Good Life Project - Michael Gervais | Finding Mastery

Episode Date: July 13, 2020

Michael Gervais is a high-performance psychologist working in high-stakes environments with some of the best in the world, training the mindset skills and practices essential to pursuing and revealing one’s potential. His clients include world record holders, Olympians, internationally acclaimed artists and musicians, MVPs from every major sport and Fortune 100 CEOs. A published, peer-reviewed author and recognized speaker on optimal human performance, Dr. Gervais has been featured by NBC, ABC, FOX, CNN, ESPN, NFL Network, Red Bull TV, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Outside Magazine, WIRED, ESPN Magazine and others.He is the co-founder of Compete to Create, (http://competetocreate.net/) a digital platform business helping people become their best through mindset training and the host of Finding Mastery, (https://findingmastery.net/) a podcast that takes you inside the rugged and high-stakes environments of those on the path of mastery to explore how they train minds to be at their very best.You can find Dr. Michael Gervais at:Website : https://findingmastery.net/Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/findingmastery/-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Question for you. How do you cultivate mastery? What even is mastery? Is it worth it? What does it give you that you can't get from maybe just noodling at something that you enjoy? What do you need to give up to get there, to get to that place? There are so many myths and a mountain of misinformation around the pursuit of mastery, of world-class performance and exceptional living. That is why I asked my guest today,

Dr. Michael Gervais, to help us get to the truth, really. Michael has pursued this central question. Is there a common thread connecting how the greatest performers in the world use their minds to pursue the boundaries of human potential? He's been sort of devouring that question and researching and living into it for most of his adult life. Michael is a high-performance psychologist working in super high stakes environments with some of the best in the world, really focusing on training the mindset skills and practices that are essential to pursuing and revealing your potential. He's the co-founder of Compete to Create, which is a digital platform that helps people become their best through mindset training. His clients include everyone from world record holders to Olympians

to internationally acclaimed artists, musicians, MVPs from pretty much every major sport and Fortune 100 CEOs. And what's so fascinating to me is his relentless focus on mental training as the unlucky, no matter the domain. It's really a deep dive into evidence-based, vetted, and proven modalities that lead to world-class performance. And what's even more amazing to me is that Michael came to these moments away from the traditional path. He almost never graduated high school and didn't even really consider college until his parents basically said to him that you either have to leave home and get a job

or go to school. So he enrolled in school and really became introduced to the science of the mind. That fueled him all the way through his PhD. And that also remains his deep fascination to this day. We explore all of this in today's wide-ranging conversation. So excited to share it with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project.

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Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk. The work that you do is fascinating to me on so many different levels, not the least of which is that I came really close to following a really similar path

and then ended up backing away for reasons that still are not entirely clear to me. Lifelong fascination with sort of not just the human condition, but for why people do what they do and how they go to the extremes of their potential. Wondering if this touches down at an early age for you, if this was sort of like a later fascination? Cool. The first exposure I had to this is I was in high school and I realized that the thing that I wanted to do, it was a surfing experience. So I grew up surfing and I could do what I wanted to do as a 15 year old kid, you know, in free surfing. But then when it came time to compete, it was completely different for me. And it wasn't that my physical skills went away. It wasn't that my technical skills went away.

It was that my mind, my mental skills, like the way that I was thinking about things was choking off access to my abilities. And I didn't know there was a discipline called psychology. I was the first person to go to school in my family. So we didn't come from a condition where it was like sophistication in structure and theory. We're just trying to figure it out as we went along. And so I bumped into it at an early age and I said, oh my goodness, there's this thing inside me. It's my mind. And like, what is this? And so it started there at an early age. And I still didn't know until it was like my first year in college that there was even a discipline in a study of psychology, really, because in high school, I was exposed to it at a class. Actually, I had a class and it didn't make any sense. It was like Freud and Skinner and all the kind of classics, which I came to appreciate later.

I didn't understand it. So then it was through pain is how I came exposed to it. And it set me down a path. Yeah. Pain in the context of you seeing something out there that you wanted to do, but somehow couldn't figure out how to get there. That's exactly right. Yeah. I had something inside me. I wanted to express is the way I think about it. Like I had a physical thing I wanted to do on a wave. And every time that there was a competition where the people were judging and there was people on the beach watching, I became a shell of myself and I couldn't express. So it wasn't so much about I couldn't do the thing. I mean, that's part of it, but I couldn't express what I was wanting to be able to express.

I mean, it's interesting. They're overlapping, but really two distinct things. One is really tapping into the fullness of what you perceive to be your potential but the other is sort of it's it's a stifled expression it's it's like i i have a sense for who i am on an identity level and and how i want that to be put out into the world and i can't get it it's like when you hear you know when you play guitar and you hear the dream riff in your head, but your fingers can't actually make it happen on the guitar. Yeah. So that's close to what happened to me is that I knew I could do it though, because I had done it in free surfing

plenty of times. And so it was actually there. It was just stage fright. It was, you know, performance anxiety. And so it wasn't, it wasn't the mechanical part of it. It was the psychological part. So you mentioned that you were the first to go to college in your family. Curious about that also, what was the background in your family that sort of said, okay, we're all good without going the route of higher education. And then what was it that happened in your mind that said, that's actually not good enough for me? Cool question is, so set the context here, is that I grew up in, on a farm in Virginia. And I should say I grew up with nature, not necessarily on it. There's a big distinction, you know, in that way. And so I grew up with it

until the age of about, I guess I was 10. And so my parents were very laissez-faire. They had very little structure. If I was out late and it got dark, I might not eat until very late. You know, like it was super figured out kid, you know, and they let me just kind of play with nature. And my parents pretty much dropped out. So I'm 48 and they were young parents and they, this was during the Vietnam revolt. So they're like, okay, we're dropping out. So more of the hippie life, but it wasn't, it wasn't an angry approach. It was like, Hey, let's just go find a little sanctuary that we could build, you know, build a little family. So it was very myopic in that sense. And then my dad came from a large family. He was, had his first job at, you know, 14,

supporting his family in some respects. So they came blue collar, hardworking, Christian valued family, and they instilled inside of me strong values. And then this kind of freedom to explore, but there was no formal structure to any of it, but same on my mom's side, you know? And so her father came over to America at the age of 15 by himself from Italy. And so it's just a blue collar, hardworking approach to life. And I, it was, I was surfing a lot, as I mentioned, and then do you know what the PSATs are? Of course. So I got a zero on those. And then on the SAT, you know what those are?

I got a zero on those. I went surfing on both of them. And my parents pulled me aside my senior year and they're like, hey, Mike, we tried. A lot of your friends are going to college. We didn't know really how to help you. But at this point, you got to get a job and get out. Or this is my senior year in high school. Or you could go to community college and you can stay here.

And I thought, well, I'm not moving out. Like I'm not done surfing. Like how could I go? How could I have a job nine to five and surf? So I was still really young in my approach to life. And so I said, okay, let me do the school thing. So I knew that the school that I was going to go to was, I don't know, two miles away from a close to world-class surf break. So I was like, I know how to do this.

So I just thought I'm going to do that. Yeah, I love the decision-making criteria here. It's like perfect. Perfect. And so I really thought that I was going to extend my high school experience for a couple more years. I was not interested in academia or becoming an academician in any respect.

So it was second semester and there was three professors who were really good friends. Now this is a junior college, right? So this isn't, I didn't have to get in. I just had to like show up. One was a philosopher, one was a theologian, and one was a psychologist. It sounds like I'm going to set up a bad joke here. So they were great friends, Dr. Cusio, Dr. Zanka, Dr. Perkins. I love saying their names out loud because they saw me coming. They saw this young kid, clueless, with high ambition to figure things out and grow. Because

remember that experience when I was in freshman, sophomore year in high school, it set me down a path to understand the mind, but I didn't even really understand what I was trying to understand. But I was committed to wanting to get better at surfing. So they saw this kid coming and they slowly wrapped their arms around me and lit up this love for the invisible. And so all things about what I just mentioned, theology, philosophy, and psychology, they're all invisible. And so it set me down a path. I went and got an undergraduate degree in psychology. It wasn't enough. I went

and got a master's degree. I started down the path of master's degree in psychology. And I thought, I'm not studying the dysfunction of humans. I am not doing that. So I bounced out of there. That was Pepperdine university bounced out of there to kinesiology, you know, which is sports science. Basically I finished a master's degree there. And at the end of that, there's a long-winded story, but I think it's, there's a relevant point here. The end of my master's degree, I had four point whatever, you know, and top of the class summa cum laude, whatever that thing is for master's students. And the president of the school of the dean of that college said, hey, Mike. I just want to talk to you because, you know, everybody has asked me and I really am surprised that you didn't ask me to write

a letter of recommendation to your PhD program. And we haven't had any conversation about it. And, you know, I just like to ask you what happened because she and I were close. And I said to her, this is again, my senior year, what do you mean? She goes, well, aren't you going to finish your PhD or to get your PhD? I said, no. Like I didn't know anyone. I didn't, I thought doctors, that's for somebody else. I'm like a scrappy blue collar, whatever. And so she said, Michael, you could have, you could go to any school you want and I'm writing your letter of recommendation.

Go figure it out. Just figure out what school you, you don't have to go, but I'm going to write you a letter of recommendation. And then I had my wife and her aunt were supporting me as well and saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, keep going. Yeah, you got this. Keep going. Keep going. That's kind of how that happened. And then, you know, I eventually became licensed as a psychologist with specialization in sport. And if there was a subspecialty, it'd be in high stress or rugged environments. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting also the choice that you made about the master's program,

you know, cause, cause psychology for so many generations was known as fixing broken people. Like it's the art and science of fixing broken people and bringing them back to baseline. And then, you know, positive psych drops in and seligman and the whole band that's really rallies around that you hit and you get okay let's take people from baseline to flourishing and then but the the lens that you found deeply fascinating is it's definitely it to me it's it it doesn't really fall under either. It definitely falls under the flourishing side of the spectrum and not the ill to baseline, but also we're not too different in age. And so when you would have studied, was there a real clear understanding of what the path is for you to actually develop the expertise or, you know, that, that, that really became your fascination.

I love how you asked that because you're not to get asked a lot. I, I mean, I guess it's maybe like 10 times a week, you know, emails, whatever. Hey, how do you work with professional athletes? I'd like to do that. I'm just starting my career, which is not what you just asked. And what they're asking is what I would consider the wrong question. And what you asked was really rich, which is like, was there a path? There wasn't, I didn't have a path. I just knew that I really wanted to understand how humans worked. And I,

the best way I could do that was to study the greats, the researchers, the, the folks that were designing the theories about how we think it might be working. And I always thought that if I could understand what they were trying to understand, but I could push it through a unique lens of this outdoor adventure, high stakes, non-coaching figured out yourself approach to life. Because I grew up in action sports, right? Surfing, skateboarding, BMX, motocross, that stuff. That it was just off access enough that it was different.

And so I thought that I could maybe figure out for me first, like what happened to me? And then, because there's no coaching in action sports. And first, like what happened to me. And then, cause I didn't, there's no coaching in action sports. And I had an aversion to coaching. I didn't like the way that these arbitrary rules of stick and ball sports, you know, laid down heavy by the adults to kids. I just was like, this is stupid. Like, you know, for me as a kid, I was like, this is ridiculous. Nothing against stick and ball sports. I'm. I'm in football right now and I really enjoy it. So no, the path was to understand and nobody had to actually ask me to read another book. Like I just was onto the next, onto the next. And I don't think I've ever told the story is that at the, one of my universities, there was a dark dingy part

of the library and it was where all the research journals were. And this was back when you had the fish, remember the, what would they call it? Like the, the little scanner, you know, the Dewey decibel, just one step up from Dewey decibel. The microfiche. Yeah. And so I remember just feeling so at peace in this dark cement floor, poorly lit part of the library. It was almost like it was not part of the library.

It was a forgotten warehouse part, but it was where all the research journals were. And sports psychology was relatively new. And so I read every article, every journal that I could get my hands on. That's a big statement I just made. And I loved it. Forward and backwards, loved it. And so that was the driving force was to understand. And it was never to work with extraordinaries.

It was to understand the human experience from a different way. Yeah. I mean, I love the, there's so much self-direction in the whole process. And also the fact that you chose the activities that you chose from a young age already speaks to the way that you like to explore the world, you know, and you described the way that your parents, you know, like with sort of like these days we call it free range parenting, you know, like back then we just called the parenting, just go out. And at some point I'm assuming you'll be back, hopefully safe and sound without anything too injured. And as long as that happens, we're all good. But like it, it, it, it sets a foundation

that I wonder if we're not setting for kids these days where there's a certain amount of acceptance of the fact that the process of learning to become fully embodied and express human being happens when you take the guardrails off and not put them on. I wonder if you reflect on the fact that because that was the fundamental experience of your childhood, whether that sort of like set in motion, this lens on how to pursue what you wanted differently than so many others. Yeah. Well, you're right on it is that now there's a downside to having these laissez-faire free range parenting approaches. There is a cost to it. And I want to answer your question first, but not miss the note that there is a potential downside to this. It sounds wonderful, but there's pain involved in

many of the steps. But yes, where I figured out me is right at the edge of capacity. And so I figured that out at a young age. Like if I wanted to go get the crawdad, so there's this river running in the back of our farm. And, um, you know, when you're six years old, it feels like it's the biggest raging river. It was a little, it was small, but, but if I wanted to go get the crawdad, I don't know why I was fascinated with crawdads, you know, and they look like little lobsters, but they're not lobsters obviously. And so if I want to do it, I had to actually stick my hand in this muddy little hole with this river running and kind of get my arm as far as I possibly could. This little eight-year-old arm, no parents around, my nose is barely, you know,

kind of touching the surface of the river as my arm is down in this deep hole with something that could bite me. And now that sounds like, oh, well, that's what kids do. It is. But that was my regular experience every day. It wasn't trying to figure out how to listen to this adult say, keep your head down when you swing the bat. I didn't have formal instruction. And so there's two basic learning styles, right? There's more than that. But the two that I like to think about is formal instruction and then guided discovery

or even plain old discovery. And so the discovery model takes longer. It just takes longer. But once you get through like the proficiency of discovering through the discovery model, you actually get to create and innovate because you can see it forward, backwards, sideways, up and down, whatever, where formal instruction has you do the rote over and over and over and over and over thing where you become highly proficient, but not artistic. And so it takes longer. So I got in many ways, super fortunate, Jonathan, that my parents at a young age were like, Hey, you got a choice.

And I took the choice to go keep surfing. And then I had three professors, super fortunate. And then I had a professor at the end of my master's degree program, super fortunate. And I had a mentor all along who knew me from age 15 that just kept nudging me in different, you know, like, Hey, you're actually pretty good at this. You know, once you consider something down this lane. So I was just super fortunate to have these opportunities that present themselves without formal instruction, without a heavy hand. I love that distinction. I think it's not, it's not spoken about very often. And it brings up a conversation I had years ago, actually. This was when I was working on a book, so it wasn't even on a podcast or a video. I had the opportunity to sit down with Bob Taylor, who's the guy who founded Taylor Guitars, which I think is the largest handmade

guitar builder in the country, if not the world now. And they had this massive compound in Southern California, and we struck up a conversation. And at some point in the conversation, I said to him, I've had this lifelong, sort of like Jones, to learn how to build a guitar. And at some point in the conversation, I said to him, you know, I've had this lifelong sort of like Jones to learn how to build a guitar. I've just been waiting because I see all these ways to go and do it. And, but, you know, the programs are all structured in a way

where I can't work in the time or whatever it may be. And he looks at me, he's like, nah, dude, that's not how it works. He said, he said, go online today. You can just buy a kit, which is just raw pieces of wood, and build one bad guitar. He said, you will learn more building one bad guitar than you will building 10 under the guidance of a master. Now, sadly, I waited 10 years, didn't take his advice, and then learned to build one under the guidance of a master now sadly i waited 10 years didn't take his advice and then learned to build one under the

guidance of a master which was a stunning experience and i loved the instrument that i built but i cannot now go into a workshop and understand how or why i did what i did or build another one myself whereas had i actually taken his approach i would would have known the why, you know, so that I could, the distinction you made, I think is really powerful, which is you become an artist when you, through the guided instruction, through the self-experimentation, you know, with some sort of mentorship, because you understand the decision-making behind the actions on a level that lets you then discern whether you feel like that's the best way or not and then maybe start to articulate your own approach that may push

the boundaries beyond whatever process or idea you learned i love it and you also understand and feel the part of humanity that is real that comes struggle. It's a way to understand it where when it's formal instruction, head down, do this, do this again, again, again, again, it's like this manufactured frustration fear. Whereas when you are working with tools and instruments, psychologically, emotionally, or actually in your case, you know, materially, you're going to bruise your knuckles and scrape some stuff up and, and you fit, you learn like, oh, this is what, oh yeah, this is hard. And you get in deeper, I think in deeper in touch with the human experience. And we're so far out of whack right now. You know, we're even calling our COVID experience, like we're using jail terms lockdown isolation like what are we doing this is a this

is a a living organism that has mutated been around a long time it's part of us you know we created this in many respects it came from mother nature and we're using these artificial concrete cement terms to battle. We, I mean, I get the analogy of war. I do get it because in many respects it feels that way, but we're so out of touch with mother nature. You know, like I've got this axiom that guides my approach to life, which is through relationships we become. It begins with your relationship with yourself, with Mother Nature, with others. And those are the three kind of concentric or Venn diagram, these circles that hum over each other. And we're really out of touch with Mother Nature right now. Yeah, but I mean, in that Venn diagram, it feels like we're really out of touch with

all three right now. I mean, with ourselves, the level of self-ignorance or unawareness, I think, is huge. And look, I'm not judging in any way, shape, or form by saying that because I'm in all those Venn diagrams. The level of wisdom and connection and awareness of our relationship between us and others and between us in the natural world is kind of been blasted apart. And a lot of people, I think, point their fingers at technology, but it's not it. We made technology because we're starving for dopamine. We're starving for serotonin. We're

starving for connection. So we made this and I use all of them. I love them. But that idea that we are not connected is real because let's strip back psychology for just a moment because it can feel so taboo for so many that aren't awake to this new progressive approach to life, which is the most extraordinary thinkers and doers across the planet. The brave men and women are saying, hell yeah, I'm trained in my mind. What are you talking about? There's only three things we can train. We can train our craft. We can train our body. We can train our mind. And the best of the best of the best, they're not leaving that third up to chance. So why should we? So when you drill down like the next frame under, well, how do you train your mind? Well, there's two basic camps, self-discovery. Who are you? What are you? And then the other camp is skills, psychological skills. So sets and reps is on the skills, literally sets and reps, the same way you do sets and reps for exercise, physical exercise. You can do sets and reps for the mental exercise and that self-discovery part is wanting and it's hard and it's so much easier if you do it with somebody who's walked down that path ahead of you and will come back with a candle or a flashlight or whatever and say hey but you want to go i've been down here i fell off the cliff over here once. So you might want to watch that second step. It's pretty brutal, you know, and then, you know, whatever. So that is a, it's just, there's so much freedom on the other side of doing the work,

because once you know who you are, nobody can ever take it away from you. No mistake you make, no failure, no eye slight from another person. Nobody can ever take it away from you. And there's incredible freedom because many of us have bought and I bought it for a long time and I suffered with what I purchased here. What I bought was I need to do more to be more. I need to do the extraordinary to be extraordinary. And it's broken. That model right now is being flipped on its head. And the model is I need to be more, be more what? Be more present, be more grounded, be more creative, be more authentic, be more and let the doing flow from that place. And I'm watching it happen on the world stage

across multiple different sports. That model is starting to shift and it's amazing and it's freeing. And we need more people to talk about it, to celebrate it, to point to it and say, oh yeah, this is good now. I took off the golden handcuffs. I'm good. Yeah. It's funny because I feel like 20 years ago when you saw the random coach in professional sports trying to introduce that to the team, they were viewed as these weirdos. And now it's sort of like the pendulum has not only swung, but people are like, huh, maybe this actually is the center of everything and training the physical body happens beyond that. I love that mantra that

you shared. The one thing that we keep sort of referencing and going back to here is whether you call it a coach, whether you call it a mentor, whether you call it a teacher, whether you call it a guide, whatever name you want to assign this is the role of this individual or small group of individuals who somehow step into your path or you step into their path. And there's some shared interest in helping you figure things out and move from where you are to a place where you want to be. It's interesting. I had Anders Ericsson in here a couple years back. Isn't he awesome?

Such a fascinating guy. So for those who haven't listened or who don't know who he is, he is one of the OG researchers in peak experience, in expertise and excellence. And he is, even if you have no idea who he is, most people actually do know his research, but in a very bastardized, popularized way as the 10,000 hour rule, the classic thing that it takes 10,000 hours to become world-class at anything, which when I asked him, said, well, actually, no, that's complete fiction. It takes a whole lot of work, but it's completely varied across every domain, and it was taken completely out of context, and that wasn't the whole bit of research. But what he said that was more interesting to me was what we're talking about, which

is he started out by sharing his 10,000 hours of the thing he called deliberate practice, which is practiced in a very specific way, which is focused, intentional, progressive, analytic, iterative. It's nauseatingly how difficult deliberate practice is. And you have to really want it. Yeah. And that he also described as a relatively brutal experience, especially over time. And he began to switch his language from deliberate practice to purposeful practice. When I asked him, what is the distinction? It's what we're talking about now. And he said, it's the role of the teacher. You know, it is the ability of somebody who is not you, who has either been there themselves

before or, you know, is studied enough and has worked with enough people who have been there that they can walk with you side by side. And when you can't figure out why things aren't working, they can step in and help you. And it's that it's the blend of this coaching experience and what you were sharing, you know, the sort of when we're, we are in relation to others, that is how we become. He, he really opened my eyes to the critical importance of having those people along the way with you. Yeah. And I get caught in, by the way, I had a similar experience with him on the Finding Mastery podcast that he says, he goes, you know, he was so political and

so right on the money. Cause I read his original research in 1987 back in that library that I was talking about. And so he says, you know, I wish somebody from Malcolm Gladwell's team would have called me. No one called. He said the exact same thing to me. It's so funny. It's awesome. That's so, it's so respectful, but also so right down the strike zone. Like they didn't call. That's why they got it wrong. It's not 10. It's more like 20. And it's really, you know, it's more about the tribal experience than it is just the singular experience. Anyway. Yeah. So, okay. Where were we about

purposeful practice and a guide? Yeah. And right. The role of the guide and like how really important it is and also the quality and the nature have the theoretical frameworks. And what they end up doing is being compassionate or giving advice. And I don't think those alone are not terrible. By the way, I don't give advice. I made a pact that I'm not giving advice. I know too much about how complicated it is to arrive at a conversation. And so I feel like it's a total disservice shortcut approach to learning to give advice.

And so, but my point about this was that if you're going to work with somebody and because you've got this deep burn to figure something out for a larger purpose, or you don't know your purpose and you want to know, you want to figure that out. Remind me to come back to purpose in a minute. Is that make sure that that person has been down the path, legitimately earned their scars. And if they haven't, I would be nervous. And so how do you know that someone's been down the path? One, they've got some scars, right? They've been, they've been tested. They've had some real experiences in their life. And I would say that they have spent years before they even offered or thought that they could help another person. They spent years in the trenches, sorting things

out, and they've got a very clear approach to how they want to work. For me, I had to do formal training, which sounds so counterintuitive to my early experiences, but it was the structure that I needed to understand some of the most complicated ideas on the planet, how humans work. The mind is invisible. Jonathan, it's completely invisible. Like I, I wish that I was attracted to quantum physics. I wish I was attracted to like physics in general. Like you can see this stuff for the most part, but you know, just like gravity, we can't see gravity, but we know it exists. We can't see the mind. We know it exists. We can study the artifact. We can study the leave behind. And if you can study the leave behind and understand it, you might have a better understanding of the theory

of the mind and the skills of the mind. And so long-winded way of me saying, make sure they've been tested. I've heard you explore a distinction between, I think what you call it, the bands of coaching. Oh yeah. Like three different levels, you know, like amateur performance and elite. And I think the distinction is actually probably interesting here. Oh, cool. Yeah. So, I mean, amateur coaching are folks that, and I, when I'm talking about this, I'm in reference to physical coaches, right? Not, not necessarily anything else, but so physical coaches, amateur physical coaches, they talk a lot.

They give a lot of advice, a lot of instruction, but they're not always accurate. You know, they're telling the kids how to fish, how to fish, how to fish. And sometimes they're going to maybe get lucky with like the fisher at two o'clock on the pond, you know, that type of thing. But, you know, there's a lot of talk, a lot of instruction, but not highly accurate. Performance coaches are, you know, and high performance coaches, they are accurate. They might give some advice here and there, you know, because I've seen so much and they understand how long it takes to figure this thing out. So they might shortcut it with some advice, but what they give is usually highly accurate information. So they might shortcut it with some advice, but what they give is usually

highly accurate information. So they're really switched on to the nuances of what they're saying. And they're switched on to the nuances of the, where the person is in their arc. So they can see that they can see the arc and then let's call it like, you know, elite coaches or those very rare special coaches, the ones that are tip of the air folks, they don't say much. They ask way more questions. They understand not only the arc of the person, but the arcs of people. And they, they're so connected to the Intel and the insights and the understandings of the person they're working with that they know that they have to observe in a world-class way. And part of that observation is learning through questions.

And so they are highly skilled at observation. And that observation is finely tuned to insight and wisdom, not performance necessarily, but insight and wisdom. And then it's almost like they do a service to help the performance out. But the arc is so much more robust and the regard for the person is so much higher. And the skill of their language is so precise that it becomes this very powerful relationship and it is not transactional. They never are. They are transformational. And those words are overused, like wisdom is overused. But they are different. Yeah. I love the distinction between them. And I'm curious about the listening aspect of

what you would call an elite level coach. because it's not just yeah like little l listening i think the way that most of us um would it it's the it is like the intentional years long uh skill of observation you know it's like the first thing that art students do in their first semester of the first year of art school is they take classes that teach them how to see, not how to develop the craft, but just how to see what's truly in front of them so that they're not drawing the object of a cat that they've had imprinted on their brain when they're looking at a cat. They're actually learning how to see the cat in front of them, which is a skill that I think is the root of this listening that you're talking about. And it's fascinating to me that that is one of the skills

that becomes one of the most powerful enablers of coaches. And also I think just of human beings relationship globally. And yet it's maybe outside of art school actually, or maybe if you're, you know, like getting some higher degree in some therapeutic or psychological pursuit, it's not taught. It appears as this huge gap in our experience of learning how to just become human and become helpful. It's hard. It really is hard. And I was noticing about 10 minutes into our conversation that you're a good listener.

I had the thought, this is not me taking an opportunity right now. Like you're a good listener because you picked up on something that many people don't pick up on the way you reframed a question. And so it is a skill, but it comes from a place. And I think that place is an unconditional positive regard rooted in curiosity, true curiosity, as opposed to this shell game of I want to listen so I can tell you how smart I am. I want to listen so I can get you to do what I want you to do. That's a whole different game that it's like a sheep and wolf's clothing type of thing when you're really trying to care for somebody and help them. So how do you practice it? I think one of the great ways to practice it is meditation. Start with you. Listen, oh my God, you'll go somewhere. Like you will go somewhere if you do it right. And it, cause it is super challenging. I will absolutely validate that. I have about a decade-long practice there,

and I can't honestly say it's gotten a whole lot easier over the course of that entire decade or that I feel any more competent. But what I have come to understand is that that, in fact, is the practice. I have good friends who are Buddhist meditation teachers who are generations down the road from where I am who have thankfully shared that lens with me so I can forgive myself along the way a little bit. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing.

Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here.

It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. The other thing that jumps out at me when you shared listening as really this key skill is a curiosity around, is this extraordinary coach or guide listening entirely because

they have learned how to frame questions in a way which will elicit really powerful information that they can then use to help guide the person or as part of that also framing questions in a way that allows the person that they're in conversation with in relationship with um to inquire into themselves in a way that allows the answers to sort of emerge from their own experience, their own contemplation and reflection, and in a way end up letting them feel a sense of agency that they wouldn't necessarily feel without that. Nice work. Yeah. And I'd add one more to it. It it. It's both. It's not, it's not an either or I don't think, I think it's both of those. And there's another part that's really important too. So let me just reframe what I heard you say, which is, or is listening really about asking a question to help a person explore it within themselves? Or is the question more about being able to help move somebody in a direction that you're noticing is maybe a direction to explore? You didn't say it in that way, but

that's how I heard it. And of course, correct me if I missed a subtlety there. And then the third that I would say is sometimes what we understand from psychology and good change in psychology, therapeutic relationships, is 60, 70, maybe even 80% of change is accounted for by the relationship. So even if the question is not brilliant, but it's just a question or reflection, and then you give a chance to the person to navigate within and then they feel the relationship is of regard and then there's a neurological thing that takes place neurochemistry as well is that if i'm rattling okay let's say you and i are working together and you ask me a question and i'm coming from a place of sadness or fear that kind of rattle emotions even anger but

if we go deeper anger is a secondary emotion not primary and we go deeper and i'm coming from a place of sadness or fear that kind of rattle emotions, even anger. But if we go deeper, anger is a secondary emotion, not primary. And we go deeper and I'm working on some fear or something that I'm sad about. And I'm starting to rattle and my body is speaking to me in just the right ways about sadness and fear or fear. And you maintain a sense of groundedness that that calibration in and of itself creates a new frequency. And I'm not using that word in a woo way. I'm talking about literally in a neurochemical way, neuroelectrical way that that in of itself is a bit like a lead horse. And I don't know what you call the second horse, the kind of the wild horse. So a lead horse might take the like, Hey, it's okay. We can just slow down our trot or we can go a little faster you call the second horse, the kind of the wild horse. So a lead horse might take the like, Hey, it's okay.

We can just slow down our trot or we can go a little faster. And the second horse falls along that it's a bit like that. But what we know when we measure neuro electricity and chemistry is that there's a radical change just being in the presence of somebody that's grounded while you're doing emotionally based work. Yeah. It's like a process of attunement, two pitchforks next to each other. Right. Yeah. Well, one is out of tune.

Like doing something funky. Right. Hopefully one keeps its frequency and the other attunes to it. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense to me. I remember reading research that actually looked at something like six or seven or eight different schools of therapy and interventions to try and figure out which one is more effective. And the surprising result was it really didn't matter. It was all about the quality of the person and the nature of the relationship. And you could

kind of like just pick and choose whatever the modality was and it didn't have a big influence. That's right. That's exactly right. And there are certain tools that do work best. And that's why we've got good research on best practices and best science for particular struggles that people are in. But 60, 70, 80%, depending on what research you look at, it's about the relationship. It's about the therapeutic skills rather than the actual tools that are being provided that's cool that's good to know yeah i just love the fact that you can kind of uh i i love the fact that i feel like so many people are out there looking for the next set of skills that they can apply to get better at what they're doing rather than um this is about what you talked about before right saying well maybe the next set of skills that takes me to the next level or my ability to have impact to the next level

is actually just me going deeper into myself. You know, the way you described it, if you're in a room with somebody and you know that your grounding presence can have a really strong effect on another person, you know, would you rather spend the next three months really deepening into your practice to learn how to be grounded versus spend three months studying a new basket of skills that you can apply

to somebody? And maybe it's not necessarily an either or, right? But I get the sense that if I was given that opportunity, I know what I would choose. Yeah. I mean, you can only go as far as you can go if you want to work with other people and help other people. And we should put a note in this is that, well, let me finish the thought, is that if you think about it as a well and your well doesn't run so deep and I'm coming to you looking for some help and I quickly go, oh, this isn't safe. He's out of water, you know, as well as dry. Like, because you'll keep bouncing off of that, you know, and coming back up to the surface on the tactics or strategy, as opposed to the emotional level, which is a much deeper experience. And by the way, there's not, there's not, there's very few things, if any, that are mentally hard. So when we think about doing mentally hard things, that's really about duration of focus. It's about gating out noise, distractions, really.

And really, the deepest work is emotional work. That's hard. So if you want to help someone to get to like explore their potential, it really is about emotional work. But now why does that relate to the psychological mental part is because thoughts and emotion, emotions work hand in hand. You know, it's like a bang, bang experience. They work together and thoughts are a bit like the rider of an elephant and the emotions are the elephant. And so that analogy while overused is a beautiful description of where thoughts and emotions work. If emotions

want to run, if the elephant wants to run, they run no matter how skilled that rider is. So we've got to skill up our mind, skill up our thoughts, awareness of our thoughts to help work with that elephant. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting the analogy of those two I've heard in a number of different ways in the context of living your best life or in the context of achieving something. I mean, we started out a conversation where you were sort of referencing this quote, performance anxiety or performance. There's something you wanted to do where when the stakes were low, no big deal, you could do it. But as soon as you added stakes and exposure and risk of loss and fear of failure to these

things, all of a sudden this new state enters the equation, like anxiety enters the room and it affects not just how you feel, but your physical capacity to do the exact same thing that you had done at a previous time. No problem. Curious what that is. I'd love to know more your lens on what's actually happening there. Sure. The way it presents is I was in a different body, not metaphysically, but like my muscle fibers were just a little bit shorter. My chemistry was completely different. So I was physically in a different body. So at the bottom surfing, this is a surfing thing, but at the bottom of my turn, I wasn't able to extend the way I normally did because I didn't have that same range,

same in tennis, same in basketball, whatever. Like when there's a muscle shortening, you're in a different body. So that's how it presents itself. But it starts with thoughts. Now, for me, surfing is unique in that there was, whether it's free surfing or competitive surfing, there's still physical stakes. Matter of fact, in free surfing, like the big thing was be hardcore, pull into the deepest, heaviest, scariest part of a wave and don't say a thing. Don't brag under. It's scary. Okay. So there's real stakes. I mean, I say that like guys are surfing 80 foot waves, right? A hundred foot waves right now, guys are surfing 15 foot waves that are like truckloads of water. I mean, so what I was doing is not in comparison, but it's, it's all relative. And so, so what ends up for me, I'll just be very clear is that the difference was the judgment of others. That was the only

thing that got me caught up. And the brain though, cannot tell the difference between real threat and perceived threat. So the brain's job, the dictum of the brain is survival. And so the way that it operates is to scan the world and find threat. And the mind is the software that runs that hardware. The brain is the hardware. I'm oversimplifying this, But most people have not upgraded their software. They're still operating in a self-programmed, patchy, buggy approach to what their mind could do. What is their mind?

It's the collection of thoughts. It is the habituation of thought patterns. It's the framework that you filter information through before it gets down into the brain, or actually technically that's not totally right because I'm sure you're familiar. There's two parts. There's two, there's two routes that information comes in the low road and the high road. And so all sensory information goes in the fast route, which is called the low road straight to the amygdala. And then the same sensory input goes into the high road, which is up into your cortex,

your thinking brain. And so the amygdala, the limbic system, the emotional system in our brain is saying, nope, not a threat, not a threat, not a threat. You're okay. You're okay. You're okay. And then it goes up into the, at the same time, it allows the cortex, our thinking brain to do some work, but the mind is the filter for that. So if you haven't significantly upgraded your mind, it's time. How do you do it? Investigate within, find a guide, you know, get with a sports psych or a trusted guy that's been down the path. I shouldn't say sports, like a psychologist, whatever, a therapist, or somebody that's been down the path that is understands the trap doors that are littered across and, and right. You know, those are kind of the three ways. And so wise people, mindfulness slash meditation and writing are the three ways to get after it.

I'm curious about the last one now. Wise people, I get. We've talked about them. Meditation, we've touched on. I'm a writer, so I know how writing affects my processes. But tell me more about how that works internally and why it matters. It's a forcing function of all the words of your native tongue. And I'll say that that does even disservice, you know, to the actual experience that you have, because we're limited by our sensory input and we're limited by language. We know that there are more colors than we can see, more sounds than we can hear. And the words that are trying to capture our limited sensory experience, those even fall far below. And I hear Cat Stevens in my head right

now. I listen to my words and they fall far below. And so it's a limited experience, but it's a forcing function. And of all the words of your native tongue, if you're trying to explain or understand or explore something, there's a forcing function to choose this word next to that word and those two words next to the other two words. And you end up getting sentences or stems or ideas that you circle and words that are important, whatever the journaling methodology is. And it's just a forcing function. It's a way to externalize the, your hard drive. or sleepy. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10.

Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun.

On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you i knew you were gonna be fun on january 24th tell me how to fly this thing mark walberg you know what the difference between me and you is you're gonna die don't shoot if we need them y'all need a pilot flight risk so it's interesting so it's less about what ends up on paper on a keyboard on a screen and more about the process of grappling with how to try and put it into a coherent language. That's your language. It's that sort of like reckoning where really the value lies. That's right. Because let's take a mindfulness practice, contemplative practice by sitting down,

relaxing just a little bit, and then saying to yourself, who am I? And asking that question, right? For 20 minutes or whatever, two minutes, whatever you can manage it. I'm not going to get very far in two minutes, I think. But so as one of the ancient practices, who am I? You can do it through meditation. But when you write it down, it becomes almost more concrete. So you can think about things a lot. But as soon as you have to commit to the words,

who am I? And you had to write it down. You see it. There's some sort of materialism there. That's like, Oh, you know? So it's,

it's a step removed from like tattooing your whole body with your first principles, you know, like it's a step, but because you could burn a piece of paper, I mean, there's no cost to that really. So anyways, those, there's no cost to that really.

So anyways, it's a forcing function. I think it's fascinating also when you do stuff like that, especially when you're moving through experiences which are high stakes, transformational, which in some way may bring you to your knees and then back up, or you leave it in some way changed and different. And then you're immersed in a process of in some way trying to process and put language to it. And then you revisit that five years later, 10 years later, 20 years later. It's fascinating

to me to be able to reflect back in moments like that and understand and to to to get a glimpse into the language really starts to reveal like where were were you psychologically and emotionally during this moment in time and to also sort of like to see a process of evolution of continued change there's a even things yeah I look at my writing um you know I write books which means they come out they're printed and these days it's easy to change you change, not in sort of the traditional publishing world. And I look at stuff that I've written a dozen years ago and I'm like, what was that? So, I mean, forget about whatever I feel about the level of craft.

It's just fascinating to see like, this is the way that I was seeing myself, seeing my relationship to others and seeing my relationship to others, and seeing my relationship to the world, and feeling like I could be of service. And this was because it was in the context of a publishing contract and where I was under deadline and being paid money, it was the best that I was capable of delivering at that moment in time. And it's kind of fascinating to be able to reflect on that. Yeah. And so I got some fun news to share with you is that I've got my first book coming out in July. So I'm super stoked on that. I, it's like, it's not, I'm not trying to do anything perfect. I'm not at all doing that,

but boy, there's so much more that didn't make the pages. And I look at it in its total and I'm not at all doing that, but boy, there's so much more that didn't make the pages. And I look at it in its total and I'm like, it's, I like it. It's good. You know, I'm ready for like to push that out. And so it's a, I think I could write forever and then, you know, maybe pass it to my son one day, you know, like, but it's, it's at a place where it's like, yeah, that's going to do good. You know, like that's what I'm, that's where I earnestly come from that part of my purpose is

not, not part. My purpose in life is to help people increase the amount of time they spend in the present moment. That's my purpose. And why is that important to me? Why does it matter to me is because the present moment is where wisdom is revealed, high performance is expressed, and all things that are true, beautiful, and good are experienced. It's in the present moment. And we're not so good at it. Our brain is winning. For most people, the brain is winning. The dictum of survival is winning over the luxury to be able to explore this moment and this moment and this moment again by dampening down like that, that sense of survival that the brain's trying to sort out. So, so how do I go about helping people live in the present moment more often training their mind?

Let's train your mind sets and reps and self-discovery. Let's go at it. And so I I'm fortunate enough that I get to use, um, or they've allowed me to use their stories, the extraordinaries, some of the men and women I've been fortunate enough to work with. So I'm excited. I love that. And congrats, by the way. Thanks, man. Talk about though, reflecting back, you said the real difference in stakes when you were surfing was not the physical danger, but the exposure to judgment. So here now we're having this conversation on the eve of you putting your first book out into the world. Did that play?

And you work really, really, really hard on something. You want it to be super valuable and a true expression of who you are and what you have to offer. Are you at a point now where you can put something like that out into the world and feel like I'm completely good with however it lands? The whole exposure to judgment side, it's just, have you trained yourself out of that in the context of something like this? Well, I haven't, I don't know because I haven't done this before, right?, I would say that I am, um, I feel very free from that part of me that I struggled with when I was younger. Like I feel very free from that. And that shows up on a regular

basis in many ways. Like I'm not, um, I don't have this anchor that I'm pulling behind me anymore. And I'm sure some days it kind of rears up a little bit, but if you're to ask a better person would be like, I feel free from it. But like, if you ask my wife or yes, the editor of the book, you know, they might say, Mike, you actually labored really hard on this, you know? And why is that? Well, I don't want to waste people's time. So that's where it comes from for me is that if I'm really about the preciousness of now,

I don't want to waste people's time. So I want to capture what I've come to understand in the right way. Now, if you don't like it, or you think what I've written doesn't make sense, I'm okay with it, but it won't be mechanically wrong. It won't be scientifically in error. And so it would be sound that way. And so it's not a book for everybody. That's okay too. Yeah. I'm fascinated by the idea, just the context of, of how we relate to judgment, like perceived future judgment or how we process past judgment. And your, your purpose of helping people really be fully present in the moment, the fact that

so few of us actually are on any given day, I often wonder, is it, you know, part of it sure is the skill of cultivating that. And I think we're never taught that, like you said, we rarely train in this, but part of it also is, I believe it is this idea of how we handle judgment because what takes us out of it? Well, people say it's, you know, it's, we're processing things that happened in the past or we're anticipating things that we think might happen in the future. So we're in an anxiety state. But are we really afraid of it happening and the pain that it will cause?

Or are we really much more afraid of how we believe will be perceived differently if and when that happens by those whose opinions of us we really care about? And if you remove that, does that profoundly change the experience? When I was researching my book, Uncertainty, I stumbled upon this phenomenon called the Ellsberg Paradox, where I know you know this for our listeners. Imagine you have, I'm holding two bags, a bag in my left hand with 100 marbles, 50 are black, 50 are white, and a bag with 100 marbles in my left hand with a hundred marbles, 50 or black, 50 or white, and a bag with a hundred marbles in my right hand. It's a blend of black and white, but we don't know how many are each. It could be 90 and 10 or whatever it is. And I tell you, you have to

choose one of the bags and predict what color the marble is that I'm going to pull out of it. And whatever's deeply meaningful to you in life, whatever the high stakes are, that you need to wager that on this bet. And the vast majority of people with no rational basis will choose the bag where they know it's 50-50, black or white. And the truth is, logically, this is actually a math problem where the answer is D, not enough information. There's no rational basis to choose one or the other. But there's a subtler distinction that I came upon. And this is where I'm curious what your lens is on this. When that experiment was repeated and people were told,

your choice will never be revealed to anybody, including the researchers, the bias away from taking action and making decisions in the face of uncertainty vanished. So what it showed was there's a huge social context to all of this, which is fascinating. And it's cultural too. So that was done in the Western frame. And, you know, the social aspect is, I'm going to skip over to evolutionary psychology for just a minute, which is in some respects a little dangerous because it's hard to disprove evolutionary psychology. But the story of what I want to share is really important. And so it's easy to create a narrative that if we underperformed hundreds, thousands of years ago, if we underperformed and we were both hunters

and it's not, it's also, we're changing in our understanding of who was a hunter, who was a gatherer. And so there's tribes in the middle ends of Africa that the hunters were women, really interesting research. Anyways, back to the point, let's say you and I were hunting and it's you and I, and it's just you and I, and we're going out, we're going to bring back protein and the protein, you know, animal protein. And so I sharpen all of the arrows and I get the flint down, right. And the, uh, and the stock being true and you're responsible for the bow. Okay. And we go out and you hand me the bow and I handle the arrows and we've only got a limited amount of arrows. And I'm so unskilled or nervous or something that I'm shooting arrows high and low and breaking them and cracking them. And we've got one left and we look at each other and the animals right there, right? And we look at each other and I say, I can do it. I want to do it. I got this. I take my shot and I miss.

Now we go back empty handed. You're likely not going to ask me to go again. You're likely going to come back and say, maybe the first time you give me a pass. Maybe the second time you kind you give me a pass, maybe the second time you kind of give me a pass. But on the third time where your kids are hungry and the village is like agitated and we're nervous, you're likely to say, hey, dude, you don't have what it takes. Matter of fact, you're causing some near death in this tribe. You got to go. And so that you got to go thing, like i'm not dealing with you anymore now i become

relegated to something less than you know some other skill that i'm it's not regarded or whatever so what ends up happening once that narrative takes place once and if you really push it that maybe i get pushed out of the tribe because i'm socially not cool about it and i'm wanting to be a jerk about it and fight about it this that and the other and i get pushed out of the tribe because I'm socially not cool about it. And I'm wanting to be a jerk about it and fight about it, this, that, and the other. And I get pushed out of the tribe. It likely meant my survival, right? Because how am I going to fend for my family by myself? It's too hard. We need each other to live well, period. Modern times as well. And so that has created a narrative inside of us that we need to be part of something,

Allah, we need to be accepted. And I know I took a long way to tell that story. But if you take a look at your own life now, the need to belong is real. The need to be part of something is real. Now, on the other side of it, the fear of not being connected is also real. So it's complicated. I think that at one level, human relationships are so tender and fragile. And another level, we're protecting so well that we don't get to the truth that both of those need to be addressed. And authenticity is the only thing that pierces the armor.

And to be authentic, we need to be vulnerable. And to be vulnerable is the demonstration of courage. And when we can do that through an authentic way across all conditions, whether they're safe or rugged, people change. Yeah. So great. It's experience of coherence across every domain or across every circumstance. And that is so unusual. I feel like it's so unusual for us to experience it in ourselves. We know it when we're there. We know those moments. I think we know it in ourselves. And yeah, I think others can see it and we can see it in others. We might not be able to put our finger on this is what's happening, but we feel it. We feel this sense of just absolute coherence.

Um, if you want to call it authenticity, whatever it is, I feel like it's so rare that when we feel it, we, it reminds us of how we can be. And when we perceive it in others, we will do anything to be around it more often. And it's such a powerful way to be. I want to quickly come back to important relationships is if coach Carol was in this conversation. So he's my business partner and also the head coach of the Seattle Seahawks. He'd say, that's it. He goes, Mike, I think that's, he might say something like, Mike, I think that's my main job is that I'm just looking for those moments of brilliance that somebody expresses. And I go, there it is. And then, and then we show it to them and then they see it and they go, and then we agree. Could you do that more often?

Yeah. Really? You think you could, what would you have to do to do that? Oh man, if I could do that more often, I have to do A, B and C. Is it worth it? Hell yeah, it's worth it. Okay. So then that's like great coaching, you know, like catching, being so observant, catching that and saying, there it is. Look, look, look, look, look, look, look what you're capable of.

Look at that. And so that's part of, I think what coach Carol is very special at. And so he helps create a vision of what's possible for other people. Yeah. I love that. Feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So sitting here in this container of the good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? To live a good life. And I don't want to be pithy when I say this, but to live a good life requires the exploration of the depths of the human experience, the reaches of potential and the connection of others. And to do all three of those requires vulnerability, courage, and authenticity back to that point. And so again, it's the depth

of your own experience, the reaches of your potential and the deep connection to others. And then let us never forget the connection that we have with mother nature, how important that is. That's the good life. Cause yeah, let me end with this note. If you don't mind, I really appreciate this. So thank you for your tone. You're the way that you shape this conversation allowed me to ramble in some respects. And so thank you for the space. And then I just want to, on the mother nature thing, she's going to be fine without us. It's just whether we can continue on this planet. Okay. So yeah. So our relationship with all three is incredibly important. And that is the good life.

Yeah, I hear you. Thank you. Cool, man. Appreciate you. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever

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Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?

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