The Daily Stoic - Dr. Michael Gervais On The Extension Of Stoicism In Modern Times (Pt 2)

Episode Date: February 3, 2024

On this episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan continues his conversation with one of the world's top high-performance psychologists and leading experts on the relationship between the mind and human performance, Dr. Michael Gervais. Together they talk about living in the present moment, Austin Kleon's “people would rather be the noun than do the verb”, and the tension of virtue in Stoic texts. Dr. Michael Gervais has spent his career being called on by the best of the best across the worlds of business, sport, the arts, and science. His client roster includes Super Bowl winning NFL teams, Fortune 50 CEOs, Olympic medalists, internationally acclaimed artists, and so many more. He is also the founder of Finding Mastery and the founder/host of the Finding Mastery Podcast, and the co-creator of the Performance Science Institute at USC. His work has been featured by NBC, ABC, FOX, CNN, ESPN, NFL Network, Red Bull TV, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Outside Magazine, WIRED, and ESPN Magazine.Signed copies of Dr. Gervais' is latest book, THE FIRST RULE OF MASTERY: STOP WORRYING WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK OF YOU is available at The Painted Porch. IG and X: @MichaelGervaisYouTube: @FindingMastery✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of The Daily Stoke Podcast. I brought you part one earlier this week of my conversation with the one and only Dr. Michael Gervais. He's one of the world's top high-performance psychologists. He's worked with Super Bowl-winning teams, top CEOs, Olympic gold medalists, internationally acclaimed artists, and he's just a great, thoughtful, smart dude,

dude, a really kind dude, a great, I would say, this isn't a compliment I give very often, but a dude with great energy It was awesome to sit in a room with him and talk about Stoicism talk about high performance talk about reaching your potential and he and I go way back So we really connected and I'm really glad that he came out to the pain of porch to have this conversation He signed some copies of his new book the first rule of mastery stop worrying what other people think of you You can grab signed copies at the Pain of Porch.

You can also follow him on Instagram at MichaelGervais. You can watch his YouTube videos at Finding Mastery. You should definitely check out his amazing podcast, Finding Mastery, which I did many, many years ago, but he's had some awesome, awesome guests over the years. And he's someone I always point people to who want to learn more about this stuff. He's basically a always point people to who want to learn more about this stuff. He's basically a guy you can hire. He's basically a guy that you could not normally get access to so that for him to give us a couple hours of his time was a real treat. I learned a lot.

I think you'll learn a lot. People really liked the first half of this episode. So here's my conversation with Dr. Michael Gervais. If you want to focus more on your well-being this year, you should read more and you should give Audible a try. Audible offers an incredible selection of audiobooks focused on wellness from physical, mental, spiritual, social, motivational, occupational, and financial. You can listen to Audible on your daily walks. You can listen to my audiobooks on your daily walks.

And stillness is the key. I have a whole chapter on walking, on walking meditations, on getting outside. And it's one of the things I do when I'm walking. Audible offers a wealth of well-being titles to help you get closer to your best life and the best you discover stories to inspire sounds to soothe and voices that can change your life. Wherever you are on your well-being journey, Audible is there for you. Explore bestsellers, new releases, and exclusive originals. Listen now on Audible.

I'm reminded of a, this was an early, go back to early days of college for me one more time, is that it was the first, it was the past at like 11 world religions. And so we're studying all 11. Yeah. Sikhism to Zoroastrianism to Judaism. And so we're studying all 11.

And I had this wonderful idea that I was gonna stand up and say, you know, if we combined, this is my humble opinion, if we combine this, this, this, there's a commonality here, here, here. And if we cobbled together a couple of these, like, these common ideas, like, and so the professor says, thank you. I just want to make sure I'm understanding your point of view here is that you believe

that you've discerned deeper than Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and Muhammad. I just want to make sure. Yeah, yeah, sure. Right. In your, you know, six days of class here. So, you know, it is so easy to opine from a distance as opposed to develop from within. And this is where I think we come back to that signal to noise ratio is for us to understand what the signal is. And if the stoic approach can help, awesome.

And if it's resting on a bed of virtues that are generative rather than self-serving. Yeah. And so that to me is one of the bedrock of the whole thing. Yeah, and not all the innovations are these massive breakthroughs in like science or psychology or neuroscience. Although there's many of those that we have to incorporate

but like I'm fond of that idea in recovery groups of the acronym HALT, like hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. Oh yeah. That you have to think about if you're any of those things before you make a decision. So nowhere does Marx, Reelius, or Sankar, Epictetus, as they're talking about being rational and not being driven by our emotion.

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

Well, that's not just, hey, what do I think about this? But also we now understand that what we think about it is formed by what's going on inside of our body, right? That's right, that's the embodied cognition piece. And so I think we have to incorporate all that stuff. Even by our gut bio. Yeah, of course.

Yeah, right, which they didn't have access to the science, but they had great insight and intuition about how things are working. It also makes you way more empathetic of other people if you understand this, right? Like so you have kids and you go, my kids on an asshole, they just skipped their nap, right? My kids on a monster, their routine was disrupted.

And so you get really good at separating between the behavior and the person. Hopefully you can give that gift to yourself, but hopefully definitely you can learn to give that gift to humanity, which is the person who cut you off in traffic just got a call on headphones that their mother died or what at right, you can go,

oh, you can realize that things are always happening to people and if we can be kind and empathetic and separate between the person and the behavior, it allows us to be more empathetic and then also not be so frustrated, right? Not like ironically Socrates said that, nobody does wrong on purpose. And then we have this understanding of,

oh, okay, why are people doing things that are wrong? And then it helps us manage our emotions, but then it also helps us understand and appreciate what other people are going through. Is one of the things that my wife and I we've married a long time, like we're great friends. And I come from an approach that I don't know anyone that's a villain in their own story.

Yes. Right? And so we're looking for reasons why we are slighted or agitated or tired or fatigued. And so that helps me give a pass to people to look at the behavior in a different way and not assault the person. Yeah.

And she says, you're making up stories. That's bad behavior. That is unacceptable. Right? Like I don't care. I don't care what the deal is. That's not right. And so like that's one of our tensions. And one of her virtues that she is,

thinks is not a healthy virtue is fairness. That fairness is not. A healthy virtue to rest on. And I'm like, yeah. And so, and we've had a lot of time It's a walk me through that so fairness That she feels it's a dangerous Duping that we should be in a world that we should see all the things are fair. No to build children

Children's philosophy that let's work out of fairness Okay, as opposed to and the reason being is because there's wolves in the world. Yeah, sure. And there's slippery folks that like are trying to take advantage. I happen to believe the world is dangerous and hostile. I don't think it's set up for my success or your success or happiness for all.

Like it's a pretty toxically dangerous world. Yeah. Okay, so put a pin in that. So then we raise these young babes saying, act out of fairness. Sure. But you might be working in tandem with a wolf in sheep's clothing.

And so, or a selfish person that's trying to get theirs rather than support yours. So it's an interesting philosophical position about the concept of fairness. Yeah, it is tricky because so you have this virtue of justice and we control whether we behave with justice but we don't really control whether other people act fairly or rightly.

But should we let the fact that other people act that way make us not act that way? I think that's the tricky part. I think that that's where society is holding together loosely, is that many people hold the position of my wife, which is like, well, if that's gonna happen, I need to protect myself. Okay, if there's a bunch of wolves out there,

I can't just kind of walk out there and say, hey guys, let's share the meat. Let's share the cockers, can I get some? As opposed to other virtues of maybe kindness, but not fairness, is an interesting split between the two. So I take your point, which is, no, my actions need to be my own, not in only reaction to somebody else's action.

So yeah, so. I think that is a tension even in the Stoic text is that you have this moral compass, you have this standard you hold yourself to, and then you have to deal with the fact that the vast majority of people in the world, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, do not operate the same way.

And there's this great line in Meditations remarks because remember, you do not live in Plato's Republic. And he didn't set up the system, he didn't choose to be in the system, he has to operate inside the system. And I think there is this idea, for instance, I forget what, maybe it's Kennedy said, he said like, parents want their kids to be president,

but they don't want them to be politicians. And in fact, we need more politicians. Like political success or operating in a political domain is a skill that requires mastery just like any other skill. And oftentimes what happens is you either have complete monsters who have that skill, or you have great human beings who enter that world without any of the skill.

And they think they're living in Plato's Republic where the just cause always wins and if I can just give the right speech, everyone will give me a standing ovation and then vote to fund Ukraine or whatever. But that's not fucking how it works. And the system we have is set up to mitigate some of those toxic impulses,

but they nevertheless exist. And you have to figure out how to be savvy inside them. And I've always found this like, I'll recommend Robert Green's works and people go, oh, it's so awful. I'm like, if you think that, you're the person who needs to read it more than anyone because you are saying that because you don't like something

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

Definitely not. I have zero interest in participating in politics in that sense, but... Are you, do you think of yourself as a philosopher or as a commentary on philosophy? I don't know. I mean, I think there's, in the world we live in, I feel like there's something a little delusional,

grandiose about calling yourself a philosopher. So I prefer to see, I think it's healthier to see myself as a, number one as a person who's trying to use philosophy in my life. And then number two, as a writer, who happens to write about philosophical ideas. And then if somebody else wants to put those two things together and call me a philosopher, I'm not going gonna argue with you, but it's not important and in fact, maybe dangerous for that to be incorporated

into my self-identity. So I'm glad we bring it up because we go after in the book, a performance-based identity. And that is one of the great on-ramps to a radical fear of people's opinions, right? And it makes perfect sense to me that in, certainly the West, we are obsessed with performance.

Like at age eight, we're giving grades. We like performance now, so it makes perfect sense that people would mingle their identity with performance. And so it's a thing called a performance-based identity. And a performance-based identity basically is, I am what I do relative to how well you do it. So it's not just I am what I do, which a healthier version is I am who I am, okay?

But it's I am what I do relative to how well I do it next to you. And that's where it gets really, really tricky. Cause now I need to be better than you. And maybe I'm a friend or maybe I'm a competitor or whatever competitors can be friends as well. So this idea of having a performance based identity, the work is to decouple who I am from what I do. And that takes a very long time.

I heard it in what you just said. Well, my friend Austin Cleon, who's amazing, he's done a bunch of great books, he says, the problem is too many people wanna be the noun rather than do the verb, right? So like, I like writer versus author even, because like, what I do is write things, right? And I do it every day.

And the fact that these, those things are at some point packaged together, called a book and then flung to the public to sell or not sell, you're getting, each step of that it's getting further away from what I control. And fundamentally,

I think more importantly, getting further away from what I do, right, I think more importantly, getting further away from what I do. And so I think so often, like, do you see yourself as a point guard or do you see yourself as an all star, right? Or an NBA star or a team captain? You start to get towards roles as opposed to jobs or status. I think both of those are equally dangerous. Yes.

You know, which is underneath is, so I, two funny stories. One, well, I'll leave the humor decision up to you. I'm good. Right, that's not in your control. Yeah, right. That's right. I'll be the judge.

The first one actually is not funny at all, but the second one is I walked into a fitness gym and it was one of those kind of structured classes, gyms. And the person behind the desk comes up and goes, are you Mike Gervais? And I go, oh, thank you, yeah. And he says, man, I don't want to bug you. I know you're going into doing this thing.

But I'd love to talk to you about, at some point, I said, want to bug you. I know you're going into doing this thing. And, but I'd love to talk to you about like, you know, at some point I said, okay, no problem. So I come in a week later, I'm back in there and he says, you know, could you just really quickly, could you tell me how you've become, you know, like what you, I'd love to do what you do at some point. I said, oh, no problem. It's like, you know, undergraduate,

graduate degree in this, PhD in psychology, then you got gotta get licensed. And then you really don't know anything. So you need some real kind of time under tension. And I could see kind of this glazed over look. I said, it's about 16 to 20 years before you're kind of in the space, right? And of course I'm pointing to my applied art science

of psychology and he says, wait, to be a podcaster? I got it. See what I thought, what's just happened to me before is, and this is why audience and fame can be dangerous, right? Is you get used to people recognizing that you're coming up to you and talking to you, even if it's not like at some huge level, like the way like a world famous person would be,

but you get used to occasionally people recognize you. And I remember I was at the airport a couple of months ago and this person sort of comes up to me and I could see their, anyways, they come up to me and they start talking to me out of my headphones. And I thought they were coming up to me as a fan, right? And so you go into like the, this is, when you've identified yourself as a person

who gets recognized, I'm going into that interaction. And really they just wanted me to move. Like I was in the way of something. You know what I mean? And so, they say fame is a mask that eats at the face. The thing you do, you become conscious of your status or role in the world. the thing you do, you become conscious of your status or role in the world.

And then it changes literally how you interpret reality. If I was a regular person, and I am a regular person, but if I didn't have the experiences that I had, my first, my mind would never have even conceived that this person was recognizing me or that I was important. There's a status differential or whatever. My initial impulse would be am I in somebody's way? And so when you identify with something or things become normalized to you, it fundamentally shapes your understanding of reality and usually not in a good way.

100% that's so good. That's so funny. Cool man. But that's, I think that in your case, I would say you passed the test in the sense that you went towards the harder thing that you do and the training and the work that went into it as opposed to the easy, because a lot of the problem is,

and I think Austin's right, people wanna do be the noun, not do the verb. And people wanna be famous as opposed to do things for which the byproduct is some level of fame. Like I'm wearing a Marin Man shirt, but one of my favorite quotes from the lead singer of Marin Man is he said, he said, fame is the excrement of creativity.

He's like, it's the sludgy thing that comes out or it's the thing that comes out the backside. And his point is that if you do stuff that large amounts of people like or you do things long enough that you accumulate an audience of people who have seen you do what you do that you accumulate an audience of people who have seen you do what you do, then the byproduct of that is fame.

You can be a famous astronaut, you could be a famous chemist, you can be famous for many things. Or so you could say, hey, I need to go do something and I'm gonna focus on that process and hopefully or potentially the byproduct of it is that a large amount of people know who I am, which is not as great as people think it is,

but it does happen. Or you could be someone that says, I want a large amount of people to know who I am. And then that's where you get reality TV stars or Donald Trump or whatever, right? Not great outcomes. Like I live in LA and it spits people right out. Of course.

Like it's just such a heavy place because they're attracted, so many are attracted to the lights. And if you don't have some roots, like you get spun quickly. Or if you don't have a craft that you can fall back on, because again, there's so many things that are outside your control.

How quick you get traction, how your things do, there's so much between you and those things that you are nice to have. Like the Stokes had this great concept they called, there's things that are up to us and there's things that are not up to us. But they said there's kind of this middle category of what they called preferred indifference,

not indifference ENCE, but indifference like ENTS, right? So that there are things like, if you work really hard on a book and it's the best thing you've ever done and you're so proud of it. And if I asked you, do you want it to sell a million copies or zero copies, right? Well, the Stokes would say it's not fully in your control.

So you should be indifferent, but you obviously have a preference, right? Like would you prefer to be born really tall or really short? You would have a preference, right? Would you rather be poor or rich? You have a preference, right? Now, the Stoics would say you should be able to work

with either, right? And it neither says anything about you as a person, but preference, right? And so as long as that preference doesn't fundamentally change who you are or make you vulnerable to being unhappy if you don't get that thing, it's I think okay to have a preference. Yeah, preferences are cool.

Yeah, and I think if you see it as a preference, then it's great. But the problem is if you see it as a necessity or you see it as a just reward. Like that was my other thing when I was thinking about fear of what other people think or is Mark Shrews has this line of meditation where he says, he says, stop asking for the third thing.

So he says, you've done something good and someone has benefited from it. He says, stop asking for the third thing. So he says, you've done something good and someone has benefited from it. He says, stop asking for the third thing. And he says, the third thing is gratitude, recognition, appreciation, compensation, whatever. Like the different situations demand different, provoke from us a desire for a different third thing. But I like the idea of like, do the thing,

hope it, you know, do the thing so it lands, up to you it's in your control. And then not needing that third thing, that's a pure place to come from. It's a little bit like the Zen insight about the two arrows, the second arrow. So the first arrow, the first arrow that's shot is something that happens,

like it's something outside of you, it happens. And maybe you're crossing, you know, your nice little street here and somebody hits you, right? So that's a first arrow. It's an arrow you get hit with, not an arrow you're shooting. That's right, yeah.

And the second arrow is the one you shoot. And it is your critical or judgmental or hostile or whatever interpretation that, it is your critical or judgmental or hostile or whatever interpretation that, so the second arrow is the one you shoot. The first arrow is the one that happens to you and the second arrow is the one you shoot. So the second arrow is suffering. The first arrow might be pain, right?

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

they had this on the wall. You know, you go into the... The second arrow, not the second arrow. No, the Stoic line. You know, you go into the... The second era, not the second era. No, this stoic line. You know, you go into like locker rooms and sometimes like it's all cliches come from something at some point, right? And a lot of these unattributed quotes,

actually there is an attribution at some point. So they had it on the wall as just like a line, a commandment inside their organization. They didn't know who said it, but it actually comes from Epictetus. He says, it's not things that upset us, it's our judgment of things. So of course the first arrow does hurt,

but if you tell yourself, it's a metaphorical arrow, right? So it's the telling yourself you've been screwed over, that you've been singled out, that your life is over. You know, it's the story you tell yourself about that thing. That's what the second arrow is. That's right. And I think one of the deepest, most rewarding states, continued states that you can get into

is a love affair with the unfolding present moment. A love affair with experience. And I learned that from a mentor friend, John Kabat-Zinn, the idea that- Wherever you go, there you are. Yeah, yeah. Like he's such a rich, amazing human. But the idea is, do you have a love affair

with the present moment, with experience itself? And if you could fall in love with the unfolding, unpredictable, unknown moment, as opposed to be anxious, protection, try to control stuff, just be in love with showing up and experiencing this moment. It's an amazingly powerful way to go through life. You end up being in life rather than trying to calculate

how to achieve or work from an ambitious standpoint. And that does not mean that you're just gonna kind of be a tumbling weed or just kind of go wherever the wind flows because you've got some bellwethers, you've got your virtues, you've got your purpose, but do you have a love affair or are you afraid of the unknown present moment? And wait, let me finish this thought, I'm rolling.

Is that I think this is why I love, it became apparent about halfway through working with the Seahawks is that I think this is why I love, it became apparent about halfway through working with the Seahawks is that it became so clear that the way they fundamentally organize their life is to go embrace the unknown and to do it publicly, that we see that. They don't know, we don't know how the outcome's gonna go and they bring all of themselves into it.

The ones that are like, I think noble in the approach. And then one more layer to that is that that's what they do on Wednesday and Thursday and Friday and they don't do it publicly, but they do it in front of their peers. They get to the messy edge where they could fall into a thousand pieces and they do it in front of people that decide whether they get to play on Sunday or not.

So people with real power and control and your peers, by the way, trying to take your job, some of them, there's a depth chart, like everyone's trying to get the starting job. So I have such regard for the fundamental decisions they've made and the fundamental commitment to go to the unknown, the messy edge at the unknown, that to me is way more important than celebrating or thinking that they're born different.

Celebrating the achievements, you know, when they're on the podium or whatever, and then thinking that they're born different, they practice fundamentally to be their very best in relatively dangerous environments emotionally because like you got to get to the edge where you don't know if you're good or not. And there's people watching saying not good enough. Yeah. I remember very specifically I rented an Airbnb in Santa Barbara.

I was driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I just sold my first book and I'd been working on it and I just needed a break and needed to get away and I needed to have some quiet time to write. And that was one of the first Airbnb's I ever started with. And then when the book came out and did well, I bought my first house. I would rent that house out during South by Southwest

and F1 and other events in Austin. Maybe you've been in a similar place. You've stayed in an Airbnb and you thought to yourself, this actually seems pretty doable. Maybe my place could be an Airbnb. You could rent a spare bedroom. You could rent your whole place when you're away. Maybe you're planning a ski getaway this winter or you're planning on going somewhere warmer. While you're away, you could Airbnb your home and make some extra money towards the trip.

Whether you use the extra money to cover some bills or for something a little more fun, your home could be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca. Happening now at Madimee Homes, the Now's Your Time event, offering limited time savings and incentives on new homes in neighborhoods across the GTA and beyond. Contact us today at madimeehomes.com slash now's your time. As you brought that up, what it spurred me was this idea of like, okay, do you love football or basketball or surfing or golf or writing or trading stocks?

Do you love that or do you love winning? Right, do you love being seen as great at those things? And the person who loves all of it, like I just, I love the squeaking of the shoes on the floor and I love getting in the pool at 5 a.m. If you love the thing, you're gonna do it longer and better and be able to ride the ups and downs of it than the person who, it turns out, they've only liked it

because it's been going their way a long time. That's right, yeah. And I remember, Chakas Mark was talking about this, who we both know, he was at Texas, now he's at Marquette. He was saying that like, kids will quit and they'll say they just don't feel the same way about the game anymore. And he's like, is that really true?

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

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

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

because that's where it happens most often. But those are harder to come by because the world outside of us is giving us lots of externals. Hey, you need to do this, you need to do that. Oh my God, you're so amazing. This is like, are you ready for next week's game against the Crosstown Rival? All of that external noise definitely clouds the internal signal. Yeah, right.

But so the tricky part of that is so if you have that intrinsic unlock that gets you motivated and then internally motivated, that's what allows you to keep doing it, to do it for a long time. But then do you find that can also be hard to turn off? Oh yeah. Like how to stop.

Well, yeah, there's a near obsession when you really love the unlocking because it's such an electric embodied experience. When those ah-has happened, actually we can see the signature. It's gamma brainwaves take place, which is similar to a flow state experience, but it's the insight.

And I think the philosophers were like, they would spend time discerning, thinking deep, going deeper, deeper, to try to get to the essence of something. I got it. So that's a gamma brainwave experience. That's an aha moment. We call it insight.

And we call it in the performance world, an unlock. Insight, unlock, aha, that stuff is so embodied and rich that there's an addiction to that. I only wanted to, I didn't care about working with pro athletes, I only wanted to work with people that were as obsessed as I was at trying to figure out how to get better. I was just thinking there's basically been like

one boxer ever who retired like. Oh yeah, right. So you get this, it's on the one hand being extrinsically and externally motivated. It's great as long as everything goes your way, which is unlikely, but you know, it works. It can work. But so it's better to be that sort of intrinsically motivated thing,

and it's better than being at the mercy of everything going your way. I think you need both high. I don't think, I think it's, before you go to the box right now, I don't think that this Polyannish approach, is that the right word? Polyannish? Polyannish idea that intrinsic needs to be the number one. As long as it's high, you can have equally high external, you know, drivers and rewards.

Like that's cool. Like if you are the best in the world and people like the thing that you're doing and they want to give you money, it's okay. I remember when my books first started to come out in sports, you called me and you gave me a bunch of advice and you were like one thing,

you were like don't ever talk to a sports team for free. And I was like, why? And I was like, you were like, they're huge multimillion dollar, sometimes billion dollar organizations and they all pretend like they don't have money, but they do and you should, if you provide value, you should be paid for it.

And I like, cause there's some part of you, if you are intrinsically or internally motivated, you're like, I'm just happy to be here, just happy to do what I do. It's awesome, there's an unlock here. Yeah, and that's all great, but you should also, you're not doing yourself, one of the things I've learned,

you're not doing yourself any favors by not getting paid the most amount you can get paid for that thing. And I want to go back to Boxers, right? And they're not put, if you don't value it in that way, they're not gonna really value it. So it's a nice- Any time I've done less than my fee or not for it,

I always regret it in that it just turns out to be a disaster. Like it takes a lot, it's just, there's something clean about I show up, you pay me this. Like businesses, we developed this developed these practices for a reason. That's right. It's nice and clean that way. And so, yeah, man, that's cool. I think about it all the time.

That's awesome. Okay, good. Yeah. And I think that for all of us, like the way I make decisions, there's three vectors. One is, is there an economic reward? Yeah. Does it move the needle economic reward? Yeah. Does it move the needle towards goodness?

Yeah. Okay, so there's something compelling or purposeful that is taking place. And is it gonna be fun? Yeah, is it cool? So I need two of those three, and I just need to know, if I get all three, it's awesome. But I definitely need two of those three.

I don't like just showing up and taking money. Of course. If it's show up, take money and it's fun, okay, that's cool. But I definitely need the third one in there as well. So if you can get all three of those together, I'm like, this is a home run, are you kidding me? But I guess what I'm saying is intrinsic, extrinsic, the point is some people have the problem,

they don't have enough motivation, then other people, you just do it longer than you should. You can't stop doing it because- This is the box, you're back to the box right here. Back to the identifying with being a thing, getting to do a thing as opposed to what's best for you, what's most sustainable, et cetera. Well, so this professional sport world is really electric.

And if you have identified yourself with being a performer, whatever the performance is, one, it's really fun. It's electric. Your identity is merged with it. It's a near death sentence. This is why 87% are divorced, broke, a mess within two years of retiring.

It's because their identity is so merged with what they do. So most have to get kicked out. I think you'd have to kick me out too, right? And because it's fun, it's amazing. But you left. I did leave. So then you didn't have to kick you out? No, I left because there was a pandemic

and I had to move my family up to Seattle to be in the bubble. And so logistically it stopped. But it was a perfect time for it. I mean, the pandemic was a forcing function for me in a lot of ways. You get so comfortable doing what you've done and just going along with how things go. Sometimes you need something to come in

and force you to get back to your first principles or reevaluate some assumptions. And you go, oh wait, this isn't the way it should go or I wanted it to go all the time. And what do I want my life to look like? For me, it was like perfect timing. It wasn't easy, but Coach Carroll and I, the head coach of the Seahawks,

we had built a business taking best practices in sport, how to train your mind to be your very best. And we crosswalk those into enterprise companies and large corporations. So when the pandemic hit, it was like, I think it's time to go run that thing full time. What do you think, Pete? And coach, and he says, yeah, like this is eloquent.

And so that's where I've been the last handful of years doing that. But it's hard to stop. And I think your point is, yeah, a lot of times you have to, something either has to force you out or you have to literally be forced out. A pandemic. Yeah.

Yeah, right. And imagine like if I talk about with my wife all the time, again, best friend, great partner, and she's like, we go up, we go up. Like if that's what you want to do, we'll kind of uproot. I'm so glad I didn't. Yeah. Right?

Like it's, when you can have the internal practice to get down to the truth of things so that you can discern and you can feel your way in there. See what I did? Yeah. I just think, but you can think and feel your way in there. It's just, I think it gets exponentially easier.

All right, so I wanna talk about finding mastery for a second then I'm gonna come back to Beethoven. You talk a lot about it in the book. But when you say finding mastery, do you think it's an external thing or is it an internal thing? So there's mastery of self and mastery of craft. I'm far more interested in the internal experience.

The commitment to the path to get to the truth of whatever, what you value, right? So whatever you're attending to. And so it's a, the path of mastery is really what it's about. And so what we're, it's like the approach towards trying to better understand it is what finding means in that sense. And so mastery is mastery of craft and mastery of self.

I've sat and asked the question to so many people you included like, what do you think about mastery? And most people say, there's like two that didn't say this. I don't know, like I'm, I love it. Yeah, I don't know if I'm on the path. I think I am. You know, like this idea that it's an unfolding as opposed to there was two people like,

yeah, I have mastered my craft. You know, like most people are like, it's this thing. It's a path, it's a process. It's a, it's a becoming, it's an understanding, it's an unlocking and I'm committed to it. And I'm more interested in mastery of self through craft. Sure. Mastery of craft alone feels hollow.

Well, cause there's a lot of people who are very good at what they do, but also monsters. Yeah, that's exactly, that's well said. Yeah, so mastery of self through craft. So the craft is the tool or the utility as opposed to the reversing it, master of craft and master of self. Yeah, don't you think there's kind of a point

so you get really good at something, maybe you get really successful at that thing, it usually happens, but not always. So you get really good at something and then you kind of have this crossroads moment where you go, is this gonna be my whole thing? Am I, is it gonna be everything about me? And I'm gonna sacrifice everything to maintain it

or keep going with it? Or now I have this kind of second challenge, which is how do I integrate this mastery and this success into a seemingly normal, healthy, well-adjusted life relationships, people, happiness. That's right. Yeah, you're hitting the nail in the head. That's why it's self-throughcraft.

Yeah. So the craft can actually change. Yeah. So, you know, you think about Anders Erickson's work on number of hours, you know, it's not 10,000, it's more like 16,000 to 20,000. Yeah. And which is fun to be that. They just move the goalposts on you.

You're getting, oops, gonna do it twice now. So this idea that you put in some real work towards something and you have the sense of being artistic with the expression of that craft, you don't need to do another 40 years or 20 years, like happy to pivot, that's cool. And there can be, I was sitting with the, he was a CEO of PayPal, he's now the CEO of Nike.

And John says, he was right in the middle of what he was gonna do next. And he was an Uber successful CEO. And he says, I feel like I kind of have golden handcuffs on where the world is expecting me to go back and do that thing because I'm so good at it. And I could do it really well wherever I go next. But I might want to just take pictures.

I might want to move into photography. I don't know, which is, it's not using any of the tactical technical skills of CEO ship. But if he could rest on the skills he's worked that are agnostic to the craft, but consistent with self, then you can apply those somewhere else. And of course we get to crosswalk some of the skills

like athletes get to, they know how to be coached, they know how to work hard, they know how to be on time, they know how to be good teammates. You could crosswalk those into lots of organizational or other places as well. I just mean like, okay, so obviously there's a very few small percentage of people who have ever played basketball, soccer, football, whatever,

that they get to do at the professional level. But then you're saying that 87% of those people, like that, the 0.001% but 87% of them end up divorced, broke, unhappy, all that stuff, right? Within two years of retirement. So I'm saying you kind of, you kind of face this second challenge. That's right.

Of like going, I'm gonna be great at this thing and not let it destroy me or I'm gonna be great at this and I'm gonna be happy. I'm gonna be happily married. It's a dangerous proposition. It's very hard to navigate. I had a gentleman who was about four months retired and he came home from not being recognized

at the supermarket, okay? So normally when he goes to a local supermarket and everyone's like, ah, you know, and so he's like, I came home and it was so jarring to me that I turned and said to my wife, you know, I don't know how you're gonna give me the love of a hundred thousand screaming fans.

And he said to me, I knew my life was in shambles. Like relationship was over. It probably never really was. Because it was more about me, more about my attention. Was subsidizing it. That's a good word. Yeah, and so that's how slippery this thing at some point flashes in their face like,

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

And when I pushed it, I was thinking, I'm tired. I don't want it, because I'm doing this four book series. I was like, I don't think I'm ready to just finish this and start the next one. And so I was thinking about it like, hey, this is gonna be really restful and regenerative and it's gonna be easier to take time off than to just start training for the next season,

so to speak. And I would say that this year has actually been much harder. It would have been much easier to just stay at your fighting weight. Run the play. Yeah, run, and then to stop and try to exist more as a functioning person in a world and a relationship and family.

Cause like, it didn't just, hey, I was working eight hours a day on this book and now I'm not. I was like, well, if you're not doing that, you need to pick the kids up from school. Just way more stuff in life, which I have no problem doing. I've loved doing it, but it challenges you. It's easier to be like a finely tuned machine

that sloths off all the responsibilities of being a functioning happy person. And also you're just so busy, you don't have to think about, am I happy? Is this how it should go? How do I want things to be? Why was work such a large part of my life? You know, all that stuff.

And so weirdly, the year is harder than doing it the hard way. Probably an outsized impact for the health of your life later, you know, like outsized, like a real one. And yes, harder. Cause you know how to run the play of grinding to publish and to get out and you know that.

So yeah, that's cool. That's a, that's a, that's a cool moment for you to reflect on too. Well, and then now I about in January, I had to start the book that I paused for a year. And so- Now you gotta get back into shape. But can I get back in shape,

but also not just swing from one pole to the other, right? Can I now get in shape and do the thing? And I'm not out of shape because I just spent more time kind of slowly working on the other book. It's different shape, right? But like, can I go, can I do a healthier version of the season, you know?

In the way that, you know, the first five seasons of someone's career are gonna be very unbalanced and totally weighted in one direction. And you would hope a veteran athlete that has a family and commitments and other responsibilities is just more balanced. And you also, you learn stuff about yourself and you learn stuff a veteran athlete that has a family and commitments and other responsibilities is just more balanced.

And you also, you learn stuff about yourself and you learn stuff about the game. And hopefully you get more efficient at it also. Yeah, you can see, you have different frames of reference. You can spot things a little sooner. You're working upstream rather than the rapids. And you know, I also think that what you're pointing to is under celebrated, which is the power of

a partner. And so having a great partner is really important. And I did not, it took me too long to recognize that I was early in my career, I was really trying to understand the golden thread of like, what are the commonalities amongst the greats? And I found some kind of interesting, you know, red threads in there, golden threads, in the golden thread of like what are the commonalities amongst the greats? Sure. And I found some kind of interesting, red threads in there, golden threads, but I totally missed looking at my own life

and many of them, it's like they've got great structure and partnerships and they've got people in their corner that believe in them and bet on them. Whether they are in return honoring as well is a different story. Yes. But there's a support mechanism that allows their head to hit the pillow

in a good way, a supportive way. Yeah, I think one of the things you find, people are concerned that being married, having a spouse, whatever, is going to take away or tie them down. And I sort of go, it does, it ties you down to reality. Like you're held down on earth, as opposed to floating off into the space of celebrity

or greatness or what, it's keeping you balanced and healthy and a real form of life. I don't know if I could have gone to the agitated edges that I did in my early career if I would have had two kids. So we started late with kids. So I have great respect for people that have figured out how to do that.

And I see it in coaching all the time is they're at the facility 14 hours a day and they're coaching these, let's call it 22 year olds, but they don't know they're 17 year olds at home, and they're 14 and they're 21 year olds. They don't know them because they're spending 14 hours a day. So I don't know how I would have done it, and I think I would have unfortunately

sacrificed that relationship for my own agitated edge pursuing me. You learn by trial and error and it can't survive the trial. Yeah, so I'm really glad that I didn't have that forcing function, because I think I would have taken the selfish path. Yeah. And that would have stung me,

because that's kind of how I was raised. Yeah. So I didn't have a great relationship with my folks. Yeah. And I love them. But their stuff was more important than my stuff and their stuff was alcohol and codependency. And so, and again, I love my parents, but I think I would have made that same mistake. Mine wouldn't have been alcohol and drugs and codependency and a narrative outside of the truth.

It would have been, oh, dad's grinding, dad's doing his thing, da-da-da. And I just would have missed, you know, kind of changing the generational parenting model. Hello, I'm Alice Levine, and I am one of the hosts of British Scandal. So I want you to imagine that you're being offered £500,000 to introduce someone to your ex. I mean, the answer is still no.

So you shake hands and agree to do it. But it's all about to get a hell of a lot more complicated because the you in this story is Fergie, the Duchess of York, ex-wife of Prince Andrew, and the person who's offered you £0.5M is an undercover tabloid reporter who's recorded the whole conversation. Oh, and just one more thing, promise last one, it's all about to appear on the front page of the news of the world.

In the latest season of British Scandal, we take you inside the story of the so-called fake shake, the investigative journalist Mazem Amoud, and the series of explosive sting operations he used to con public figures, from Fergie to singer Tleesa and former England football coach Sven Gorin Ericsson. Follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts or listen early and ad-free on Wondry Plus, on Apple Podcasts or the Wondry app. Honestly, a million pounds,

and I still wouldn't introduce you to him and that's for your sake. I'm Effwa Hirsch and I'm Peter Frankapan and in our new podcast Legacy we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. This season we delve into the life of Pablo Picasso. The ultimate giant of modern art everyone has heard of or seen a Picasso work, or the Picasso brand on something. But a man with a complicated, difficult, personal side too that makes us look at his art in a different way. He was a genius and he was very problematic.

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I remember when I visited you at the Seahawks, I asked Coach Carroll about this, because he's been married a really long time. And I was like, you guys work these insane hours, and I was like, how do you do it? And he gave me a really good piece of advice that I think about as a parent and as a spouse. He says, you have to find the moments between the moments. And so, you know, a normal person, it's like, hey, you clock in, you clock out, and then you're home.

And if you have a more, you know, a normal person, it's like, hey, you clock in, you clock out, and then you're home. And if you have a more, I don't know, what's the word? Consuming career, you have a calling where there isn't that sort of delineation. You have to figure out a way to integrate family and life into the work. That's right.

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

You have to find a way to integrate it. And I do think in the business world, there is too much, especially for men, too much of a like, I have a professional life, and then I have this secret personal life over here. And only when this one is over do I go here. And by the way, I actually bring a lot of that with me because I'm just on my phone while I'm at home.

So if you're gonna be someone who works a lot and has gone a lot, you have to figure out a way to bring them into what you do and integrate it that way. And I do think it's important that you also model that behavior. Like if the coach or the CEO is like, when do they see their family? If people are saying that, then they think

they don't have an excuse to see or bring their family. That's right. And you have to model what that... Coach Carroll did a great job of like once a week, family coming in, you know, and hanging out and like at the facility and did a great job with that. And so that was supported and valued and it was not like 14 hours,

you have to stay here until I leave. And no, no, no, go to your kid's game. Now, if you're not done, come back now. Yeah, right. And then for most people that have this radical profession, they literally they're seeing their kids and I recognized it in myself early days, I don't know, 15 minutes in the morning

and then like 20 minutes at night. So I've got less than an hour relationship per day with my son. That's not gonna get it done now. Like that, no. So you gotta figure out how to reorganize your life and your day around what's, like I heard this great line there,

like your kids are not as traction from your work, your kids are your work. And so if you think about it that way, or you have these two jobs, you have your professional job and you have to go, how am I organizing this so one is not being neglected at the expense of the other? I bring my wife up one more time. She says to me, this am I organizing this? So one is not being neglected at the expense of the other. I bring my wife up one more time.

She says, this was not that long ago. She says, Mike, you have a really important job. And I was like, okay, cool. Like finally I'm being seen. She says, she says. Also I don't give a shit about what you do for a living. She says, it's taking care of me and your son and this family and like, and I have an important job.

I'm here to take care of you and my, and our son. Like that's a really important job. And if you are traveling the world and not tuning right here, your job is not working, you know? And it has nothing to do with my, the profession that I'm in. And so I just, it was such a grounding moment. I was like, thank you, thank you, thank you, you know.

Well, in one of Seneca's letters, he talks about the problem. He says, like, people are really busy. They pursue their career, you know, money, roman, all this stuff. And then he says, and then philosophy gets like the leftovers. And he says, it should be the other way around.

You're sort of, if we can take philosophy to mean self-development, self-improvement, being who you're meant to be as a person, he's like, that should get the main thing. And then the other stuff should get the leftovers. And there can be considerable leftovers, but we have the ratio precisely wrong. So in elite sport, this is another insight

behind the velvet rope. There's only three things as humans we can train. We can train our craft, we can train our body, our physical carriage, and we can train our mind. The best of the best are not leaving the training of the mind up to chance. So training of the mind is not being intellectually stimulated, training of the mind is like

the tools to be focused, the tools that you practice to be confident. That's a confidence is a skill, being calm is a skill and it would be a mistake to think that if you don't prepare yourself with the training of those skills that you would just magically happen it would happen one day. So the the greats do point to an uncommon, unreasonable, high standard of training craft, training body and training mind. And so that's what I think many of us didn't get in grade school, high school, da-da-da, but athletes do get that, not just athletes, but in formalized, sophisticated structures, they've got coaches there, like a one to three ratio

and showing them how to train their mind. And the best coaches in modern times are bringing in strength coaches, sports scientists, nutritionists to support the body and brain, and now sports psychologists. So they're not trying to do it all in a colloquial way. They're being very sophisticated. Whereas we're not getting that in big business. We're not getting to do it all in a colloquial way. They're being very sophisticated. Whereas we're not getting that in big business.

We're not getting that in our professional lives. Like inside the rhythm of business of sport, in the hours that you're in the clubhouse, that's where mental training happens. And it's actual training. It's not like, I think they're going to the sports psych, you know, after, I think they're doing imagery later. I don't know.

That's 10 years ago. What's happening now is inside the rhythm of business. And it's not the psychologist at the end of the hallway. It's in the agendas of meetings. That's how we're getting into it. And I think that that's what's gonna, that's what I wanna ring another bell for in business is that, hey leaders, you know people are leaving,

that's HR, global HRs will say that, why are they leaving? They're tired of having the best of them extracted for your bonus, for Wall Street's gain. They don't know their kids, they don't know, and they're not doing that anymore. So the movement is to go from extracting to unlocking. So how does the culture and the structure of leadership enhance the unlocking for individuals to have a life that has meaning and purpose and they've got the psychological skills to be their very best,

even in high stress moments. There was a human energy crisis that's taking place. People are tired and fatigued and overwhelmed. And that is the, what'd you call it, the excrement? Excrement. Excrement from the extraction model. Sure. Yeah, yeah. And right, it's like, look, if your people are getting

divorced, if their relationships are taxed, if their health is burning up, they're not gonna do a good job. Just like you're not gonna do it. No, I don't, when I'm anxious, I'm a bit of a wreck. And so listen, it's not loss of may why I was attracted to this discipline. Like I needed to figure out the skills and tools.

You know, cause I can use my mind just fine, but if I don't know how to be present and focused and calm and confident and tools, you know, because I can use my mind just fine, but if I don't know how to be present and focused and calm and confident and optimistic, I can't have a love affair with the unfolding moment. Well, I wanna talk about Beethoven because I talked about him in Discipline of Destiny. We both sort of locked in on a similar moment, which is you basically have the most talented,

most successful person in the world at what they do. And then the unimaginable thing happens, which is he loses what you would think would be the most fundamental part of doing that thing, the most important asset to doing that thing. And I think, you know, you hear about Beethoven as a kid and go, oh, Beethoven was this great musician and then his hearing went away and he just kept doing it.

Isn't that so impressive? And it's weird how we kind of skip over just how devastating and terrible that must have been for him as a person. Even more insidious is his dad manipulated his sense of self by telling the world that he was younger than he actually was. And dad was a radical alcoholic, raging alcoholic as well. So you can imagine just how unsettled

young Beethoven was, is that he needed to have everyone believe he was younger, so he'd be a prodigy, and how unstable not only that was, but having an alcoholic father. So it was a bit of a mess growing up. And then Harold as the best with an unsettled sense of self, it literally was the emblem of a performance-based identity. And then how dare somebody like me be so perfect in his craft to lose his hearing.

And it was so overwhelming. He was depressed. He was suicidal. Yeah, he writes a suicide note. That we basically that it survives. I mean, I feel like that note should be read in schools to kids. It's pretty radical.

Yeah. I have a part of it in discipline and his destiny. He says, for six years now, I've been hopelessly afflicted, made worse by the senseless doctors, for year to year deceived with hopes of improvement, finally compelled to face the prospect of a lasting malady, whose cure will take years and perhaps be impossible. And it was impossible, he was deluding himself.

Said though born with a fiery act of temperament, even susceptible to the versions of society, I was soon compelled to withdraw myself to live alone. If society, I was soon compelled to withdraw myself to live alone. If at times I was soon compelled to forget all this, oh, how hardly I was flung back by the doubly sad experience of my bad hearing. Yet it was impossible for me to say to people,

speak louder, shout for I am deaf. And he basically was gonna kill himself. That's right. And he would pretend for a long time. And he would, so he's a creative genius. Okay, so you can get away with a lot when you've got that title, I guess. And people just thought he was really focused.

Yeah, and he would call it something. And I love this. Is raptus or raptus? Raptus. And so he would go into his raptus. So people would say, Sir Beethoven, Beethoven, and his friends would be like,

oh, he's in his raptus. Even though we're walking along the river. It was a protection mechanism that he was socially deploying. And then when it became just too much, he couldn't hide it. That's when he went away. And that's where he, I'm pointing to, he made a decision. I need to do my music. And that's where he, I'm pointing to, he made a decision, I need to do my music. Yeah.

And it's been said, and I don't know if this is the case, but you know, Beethoven number five, bam, bam, bam, bam, that it actually comes from him banging his fist on the piano, like why can't I hear? Yeah. And so what, what is that? And so that was an insight, like, so that's,

I'm gonna make up some liberties and take some liberties in the story that that's where he was like, I need to do my music. I was making music for the world, I need to do my music. And that's where number five and the rest were like some of the best he ever produced. When I think about just sort of, we talk about four or two, we talk about strength,

just the sheer strength and character that it takes to get that low and to be that down and to have that taken from you. And he, he claws his way back. You know, he doesn't, he doesn't quit on himself. He doesn't quit on the art. And that's part, ironically, part of what keeps him going is he, he, he goes, I think I do still have more good work

in me. That's right. That's an optimist. Yes. So I haven't met a best in the world across multiple disciplines that's not fundamentally optimistic. They all are. Like there's not a best in the world that sees the future being bleak.

Okay, like pessimism is, I don't think this is gonna work. Optimism is, I think something good's gonna take place. Well, I've talked about this because the stereotype of the Stokes is like a little resigned, a little down. I mean, Marx really has people that say, oh, it's been depressing. It must not have smiled a lot. It must not have been joy.

Now I think about his life. I mean, this is a guy, he becomes emperor and it's basically like 20 consecutive years of everything that could go wrong going wrong. There's a plague, there's floods, there's wars. He buries six children, six of his kids die. So half of his children die before reaching adulthood. It's just like one after another.

And he's betrayed. Some people think his wife cheats on him. It's a horrible life. Like, and he's sick. And also it wouldn't have been fun to live in ancient Rome. Like life would have been just hard day to day. Like there would have been not enough heat. It would have been too hot, you know?

And I'm like, how does he get up every morning? Like how does he get out of bed? Like again, the greatness of Michael Jordan in the flu game is one thing, but like the person who's depressed, who feels like their life is falling apart, who's lost something or someone, and they keep going,

and they keep going not just like for a day, but every day. To me, that's also greatness. And it's, as we started earlier, it's harder to celebrate than they scored the most points in the shortest amount of time, or they set the scoring record, or they ran the fastest time, but that's real greatness, that sort of day to day

I kept going through. It's just that we don't honor it because there's not a TV set on it. There's not a microphone in front of it. There's not a financial reward. We endlessly argue about who's the greatest of all time in whatever sport. And we haven't started the conversation

who's the greatest mom. Yeah, sure. Who's the greatest dad? Which people herald in a naive kind of like throwaway, like it's the hardest job in the world. Yeah, no kidding, but we don't really reward it. Yes. Right?

And so, I don't know, I'd love to know who the best mom or the best dad in the world is. Well, and it's, we don't know what people are going through. So, you know. We're all going through something.. We're all going through something. And we're all going through something. Yeah. And so, sometimes that is a tangible or a identifiable thing,

like someone loses their hearing or someone, you know, loses someone they love in an accident. It's very clear, but just you wake up and you feel shitty and you feel down and you don't believe in yourself. And to be able to find a way through that is that's a form of greatness. Do you lean on anxiety or depression?

More anxiety. More anxiety, yeah, me too. Do you know depression? Yeah. Yeah, like full on depressive episode or like having some sadness that. Yeah, more like the dysthymic, like just sort of a little bit.

A little bit, yeah. But yeah, that's the problem with depression, right? Is that like what it actually feels like for the people who are depressed is ineffable. It's like we can't fully understand it. And that's why we're so sort of glib and- Right, hard enough, tough enough. Like come on, it's not that bad.

Look, it's not that, you can't talk your way out of it like that, you have to feel your way. It seems like you should be able to, right? Cause they've got all these opinions about it. And then you're like, well, let me show you why all those things are incorrect. Yeah, you've got, you can try that. You've got running water, this, that and the other.

And that actually makes a depressed person feel worse because now they say, yeah, they say, well, you're right. I should be happy, but I'm telling you, something's not right. And so the thing about feeling deep, even experiences of depression, it's actually really important. The thing about a depressive episode

or a disorder of depression is that they're stuck in it. So that's one of the reasons that I think many of us are afraid to do that. If you didn't experience nighttime, you wouldn't know how to experience daytime, right? So the yin yang, the equal opposites, the valley and the mountains, whatever. So we need both to understand.

Yeah. And the problem with the disorder is that they're stuck in it and they don't know how to climb back out or get out of it. But it's really important for us if you really want joy, you've got to understand deep sadness. And it's like, in some some respects the grief that comes as the After-effect of a death one it can help you understand that just a little bit sure as long as you don't kind of just do the Irish I got Irish and Italian to me so like you know what to laugh tell stories drink and you know and

Cry at the same time, but like Understanding the depths of both anxiety and depression is a powerful tool. If you want to really understand what you're capable of, you do also, yeah, okay, get in your ice tub, fine. Why not go to the depths of sadness? Oh wait, that's too hard. You're gonna macho up and do the ice bath, come on. I mean, like, you know, you're gonna grind through that.

It's crazy. Honestly, the biggest part, yes, there's physiological benefits're gonna grind through that. It's crazy. Honestly, the biggest part, yes, there's physiological benefits of an ice bath period. That's good. You know what the opportunity in that, that I see as a psychologist, is the walk to the ice bath is where you meet yourself. Once you get into the ice,

you have another opportunity to meet yourself. Yeah, you got three minutes, you're just sitting there. What do you do at that time? The moment that you get in and you have the shock response, you meet yourself in that moment. Are you trying to escape?? The moment that you get in and you have the shock response, you meet yourself in that moment. Are you trying to escape? Sure. Or do you settle in and be in it? Sure. Yeah.

So it's the walk to, it's the first few seconds. And then when you're actually in it, are you trying to leave or can you be with yourself in a harsh environment? So there's as much a psychological play as there is physiological in that experience. Well, I would argue that the physiological stuff is, hopefully it's true, you know?

And it seems like it'll be vetted, but we don't know, right? But even if it isn't true, it's still beneficial if you're using the walk there and the walk back in the three minutes. And you're wrestling with that part of you that says I don't wanna do that thing, it's hard. That's right. And you say, I'm gonna do that thing because it's hard.

And then you get in and it's hard and your mind wants to wander, you wanna check the clock and to go, what I'm gonna practice here is being in control of what I'm thinking about. Or aware. Yes, yes, east, West, different, but there's different, my word choice is probably operative.

But the point is, yeah, am I gonna actually think about those thoughts and decide what they mean? Or am I just gonna, am I gonna be lost in what's happening, which is unpleasant and cold? Or am I gonna be thinking about how this looks on social media or all this other shit.

And there's a danger in it when you're in a harsh, difficult, cold environment in this case. And I labeled it harsh, but a cold environment. And your reflexive nature is to escape. And let's say you're doing that, I gotta get out of here, what am I doing? This sucks, I gotta get out. And so now you're pairing, let's call it,

low-level thinking, escapism, desire for relief with harsh, hardness, difficult environments. So now when you're entering, you're pairing and training, when I'm in a difficult environment, I'm training myself to try to escape. And that's just a shitty experience. They didn't learn anything. It's actually really bad because the unlock happens

when you settle in, you make a decision to be in it and to have a love affair with the unfolding moment. So we're still the stone ages in so many ways. Go do the hard thing and suck it up. It's all of the little nuanced delicate tenderness that happens with the awareness of what's actually happening and pairing an aware mind, a guided mind in a hostile, rugged, difficult environment.

That's the path of mastery. Yeah, and it doesn't have to be in an ice bath. You can also do it as you walk to get your hair cut or you can find that, you can practice that skill, that exercise, that sort of getting in touch with yourself or being present or whatever. You can do that anywhere and everywhere. This is amazing, man, thanks.

I'm so stoked to hang with you. Yeah, it's true. I loved the book, I'm glad you did it. Thank you. It's great. I appreciate you. It's great. I appreciate you. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show.

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