is a successful human being? Like none of those appear on my list. So success as a human being, I mean, there are things like living authentically, you know, integrating the pieces of yourself, living according to principles, again, being willing and showing up, especially in those small moments when you don't have to show up, when no one's giving you a trophy, that's what it's really demonstrated, whether you're a successful human being or not. When no one sees it, what are you doing? Jeez. How do you say, how do you go for this? I am. Aha.

It's interesting you ask that because I can no longer answer that question. In the last few years, so much of whatever would fill in that blank has changed so much with me that I no longer am able to answer that question because I can no longer attach the am-ness to really anything. So, I mean, I could give you like some easy ones. Like I guess I could say, oh, you know, I'm female, I'm Canadian. Like there's things I could point to, but none of them would fully capture it. So I am actually unable really to answer those kinds of questions now. And I feel really good about that because there's like a freedom to it. It's like, what is the weather? Right? Well,

lots of things. That's how I feel. I love it. And you know, Jesus said, I am, I am, I am the I and I am. And so you just said the same thing in like a very modern way, which is, you know, I don't know. I'm not concerned with that so much. I've come to a place where it's, uh, it escapes me. It's yeah. I've always been, I've always been really struck by this, that exists in kind of the Babylonian mythology where the goddess Inanna descends to the underworld. I mean, there's this kind of archetype of descent to the underworld. But the Babylonians spared no expense in describing this very gruesome experience. And so the goddess Inanna descends to the underworld. But she goes from a queen to being nothing. She goes to visit her sister,

Ereshkigal, I believe. But she gets progressively stripped of everything, right? She gets her crown taken away, her clothes, her jewels, all that kind of stuff. And eventually she even ends up losing her skin, like literally, like she's flayed and hung on a hook. It's completely gruesome. But to me, that's always been this incredible metaphor for like how life progressively takes all that you have. And I don't mean to sound like negative or nihilist, but it's like everywhere you hang your hat, that hook at some point will disappear, whether that's permanently or temporarily. So if you define yourself, oh, I'm a healthy person, some point that is not going to be true. So however you define

yourself, again, temporarily or permanently, that self-definition category will be taken from you. So I've always found that such an instructive parable because you have to be willing to allow all these things to be taken from you. Not that you have to love it because a lot of it sucks, but to recognize that that is part of the whole experience. And there has to be some kernel of you that survives, but that kernel is indescribable. Do you have a framework? Because that insight is stitched across many of the world religions. Buddha lived something very similar to that. The story of Job and Christianity, you know, Hinduism and kind of the civil war of trying

to figure out who you are measured by your internal war or your internal struggle. Like these themes show up in many of the world's religions, but also like Stoicism and Socratic methods. And so there's other philosophical approaches as well. Like, do you have a framework that you tend to sit squarely in? Well, you know, I always sort of feel like Groucho Marx, like I wouldn't ever belong to a club that would have me as a member and i think i think buddha also said if you meet the buddha on the road kill

him right so for for me there's there's never really been any kind of attachment to a particular framework because you know i think if we we try to build a house and live in it then we're going to run into problems because at some point, some part of us is going to bump up against the walls of that house. But if we think about it as a loose garment or something airy that we can kind of put on as we need it, right, steal from it, right, take an idea that is helpful to us in that moment, then I think that's perfectly okay. But I certainly would not consider myself as living in any particular framework, because I think as soon as we erect our scaffolds, they get knocked down. It's the same thing that everything gets taken from you. As soon as you come up with a really terrific set of concepts, the universe is like, haha, nice concepts. Shame if something were to happen to it, it kicks it over. Really cool.

Where have you done all this work? Is it in reading alone? Psychotherapy plus? Is it spiritual gurus? Is it being around John Berardi? What's up, John? So like, where have you done the work? And I know that that's a multi-dimensional question, multifaceted response required, but like for the most part, where have you done this work?

It's funny that John Berardi contains all things. You know, it comes back to what we were talking about before, being an alive and aware and a curious person, right? So there are tools and techniques. Sure, you can read books. You can go and talk to people. You can go get psychotherapy. Like there's lots of pathways to it. I also think that looking to a source as like the big answer misses the fact that so many of these incredible lessons

are contained in the banality of our lives, right? Like, so if I look outside my window, there's a sidewalk. Okay, it's a sidewalk, like who cares? Someone had to get up early in the morning and kiss their spouse goodbye and pack a lunchbox and go to work and make that sidewalk. There is so much invisible labor in our society and regular people who are living these profound truths in some way. To me, that's really been one of the best places to look. So if I wanted to learn about resilience, I think of the woman I met when I was an undergraduate who came from Cuba, was studying, somehow made it to a university in Toronto, was studying. I think she had a couple of kids. She was working a part-time job and was somehow making it all work. English is a second language. So I don't need to look to some great

guru for lessons on resilience. I can look to this regular person who is living a regular life in an amazing kind of way. To me, that's always where the best lessons lie in these little trivialities and banalities and invisible mechanics of human existence. How do you practice the insight? Do you write more? Do you talk to others? Is there a meditation experience

where you're sharpening the refinement of the linking of ideas? There's some sort of practice that you have. And I'm curious, maybe it's not this consistent thing. I'm not, I'm not trying to box you into a framework or be reductionist in any way, but you know, there is something that you're doing to gain clarity. Unless, you know, I don't know, you're born with clarity, which it doesn't sound like it. So how are you practicing?

There's certainly no formal practice. I have tried seated meditation. For someone with ADD, it's a complete disaster. At least it is for me. Maybe some people love it and find it helpful. I typically prefer to be in motion but i mean for for me my my like i said my practice is in is in the banality i i love this reflection uh that comes from japanese psychotherapy which is what you ask yourself questions what have i been given today and you're encouraged to extend that beyond like a thing that

someone gave me but like you know if i'm an airplane, who made sure this airplane didn't drop out of the sky? Oh, my gosh, there's actually like 500 people that made that happen, right? So what have I been given today? And what harm have I caused today? Which I think is a really interesting question, whether that's, you know, purposefully or inadvertently. So to me, like, there is a practice of asking oneself some questions in a day. Who do I want to be today? Is a question I asked myself. What's the life I want to live today? Is a question I asked myself. But I often do I don't do this in a structured practice. I do it during something like I walk to the coffee shop, and I ask myself this, and sometimes I go out and I practice walking. Like, what is it like to have my feet hit the ground or to maintain an upright spine? Like, what is, gosh, that's an interesting thing. So I really don't have a formal structure practice in the sense that most people recognize. I mean, I half-ass, you know, I half-ass journal, I half-ass listen to things, think about things, but it's really only when you step back from, you know, 46 years of doing that, you see any kind of pattern emerging from it.

Chris, I love your approach. I think it's super attractive in the authenticity and the consistency that have allowed you this clarity. And I'm really attracted to your approach. I think it's really free. And so evidence by your laugh and evidence by, you know, the way that you think about concepts and the way that you stitch ideas together. Yeah, I really appreciate the conversation. So thank you for all of it is it was great this has been wonderful oh thank you you asked such terrific questions i feel like i got a good uh intellectual work out there so yeah you made you made my brain sweat which is great awesome all right so um a couple things one is maybe a couple hopeful go-dos that you would imagine people could do, but then I want to ask that maybe people pick up your book. And so if you could talk about that, but maybe in addition to that, a piece of it. So the go do is go and encounter reality, as it is, and like realities all around you. So it's

like you have to go somewhere special, you don't have to go on a meditation retreat. I mean, sit in your chair, look around, go out in the street, look around, go, go experience something at a time or place, you don't normally do that, you know, so it sort of jars your perspective a little bit. Go and experience reality directly. The more practical implementation of that, which we use in our nutrition coaching program, is eat slowly with full presence and awareness, as much as you can. You know, so put down the phone, turn off the TV, whatever, and just eat slowly. And notice, like, what is it like to chew my food? How does this stuff taste? How does it smell? How am I putting it in my mouth? You know, my,

how am I experiencing it? So that's a very, very simple technique that we teach in our program. And when people first hear it, they're like, oh, that's dumb and easy. And we're like, okay, cool. Go ahead and try it. Try it out. Yeah. I mean, it's funny that you, you don't want to be kind of boxed in by a mindfulness approach to life or meditation practices, but you are like you, you're doing them like contemplative meditation or mindfulness is asking questions and exploring and exploring the nature of reality. Like it's, it is awesome to hear you put language to something that is very applied and has been around for thousands of years and very organic, you know, and then eating meditation is so hard and so challenging that it does get almost dismissed like this is silly, but I'm sure you've done the meditation where you just put a raisin in your mouth or whatever, and then kind of advanced to actually noticing the sandwich you're putting and the

texture of the fill in the blank ingredients and what that feels like. Have you, have you started with a raisin? Have you ever started folks? Oh, yes, yes, yes. And the raisin, the raisin thing is actually in a lesson in our program. Oh there you go yeah cool yeah yeah and i mean another way we say it is like eat food like a wine tasting right if you're if you've ever done a wine tasting or other you know like a whiskey tasting or beer tasting whatever um do do that with your eating that's how often do you drink alcohol uh it's funny you asked that actually because uh for a long time i i didn't drink at all and And then when I had some life change stuff happen over the last few years, I was like, you know, alcohol would make this feel better. And I started I

started drinking more. And I mean, I love scotch and anything that's sort of interesting flavor, like gin and a good smoky mezcal. So now I drink much more often, relatively speaking, so that might be something, you know, something like, um, three times a week or something like that. If I have a really, like someone makes me a really good cocktail or something like that. So yeah, I drink much more. And in Vancouver, there's a great like craft beer and craft booths. So, you know, I can't not participate. Is that on average, say the three times, are we talking 12 beers? Okay. No, for console's dear listeners, I am a 46 year old woman who was five feet tall.

So to me, a bender is like a full cocktail. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, cool. All right. Good context. All right. So anything else on the go-dos? I honestly think there's, yeah, like go and get present with reality. And I don't

want to say stop the seeking, because I don't want to shut you down and be like, okay, that's all there is. But I would say like, really think about what's driving you to acquire and hoard and seek and look for the answer. Because that may or may not be the correct project for you to be on. There may be a wealth of things that are available, like right within you or immediately around you that you haven't yet mined. I mean, if I think about, you know, for example, athletic mastery, right? People are like, again, like what's the secret technique or what's the secret coaching technique?

And what you're actually looking for in being a good coach or good athlete is using the resources that you already have and developing them to their fullest potential. So if you're a coach, it's communication, listening, empathy, you know, planning, analysis, all that kind of stuff. If you're an athlete, it's what is located with my own body that I can develop as a capacity. So I would say do maybe a little bit less looking out there and more a little looking or cultivating within you or nearly around you. part of us becoming. And if you want to get better at it, there's lots of ways to explore that domain of humanness. And one way to do it, to get better at it, to understand it is to punch over to precision nutrition. And then your book, the title of your book is brilliant. Say it for us. It's called why me want to eat fixing your food fucked up a toot. I love it.

What are we getting from that? Well, it's funny because people always say, like, is there a Kindle version? No, there is not because this is a print workbook. And what it does, it takes all of the things that I have learned from working with clients and the literature on disordered eating over the years to help people explore their issues with food and eating and to some degree like exercise and body stuff. Because almost all of us have it, right? Almost all of us have something with food and eating and body stuff. And so it takes all the scholarly academic literature and all the perhaps with clients and puts it into a workbook that is full of curse words that is meant to be scribbled on torn apart you know stuck googly eyes

on whatever but it's it's meant to be a very hands-on working through of any issues that you might have with disordered eating well done all of it and that you don't need me to say that. But I just felt like I'm so stoked on this conversation and what you're contributing to our community and your community at large. And so again, super stoked. And thank you. This is this has been wonderful. Oh, thank you. Yeah, awesome. Okay. Do you have social handles or anything that people can follow along with your musings? Yeah, you can find me on Instagram, Stumptuous, S-T-U-M-P-T-O-U-S, Stumptuous. And then if you get on Facebook and search for Krista Scott Dixon, you'll find me. I love it. Okay. All the best.

Thank you. Okay. Bye. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Okay. Bye. listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter we send out every Wednesday. Punch over to findingmastery.com slash newsletter to sign up. The show wouldn't be possible without our sponsors and we take our recommendations seriously. And the team is very thoughtful about making sure we love and endorse every product you hear on the show. If you want to check out any of our sponsor offers you heard about in this episode, you can find those deals at findingmastery.com slash sponsors. And remember, no one does it alone. The door here at Finding Mastery is always open to those looking to explore the edges and the reaches of their potential so that they can help others do the same. So join our community, share your favorite

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