The Tim Ferriss Show - #256: How to Overcome Anxiety and Stress - with Adviser to Olympians, Michael Gervais

Episode Date: August 2, 2017

Michael Gervais (@michaelgervais) is the performance psychologist elite athletes and coaches turn to when they want to level up or when they're returning from hard times and want to not just get back to where they were, but exceed their previous highest levels of excellence. His clients include Olympic gold medalists, Super Bowl champion NFL coaches, you name it. In this episode, we discuss how to win the war against anxiety, some of the more effective (and less effective) ways to self-talk, behind-the-scenes stories of Michael's clients, understanding the process to mastery, and much more. This episode comes from my new television show Fear{less}, where I interview world-class performers on stage about how they've overcome doubt, conquered fear, and made their toughest decisions. You can watch the entire first episode with illusionist David Blaine for free at att.net/fearless. (To watch all episodes, please visit DIRECTV NOW.) We recorded three hours of material and only one hour was used for the TV show. This podcast episode is almost entirely new content that didn't appear on TV. Enjoy! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at tim.blog/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Ascent Protein, the only US-based company that offers native proteins -- both whey and micellar casein -- directly to the consumer for improved muscle health and performance. Because the product is sourced from Ascent's parent company, Leprino Foods -- the largest producer of mozzarella cheese in the world -- it's entirely free of artificial ingredients and completely bypasses the bleaching process common to most other whey products on the market. If you want cleaner, more pure, less processed protein -- which I certainly do -- go to ascentprotein.com/tim for 20 percent off your entire order! This podcast is also brought to you by Audible. I have used Audible for years, and I love audiobooks. I have two to recommend: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman Vagabonding by Rolf Potts All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is visit Audible.com/Tim. Choose one of the above books, or choose any of the endless options they offer. That could be a book, a newspaper, a magazine, or even a class. It's that easy. Go to Audible.com/Tim and get started today. Enjoy.***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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turn to when they want to level up or when they're returning from hard times and want to not just get back to where they were, but exceed their previous highest levels of excellence. And his clients include Olympic gold medalists, Super Bowl winning NFL coaches, you name it. It's an incredible, incredible roster. And in this episode, we discuss how to win the war against anxiety, some of the more effective and less effective ways, even self-defeating ways to use self-talk, behind the scenes stories of Michael's clients, understanding the path to mastery, the process to mastery, and much more. The audio from this episode comes from my new TV show, Fearless, which is fear and then less in parentheses, because it's not about being

fearless, but learning to fear less, where I interview people like this, world-class performers on stage in front of a live audience about how they've overcome doubt, conquered fear, made their toughest decisions, and so on. You can watch the entire first episode, which is with David Blaine, the illusionist and master endurance artist, for free at att.net forward slash fearless. That's att.net forward slash fearless. And to watch all of the episodes, there are 10 of them, you can go to Tim.blog forward slash fearless. No parentheses. Just Tim.blog forward slash fearless. And if you are a cord cutter, just click on DirecTV now, which is a button there.

And any of the packages get you the show. So you can choose the cheapest one if you like. And then we recorded three hours of material in this particular episode with Michael. And only one hour was used for TV. So this podcast episode is almost entirely new exclusive content content for y'all, all my listeners, because I love you, and did not appear on television. So I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. And without further ado, here is Michael Truvett.

Welcome to Fearless. I'm your host, Tim Ferriss. And on this very stage, we'll be deconstructing world-class performers of all different types to uncover the specific tactics they've used to overcome doubt, tackle their hardest decisions, and ultimately succeed on their own terms. So imagine yourself standing 127,000 feet above the earth trying to set the free fall world record, or stepping onto the field for the Super Bowl, or perhaps attempting to take gold at the Olympics if You were nervous or if you had to prepare for that who would you turn to? Who would you ask for help in less than a decade? My guest has built a very impressive client roster that includes Olympic gold medalists like Kerry Walsh Jennings

Teams like the Seattle Seahawks and the US Armed Forces. Armed Forces. Please welcome to the stage Dr. Michael Gervais. There you go. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Yeah, thank you. A little step will get you. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The step has gotten me. You guys ready for a show? Yeah! All right. Just. The step has gotten me. You guys ready for a show? All right. Just describe your family a little bit. What did your parents do? Do you have siblings? Yeah. Okay. So I'm, uh, I have one younger sister. I was actually born in a city and they said, okay, we're done. And they moved out to the farm, a farm. And now this isn't a glamorous farm. We had like 12 chickens and, you know, a pony, not a glamorous farm. And so they moved out to the farm to get away, to get back to finding who they were. And so that was what it felt like for me for a long time. We didn't have heat in the

winter, in the middle of winter in Virginia. So we had a wood burning stove that at age six, seven, eight years old, I was chopping wood, literally carrying a lot of wood, you know, pop saying, Hey, listen, if you want to be warm tonight, that wood's got to get into the fireplace, some kind of way. So, so that's where I feel like I figured out some roots and, and, uh, sorted out what it meant to listen to nature. We had a lot, a large amount of land behind us and we didn't have lights there's no street lights and i needed to figure out my parents really were laissez-faire if you will they allowed me to explore and so if i didn't get home by night time it was a long night you know and so the fear of that was you know i never really got stuck out at night you know but the fear of that was real

and so i figured i how to tune a bit to nature and then working hard was just part of the process. And when did that change? When did you, when did the farm cease to be home base? At middle of fourth grade, which is, I think is an important footnote that it was the middle of a school year. Cause I, they did that to me a couple of times. And so changing it in a school grade is one thing, but then changing in the middle requires a different type of transition skill. And so being put in an amphitheater, whatever that amphitheater is, is one of the greatest teachers and let alone far beyond what we learn from books and watching others, but figuring out transitions or any other skill is really important by doing doing. And so welcome to California.

How'd that go for you? It was hard. How did that go for you? And were there any specific tactics that you used or approaches to handle that? No, I didn't have that. As a fourth grader, I didn't have any tactics. I was like, okay, I'm going to miss my friends. But this seems like it could be okay.

Because they sold me on California, the dream of California. So then we moved again. And so we went from Northern California, Southern California, and it was, um, mid year, mid year again, freshman year. And so we actually moved again in sixth grade at the beginning of the year and not, it would be nice if the theme ran through, but yeah, so we moved down to Southern California and I didn't want to go. Like I wasn't into it up where I was growing up at the time. I was having just a lot of fun, you know, with

motocross and motorcycle and BMX and, you know, just loving that type of stuff up in Northern California. And, and so it was the right move for the family. They dragged me along with them. And then I, you know, I know, there I am in Southern California. I know that there's that story that I hear often from some of the best in the world that they knew at an early age that they wanted to do fill in the blanks, whether it's music or sports or arts or business. I didn't have that. I was really more interested in today and figuring out how to do today at the best way I possibly could

as a six-year-old and a 16-year-old. No one in my family went to college. I didn't know anyone that went to college. I didn't. And if they did, they didn't talk about it. And I certainly didn't know anyone that had a graduate degree. Were you good in school? No. Yeah, school was the assistant principal, the dean of my high school, pulled my then-girlfriend, now wife, cool story, pulled her aside and said, what is a nice girl like you dating Gervais? So kind of heavy in school, the way that that went down. But that was an indication that I was not on the right path.

And I didn't have a structure to really help me get the right path. And so I learned a lot the hard way. And I had no idea that there was even this profession about being able to give back through understanding how the mind works and so that that's how my journey began so if you were say uh could teach any class or mandate this is a better question mandate certain types of experiences for could be high school students or in this case college students you know what what might they be or mandatory if i could if i could create a class sure that was mandatory for incoming freshmen or whatever yeah yeah um it would be dangerous and it would yeah for sure um we are raising children that are i don't know how how old you are, but I'm sure you grew up probably kind of with a seatbelt, but not always maybe.

Mostly off-leash, just like face-planting, skateboarding downhills and stuff like that. Yeah, so our generation right now is every one of them grew up with instant access to whatever, and everyone's buckled in and safety harnesses from the beginnings of their life. And we don't have a real appreciation for danger. So we pompously walk around with a soft underbelly thinking that we understand what's true and real and beautiful and hard and honest. And so it's the rugged and hostile environments that teach us. And they teach us by leveraging real fear. And we say that we conquer fear. We say that we'll do things, but not until you're squarely facing it down. Does the risk of putting yourself in that situation provide insight?

But that class would be too dangerous for modern times. And so, yeah, like there would be stuff that would possibly people would get hurt, which would make it real. Yeah. And maybe somebody loses limbs or life or something, which makes it real. Because this bubble that we live in is problematic for the next generation. Yeah, I agree with that. I feel like Lord of the Flies 101. No, I agree. I couldn't agree more.

Someone asked me recently in a Q&A, they said, have you ever thought about doing a summer camp for adults? I was like, well, I've kind of occasionally, maybe after too much wine, thought about it. They're like, well, what would you have everyone do? And I'd be like, it would be mostly suffering. You would definitely exercise until you vomited. I guess all the hands go down, but, uh, yeah, definitely undervalued, right. It's thought of as a negative thing, but it's a, it's a tool and a teacher. When was the first time when you felt like you had

made a huge mistake or failed someone? Or does it have to be the first time? Yeah. Okay. So the first one that comes to mind, renamed Nameless for sure, but it was an entertainer that I just couldn't quite reach. And it was hard and it was deep and it was rich and she made it, survived but um i wasn't able to kind of um do what i had hoped we would do and so it's those kind of haunting experiences that one's not haunting but i i knew that like i i can't i can't connect in the way i can't access the depth and the richness that i need to go to because i had a limit i have limitations of what i was able to do at that time. What were the limitations? She could go deeper than I could go. In what respect?

Authenticity. Okay. To talk about the real stuff. So here's the full circle of the conversation. Before I finish that story is that I don't think about failure that way, though. Failure is not making a mistake. That's not failure. Failure is not making a mistake. That's not failure. Failure is not being authentic. Failure is not going for it. Failure is being small.

Whether you win or not, if you're authentically you and you go for it, okay, it sounds easy. It sounds like you could put that in a fortune cookie, but that's really what it's about. So when you play it safe and small and you don't and you're not authentically yourself it's your whole day is is failing your whole month your whole year and so i i don't think about it like that's a win that's a loss that's a failure that's a mistake that's good that's bad it's like the the experience is a day-to-day orientation to try to pivot and grow. And it's relentless and it's hard and it's difficult. And so back to this experience is that, you know, when I reshape how we think about failure, it really is about, can hold our ability to be authentically ourselves when it's difficult and that's only emotional like we use physical whatever

to get to the emotional there's no mental difficultness there's no such thing because they're just words right and so it's the emotional thing that's the hardest for us and so if we can hold presence this is the hardest for us. And so if we can hold presence, this is the gift to give another person. If we can hold presence when another person is rattling and they're a wreck, you're there for them in a really cool way. But if you can't go deep enough to be able to hold true and to be authentic with them, then they don't trust you. They come up, they take care of themselves and the work is not real. So in that case, when you're having difficulty going as deep as she went,

was it not having enough present state awareness so she could tell you weren't truly paying attention? Was it not asking the hard, harder questions? I was overwhelmed. And so I couldn't be there authentically for another person. And that is the essence of what love is. Yeah. How did that manifest not being authentically there for her? If you, if you and I are having this conversation and you're checking your phone, I'll be dramatic. You're checking your phone. You're looking at your watch. You're checking to see if we're okay. You're checking out, you know, because this is not interesting. Yeah. Then I'm going to be like, F this. Like, this sucks. Okay, so that's one level of it.

That happens every day, all day long, every airport that I'm in. Like, that's what's happening. Deeper than that is if I'm asked, if he or she is saying something, and they're trying to see if they can go for it, and I'm missing it. People all the time will tell you who they are, right? You just have to listen. You have to be really present with them to hear the essence of what is what they're trying to communicate underneath the, a, the boy meets girl. You know, there's Romeo and Juliet in every story, but we have to look for it, which is the emotional gripping,

true experience that people are, are wanting to sort out. So you have to get under there to do it. And if I miss the lob that the person's giving, they're out. And so that's kind of how relationships work. It was on the half yard line and it was a roller coaster of a third and fourth quarter. And Tom Brady on the other side and that team, they did a phenomenal job. They did a phenomenal job. And they're skilled, very skilled. So here it is on the half yard line. The entire stadium thought the ball was going to go to our running back, exceptional running back Marshawn Lynch. And Bill Belichick. So not like, mind you, the, the intensity of trying to sort out what the next play is while the clock's going down, while there's an emotional stimulation that's taking place is not an easy thing to do. That's,

that's a very complicated thing when the environment is losing their mind to be clear about what the options are. And Bill Pelichek brings in his men to stop the run game. And the coaches are like, because we brought in a particular unit that was just a beautiful play and it was a pass play. And so you could kind of, you could see the, I could see the coaches go, that's, that's, that's the matchup you want. That's the exact matchup. Because there's another thing about this matchup is that the Seattle Seahawks are like 20% from running from the goal line. So as a general rule, we want to put people in organizations in positions of strength, not roll the dice on positions of weakness. So being 20% from the goal line, those are not great odds.

For sure. So they're matching up for the run. Here we are trying to get to a pass play and the ball's intercepted and game's over. And what was happening on the sideline before that is that we were ahead of time. The sidelines, not the men out here, but the sidelines were ahead of time. So if you think about music, what do you mean by that? If you think about music, music is beautiful when it's on time, even if there's some dissonance, right? But when it's on time ahead of time is that, that dissonance, that syncopation is, it creates chaos. So we were on the sidelines because we weren't in the game ahead of time oh my god we're winning the game this is it and then all of a sudden we thought it was ours now i'm speaking about me really right i was ahead of time

and balls intercepted games done that team storms the field blue and what was it blue and silver ticker tape is coming down and the sidelines was ours was like stunned the the the emotions in the locker room afterwards it was the most intense environment i've ever been in that didn't have real violence yearning and searching and questioning why was on a scale of one to ten a hundred anger and and just being pissed off about what just happened because the loss this our brain is phenomenal as you well understand that there's no redundancy in the brain so the circuitry for grief and loss is the same circuitry for losing a game so it was grief it was the most intense grief. Like somebody would just came in at the last moment and took away everything that you thought was yours. And it was exciting.

It's a thing you've worked your whole life for. And so coming into the locker room, there was six foot eight crying, six foot four, ready to break someone's head open. Six foot two was, was taken off his tape, ready to punch somebody. There was a person behind me that was screaming, why, why is this happening? There was, there was another gentleman, another athlete in the back that was kind of snickering and laughing. And then there was plenty of people that were just completely, completely overwhelmed and didn't know what to feel. What are, and I'll give a personal example here, maybe some baby steps, remedial approaches that people can take if they've had a hard time

or suspect they would. In my case, I found the gateway drug to get me moving in the right direction was guided meditations. So listening to say Tara Brock or Sam Harris or someone else who have a lot of guided meditations. So listening to, say, Tara Brock or Sam Harris or someone else who have a lot of guided meditations. Basically, every couple of seconds, they're just going to be like, hey, idiot.

Come on back. You're thinking about porn. Your to-do list. Come back. Come on back. And in addition to that, I found a few apps, Headspace to be very helpful. The thing that actually helped me to break through,

and it's maybe embarrassing in a way to admit this, was social accountability. So I actually, I did take a course in this case, it was Transcendental Meditation, but I knew if I didn't meditate, I would have to go to the session the next day. And there was an hour set aside for me to talk about my two sessions,

and I would just feel like an ass. And I also paid for it. So those were a few of the crutches that I used early on to get to the point where I had enough sessions under my belt that it became like brushing my teeth on some level. So I remember one point, I became obsessed with Bhutan. So why on earth would I become obsessed with Bhutan? Well, there's this very romanticized story of gross national happiness and the happiest country in the world and so on. Well, one year they got overtaken in a poll by the Danes. So the Danish are now the happiest people in the world. And I'm like, the Danish? Okay.

So I at one point ended up going to Denmark. And I was like, are you aware that you are supposedly the happiest people in the world? And the guy's like, oh, he's drinking his beer. And I said, why do you think that is? And he goes, low expectations. And it's easy to dismiss that and go, ah. But then I was like, no, there's actually something there. And in my mind, if I sat down and meditated and I wasn't on point, like 90 plus percent of the time,

I was thinking of it as almost in terms of school grades. I was failing. I was losing. And I had, I was because you weren't quiet. Yeah. I wasn't, I wasn't doing my job. I wasn't following the script. And I was having a conversation with Tara Brock, this very, uh, well-known, uh, Buddhist and meditation teacher has great talks that she gives regularly in the recorded. I explained this. I was like, I could go if I'm sitting down for 20 minutes or roughly 20 minutes, sort of what I do in the morning when I can, which is most days I say I could spend 19 minutes thinking about some cartoon I watched when I was a kid, like Thundercats for for 19 minutes and that'll be like ferris you've spent 19 minutes thinking about thundercats and then i come back and she says that's a successful session

because the training isn't getting it right it's the coming back that's it the coming back is the rep and i was like oh okay and as soon as i thought of it in those terms, suddenly I was having successful sessions and I was able to start with it. Yeah. The misconception is the first trap is that like, if you just focus on your breathing, there's two types of mindfulness training that the way that I've come to learn about it, single point and contemplative. So single point is one thing over and over and over again. So you notice when you leave the moment, that moment, and then the work is to come back. And in that, once you become aware that you've shifted from now, the breath or the dot on the wall or a mantra or whatever it might be, and you're over here, what do you do with

that? Do you say, mother...or do you say... I want you to curse so badly. Come on back. Come on back. Don't do it. The trap. Do you come, do you come back and can you swiftly come back and can you do that a thousand times? Can you do it? Can you, whatever. That's the work that like, and then eventually, eventually you'll slip into that no minds experience.

And I'll tell you how my first, my first teacher, he said, Mike, not mind you. I'm like, I don't know how old I am but he says if you was young and he says if you knew what i knew you'd be doing this every day i said okay what do you mean he says it's like a full body orgasm that's the way you sell it that's how you sell it oh now you got my attention like okay there we go there we go. So, you know, and I don't, I'm still waiting. So maybe he sold me a bill of goods, but you know, you know. Did this get awkward? I feel like, no, I feel like, I think you just solved a major branding problem for mindfulness.

Yeah, right. Just got to sell it as full body orgasm with people around the block. See, so let's take a left turn. You mentioned the importance of fighting earlier. And I'm taking it out of context, but it brings me back to the Seahawks in so much as I have heard, and this is not as someone who knows a lot about football, but that the Seahawk organization allows their players to resolve conflicts or sort out their differences on the sidelines amongst themselves on a regular basis i don't know if that's true i this is just something i is that true

okay so the statement was that the seahawks allow athletes to work out their conflicts yeah there's a if there's a conflict between players well i think there was recently there was okay so i'll i'll unpack the story surrounding it. And this is just me repeating something I heard. Yeah. I don't know. Well, I mean, okay, so go back to the principle that Coach Carroll set up, that this is a relationship-based organization.

And so when relationships matter, there's intensity around emotions. So what happened just recently was this year, one athlete was angry. He was pissed through his helmet, you know, and he was in a fit of rage. And so there's a couple of courses that would take place, a couple of predictable things that could take place. People would be like, whoa, that's too much now, right? Like stay away. Or they can come up and become aggressive with him and jump in his face and say, that's too much now, right? Like stay away. Or they can come up and become aggressive with him and jump in his face and say, that's not okay. And so what most people do in most organizations,

when somebody is raging, I mean, I mean, raging full of testosterone and strength is that they back up because it's dangerous for them, even though destruction is taking place, right? And when one person that football is a beautiful team environment. When one person's off, the whole thing is working to try to help that person, right? And so that's what teams and tribes do, right? To really help. So what happened in this particular occasion this year is that one athlete confronted him. And the athlete that was overrun with emotions, I want nothing to do with it. Another athlete stepped right in, literally right next to him. This is not orchestrated. No one knows that this is going to happen ever. Steps right in, grabs his attention. The first athlete

wants nothing to do with it. A third person grabs, a fourth and a fifth, and they literally lined up. And it was this amazing experience and the athlete was so overwhelmed with emotion he wanted nothing to do with his best friends and so there's a picture an image i have in my mind where one of the athletes is pulling on um the said athlete's hair like like you know come on now get back in here and it was radical and i'm watching going this is unbelievable and so then all of a sudden, the entire defensive part of the, I think it was everybody, almost everybody just started jumping like a tribal experience, getting him back, getting them back in the rhythm, almost like these

large animals that were hunting together. And they're kind of in their tribal moment. And they brought him back into the fold. They met him with the intensity, with the care to say, come back. You are one of us. Stay with us. It was unbelievable. And the leadership to do that, I mean, it was Earl Thomas. Our safety was right there. Cam Chancellor, you know, strong safety was right there. Bobby Wagner was all these men that just showed up to say, come on now, let's go. It was beautiful. It was wonderful. Now, if you have a controlling environment or if you're afraid of emotions, that can never happen. Sure. Can't happen. If that's not okay, it can't happen. But that's how far you want to be able

to push to the edge, to explore potential, to explore capacity. Those moments, as you'll well understand that word and appreciate that word, I hope is that that's a capacity building moment for everybody involved. You've worked with a number of fighters and the fighting has both the consequences and you have a duration of time, right? So you could have puncher's chance, 10 seconds in somebody gets knocked out. That's right? So you could have puncher's chance, 10 seconds in, somebody gets knocked out. That's right. But you could also have a 15 minute battle on your hands. For a championship fight.

Exactly. Yep. What are some of the most important types of work or practices that you've implemented with fighters? Okay. So, um, again, it doesn't differ that much from others because I think truly believe that I have no evidence from what I'm about to say, but the, in the craft matters less than the ability to access the craft. Okay. So my approach doesn't change that much between sport A and sport B, but when there are said consequences, it feels like, um, the, the meeting to want to do the work is amplified. Okay. So the person wants to do the work. I want to do the work. So there's more intensity in the

work because their ass is on the line. Like there's intensity. Okay. So first things first is what is your ideal competitive mindset? What is it? How do you talk about it? What does it feel like? Let's see if we can create that as a target. And then, so that's the first part of the work is like, what is it like inside of you when you're at your best? And if you haven't done that work, that's a really important thing to be able to do. Because if you don't do that work, what ends up happening is we get overrun by external stimulus telling us how we should look, how we should think, how we should, and that shoulding all over oneself creates shame and smallness, and it becomes problematic for expression, artistic expression even. So the first is like, what is your ideal competitive mindset?

The second is, what are the strategies that you employ to turn that on? And once we get to sorting those two things out, then we backfill into, well, we need to increase our awareness of those thoughts, of those circumstances, so that you can dictate that more often. Dictate what? The ideal competitive mindset. And that's the fighter's responsibility, because it's dangerous, and it's rugged, and it's real that there's another human that can do complete damage and change you forever. And so we need to know what the ideal competitive mindset is, and then we back into great awareness so that you can pivot and adjust. And you've got the skills to be able to adjust accordingly to either erroneous thoughts or real consequences that are taking place.

And I think that you would recognize that the steps into the cage, those steps, if not prepared properly, they become problematic for people. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Tough on the concrete. And then as soon as some people, as soon as they get into the cage, it's a different experience. And some people, they light up as soon as they're in there. No work is needed. And it's amazing. Yeah. Lights are on, cage door closes, and the grin on their face it's a real deal give you guys a quick tip that I learned recently which is if you want to be less addicted to using your smartphone whatever it might be set the screen to grayscale it's

actually some pretty interesting data to suggest that you will use apps in a less compulsive fashion if you change it to a black and white screen. If that's where you want to go. Yeah. So real quickly on that thing, the challenge that we're having from smartphones is that I'd also say compete, get around your boat, get around your buddies, your boys, whatever it might be and compete. Put, put, you know, if you guys go to dinner with whomever, put your cell phones on the table. So when you put your cell phones on the table, it decreases attention. We know that.

Put your cell phone on the table, and whoever picks that thing up first, they're buying the bill. So level up on some competition. Yeah, that's good. So then there's a consequence to kind of grabbing that thing instead of getting the dopamine and the hit of like, you know, the rush that we get. And, and then the, the last piece on the, on the, um, stimulus, the, the external stimulus for our attention, it is deconditioning us away from being present. No, no, not lost on anyone here, but that's a, that's a real problem for the next generation. Like it really is. And I'm hopeful, I'm hopeful that we'll figure out ways that they're going to show us how to be better than we are. But I'm nervous because we know that flow state, the most optimal state a human being can be in, flow follows focus. Not just any kind of focus, but deep focus.

So think about that for a moment, the gravity of that. If we're detraining ourselves by multitasking and not training deep focus, we're decreasing our frequency of dropping into flow state, the most optimal state a human can be in. We've got problems, productivity, sense of awe and wonder. There's challenges coming around the corner for us. Yes, indeed. Let's just wait until we're all wearing VR headsets. That'll be curious. Well, I suppose this is a decent segue. Jeffrey Newman or Neumann, where are you? Yeah. Do you have your own therapist or counselor or other performance coach you turn to personally? If so, what is it they give you in terms of perspective that you can't give yourself? Why would I need a therapist?

Yes, yes. I'll tell you, that's a great question. And there's a story that goes with it. Is that first story was two stories. First was that going through graduate training, one of the requirements that the school provided was you have to go sit in the other chair. Like that you have to, you have to feel sit in the other chair like that you have to you have to feel what it feels like to understand that level of vulnerability and the process of being

authentic and saying difficult things so that's what was my first exposure to it i don't see myself doing therapy that's not what i do right but i'm invested in relationships to strengthen the assets of the of other people and so i sat in that chair and I was like, wow, this is heavy. Like it is sweating, just sweating in chairs. And it's just another human being asking me questions. I could say no. I could say whatever I want, but I'm sweating with tension. So that was my first experience with it.

The second was my wife, seven years into our relationship, said, you got to go. And she said, we got married really young, high school sweetheart. We got married really young, and we hadn't found ourselves yet. And she said, I love you. I love you. You're wonderful, but I don't know how to be me. And I don't know how to be me around you. And the strength to say that, oh, the strength to say that.

So I was in panic mode, right? I was like, what, what, who, what do I do? And so, um, we didn't talk for some time and I said, Hey, listen, I'd already had my, um, I was already doing what I do. And I said, Hey, listen, we just go, let's go talk to somebody. She's like, fine. And she's Latin and she's wonderful. And she says, you know, with all the flair you can imagine, but it's not going to work. I said, okay. So we go to therapy. And it was so, it wasn't manufactured.

It was real. And it was on. I was about to lose something that was so dear and tender to me. And then I had created the problem, basically, right? And so it was rad. And yes, yes, yes. If you haven't done the work yet, get your ass in a chair and be real and sort it out with somebody. And it is unbelievable. So we dated, we ended up doing that work for two years. We dated, we've been married now for 20 some years, and it is just like, it's rad. It's rad. Yeah.

I work with adults, and so it's not like they don't know what they're doing. And there's no trickery. So we have to work from sturdy and robust practices that will test and be weathered in rugged environments. That's why I said there's no tricks. There's no hacks. You know, I don't know how you feel about hacks because it's talked about a lot, but I have a reaction to it. Yeah. There is no shortcut.

Yeah, I don't like the word. You don't? I don't like the word. Yeah. Because I think it implies too many things to too many people in different ways. It's nebulous. And it can be interpreted in a very expedient band-aid type of fashion in the form of a shortcut.

I mean, I think looking for elegant, not obvious solutions is interesting. Sometimes those do end up being faster, but I don't think of them, I don't like to think of them as hacks. So on this point, though, with your experience of this conference and the fighters and so on, assuming that the clients, A, are going to do the work, they're there and they will do the work. B, they have the budget. Are there any types of clients that you no longer work with that you say no to? Yes. What types? People that have incredible influence and have low regard for others. I was wondering why I stopped returning my phone calls. How do you suss those people out? Uh, it comes out in the first, um, 15 minutes,

you know, of a phone call. So I have, that's like my screening processes. There's a couple gates to get through for both of us. One is the sniff test, you know, for both of us, like, will you do the work? Does this guy know what he's talking about? You know? And then, um, and there's just a kind of some questions and it's And I don't have a set of questions, but it's an organic feel. And then I'd say I'm probably shooting 85% from that first 15-minute conversation. And then when we show up in person, I know almost right away. You can feel that. And so what I've learned in between now is to get with permission from that person and say, here's, are there a couple of people that I could call, you know, to learn a little bit more about

you before we make a final decision. And so then I'll make a couple of calls and do some due diligence because it feels awful to take money from somebody who has incredible influences, influence, and is going to harm other people, not for a noble cause, not for something that's right. So if people are a-holes and they want to be more powerful, it doesn't feel good. So just on a process standpoint, one thing I'm really interested in is if the person who wants to work with you is giving you three names, it's kind of like interviewing anyone for a job. They're going to give you their references are going to say nice things.

Generally. So you're going into it knowing that these people are probably going to want to praise. They don't know why I'm asking though. They don't know why I'm asking. They don't know if I'm trying to suss out if they're a jerk or not or have low regard for other humans. Right. No understanding.

Yeah. Yeah. Now they do. Now they do. Don't worry. Don't worry. No one's watching. No one is watching.

It's just us. It brought to mind an approach that I thought was very clever. So I'm going to ask about your questions, what you do on the phone. Very clever approach that I heard from someone who is in charge of hiring at a fast growing company. And they knew, at least in the state of California, you can get yourself in a lot of trouble as a reference. If you start shit talking someone like it can, it can come back at you in a really nasty legal way. So how do you get someone to admit that the person they're supposed to be a reference for isn't a 10 out of 10? And so what this person would do is they would just

call and they would deliberately call in time. They would get voicemail and they would say, if this person is a 10 out of 10 and you would recommend them with all your heart, call me back. And if they didn't get a call back, they got their answer without the other person incriminating themselves. Cool. They have plausible deniability. It's pretty clever, right? That's good. So when you call this person, friend of person X, what do you say? What do you ask? Yeah. So I say, I just thank him for taking the call. I have a little chit chat about how they know each other. And then I'll start to feel it out. There's no, I don't have a system for this.

And it's a conversation. The things that I do like to think about with them is, um, what are they, what have you ever been embarrassed around them? You know? And so people, people will say yes or no or whatever, but it's the hesitation that's important in that, you know? So I'm just feeling the hesitation out. Um, I asked him about how they tip. Yeah. And so, right. And so, um, that, that tells a lot. I, and I ask them about how they tip. Yeah. Yeah. And so, right. And so that tells a lot. And I ask them, you know, you know, are you going to work with them again, you know, like in the future? And so usually their agents or managers are people that they send as referral. So those are some of the things. It's just a feel.

You know, I don't know how to do it more systematically over the phone. So I'm not in the hiring game, so I'm not as good at that. But it's like a screening, I would say, is the way I use phone. So I'm, I'm not in the hiring game, so I'm not as good at that, but it's like a screening, I would say is the way I use it. So tipping. So I worked in restaurants for a long time. What is your, what are your rules for tipping? What's your system? I have one. What's yours? Yeah. I just kind of do the same thing unless, um, they're exceptional or awful, like it's 20%, you know? And so that's kind of what I'll do for, uh, for, but like, how do I, if they're exceptional, what does that mean? Um, it's like, it just feels good to be at dinner. You know, that's just like, they've created somehow they've added to the environment

and the experience of, um, joy with people and food. And so that's what I'm looking for. And so right down the middle, most people aren't, aren't exceptional at their jobs, you know, which I think is a bold statement, but I think that that's accurate. So 20%, thank you. You know, it's good. It's fine. And then, um, you know, the other experience when people are awful, you know, I just, I don't want to leave anything, you know, so it's really aggressive, but I usually tell people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm very similar. I mean, having worked in hard restaurant environments and busted my ass to earn tips. I'm just like, dude, you're just like mailing it in. You're not even trying. Yeah.

So Robert, the reason I wanted somebody to read is because I would bet what I wanted to ask you, did your heart rate come up? Just asking a simple little question. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So how many of you, can I do this? Go for it. Yeah. How many of you, how many of you here have a philosophy that you could say in 20 words or less?

Hands up. That's not enough. That is not enough. How many of you could come down and say it with Tim and I right now? Right now. Right now. Yeah. we got some bold ones. Yeah, good. Yeah. Got some self-selection going on. And then for Robert, how many of you

have those experiences where just saying your name at a table of strangers, your heart starts to pound. Yeah. Right. So those are great moments because it's teaching you something about your psychological framework that what they think of you is now too important because your body is saying, is this a saber tooth? That's why that systems turn up or, or, you know, is this some other kind of threat that I don't know what to do with? So it's, those are great moments. And so as often as we can find those moments to put ourselves in, that's how we build capacity to be able to one day express artistically. The capacity is a really important term. So I want to just build on a few things that he said. So the first about mindfulness and present state awareness, my experience. So I live in San Francisco. People are always on their phones.

LA has a different thing. and this isn't everybody, but I had this experience. I went to a party, and this woman had just moved to L.A., and she said, yeah, it's really difficult here because people will be talking to you and looking over each shoulder, looking for, like, a bigger and better option. Somebody was walking around. And I was at this party, and my phone had died,

and I was also drinking a fair number of like gin and sodas and i'm talking to people and they're like i feel like you're really listening to me and i'm like yeah because i'm just looking in your eyes and listening to you so it doesn't take much and it was like a superpower it was fucking. Like the bar right now is pretty low, like in general. So it doesn't necessarily take a lot of work. A, uh, B this piece on like, when did being on stage and worrying about what people think become a threat. I think it ties in very nicely to something you mentioned earlier, which is this systematic desensitization. So not to totally nerd out, but I will for a second. Stoicism, once again. So we have a gent named Cato. So Cato was considered by many,

including Seneca, to be the perfect Stoic. Now, no one's perfect, but he lived the principles better than many or most. And one of the things Cato would do is routinely, purposefully do things that would get him ridiculed, but on a surface level. So he would wear a different colored tunic, for instance, than was customary at the time so that he would get ridiculed by people who were around him. And he trained himself to be regularly not embarrassed or to condition himself to not be embarrassed so that he could reserve being embarrassed for only those things that are worth being embarrassed about. And in doing so, became very emboldened to share unpopular opinions because he built up that tolerance. It's just like building up a base stand, going into the sun. You can't just jump out for two hours in the sun looking as pale as I do, especially, and expect that mind over matter, you're suddenly going to tan really well. You're

going to get turned into a lobster. Psychologically, the same thing is true. So you can train yourself. I have these pants. I'm not wearing them right now. I call them party pants. They're the most disgusting, ugly, like floral pattern grandma couch pants you've ever seen. And I have a few things that I do like that borrowed from somebody who lived more than 2,000 years ago that are just as applicable today. So that's also something you can regularly train. And it's really important, I think, to honor that the same way you can train your body, you can train your mind. And so systematically desensitizing yourself to what other people think of you at a surface level. Fantastic. Yeah. Brilliant. So many of the concepts that, um, we would talk about are not new, you know, grandma, grandma told them to you,

you know, science will back them up in some kind of way but they've been practiced for thousands of years definitely you know the science is nice because there's like you don't have to rely on storytelling you can rely on some evidence or theoretical evidence at least so the next question is from facebook this is from jimmy suta what's up jimmy what's up jimmy uh ask what techniques they use when visualizing. Dark room and music? Do they meditate? Hypnosis? What are best practices for visualization? So let's use the word, instead of visualization, use the word imagery.

Sure. So visualization is like just with one senses. Imagery conjures up the idea that we're going to light up our brain with as many senses as we can. And is the question where? Is that the question? It seems to be across the board. I mean, should I do it when it's light out in a dark room? Should I wear an eye mask, listen to music or no music?

Silence? I think just the general guidelines. So, yes, the answer would be to play with it. The science is not great for imagery, but the practice is pretty well understood. So music or no music, let's kind of address that. My experience has been better with no music. Some athletes like music. I feel like it's a distraction to the objective.

And the objective is to create such a lifelike experience that your body believes that it could be real. And it might just be. So there's a switching on or an animation that happens within you when you create an image that is crisp and has color and sound and smell and taste. And you could manipulate it in such a way that you're putting yourself in an electrically charging situation. So that's imagery in a nutshell. Can you be so skilled? And that takes time to activate those senses. It's easy.

It's relatively easy to do color. It's much harder to have color and control it and move it. And then can you add the other variables on top of it, the other senses on top of it as you go? And again, this is a skill of focus as well. So when your mind wanders, can you refocus? So again, there's a stitching to mindfulness in here, but the aim is different. Mindfulness is about insight and wisdom.

The aim of imagery is enhanced performance. So they're different in that vector. And so what else would you want to know about it? Like, we all know it works. And why don't we do it more often is the question. So I've never really put this together before. But one thing that struck me is that perhaps one way to train that ability, given how you defined it using imagery,

would be something that fascinated me for, still fascinate me, but fascinated me for a very long time. And that was training yourself to use mnemonic devices. So for instance, there's something called the memory palace. It's also been called the loci technique. Cicero used it. Many people in the Roman Senate used it to memorize long speeches, where you're taking objects and placing them in a familiar location. And a great book that talks about memory athlete competition specifically called Moonwalking with Einstein. It features a friend of mine named Ed Cook, who trained somebody in a year to go from nothing to national memory champion. It's an incredible, it's incredible. Look at how this works, but it's embracing and learning to manipulate all the

things you just mentioned with a very clear objective and also a reward. Uh, so you can do things like learn to memorize the serial numbers on say five different bills someone gives you. And then two weeks later you could give those serial numbers to them indicating which bill it was on like a 5 a 10 or 20 or do them backwards and you could train yourself to do that in two or three days uh that that could be interesting for people to pursue potentially if you're nerdy and like that kind of stuff yeah and you know what i want to go back to fighting and imagery for just a moment and stitch those two concepts together is that um hicks and gracie oh yeah so hicks and gracie is a legend in the in the fight world and he and i did an interview probably 15 years ago where i was asking him about imagery and we created a um with a partner i was creating the champion mind fighter dvd it was back when there was dvds this is before

it was on spike tv before it was a Spike TV, before it was a thing. And it was a thing, always a thing to fighters. So I asked him about imagery, like, do you do it? And he says, oh, yeah. He says, I do it. I said, what's it like? And he just kind of gathers himself and he says, it's the most beautiful movie. And every time I relive it, I create images and nuances that I want to experience. So he called it like, think about the care that you would have, that you will spend time to enhance your imagination and use your imagination to create the most beautiful movie. That tells you something about the way he's fundamentally orientated his life. So just doing a couple of imageries here and there, or, I don't know, four days before you're going to go give a speech, that's not enough.

That's a hack. That's taking good science but not really living it. When you think of the word successful, who or what is the first thing that comes to mind? Yeah, I think about success as a life of inner peace, of a life that has meaning and is adding to the wellness of the global community. Like, that's how I think about it.

And I could pull out the word global and make that not necessarily the world, but one's own ecosystem like the family unit but so a sense of peace exploring um the giving and making something better uh than you left it and so there's a gentleman by the name of john cabot zinn that i think um wherever you go there you are what's up john yeah he's unbelievable and so um i don't know him the way that it might sound. I know him, but I feel like I feel him and I understand him and I love what he stands for. And I love how I feel around him. And he has, he's done a tremendous gift to modern times to

embrace the science of mindfulness. And I think he has an inner peace about him and he's worked at it. I think that that was a person that encapsulates it the best for me. So you mentioned an author that I'm fond of. Are there any books that you've given most as gifts? If you give books as gifts? Yeah, I do. I like to give poems and on one page with great writing, there's so much in there. What type of poets or poetry? So one of my favorites is Oriah Mountain Dreamer. Oriah?

Oriah Mountain Dreamer. How do you spell Oriah? O-R-I-A-H, Mountain Dreamer. Got it. And just beautiful prose. And so that's one. am me by virginia satir um it's pretty powerful as well um and then the book i think that i spent a lot of time gifting is it's a great applied book jerry lynch wrote it with a co-author and it's called the way of

the champion the way of the champion yeah very applied, very meets me right where at the most simple concept. And it's a book that you do rather than just read. And so it's great. I pass it out like it's candy in locker rooms. Do you have any favorite movies or documentaries? I love documentaries. Yeah, I really do. And I think documentaries, I'm much more interested in nonfiction than fiction,

just the way that I think about things. So I love, I can't remember a documentary that said, that's a bad documentary. Because usually people that are shooting documentaries, like love it too. And it comes through the work, it translates some kind of way. So I love documentaries, favorite movie, Star Wars, you know? And so I just, I think that there's some, I was captivated by it when i was eight and it just kind of keeps coming back to me but as far as like titles of documentaries um it was good it was amy amy that was a good that was really good the the beauty and tragedy of so hard artistic genius and so um that was captivating uh Uh, if I say a hundred dollar or less purchase that has

significantly positively impacted your life, does anything come to mind? It doesn't have to be recent, but it could be recent. Uh, yeah, two, two things pop up. One is, um, this $1,199 book that my wife, uh, bought my son and he just won't put it down. I have an eight-year-old son. What's up, Grayson? And I have an eight-year-old son who's just like, so any little book that I give my son feels like the greatest gift in the world because he becomes mesmerized by the imagination, the stories inside of it. And so that's been a really good. Do you remember the title of the book? It's something about Pokemon. I think it's like the something Pokemon, whatever. And so he's like, he's all about it. Yeah. And so that's been really good and then i'd say like not for

my son would be um i think soft tissue work like massage in soft tissue work um it's um i think it's an incredible gift for all of us to to you know you know, for alignment. If you feel tension in your muscular system, if you had to give a Ted talk or just a very high profile, 20 minute speech on nothing that you're known for, nothing you've spoken on before. It could be like a weekend obsession. It could be still worse, but what would you choose? What kind of question is that?

It's a, it's a curveball question. So for instance, now another... Where are we trying to go with that? Yeah, where are we trying to sort out? So we're not trying to sort out anything in particular. I'm not solving climate change here. But the people...

I'll tell you where this comes from. So where it comes from is... I was having a conversation with a gentleman named Mark Andreessen. Mark Andreessen created the first popular graphical web browser, co-authored it, Mosaic. And he is a serial billionaire, one of the most successful investors on the planet now, and an incredible writer. The guy's a real polymath. And one of the ways, one of the many ways that he finds opportunities is he asks,

what are the nerds doing on the weekends or in the evenings? What are they spending their spare time on? Did you just call me a nerd? No. Although that would be a compliment. You did just mention Star Wars. I mean, let's be fair. And Pokemon.

And Pokemon. So the, what I'm trying to suss out is any side obsessions that you have yeah i don't i don't think i have a great answer for that like what do i think surfing would be the thing that um i try to fit in best way i possibly can which is tough to do um so would i give a talk on surfing probably not um i don't know i spend so much time thinking about the human experience. It would have to be something outside of the human experience. So I don't know where to go. Like, well, here, I'll give you one. Yeah. What is, what is the hardest challenge that you

are currently working on yourself? The hardest challenge. Um, I think it's always authenticity. I think that's always it, right? Like,, right? And then moving as deep as I can to places that are uncomfortable. So what would that be? It's saying the thing that I find difficult to say because it requires this fear that I have that if I go back to way back, that if I say this thing that I feel like is true and pure and it hurts another person, then, then that tension becomes really challenging in the relationship. And I'm significantly better because I practice a lot, but that's the, that thing is I think really hard for people, uh, for me, I should say. So that would be one of them. And then, um, business. So I, I, I'm building a business

right now with coach Carol and figuring out entrepreneurship in that frame. Win forever? Yeah. So this is a consulting model where we're trying to take what we have taken his intellectual property in mind, his on culture building and mine on mindset training and put them together where we can where we think we've captured and we're onto something about how to share that with people that are not in sport. So it's landing in the business world on how to shape cultures that are meaningful and then train the people's, the brilliant human capital inside of our workforces to be their very best. And so that sounds wonderful. And then like, how do you actually create a business that has scale and meaning? It's like, that's, I love it.

That's hard. I love it. When there's a challenge. Yeah. What is the worst advice that you hear often in your field? And I'll let you define field however you want. Yeah. So the field would be squarely in, you know, psychology, right?

And the facets of human performance that's the field particularly from the invisible standpoint but the worst advice is advice that's it like advice is awful just spitting out answers just like saying stuff that you should and why don't you and how come and like that's what you should do and And like that, that, that's the stuff. But I'd say like more specifically than, than the general answer would be, um, that you too can be everything you want to be. Not necessarily. Yeah. I don't, I, you know, maybe in some kind of make believe world that everybody is going

to be amazing. I just, I don't see people putting in the work to do it. And so motivation, I don't know. I don't know anything about it. I don't know anything about motivation because people I work with don't need it. They're driven. They're fully committed to a particular way of living. And so this idea that we need motivation, we don't need motivation. We need to find ourselves and what is true and honest and when it matters to us i know this to be true for me i'll do whatever it takes and yeah so i think that that's that's what we want to help people find that stuff so sorry for a little soapbox moment there but soapboxbox on, uh, do you have,

and I'll explain what this means. Do you have a, any favorite failures? And what I mean by that is a failure or failures that in hindsight actually set you up for future successes. And I know we've talked about how we can semantically drill down on that, but I think you get what I mean. Yeah. I think I've shared them with you already, which is like the love of my life saying that this isn't working anymore. And it was both of us co-created that relationship. But that was unbelievably painful to go through that journey. And so many of us have done it, you know. And that was an incredible gift of strength

that she demonstrated for me and for us. And so I think that was a big one. I was an absolute, um, selfish, uh, uh, craft obsessed human being that was not watering and loving properly, uh, the people that mattered the most. And so, yeah, that thing is real. And so that's an incredible gift. Fundamental altar in my life. Fundamental altered my life. So excluding that, this is leading to the next question.

What is the most or one of the most worthwhile investments you've ever made? And I'll what i mean by that could be money time energy anything else and i'll give you an example there's a woman named amelia boone she's the most decorated optical course racer of all time three-time world's toughest motor champion uh just an incredible athlete and And, um, her answer was the $450 for her first entrance fee into one of these competitions. And it was a real stretch for it at the time, but having taken that step, it opened up an entire world of possibility for her. Uh, what would, what would your answer? One of your answers be, what was it? What was the first one? Most worthwhile investment worthwhile investment of time energy or one of the most worthwhile investments of time energy fill in the blank yeah so time is all we get i mean that and that is what we're competing for right and with right now that's the greatest kind of thing that we're trying to suss out i think is how can

we be here now so um you know the easy one is time. Investment in understanding how to be here now and be on time, I feel like is the gift that I'm trying to help others find as well. But more concretely, there was a moment when I just graduated my PhD program and there was one of two ways that I could go. The two ways, one was I could get, I could go licensed, get licensed. And the other was I could not get licensed. And so license as a psychologist means that you've got certain privileges and restrictions, but you are part of that. No, yeah, you're part of the club that can do psychological services or medical services. And so I had a moment where I was like, back to like when I was really young, if I don't take the test, I had all these reasons. If I don't go get licensed, I'll be like, I'll be able to build a business and I'll be fine. Cause you don't have to be licensed to do some of the work that we're talking about. But so it was like this personal decision. Do I go and get tested or do I not? And it was like

one of these really cool moments where I was like, you know what, I'm letting it rip. And I can remember getting the results back. You know, I was in the first home that we bought, I bought with my wife and like getting that thing back and the results back after, you know, six weeks of waiting, I was jumping up and down. I was like, Oh, you know, like that was like a moment of test that was meaningful for me. And it created a lot of freedom for other tests. After all of your experiences with the SATs and so on and hating tests, how did you, what was the self-talk to make that decision? To go for that test? Yeah.

Is that I would be a phony because I really did want it. This goes back to surfing. I really did want it, but I couldn't do it. I was afraid to do it. I was afraid to put myself out there to not be good enough. And then, and that was the model that others were going to determine if I was good enough. And so I was right on the cusp of it during this test taking thing. I could go and build a business the other way, or I could go and get tested. And it was just, it was really just for me. And so. So you're being honest with yourself. Yeah, I was being honest. Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Michael Truffet.

All right. Thank you guys. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do.

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and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Audible, which I've used for many, many years. I absolutely love audiobooks, and they are one of my favorite ways to pass the time when I travel. I'm on the road all the time, and Audible allows me to consume many more books than I possibly could otherwise. I have two audiobooks to recommend right off the bat. The first is perhaps my favorite audiobook of all time, and it's the only audiobook I've wanted to listen to twice in a row. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. It's amazing,

and you will thank me. There are a few different versions. I like the version that Neil narrates himself. One of the most soothing voices of all time. The second book is Vagabonding by Rolf Potts, P-O-T-T-S, which had a huge impact on my life and formed the basis for a lot of what would later become the 4-Hour Workweek. So go to audible.com forward slash Tim and you can choose one of these two books or any of many, many other options. That could be books, magazines, and much more. As a listener of The Tim Ferriss Show, you can also access a free 30-day trial. Just go to audible.com forward slash Tim. You can't make more time, but you can make the most of it. So turn your travel or your commute into something more with a free trial at Audible. Go to audible.com

forward slash Tim to start now and get your free 30-day trial. This episode is brought to you by Ascent Protein. I am really excited about this discovery. I became aware of these guys when I found out that they'd spent five years trying to manufacture a better version of whey protein. And the result is something called native proteins, which represents cleaner, purer, less processed protein. So here's a mini tutorial. There are only a handful of companies worldwide that can extract native proteins directly from milk. Traditional whey protein, what you've probably bought before, is a byproduct of making cheese. So a company must have the resources, know-how, and a large customer base to invest in extracting proteins directly from the milk

without the ability to also profit from the associated cheese. That means the net net is native proteins are super rare. So Ascent is the only US-based company that offers native proteins, both whey and micellar casein directly to the consumer. They're able to do that because the parent company, Leprino, is a huge cheese manufacturer. They've been filtering proteins for more than 30 years. And there are a few important things to take away from this. Number one, zero artificial ingredients. That is a solid claim. It's much stricter than all natural. Number two, they've done extensive testing. So the chocolate, which I've been using after every workout and also in the mornings, was finalized after 282 recipes were vetted.

And perhaps most important, I talked about less processed. They avoid steps like bleaching. And this is important to understand. So it's a very big deal that hasn't yet caught on for sports nutrition. Traditional whey proteins are a byproduct of cheesemaking, like I mentioned. Many of the proteins are therefore orange in color because they were sourced from, say, cheddar cheese production. Because companies can't sell orange powders, mila, or strawberry, they have to bleach the proteins white. This harms the proteins and leaves trace amounts of bleach in the product. That is no bueno, no good. Infant formula companies,

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so I need another bag. Check it out. Go to ascentprotein.com forward slash Tim. That's A-S-C-E-N-T protein.com, ascentprotein.com forward slash Tim. And you can receive 20% off of your entire order. If you want a quick 25 gram dose to start your day, for instance, you're following a slow carb diet or after a workout, this is a great option. They also have micellar casein, which is slower release, and you can check that out. So take a look, go to ascentprotein.com forward slash Tim.