Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - The New Science of Self-Actualization | Scott Barry Kaufman

Episode Date: April 1, 2020

This week’s conversation is with Scott Barry Kaufman, a humanistic psychologist exploring the depths of human potential.He has taught courses on intelligence, creativity, and well-being at Columbia University, NYU, the University of Pennsylvania, and elsewhere.In 2015, he was named one of "50 Groundbreaking Scientists who are changing the way we see the world" by Business Insider.Scott was a previous guest on Finding Mastery (#078) where we spent time diving into his journey and what made him the man he is today.I wanted to have him back on because he just published a new book titled, Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization… a bold reimagining of Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs--and new insights for realizing your full potential and living your most creative, fulfilled, and connected life.And that’s what we discuss in this conversation.If you’re not familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, definitely check it out.The needs are: physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.The interesting thing with this conversation is the timing.As Scott mentions, right now our focus is on more pressing needs at the potential sacrifice of realizing our full potential._________________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. When you peer into the heart of darkness, what do you see? You see exploitation, the drive for exploitation, the drive for greed, the drive for power over others, control over others. You see excessive, excessive self-interest. Now, so what is a light triad? So a light triad incorporates treating people as an end in themselves. You can admire the sacredness of a person, even if they're very different from you, or even if they don't serve any usefulness for you. You can have a general faith in humanity that humans are, at the end of the day, basically

good even if they often don't act that way. And then you can also, the third component is humanism, treating each individual as valuable. Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais and by trade and training, I'm a sport and performance psychologist, as well as the co-founder of Compete to Create. And the whole idea behind these conversations, behind this podcast, is to learn from people who have committed their life efforts towards mastery, to understanding the depth of what they are most curious about. And there's two parts to it. There's the mastery of craft and the mastery of self.

And we're indexing a bit more on the mastery of self side, which is how do they organize their inner life? How do they train and condition their minds and how they take steps to build the community around them to support each other towards the collective aim. And on that note, we're in extraordinary times of uncertainty right now. And I just want to say thank you for being part of this community for the years that many of you have been. And if you're new, I want to say with the warmest heart, welcome. And we are in this together, this uncertain times that we're in, we need each other. And this is a great way for us to share ideas, to punch back and forth on. We've got a Finding Mastery tribe. And so if you're not part of that, punch over to findingmastery.net forward slash tribe.

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What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell. Okay. All right. Look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective. 28 grams of protein, just 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. It's rare to find something that fits so conveniently into a performance-based lifestyle and actually tastes good. Dr. Peter Attia, someone who's been on the show, it's a great episode by the way, is also their chief science officer. So I know they've done their due diligence in that category. My favorite flavor right now is the chocolate chip cookie dough. And a few of our

teammates here at Finding Mastery have been loving the fudge brownie and peanut butter. I know, Stuart, you're still listening here. So getting enough protein matters. And 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-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Okay, this week's conversation is with Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman. He's a humanistic psychologist exploring the depths of human potential. And it feels like we talk the same language. We are

completely different when it comes to personality and style. And the affinity that I have for him is so high, with such high regard. I love this conversation. I love what he stands for and how he approaches psychology and understanding. And so he teaches courses on intelligence, creativity, well-being, and he's done it at the highest levels, Columbia University, NYU, and University of Pennsylvania. And it's not like he just teaches those courses. He's on staff doing it there in a really rich level where he's making a dent in not only the discipline of psychology at these universities, but also beyond that in his writings and the podcast that

he has as well. So in 2015, how about this? He was named one of the 50 groundbreaking scientists who are changing the way we see the world. And that was done by Business Insider. Scott was also a previous guest on the Finding Mastery podcast. It was, if you're going to go back and look, it was number 78. And that's where he spent time diving into his journey, his approach in life, and what made him the man he is today is amazing. And so if you want some deeper context, let's certainly punch over and check out Scott Barry Kaufman, number 78 on Finding Mastery. And I wanted to have him back on because he just published a new book and the timing is so good. It's titled Transcend, The New Science of Self-Actualization.

And it's a bold reimagining. I mean, when I say bold, I mean bold. Reimagining of Abraham Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs. And he's got new insights for realizing how full potential can take place and for living your most creative, fulfilled, and connected life. And so in this conversation, that's what we get into, how he broke apart Maslow's original ideas, added to them. And if you're not familiar with Maslow's ideas, the hierarchy of needs, definitely check it out. It's easy to find online. But really, the way that he organizes ideas is that all humans, we have some needs. And once those needs are met, then we're able to explore some of the higher order stuff.

And so it's basic physiological safety needs at the base, if you will. And then this idea of belonging and love and esteem, and then eventually into the space of self-actualization, like becoming and living your best life. understand, wait a minute, do I have basic physiological needs met? Because it certainly feels like with this level of uncertainty that we're not quite sure and some people are radically affected. And so the importance of our minds right now is on point. And now let's jump right into this week's conversation with Scott Barry Kaufman. Scott, how are you? I'm doing as best as can be under the circumstances, brother. I know. As I was preparing for our conversation, I was like, this is timely, you know, because I respect you and your position and your science and your ability to articulate challenging experiences and the experience that lies underneath of it. So this is timely. Two psychologists are going to talk about your life work and your passion

and also how it relates to people's real and perceived safety. And that's kind of what's happening right now is the pervasive risk that's taking place or pervasive threat that's taking place for people. And so, yeah, absolutely. So thank you for being here in this really kind of chaotic and busy time. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me on. I always love talking to you, Michael. You always give me a lot of great insights. Good. Ditto. Okay, good. Okay. So let's just start on this note really quickly while we have it is like how are you experiencing

the coronavirus as a professional but more importantly as a person that's living amongst it right now well it's a bit surreal and i'll explain why so i thought I was writing a book that I would be promoting at this time, and I thought the message I would be promoting is the upper part of that pyramid, like how we can all transcend and be inspired and fully self-actualize and contribute to the good society. And what I'm faced with now is, as so many people are, this personal experience of clinging so heavily to the bottom of that pyramid, clinging so heavily to trying to get some sense of certainty back in their lives. So I couldn't have predicted that this is the part of the hierarchy of needs that I'd be focusing on as I was promoting this book, but I think it's a good wake-up call, not just to myself, but to everyone, just how quickly any one of us can, you know, this situation can happen where we focus on more pressing needs at the potential sacrifice of realizing our full potential.

So this book and me have been deeply intertwined right now, if that makes sense. Yeah, for sure. That's why I was looking forward to it. First, to set the context is that you're offering us to remind ourselves of how the great theorists in humanistic psychology have accounted for the human experience. And your book is really exciting for me. And so can you do, before we get into the mechanics of the book and the insights that you've expressed, can you do a quick little, I don't know, 25 second, whatever that, whatever it is, like background check on like, not check, but background of you to give folks an experience of who you are?

Oh, sure. Whenever I'm asked to do that, my life flashes before my eyes and I try to think, which are the highlights here? Is it the time I was rejected from American Idol? Or was it the time I was in special education? Is it the time I was, is it, you know, my interest in cognitive science or which then morphed into humanistic psychology? If you ask me right now, what am I right now today? You know, I identify as a humanistic psychologist. So I'm a psychologist who is deeply interested in plumbing the depths of human experience and human potential and thereby human potential. days. But it's funny because if you're looking at my story, if someone's looking at my story or looking at sort of my life in totality, probably would not have been able to predict this moment. But this is where I'm at. Yeah. I mean, growing up, you were taught, I think is a fair way to say, that you were not intelligent. And maybe the more brash way of saying it is that you're stupid. Yeah.

Yeah. Slow learner was the label. Slow learner. Yeah. And, but in, in actuality, you're incredibly bright and intelligent.

And there was like some sort of constriction that was allowing you to not access that full intelligence. And can you just walk through that as a little bit of context? Because I think it's incredibly powerful and it's incredibly important to what you're about to share. Thanks, Michael, for thinking I'm smart. No, I don't say smart. I say I think you're brilliant. And I'm not saying that because of your history.

It's just the way we have conversations, I get super stimulated by and the way that you snap together quickly interesting ideas. I'm like, yeah, okay. Likewise. Thanks, Michael. Well, okay. So just in brief, because I did have the pleasure of being on your podcast before, and I think we went in great depth on it in that episode. But yeah, just in brief, I was essentially deaf the first three years of my life. So it was very hard for me to process things in real time.

So teachers really thought I was stupid. Like you said, it was hard for me to appear bright because I was having trouble hearing what was going on. And I had an operation to remove the fluid in my ears, but I, you know, just like a blind person, maybe they have an operation to see, they can't immediately see. They need to process what WTF am I seeing? I had to process, what am I hearing? What does this all mean? And I did outgrow it at a certain point pretty quickly, but I was still kept in special education and remedial classes because I then developed anxiety as a result of being bullied and everything. So it

was this cycle, you know, this cycle that happens, or shall we say spiral, a spiral downward. But there was a teacher who believed in me in ninth grade and saw a greater potential in me a special education teacher and she asked me why i was still there so i was kept in remedial classes all the way up till ninth grade was not it was not college bound uh and ninth grade you know when this happened i just started to think myself what am i capable of and and it really quickly turned into yeah what am i am I capable of? And I just, I took myself out of special education and I signed up for everything hard. I didn't care. I just like, I'm like, I'm jumping in the deep end. I've had how many years where I haven't had any opportunity

to be challenged whatsoever. I'm just going to just jump in and see what happens and learn from it. And boy, that was quite an experience. I'll tell you, I wasn't good at everything, obviously. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Okay. And then, I mean, it's an important note because here you are contributing in a, um, a forward thinking way in what I think is one of the more beautiful and complicated sciences and, um, psychology. And so that's awesome. I mean, what an incredible arc. And there's lots of notes in between that will shape the tone of who you are. And so, you know, if you're new to,

and this is to folks listening, if you're new to Scott, definitely head back into the, I don't know the number right now, but his earlier podcast was amazing. It was rich. And what I'd like for us to do in this one is hit a couple more quick notes on you and then get to some insights. And what is your spiritual framework? Well, I am very spiritual and the framework, my spiritual framework is no secret because I outlined it in great detail in my new book. What I attempted to do is to democratize spirituality. And what I still continue attempting to do is democratize spirituality where I want to look scientifically at the most transcendent experiences that a human could possibly have. And regardless of your religious belief or any other belief that you may have, show that we all can rally around very similar experiences. So when I think about spirituality, I do think about these transcendent experiences where Abraham Maslow,

the humanistic psychologist, called them peak experiences. And there's something very spiritual about peak experiences, you know, these most wondrous moments of our lives where they're not necessarily ecstatic. They could be quite serene. And that's another misconception I talk about in the book is that Maslow talked about it, how some of the greatest moments of our lives are kind of like you're lounging in heaven. You're not, you know, you're not this ecstatic in heaven, right? Like, oh my God, oh my God, but you're actually having great gratitude and appreciation for all the good in your life. So these peak experiences don't have

to be ecstatic, but there's something very spiritual about it where we feel a sense of oneness or connection with the rest of humanity. And that's the kind of spirituality I'm talking about when I say I'm spiritual. I think there's too much pseudo-spirituality going on in the world today. People who will feel one with everyone in their in-group, like maybe a church on a Sunday, they feel this amazing transcendent experience. And then they'll leave church and go on Twitter and yell at someone who has a different belief than them, you know? And it's like, well, what happened to that sense of transcendence that you had? You know, we're allowed to carry it forward throughout the rest of our day. So, I've just been

trying to look at what would it mean to carry spirituality forward the rest of our day. Does that make sense? Absolutely. And there was a line in your book that you said that you referenced to the shaky foundation that some of the modern day principles or gurus that, you know, say is on stage stuff, but they sit or rest on shaky principles. And when you said that I was gripped by that line and it's early in your book. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Speak okay speak more on it and can you can you highlight the difference between something that rests on a shaky foundation or principle and something that rests on something that is sturdy durable flexible dynamic and like how the how that comes to be and maybe the difference between the

two yeah this is like an essay it's like like a homework question. I hope I can get this in a way that's comprehensible. So my thinking about this, because it is a little bit complex, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it as well, is that the original Maslow's hierarchy of needs, people have depicted it as this pyramid, as this kind of like trek up a pyramid. So you reach your connection needs or your safety needs. And then it's like it's as though some voice from above is like, congrats, you've unlocked your esteem needs as though. And then you can just move on. You've already fulfilled your safety needs.

Yeah. Right. And so, OK, good. You've got food and shelter. Great. And you never have to worry about that again. Right. Like as if you never have to worry about it. You could just move on to the next level. Well, it turns out that I discovered Maslow never actually drew a pyramid. I looked through all of his writings or as much of his writings as humanly possible. I looked through so much. He never actually drew a pyramid to depict his hierarchy of needs. He always made it clear that human development was always a two steps forward, one big step back dynamic.

You know, human growth always involves this, you know, setbacks. It always involves setbacks. It's not like that. And that really, instead of a trek up a mountain, to become fully human is actually more about integration, having a healthy integration, operating as a whole person, as a whole unit. So that's really how I see it. transcendence or for, you know, because the need to reach outside of ourselves to be part of something bigger than ourselves is a foundational human need. But there are a lot of people that are going about it in very unhealthy ways because they haven't integrated their need for connection or even their need for safety or their need for respect. And if those things are so deprived and you join an organization,

let's say it's a cult or a violent extremism organization, a violent extremism organization or extreme politics or something, and you don't have this security first, you're going to be likely to bring in, you're going to be disintegrated, right? You're going to bring in, you're going to be likely to bring in, you're going to be disintegrated, right? You're going to bring in, you're going to be on a faulty, that's what I mean by standing on a faulty foundation, because your drive to transcend is actually being driven by your deprivations, not for a growth motivation to make the world a better place. And I think that's actually detrimental to yourself and society. What are some of the core principles that you rely on to have that aspirational purpose? Like what are the kind of the roots that matter most to you that help guide your thoughts and your words and your actions?

What are some of those for you? Well, I hate to beat a dead horse. Abraham Maslow's writings, I got so... I went on such a journey these past four years, man. It was almost to the exclusion of everything else in my life. I just felt the sense of purpose to really discover this unpublished theory of transcendence he was working on that a lot of people don't know about. And I discovered the rest of the humanistic psychologists during that time period and just read as much as I could about their work. And I feel like, in total, the thinking of humanistic psychology really serves the foundation for my values and my belief system.

And really, they believed in things that are not hot today. So they never used words like, or they very rarely would use words such as happiness or achievement or even high performance. These were not words that, this is not part of their language. And I'm not saying those things are bad. Don't get me wrong, Michael. But they had a different sort of lexicon. They focused more on words such as responsibility, creativity, growth, health, freedom, social action. So that was more their lexicon. And I feel like I resonated more with that.

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And, you know, it rests on the idea that high regard for other people an unconditional approach to understand them, you know, and to just be there with them. And there's a whole approach that sits underneath that. But so, um, and as well as the good CBT, you know, I was trained in that with a third component, if there's a Venn diagram of, um, the practice of mindfulness. And so, yeah, it was a really great experience for me. But all that being said, the humanistic approach, one of the things that I really appreciate about it is their interest in the capabilities. So the upper reaches of the human experience and trying to explain the deep question in life. Like, what are we doing? Oh my God.

You know, right? Like, what are we doing here? And how can we move beyond the self to help others have a deeper experience in life? And I'd love for you to chin check this a little bit because maybe I've transmuted it over the years to something that fits more for me than it was like from the original source. But oftentimes I'll ask people or people ask me like, what do you want in life? And I know that oftentimes people say, I just want to be happy. And I think that people are kind of expecting that when they ask me, like I said, I just want to be happy. It's not it for

me. And I want to know what it is for you. But if I could bias it for a minute, is that what I want is to feel the entirety of the human experience as much as I possibly can with the widest range of emotional and physiological and physical and push to the edges of it and retract and push again and retract. And so I have more capacity to play and to experience. And so that to me is like this integrative approach. But for me, it's not about being happy. Although I love happy. It's good. Joy is good. Joy and happiness are both really good. But when you hear that, do you go, yeah, yeah, humanistic? Or do you hear something else? I do. I do. I hear very much humanistic. They were very interested in the creative, spiritual, and humanitarian possibilities that existed among humans, the upper reaches of human nature, as you, I think you said. And as Maslow put it in his book that was published right before he

passed away, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. And a lot of people haven't read that book. They've read his earlier works. Did he die in 70? I know you mentioned the book, was it 76? 1970. Yes, at the age of 62 of a heart attack. And he had left so much of what he was working on just unrealized. He died, you know, not as though... It's not that any of us actually reached self-actualization, but he definitely died un-self-actualized. Un-self-actualized? Yeah, un.

I said un because, I mean, all of us are, you know, we won't fully self-actualize. But he left this theory of transcendence just kind of sitting there on the table. So he never realized it. You know, I think I want to get to that component because you're adding to the, quote-unquote, self-actualization, peak experience, static type of thing. And you're adding to what he left unfinished which was transcendence right which is a deeper um insight and understanding well i'm going to leave that for you to explain and take it further but but i felt from

um informed by your book and informed by some of the readings that he actually had a sense of such insight and connection to his own experience at the end of life that he was able to recognize like, oh, I feel free, but maybe I have that wrong. He felt very free the past couple months of his life because he felt like he was living, he called it a post-mortem life. He did have a heart attack a year and a half before he died. He had a heart attack that he survived, and he felt had a heart attack that he survived. And he felt surviving

that heart attack really gave him a sense of transcendence in his daily life that he never had before that moment. He felt like everything from here on is gravy because, you know, everything here is an end, an end life in itself. Nothing, I don't need to worry about doing things as a means to an end because, you know, he knew time was short and he came, he confronted his mortality. It actually confused him. He wrote in his personal journals how, you know, because his original theory should have predicted that once he faces mortality, he should kind of drop to the bottom of his hierarchy of needs and panic. But instead, it gave him a— Because he no longer had safety?

Correct. Correct. it would be the opposite of allowing him to self-actualize and transcend. But actually, confronting that mortality and having that in his consciousness heightened his experience of transcendence beyond what he ever could have imagined or had written about prior to that moment. So it was quite an interesting experience for him. Yeah, and I don't think it's lost on either of us that most of the 11 world religions take a look at life after death or the experience after death to give a narrative, to give some handles that people can grab onto.

Like this is how we're going to explain what happens after you physically die to give you some sort of, I don't know, resolve or at ease to say, no, live more freely because this is what's going to happen or be in fear more based on some religions, be in fear more and make, you know, better decisions because if you don't, you could go somewhere unpleasant. So that thought is not lost on me. And I wonder how you've taken that insight and you say, huh, how can you first, you know, Scott, like how can you live more full based on something that you learned from one of your mentors slash friends? And I want to put a pin in the word friend for a minute. How do you apply that insight? Well, and I did dedicate the entire book to Abraham Maslow, a dear friend I've never met. So that was quite apropos. I assume that's who you're referring to?

Yeah, no. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, but let's come back to that in a moment. I want to know how that insight, like, okay, once the post-mortem approach to death, he needed that kind of jarring experience of a peace with our inevitable death, where we've really made peace with ourselves as well, and we have fully accept all that we are and all that we've done up to that point and without judgment or shame. If we can really reach that point, then in our life, it shifts us to everything's an end game. And this is the point here. The whole mindset of ends, the whole mindset of everything, you know, so when I say ends, I mean everything. So the person I'm talking to right now, I don't want anything out of this person. I'm treating this person as an end in themselves. I am, Mazel called it being love, having love for the being of others.

Not wanting to use someone for your own purpose, but this person is just wonderful just the way they are. I'm not trying to change them. I'm just admiring them. That's just one example. To treat everything as an end in themselves, maybe your own values, you might as well call them B values, the values of being. You have certain values where just engaging in those values, like the search for truth, justice, beauty, meaningfulness, these things are beautiful in and of themselves as intrinsic goods. And that when you engage in them, you don't want anything further out of them.

They're fine just the way they are. If you start to treat your whole life as everything is – as Madhavi called them, living in the realm of pure being, which is – okay, so that is a marked departure from a means to an end. It's the orthogonal relationship to that. And the thought that I hear you saying is that meet each moment with the fragility that it is gone as soon as you experience it. And so each moment is in an end of itself. And if you're not on time, and I don't mean that physically like from like time, but if you're not in tune and on time with the present moment,

then you miss it. And so you miss the end of the beginning and the end, if you will, of that moment and not to be too esoteric, but it forces us to live appreciating the fragility of now. You're right, the uncertainty of now. Absolutely. Mazzo called it the plateau experience. The thing is, he's credited for talking about peak experiences, and that did form a certain part of his career. But just only in the last couple of years, he was much more interested in peak experiences. And part of peak experiences were being able to see the moment as well as the infinite, the sacredness of the moment, all at the same time. You can talk to

someone and be fully present with the person, but also be fully present with the notion that you're both not going to exist for the rest of eternity at the same time, or projecting certain moments into the future and future generations. You know, like this moment here is happening at this part in time, but this is actually just an archetype for something that's going to be reoccurring through the rest of humanity. Now, this is heavy stuff, Michael. You know, this is just not me coming on your show and just being like, we just all need to be happy and here's five of my hacks. I'm so not interested in any of that. You know it. I do. Double,

double click on this just for a moment is that there is a tension that I hold that I can't, I'm still sorting out. Okay. And I know you grokked with it. Um, and you wrestled with it, that the difference between becoming and being, and let's call it B value, the value of being here now. And if you can do that more often, the quality of life increases, the resonance in life, the integration happens at a richer, deeper level. There's more capacity because you have more moments that you have been part of. And so let's call that the being. And there's a frequency of being. And I don't mean frequency like woo woo. I mean, like how many of these moments do you capture per day? And if your mind is worried about coronavirus,

and it's worried about what people think of you, and it's frustrated by the things that you did wrong, and it's full of shame. And like of that pulls us and frays us from the being that's right the quality of being okay so okay we got to get you back on the psychology podcast hey come on let's go and so the other piece though is that the the being yes this is a humanistic thought is that everything you need is already inside you. You're already fully capable to be you being now. Okay. But this is where I get stuck. Okay. Okay. Is I work my ass off to become the man that I want to be more often. Yes. And so, right. So I have an idea of the man I want to be under what I consider now to be stressful environments. And the ultimate aim is to be the man I want to be across any condition and to express artistically in those moments. Okay. But I'm working my ass off to become, and during the work, I'm trying to be the man during the work, which is the

becoming. So can you wrestle? That's such a common misconception about Maslow that a lot of his kids had when he was a teacher. And he wrote about this. I wish I could read the quote right now, but he'd say something to the effect, these young kids think that self-actualization doesn't require hard work. They think that it's something that, when I talk about it, I'm talking about just being impulsive. But he was very clear that spontaneous is not the same thing as impulsive. So to be spontaneous, to emanate from your being in a moment, there's no contradiction there with not living a very thought-out life, a very conscious life. In fact, the humanistic psychologists were very, very insistent that the good life requires taking responsibility for your existence and steering it in the direction that you want it to go. They very much believed in free will, that the connection between free

will and responsibility was something that Raoul May wrote a lot about. So I think that Maslow, he made it very clear, especially in his writing on purpose and how purpose was to have some vocation or calling outside of yourself, to him was one of the most important indicators that someone is on the path to self-actualization, he would make it very clear that that path requires intense, intense work, hard work, and commitment. This idea of commitment is very important. So these things were never viewed as odds with each other in any way. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep.

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is I wholeheartedly believe that the best way to move toward greater growth and transcendence is not by ignoring the inevitability of human suffering, but by integrating everything that is within you. Okay. This requires penetrating the depths of your being with piercing awareness, with the intent of experiencing the full richness of human existence. Now, you know that you and I are syncopated. These are your words, not his at this point. And then this is very much in line with Maslow's call for a being psychology, which incorporates a full understanding of human needs that transcends the psychopathology of the average. Thank you. But also here's the quote incorporates all of its findings in a more inclusive and comprehensive structure, which includes both the sick and the healthy,

both deficiency, becoming, and being. That's right. Good. Now, damn. Yeah, that's right. Well, well written, brother. And then a nice, a nice capture of his, you know, the continuum of the human experience from dysfunction, disease, all the way up to optimization, becoming. But so can you go a little further on that becoming and being

one more time? Sure. It's one of those things that because you are who you are and you're acting, your being is in the world, that in itself is constantly in a state of becoming. It's not as if you've ever reached a final state of your being. Your being can exist in a certain moment of time, and that doesn't contradict the fact that you're constantly in a state of becoming something larger, something bigger than the moment. But that doesn't mean that in that moment, you can't fully bring yourself to the table. Okay, there we go. So would you nod your head to the we are always becoming? Oh, absolutely. Yes. Okay. And would you nod your head to we are working on becoming to be?

That's where I get stuck. i want to be here now right here i'm right now i am here with you and i'm working out based on my the words i'm choosing and the the tone that i'm reflecting the man that i want to be exactly and that's that's beautiful that's that's that's that's the right idea that's the right idea but you are you are bringing yourself to the table though here you're not uh thinking well what would someone say in this situation in order to get more clicks or i mean i don't know i mean but i don't i don't get the sense that you're you know that you're – that everything is so strategic about this where you're not – it's not emanating from the core of your being.

You see what I'm saying? Because there are people I talk to. There are some podcasts I'm on where I don't get the sense their person's being. They're doing a lot there. Does this make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you can feel it. You feel disconnected to the person. I always feel connected to you. I always feel a great sense of connectedness and presence

whenever I talk to you. Oh, ditto. Yeah, that's probably why we enjoy talking to each other. Okay, so who is the man that you're working on becoming? And what percentage of time throughout the day are you able to be that man on a consistent basis? Yeah. And by the way, what a great question, but you're allowed to bring to the table into your being who you want to become. I do believe that's possible to help you resolve some of this paradox. So, I'm not perfect, obviously. No one's perfect. There are things I can, in the moment, there are aspects of my being that I want to draw out more, because that's who I want to be more regularly in my life. And I think that's how we should try to do it.

And not say that we're perfect or that we, you know, that we've, you know, some of these gurus, I think, are standing on a shaky foundation when they act as though they reached enlightenment in some sense. And, you know, and that everyone else they're trying to help is the unenlightened, kind of making that division. I think that's very dangerous. And you do see a lot of these gurus abuse their positions of power and et cetera, et cetera, where it makes it clear they're standing on a faulty foundation. So I think it's totally okay to bring that to the table. Now you asked me, ask me your question again. Yeah. Who, describe, if you could describe the man that you're working on becoming and then, and then, but stitch to that is what is the frequency, let's call it moments or minutes or hours or whatever, or percentage of your day? Are you that, are you able to be present with those capabilities? Well, it's one of these things that it's hard for me to fully, fully articulate, but I'll try

because it's a feeling. And Carl Rogers talked about it as, well, it wasn't a very scientific term, but organismic valuing that we could have, we have within us an intuition of what is steering us to be our best selves and what's kind of taking us away from growth. You know, what are the potentialities that if we start to realize them are taking us in the direction of growth and which potentialities, if they may feel good in the moment, like eating that chocolate, but are not really leading us to growth. So we can have a feeling for it. And I've been really working hard on becoming a good judge of that, at least becoming aware of it. Now, again, it doesn't mean I'm perfect. I want to be very clear. I want to have humility here. I really, you know, I mess up a lot, you know, I'll be like, oh, forget it. and i eat the whole box of chocolate or you know as an

example but i'm saying you know but i but i know but at least i'm aware i i i mindfully you know aware that i'm not going i'm like yeah i know i'm not going the direction of growth right now but i'm gonna have a moment here where i don't do that here's the thing i want to put beautiful things in the world that that uh are and what do i mean by beautiful in my own way beautiful so they're they they combine truth beauty and goodness i want to do things that integrate all three of those but what i mean about that is is because i see so much of those things not integrated so i'll see people who maybe are like into the truth, but they don't care if they hurt people as long as they get the truth out. You know, it's like,

they'll yell at people and be like, but it's the truth. Like, that's all that matters, you know, or people will put goodness above the truth and they'll say, well, we need to be compassionate. And even though maybe they're not grounded in reality, you know, at least we can try to help them, you know, or people are just interested. But I think integrating them is tricky. And I really, really try with the work I do because I'm really, I'm a scientist and I really like to get the truth out there. But I also want the truth to make some sort of positive impact on the world. But I also want it to be beautiful. And the beauty part maybe is the one that's hardest for me to articulate. So thank you so much for letting me try to talk it through. So when I listen to like a Yo-Yo Ma piece or a cello music, I feel a sense of transcendence.

And I feel it. So I feel the same way when I hear transcendent shell music than when I see someone in need, like help an old lady cross the street. When I see just certain acts in the world of beauty and goodness, I feel a certain way about it. And I really want to integrate truth-seeking with that feeling of goodness and beauty. And I don't know if what I'm saying here makes sense whatsoever, but it's something that I've had a tough time articulating and not many interviews do people ask me such an in-depth question. So thank you. All right. Well, hey, you and me, we're right on the razor's edge of trying to sort this thing out. I love it. I love it.

But hopefully I'll put that out there and see. I want to hear your thoughts on that. Yeah. No, I think that when I hear true, beautiful, and good, I go, yeah. I mean, that's purpose-driven. Yeah. You know, in, in, um, because it's not, um, it would be outcome-based if I want to create things that are true, beautiful, and leave an archetype of that or artifact of that then i i my bet is that the world will be better that people that come in touch with that yes and my that's my purpose so well said so well said and in another way is that people another way of putting this is i think people get too hung up on

their purpose sometimes like it's the content of the purpose that matters the most. Oh my goodness. Okay. Let's argue. Oh, sure. The content of the purpose. What does that mean? Well, people get so hung up on like, my purpose is, and then they have the statement, the mission statement. But as Maslow said, what's not worth doing is not worth doing well. So I don't think the content really matters as much as the values that lie behind it. Yeah, that's all I meant. We're agreeing. Yeah, we're agreeing.

Yeah, yeah. I thought you were saying the other, that it's not about purpose, but it's about quality of work. Oh, I see. No, no, no. I was like, wait a minute. That's not right. That's not right. No. Yeah, quality work is good. Do it well. Yeah, but it's about the values. The B values. Associated with it.

If you're motivated by B values in your life, I sort of think that's good enough. I think that you don't need to judge your life based on the specific mission statement, so to speak. People do. And people do judge their entire selves and they bound up their whole ego into the mission statement. And then if the company fails, they feel like they're a total failure as opposed to being like, oh, how can I actually apply my B values to a different mission statement now? And then just to remind us, or to clarify, B values is being value. Yes, and Maslow has a whole list. That's right, and Maslow has a whole list of the being values. Truth, beauty, courage, meaningfulness, goodness, justice, all these things. You know, are you fighting for justice?

Well, if this is what you're on your earth to do, then the specific mission statement will change. And you have to be open to and flexible to it changing. But the B value doesn't change. That's for me, purpose is upstream to mission. Yeah, that's cool. And so the mission might be to take this hill, but the purpose is to fill in the blank, something much larger than that. And then purpose also needs to snap into, not need and must, it's too constricting.

But when purpose is incorporating something that is greater than oneself, it becomes durable for life. And I think Maslow snaps into this idea that, yeah, like kind of the most self-actualized get beyond the self. And they realized that we're all in this thing together. And so if you can handle the stressors of the world and not be consumed with survival, that you might be able to be so free that you could also lend a hand to others. And boy, isn't that noble. Isn't that what we need? Yes, I love that. What you're doing is you're climbing the top of the mountain so that you can have a vantage point that you can then use to bring everyone else up the mountain to see it. But there needed to be a first person to see it. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And sometimes it's a very lonely journey

if you're the only in your community that is working on that transcendence or that ability to share from the mountain or get to the mountaintop in order to share. And I feel this in many communities that I don't have it right now in my life, but I have felt this, I should say, Oh, I actually have one community that I feel this by is that there is a pulling back down. Hey dude, where do you think you're going? And it's like, oh, you want to go to the fricking mountaintop. Look at you. You want the, oh, and it's subtle and it's clever and it's shame induced. And in this community that I'm thinking about right now that I'm in, I shouldn't be in it because it's not thriving, but when I circle that orbit, it's like, it's not thriving, but like when I, when I circle that orbit, it's like,

Oh God, that's right. That's what these people do to me. But, um, okay. All that being said is, uh, I would love to hear you talk about in this pandemic moment that we're having with an invisible virus that we can see it, but we need microscope, you know, microscopes to see it, but it's an invisible virus that is attacking humanity right now. And it's attacking humans. And the host is for the most part, other humans. That's right. When we are looking at other humans in right now, as you and I are talking, most of us are going, oh gosh, they're a threat to my existence because they could be carrying something that could fill in the blanks.

I think the conversation stops there because for most of us, it's not going to kill us, but, um, there's a fear that kind of short circuits at that moment. So can you talk about what you would hope people could experience if they knew everything you knew about the study, the science, and the artful expression of humanistic psychology? If they knew what you knew and they were able to live the way you would hope you could live on a more consistent basis what would be happening right now yeah i i do see my perception has been a little bit different about how people are

reacting to this i a little more optimistic in the sense that i think that people are treating this more like the famous study where the the there was a kids during summer camp were told that like a impending alien from outer space was coming to kill them and they all bonded together even the ones that hated each other and i think that in a sense what you have right now you're seeing us bonding more tightly as a humanity because we have a threat that is not ideological ideological i'm butchering that word um what is the word we yeah we have a threat that that we all can rally around regardless of who we are and i think there's great potential here for there to be some silver lining in the sense that we view each other more as brothers and sisters because what could happen to you could happen to me. Yes, I do think it could devolve into that sense of insecurity, and no doubt you will have pockets of that and and you do unfortunately see people people calling it like the china coronavirus right like as though this thing is

only isolated to a particular relational ethnic group you know no this thing is is is attacking all of humans and we need to come together as a species to fight it. I really would like to see, from a humanistic perspective, this tighter sense of oneness and seeing ourselves as part of a larger whole. And with the social isolation aspect, all of us having to, that's the only thing that's going to kind of flatten this curve, right? So if we can socially isolate ourselves, but also in a lot of ways, show each other that they're not alone, you know, kind of be isolated. But I wonder if there's a sense in which we don't have to feel alone because we're all kind of going through this together. We're all in this boat together. Yeah. I think, um, I would hope that that is how we get down for the next maybe

two, three, four weeks that, you know, I don't know what the window is. Could be longer. I'm thinking six months. Six months. And what I'm seeing though is, um, when people are stressed, they take care of their own ass. And like, look at the aisles. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's a very common response to threat is we like physiologically, we fight and flight. Right.

But we drop our hips physically and we're looking to run away. That's a save your own ass. But we drop our hips physically and we're looking to run away. That's a save your own ass. And usually the fight is like, okay, I have to fight. But it's usually not for the noble cause. It's usually for like, I got to do this to protect myself. And those that can transcend that are able to do it for the noble cause. But look at the, there's models.

Gosh, what's the word? Not AI models, but there's a machine learning model that can predict based on business building design or airflow design, what will happen in the moment of a plane goes down or business or a building starts to collapse. And those predictive models tend to say, yeah, there's at least two responses. People become over polite and go ahead in front of me. Yeah. Oh, sure. Go ahead. I know that the, the, the fire is right behind me, but go ahead. You should go. And the other is like, save your own ass panic, run to the front, jam into the small exit and try to grab your suit, your suitcase with you. Even though there's three children right behind you that are, you know, freaking the hell out. And so those two maladaptive responses to threat are pretty well documented.

And there's that middle ground that I think you're hoping for. All that being said, on this narrative that I'm on, is you see it right now where people are cleaning out the shelves for hand sanitizer and toilet paper. Well, I would say that at a higher level of integration, these things don't have to be viewed as at odds with each other. So there is healthy selfishness, which is important to a certain degree to keep ourselves safe and secure. But I think also now is the time for us to be heroes. You know, I think this is the time for people to, look, if you didn't have a purpose before or you didn't have any B values,

this would be a good time to step up your game. And you can have a purpose right now if you want it. Here's the thing, you know, you can have a purpose this second if you never had one before. Right now. This is your chance. You can make a decision. Yes. My purpose is I'm going to take care of my people.

I'm going to be a hero. Not just my people, but people who are not my people. You know? I'm saying those are my people. Oh, gotcha. I like that. Good. Well, I don't know if you can take care of people you've never met, but the people that you come in contact with.

I'm going to take care of the people that are in my universe. And some people's universe is really large and some people's are quite small. But I'm going to take care of my block, my family, my neighborhood, whatever it might be. That's right. I mean, this really is a great time for heroes to emerge. I always find these kinds of tragic events. You are certainly right that you will have a lot of people, if not the default reaction in all of us, is to cling to the safety. point out is that we also can reach towards something outside of ourselves. And in so doing, we reach a level of satisfaction and contentment that we never could even imagine is possible. Yeah. Tell me about your friendship.

My friendship. Well, like I said, I devoted this book to Abraham Maslow, a dear friend I never met. Actually, I wrote, it says, this book is dedicated to Abraham Harold Maslow, a dear friend I've never met. Well, I was sitting on my bed listening to one of his lectures at Esalen Institute, and he was saying, this was just, I think, a year or two before he died. Someone asked him, what is a friend? And he said, well, a friend can have different levels of meaning. He said, you know, you can have close friends who are need-gratifying, so you care about their needs and they care about your needs in return. But he said, at a higher level, we can have friendship for people that we've never even met or maybe aren't even alive in this generation. He said, you know, I feel like I have a great friendship,

I have a great affection for Spinoza or William James. And when people often ask me, do you know William James? And he says, yes, jokingly. No, of course he never could have met him. But I felt the same way when i heard maslow talk about that i i thought to myself well i feel that way about you you know uh you know maslow right so i uh you too michael but no no no well you're not you're not dead you're not dead but you're still alive thank thank god but um but you know i i said that to maslow you know imaginary because he's never going to hear me. I realize it's one-sided.

But I realize it's a one-sided friendship. But I think that you can have such affection for someone and really get into their head and into their life's work so much that, you know, you really do feel like there's a great friendliness there. You know, how about this? Do you know the athlete Bill Russell? One of the legends. Yes, of course. One of the all-time legends. Yes.

So he came down to the Seahawks and shared some insights with the team. And one of these insights was, the question was about what makes a great teammate. And if we substitute a teammate for friendship for a moment here, he says, the greatest teammates wake up in the morning and immediately think, what can I do to make my teammates life better today? And so substitute that with friendship. The greatest friends wake up in the morning and say, what can I do for my friends to make their life better? And what an apt calling right now. Go back to purpose. Go back to Maslow's.

Go back to your friendship with him and his description of friendship, but in a very applied way. And Bill Russell said that that's how he would wake up in the morning. He would practice that. So what if, what if we could make that commitment? Our tribe, our communities could make it. Well, let's start with you and me. What if we could make that commitment to wake up in the morning and just be really clear on how we can help the people and our friends be better, to live better, to experience life better, to help them.

Isn't that awesome? I think that would be incredibly awesome. What a great intention that you're setting there. Yeah. You want to go a little 10-day competition with me? What do you think? Well, that's against the spirit of the whole thing uh yeah so what if what if what if we weren't i know

yeah and i know competition has odds with integration but what if you and i could use a mechanism and say hey let's let's hold each other accountable you know to like in a fun way let's hold each other accountable see if we could go 10 days in a row. Hmm. Well, if we could help support each other, uh, I'm not, I'm not sold with the framing of this, the phrasing of this, but if we can, yeah, I know. I, I know. I read it in the book, you know, like your, your antagonism towards the competition, the note of competition. Yes. Well, I know, I know that, uh, I think there's a good spirit behind what you're saying. And if this is both of our goals, how can we support each other in those goals and be there when we need each other? I think that I'm in. I like your tone. And what if I offered a different definition of competition for a moment? I'm listening.

So the old iconic definition, the American definition of competition is this image of standing over the competitor kind of in glory on their defeat while they're on their back. I have dominated over you. And if we go back to the Latin origin of the word competition, it's to strain together, to strive together. And it is an honor between the two people that are committed to strive and we need each other to explore our best, to bring out the best in each other. And so that's the spirit of the word. I go back to the origins of it to say, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love when I'm around people that make a quote unquote handshake to strive together.

For me, that's a tribe. That's like, hey, we're going to figure some stuff out. We're going to do it together. And we're going to challenge each other. We're going to figure some stuff out and we're going to do it together. And we're going to challenge each other. We're going to support each other. And if it goes in that order, um, we have a little bit of a problem. So the best order in my mind is that we're going to support then challenge each other. And then that, that envelops what I think is a beautiful experience of community tribe and a competitive nature to see how far we can help each other go. And so sometimes they wear different jerseys than us, you know, different tribal colors.

And sometimes they sit across the, you know, the hallway from us or they sit across the chair from us. So I don't know. That's the way I see it. Does that still give you cause or problem? No, that's better. See, this is why talking to you gives me great intellectual stimulation and insight. Because I always have viewed the idea of competition as something that's quite zero-sum. And I don't really like zero-sum thinking. But I do like that idea of challenging and striving together towards wholeness of a larger whole. Yeah. So do you want to try it for the next 10 days to see if we can wake up and commit to how we're going to help our loved ones be better? I've been doing it already. Oh, you do that. That is your practice.

You wake up in the morning. I do. I really do. I've really been trying. And I, uh, I feel like all throughout the day, I'm calling my loved ones. Um, in what sort of more tangible, what would sort of the tangible thing that we, we could, you know, we, when we say like, what did you do today? You know, what, what.

Oh, I was thinking something as mechanical as a thumbs up like a text thumbs up like i did it i woke up in the morning and before i got to bed i was just uber crisp about what it would mean to help we could start small with like one person let's do it yeah let's do it yeah a little thumbs up accountability a little street counter yeah yeah and it's but it's not a but it's not a – is there a universe in which the word competition would apply to what we're doing now? I'm pushing you now. I'm challenging you to think about this. Is there a world – yeah.

I mean we could drop that and say I'm not trying to be better than you. But I want to strain and strive with you. Yes. Yes. And so I can drop the word competition. But the spirit is like I want want to, uh, I want to do this work with you. And I love the fact that you're agreeing to, um, demonstrate your streak with me so that

we can have some little reminders like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. Okay, good. And, um, all this being said is secondary sub substandard to intrinsic drive to do it without the need for an external drive or an, even an external reward, extrinsic reward. So, um, it's just a fun mechanism. I would just say, you know, do you want to have fun seeing if we could, uh, help each other be better? I'm open. I'm open to it. Okay. So, you know, why don't we do this too? Um, Scott, I wonder if we could,

um, how about anyone listening right now? Um, how can we do this on Twitter or Instagram? why don't we do this too? Scott, I wonder if we could, how about anyone listening right now? How can we do this on Twitter or Instagram? I don't know. Maybe a Twitter? The group challenge. That would be very cool. Wouldn't that be fun? Yes.

How do we do it? Well, I mean, there's a thumbs up emoticon. And you could start a thread. Start a thread in your Finding Mastery Facebook group or something like that. Okay. I don't know how to... Can somebody add themselves to a thread?

Oh, just they can respond to the post. Okay, there you go. With the thumbs up emoticon. Oh, I see what you're saying. So let's do it on Facebook. How about that? Yeah. Yeah, because you have the Finding Mastery group, right?

Yeah. Yeah, there we go. Okay, so... I'll check it on Facebook. How about that? Yeah. Because you have the Fighting Mastery Group, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There we go. Okay. So I'll check in on that. I'll check in on that every day for 10 days and add my own thumbs up if other people will as well.

I'm with you. And I'll let you know when the date this airs so that we can be on point. I'm excited. I'm excited. Once we discuss the framing of that, now I feel inspired. Yes. Okay. So there's a little life in it, in spirit too, breathing life into it.

That's awesome. Okay. So how about this? Let's kind of shift gears back to your insights on light versus dark triad. Okay. Yeah. So the dark triad is really well researched and understood. And the light triad, it's not.

No, it's new. Mm-hmm. Come on. Bring us home. It's new. Well, you know, a lot of ways, my voice is cracked there, but in a lot of ways, the light triad is so synonymous with Maslow's notion of be love, that love for the being of others.

So the three components of the, well, before I tell you the three components of the late triad, let's start with darkness. So what is, you know, what is, when you peer into the heart of darkness, what do you see? Well, this is what you see. You see exploitation, the drive for exploitation, the drive for greed, the drive for power over others, control over others. You see

excessive, excessive self-interest. Now, so what is a light triad? So a light triad incorporates treating people as an end in themselves. You can admire someone, you can admire the sacredness of a person, even if they're very different from you, or even if they don't have serve any usefulness for you. You can have a general faith in humanity that humans are, at the end of the day, basically good, even if they often don't act that way. And then you can also, the third component is humanism, treating each individual as valuable and worthy of at least treating as human. So let's do the light triad. The dark triad is easy, right?

It's the narcissistic. Psychopathic. Machiavellian. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, right. And we've got some examples in pop culture and governmental personalities right now that demonstrate that, the animation. And also, can I ask you a question?

I'm so curious of your own thoughts on that. So are there light versus dark triad top competitors in sports? And you don't have to mention names. We don't single out people. But can you think in your head right now of two people that are equally matched in terms of their talent and how much they dominate the competition, but one's a dark triad and one's a light triad in their way of being? Yeah. So the dark triad is actually celebrated in elite competitive environments. It's celebrated. And it is – which is a problem. Okay. So I want to be really clear that, um,

whether it's an entrepreneurship, big business, you know, enterprise or, um, the arts and, or sport that those that kind of rise to the top, they, this maniacal, clever, manipulative, I matter more than anybody else is not that uncommon. And they're tolerated and even promoted if they can do you good now. So we sell out. This is gross when I'm selling people will, we will sell out the integrity and the spirit of the purity of the aim, the collective aim that we're trying to do for a high earner or high achiever that will help us get an advantage in life. It's gross. Right. And it's, I agree. So to answer, to answer your question, and that's not just sport. That is in many walks of life.

And so, but they're not tolerated if they can't produce. Okay. So there's this unique constellation of the dark triad with ridiculously high talent. And so I can think of two easily that are dark triad. I can think of on the light triad. I've got one in particular well i'm thinking of someone that you work with very closely uh coach carol in my perception is someone who is very very interested in competing at a very very high level but i view him as a light triad being he is um one thousand percent in the light triad and um you know he's a he's a

humanistic yeah approach to life and he's got this belief in the fundamental goodness of people and opportunity that lies ahead and he you know i mean thanks treats people as an unto themselves as an and thanks to you and thanks to you and and the good word you put in he was very interested in learning more about self-actualization and we had a great call about it. And I was just so some folks that come to mind right now that present as the light triad and my antenna are up because I think they're actually dark triad that know that the dark triad is not a good persona. So they, um, the Machiavellian approach is so strong and good that they present themselves as the light. But, um, Is this in football? Is this a football player you're thinking uh there's i don't want to say that but it's not football okay yeah i don't want to give the indicator of who it is because it'll leave the speculation for folks but um but but there are you know and you're probably thinking of folks that um you might be familiar with as well that you know the presentation of light is actually tricky can can be a Machiavellian clever disguise.

Yeah, man. Well, but I was wondering about in the sports domain, if you have – because you can score very high in the light triad and still be a very high competitor, right? Yes. So that's what I was wondering. I would take it a step further and say, you can not only be a great competitor, but you are a facilitator of great culture. And the greatest cultures are in my experience. And with the, the scant research that would support this, that I'll work to stand on is that those, that those, uh, um, those individuals that can create a culture

that is based on belonging, which is really, if you, what does that mean? It's based on relationships that if you are a contributor or custodian of a culture that is based on belonging and the relationships that inhabit that belonging, uh, that comes from light triad. Yeah. i like that yeah and so not only are they great potentially great competitors but they lift people up that's right that's the point of it yeah that's a good point about that yeah cool i really wanted to get your thoughts about that because i think there's kind of this misconception that in order to be a high a competitor you have to be a psychopath you you know, like I'm going to finish him off, you know, that kind of way of thinking.

Yeah, I think that that is, it is pervasive and it's, it works and it is tolerated if you're a high performer and celebrated. Not the narcissist piece, I should say, but there is that. And it's, it feels to me, it's a bit like, it's okay. It's adolescent. That is an adolescent approach and it's okay. You know what I mean? Um, but not maybe the full most dynamic approach. Cool. Oh, this is so exciting to be able to talk to you about this. Like, yeah. Like such a cool question. Like, um, you know, cool conversation to be able to ask the great Michael Gervais, like what, what does a, well to ask him, like, what does a fully human top competitor athlete look like? You know, like I've just, I just, such a fun question have so much fun with you. And so, you know, this is my hope for you is that people will listen to this. They'll fall in love with you the way I have and that they will learn that there's so much more inside of them, that there's such a deep reservoir of potential that lies dormant in you, in me. And now I'm looking to the person that's listening. I'm looking right at you, if I could, in my heart, and I'm saying you, there's more inside of you. And to invest in that inner experience and to work towards becoming and being the man or woman

you want to be and doing it in the way of the light triad, that we've got this deep, rich reservoir that will help people become better custodians of the community that we've got this deep, rich reservoir that will help people become better custodians of the community that we're in this together and we need each other. And so I hope people will go read your book, turn into your podcast, um, and whatever places that you're presenting or speaking on that they'll buy tickets and go support you that way too. So, you know, let's, let's put a pin in it. Like you and I could go for hours on this and I just want to say thank you for your time and energy and wisdom. Thank you, Michael. I really appreciate your wisdom too. And I loved talking to you about purpose and all sorts of fun things as I was researching the book. So thank you.

Okay. So where can people find you? Let's do that real quick. Well, you can find me at scottberrykoffman.com. And you can also find me on Twitter at sbkoffman. And I have a Facebook page as well. But yeah, I'm pretty active on Twitter. And I have all these sorts of free resources in my podcast, the psychology podcast and all that stuff. It can all be found at scottbarrykoffman.com. Thanks for asking. There you go. Okay. So look forward to talking

to you soon and best health during this trying time that we're in. Likewise. All the best to you, Michael. Okay. Take care. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter we send

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