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

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1:27Welcome 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.

2:20Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic 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.

2:56And he and I go way back. So we really connected. And I'm really glad that he came out to the painted 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 Painted Porch. You can also follow him on Instagram at Michael Gervais. 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.

3:29He's basically a guy you can't 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.

3:54I'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 of 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 going to 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, Confucian, Jesus, and Muhammad.

4:40I just want to make sure 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. And so that to me is a 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.

5:24But like, I'm fond of that idea in recovery groups of, you know, 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. Yeah. So nowhere does Marks, Rhealus, or Sank, or Epictetus as they're talking about being rational and not being driven by your 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, you know, if they're saying like, hey, you know, don't trust your first impressions, right?

6:05Well, 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. That's right. That's the embodied cognition piece. And so I think we have to incorporate all that stuff. Even by our gut biome. 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 with other people if you understand this, right? Like, so you have kids and you go, my kid's not an asshole. They just skipped their nap, right?

6:35My kid's not 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 whatever, 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?

7:14Not like, ironically, Socrates said that, you know, nobody does wrong on purpose. And then we have this understanding of, oh, okay, why are people doing things that are wrong? And then we can, it helps us manage our emotions, but then it also helps us understand and appreciate what other people are going through. It's 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.

7:57Yeah. And she says, you're making up stories. That's bad behavior. Sure. That is unacceptable. Yeah. Right? Like, I don't care. I don't care what the deal is. that's not right and so like there's a that's our one of our tensions and one of her one of her virtues that she is um uh 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 talk so walk me through that so fairness um that she feels it's a dangerous uh duping that we should be in a world of that To insist that things are fair? No, to build children's philosophy that let's work out of fairness.

8:44Okay. As opposed to, and the reason being is because there's wolves in the world. Yeah, sure. And there's slippery folks that are trying to take advantage. Sure. 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. 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. But you might be working in tandem with a wolf in sheep's clothing 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.

9:27Yeah, 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.

10:04Let'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 actions. 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 where Marcus goes, remember, you do not live in Plato's Republic.

10:47And 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 was Kennedy who said it. He said like, you know, 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.

11:29And 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 Greene'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.

12:10And 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? I definitely not. I have zero interest in participating in politics in that sense. But 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.

12:55And 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 to argue with you, but it's not important and in fact, may be 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. Yeah. 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. Yes. Like at age eight, we're giving grades, You know, like, so we, we, we like performance now.

13:43So it makes perfect sense that people would mingle their identity with performance. And so it's, 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. Yeah. And that's where it gets really, really tricky because 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.

14:25And that takes a very long time. I heard it in what you just said. Well, my friend Austin Kleon, who's amazing, he's done a bunch of great books. He says, the problem is too many people want to 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 and and uh 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 for 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.

15:08Right. And so I think so often, like, are you, do you see yourself as a, as a point guard or do you see yourself as an, an all-star, right. Or an NBA star or a team captain, like you start to get towards roles as opposed to like jobs or status. I think both of those are equally dangerous. Yes. You know, which is underneath is, so I, two funny stories. Uh, one, well, I'll leave the humor decision up to you. That's not in your control. Yeah. Right. The first one actually is not funny at all, but the second one is, um, I walked into a, a, a fitness gym and it was one of those kind of structured classes, gyms.

15:51And the, uh, 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, okay, no problem. So I come in a week later, I'm back in there. And he says, could you just really quickly, could you tell me how you've become? I'd love to do what you do at some point. I said, oh, no problem. It's like, you know, undergraduate, a graduate degree in this, PhD in psychology, then you got to get licensed and then you really don't know anything.

16:30So 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. see what i what i thought which has happened to me before is and this is why audience and fame can be dangerous right is you get like you get used to people recognizing you're coming up to you and talking to you even if it even if it's not like at some huge level like the way like a you know world famous person would be but you get used to occasionally people recognize you and i remember i was at the airport a couple months ago and this person um sort of comes up to me and i could see anyways they come up to me and and uh they 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 this when you've identified yourself as a person who gets recognized right yeah i'm going into that interaction right and really they just wanted me to move like i was in the way of something you know what i mean and so you get you it they say fame is a mask that eats at the face It, you're, I, the thing you do, you become conscious of your status or role in the world.

17:48And then it changes literally how you interpret reality. If I was a regular person, uh, and I am a regular person, but if, 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? You know? And so like 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. Oh, cool, man.

18:30But 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, you know, the easy, because a lot of the problem is, and I think Austin's right, people want to do, be the noun, not do the verb. And people want to be famous as opposed to do things for which the by-product is some level of fame. Like I'm wearing an Iron Maiden shirt, but one of my favorite quotes from the lead singer of Iron Maiden 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.

19:15And 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, 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 going to 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.

19:57And then that's where you get reality TV stars or Donald Trump or whatever, right? Like not, 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. Yeah. And if you don't have some roots, you know, 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, how quick you get traction, how your things do there's so much between you and and those things that you are nice to have um like the stoics have this great concept they call there's there's um there's things that are up to us and there's things that are not up to us but they say there's kind of this middle category of what they call preferred indifference not indifference ence but indifference like ents right um so that they're like if you work really hard on a book it's the best thing you've ever done and you're so proud of it.

20:57And if I asked you, do you want it to sell a million copies or zero copies? Right. Well, the Stoics 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 have a preference, right? Would you rather be poor or rich? You have a preference, right? Now, the Stoic would say you should be able to work with either, right and and 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.

21:50Like that was my other thing when I was thinking about fear of what other people think

21:56is Mark Sturios has this line in meditations where 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.

22:43So the first arrow that's shot is something that happens. Like it's something outside of you that happens. And maybe you're crossing your nice little street here and somebody hits you. So that's the first arrow. It's an arrow you get hit with, not an arrow you're shooting. That's right. And the second arrow is the one you shoot. And it is your critical or judgmental or hostile or whatever interpretation. 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. Yes. The first arrow might be pain.

23:18Yeah. 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, whether you shoot it or not. Sure. And so I think it's a pretty cool way of thinking about it. Actually, the Stoic sort of explanation of 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 era, not the second era. No, the stoic line. You know, you go into like locker rooms and sometimes like it's all cliches come from something at some point, right?

23:53And 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. It's the story you tell yourself about that thing. That's what the second arrow is.

24:28That'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.

25:13It'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 going to 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? Wait, wait, 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 it became so clear that the way they fundamentally organize their life is to go embrace the unknown and to do it publicly.

25:59That we see that. We don't know how the outcome is going to 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. Yeah. So people with real power and control and your peers that are, by the way, trying to take your job. Some of them, there's a depth chart.

26:36Everyone'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, 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 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.

27:15Yeah.

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29:35As you brought that up, what it spurred in 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? I do 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 five. 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, you know, it turns out they've only liked it because it's been going their way a long time.

30:19That's right, yeah. And I remember Shaka Smart 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, you know, 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 6 '4 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.

30:59And 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. 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, you know, get ready to go to like, I'm driven, but the rewards are the unlock, the love affair with figuring things out.

31:41And if I really love that, I got to keep going to the edge. Yeah. I I got to keep getting to the frontier because that's where it happens most often. Sure. But those are harder to come by because the world outside of us is giving us lots of externals. Yeah. Hey, you need to do this. You need to do that. Oh my God, you're so amazing. Sure. 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. Right. But so, so the tricky part of that is, so if you have that intrinsic unlock that gets you motivated, you're then internally motivated.

32:21That'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, it's, there's a, um, a near obsession when you really love the unlocking because it's such an electric embodied experience when those ahas happen. Actually, we can see the signature. It's gamma brainwaves take place, which is, you know, 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.

33:03I 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 and unlock yeah insight unlock aha that stuff is so embodied and rich yeah that there's an addiction to that um 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 this there's basically been like one boxer ever who retired like at the right time. Do you know what I mean? Like, so you get this, it's on the one hand, being extrinsically and externally motivated.

33:41It'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 boxer, I don't think that this Pollyannish approach, is that the right word? Pollyannish? Pollyannish idea that intrinsic needs to be the number one. As long as it's high, you can have equally high external drivers and rewards. That's cool. If you are the best in the world and people like the thing that you're doing and they want to give you money, that's okay.

34:21I 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, because 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.

34:50There's an unlock here. Yeah. Like we're going to figure. And that's all great. But you should also, you should, you're not doing yourself. And 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. That's right. For that thing. And I want to go back to boxers, right? And they're not put, if you don't value it. Yeah. In that way, they're not going to really value it. So it's a nice. Anytime 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's, it takes a lot. It's, it's just, there's something clean about I show up, you pay me this like businesses.

35:28We develop this, 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, um, 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 towards goodness? Yeah. Okay. So there's, there's something compelling or purposeful that, that is, is taking place. And is it going to 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. Yeah.

36:04But I definitely need two of those three. Yeah. 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. And then, but I definitely need the third one, you know, in there as well. So if you can get all three of those together, I'm like, that's, this is a home run. Are you kidding me? But, 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're just, you just do it longer than you should. You can't, you can't stop doing it because you're back to the box right here.

36:35Back 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 the 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. Yeah. Right?

37:14And because it's fun, it's amazing. But you left. I did leave. So 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. Right. And so logistically it stopped. But it was a perfect time. So that was great though. 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.

37:52And 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 crosswalked 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.

38:32A 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, what 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. Not 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 want to talk about finding mastery for a second. Then I'm going to come back to Beethoven, who you talk a lot about in the book.

39:12But 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 yeah i'm far more interested in the internal experience the 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, um, like, what do you think about mastery?

40:00And most people say, there's like two that didn't say this. Um, 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, because there's a lot of people who are very good at what they do, but also monsters.

40:40Yeah, 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, mastery of craft and mastery 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 going to be my whole thing? Is it going to be everything about me and I'm going to sacrifice everything to maintain it or keep going with it?

41:16Or 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. Yeah. You're hitting the nail on the head. That's why it's self through craft. So the craft can actually change. So, you know, you think about Andres Erickson's work on number of hours, you know, it's not 10 ,000, it's more like 16 to 20 ,000. And which is fun to be that. Did they just move the goalposts on you? Oops, you can 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.

42:09Like, happy to pivot. That's cool. And there can be. I was sitting with the – he was the CEO of PayPal. He's now the CEO of Nike. and John says he was right in the middle of what he was going to 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, um, the skills he's worked that are, um, agnostic to the craft, but consistent with self, then you can apply those somewhere else.

43:00And 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 percent, a 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, you know, the 0.001%, but 87 % of them end up divorced, broke, unhappy, all that stuff, right?

43:35Within two years of retirement. So I'm saying you kind of face this second challenge of like going, I'm going to be great at this thing and not let it destroy me. Or I'm going to be great at this and I'm going to be happy. I'm going to 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, and so he's like, I came home and it was so jarring to me that I turned and said to my wife, I don't know how you're going to give me the love of 100 ,000 screaming fans.

44:22And he said to me, I knew my life was in shambles. Relationship was over. It probably never really was because it was more about me, more about my attention. Something else was subsidizing it. That's a good word. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's kind of, 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 I, 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.

45:00And, and part, when I pushed it, I was thinking, I'm tired. I don't want to, 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 going to be really restful and regenerative. And it's going to be easier to take time off than to just start, you know, 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. And then to stop and try to exist more as a functioning person in a world and a relationship and family.

45:45Because like it didn't just, hey, I was working eight hours a day on this book and now I'm not. I was like, it was, 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 sloughs 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.

46:20And 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 and yes harder yeah because you know how to run the play yeah 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. Well, can I, but can I get back in shape, but also not, not just swing from one pole to the other, right?

47:00Like, can I now get in shape and do the thing? And I'm not out of shape because I, I just spent more time kind of slowly working on the other book. It's just different, it's different shape. Right. But like, can I, can I go, can I do a healthier version of a season, you know, in the way that, you know, the first five seasons of someone's career are going to 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 about the game and hopefully you get more efficient at it also.

47:36Yeah. 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, I also think that what you're pointing to is under celebrated, which is the power of a partner. And so, um, having a great partner is really important. And I, 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 did the, what are the commonalities amongst the greats? Sure. And I found some kind of interesting, you know, red threads in there, golden threads, but I totally missed looking at my own life and many of them.

48:18It'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, like 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 it's, you're, you're, you're, you're held down on earth as opposed to floating off into the space of celebrity or greatness or what it's, it's, it's keeping you balanced and healthy.

49:07I 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 you know, they're 21 year, they don't know them because they're spending 14 hours a day with, you know, 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.

49:49You learn by trial and error and it can't survive. Yeah. So I'm really glad that I, I didn't have that forcing function because I think I would have taken the selfish path. and that would have stung me because that's, it's kind of how I was raised. So I didn't have a great relationship with my folks and I love them and, you know, but their stuff was more important than my stuff and their stuff was alcohol and, you know, like 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 on drugs and codependency and a narrative outside of the truth.

50:31It would have been, oh, dad's grinding, dad's doing his thing, da-da-da. And I just would have missed kind of changing the generational parenting model.

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52:47I 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, 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.

53:24And 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. 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.

54:00So if you're going to be someone who's 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 and hanging out and like at the facility and did a great job with that. And so that was supported and valued.

54:37And it was not like 14 hours, you have to stay here until I leave. No, no, no, go to your kid's game. Now, if you're not done, come back now. 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, like, 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. Yeah. That's not going to get it done now. No. Like that, no. You've got to figure out how to reorganize your life and your day around what's, like, I heard this great line.

55:15They're like, your kids are not a distraction 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'll bring my wife up one more time. She says to me, this was not that long ago. she says, Mike, you have a really important job. And I was like, okay, cool. 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.

55:49And like, and I'm, 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. And it has nothing to do with the profession that I'm in. And so it was such a grounding moment. I was like, thank you, thank you, thank you. Well, in one of Seneca's letters, he talks about the problem. He says, people are really busy. They pursue their career, money, romance, all this stuff. And then he says, and then philosophy gets like the leftovers. and he says it should be the other way around.

56:28You're sort of, if we can take philosophy to mean self-development, self-improvement. Right. 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. Yeah. The best of the best are not leaving the training of the mind up to chance.

56:59So 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. 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 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.

57:53And 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 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 yeah 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 yeah 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 yeah that's how we're getting into it and i think that that's what's gonna that's what i want to ring another bell for in business is that, hey, leaders, you know, people are leaving.

58:50That'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 is a human energy crisis that's taking place. People are tired and fatigued and overwhelmed.

59:33And that is the, what'd you call it? The excrement? excrement excrement from um from the extraction model sure yeah yeah and and right and it's like look if your people are getting divorced if their relationships are taxed if their health is burning up they're not going to do a good job no just like you're not going to do no i i don't if when i'm anxious it i'm a bit of a wreck you know that and so listen it's not lost on me why i was attracted to this discipline like i needed to figure out the skills 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.

1:00:15Well, I want to talk about Beethoven because I talked about him in Discipline is 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, Beethoven was this great musician and then his hearing went away and he just kept doing it. Isn't that so impressive?

1:00:50And 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 instable not only that was, but having an alcoholic father. Yeah. So like it was a bit of a mess growing up. And then he's heralded as the best with an unsettled sense of self.

1:01:36Yeah. It literally was the emblem of a performance-based identity. Sure. And then how dare somebody like me, you know, like 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 is 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.

1:02:21And it was impossible. He was deluding himself. He said, though born with a fiery active temperament, even susceptible to the versions of 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.

1:02:55People just thought he was really focused. Yeah, and he would call it something. And I love this. His raptus or raptus? Raptus. Yeah. 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. And he's in his, even though we're walking along, you know, the river. And it was a protection mechanism that he was socially deploying. Yes. 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. Yeah. And it's, it's been said, and I don't know if this is the case, but you know, Beethoven, number five, bum, bum, bum, bum, that it actually comes from him banging his, his fist on the piano.

1:03:41Like, why can't I hear? Yeah. And so what, what is that? and so that was an insight like so that's i'm going to 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 yeah and that's where number five and and the rest were like some of the best he ever produced when i think about just sort of we talk about four to 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 claws his way back. You know, he doesn't quit on himself.

1:04:19He doesn't quit on the art. And that's part, ironically, part of what keeps him going is he goes, I think I do still have more good work in me. 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. Yeah. Like there's not a best in the world that sees the future being bleak. Yeah. Okay. Like pessimism is, I don't think this is going to work. Yeah. optimism is, I think something good's going to take place. Well, I've talked about this because the stereotype of the Stoics is like a little resigned, a little down.

1:04:52I 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. And 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. And he's sick. And also it wouldn't have been fun to live in ancient Rome.

1:05:28Like 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? But 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.

1:06:03Or, you know, they set the scoring record or they ran the fastest time. but that's real greatness that sort of day-to-day a thousand percent through it's just that we don't 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 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 throw away like it's the hardest job in the world. Yeah. No kidding. But we don't, we don't really reward it.

1:06:38Yes. Right. Like, and so, I don't know, I'd love to know who the best mom or the best dad in the world is. And it's, but, and it's, we don't know what people are going through. So, you know, we're all going through something. And we're all going through something. Yeah. And so, so, you know, sometimes that is a tangible or a identifiable thing. Like someone loses their hearing or someone, you know, is, 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 like having some sadness that yeah more like dysthymic like just sort of a little bit, but not like, but, but yeah, it's in, that's the problem with depression, right?

1:07:36Is that like what it actually feels like for the people who are depressed is ineffable. It's like, we can't, we can't fully understand it. And that's why we're so sort of glib and, and, uh, harden up, toughen up. 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. It seems like you should be able to, right because 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 it doesn't make a difference you can try that you've got running water this that and the other and 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 yeah and so the thing about um feeling deep even experiences of depression, it's actually really important.

1:08:26The 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. And it's 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 respects, the grief that comes as the after effect of a death one, it can help you understand that just a little bit.

1:09:15Sure. As long as you don't kind of just do the Irish. I got Irish and Italian in me. So like, you know, 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. Yeah. Why not go to the depths of sadness? Oh, wait, that's too hard? You're going to macho up, you know, and do the ice bath? Come on. I mean, like, you know, you're going to grind through that. It's crazy. honestly, the biggest part, yes, there's physiological benefits of an ice bath, period.

1:09:52That'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? 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?

1:10:23So 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. We're in a cycle right now. 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 just you're wrestling with that part of you that says, I don't want to do that thing, it's hard. That's right. And you say, I'm going to do that thing because it's hard. And then you get in and it's hard and your mind wants to wander.

1:11:00You want to check the clock and to go, what I'm going to practice here is being in control of what I'm thinking about. Or aware. Yes. East, west, difference. But there's different, my word choice is probably operative. But the point is, yeah, hey, am I going to actually think about those thoughts and decide what they mean? Or am I going to be lost in what's happening, which is unpleasant and cold? Or am I going to 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.

1:11:42And let's say you're doing that. I got to get out of here. What am I doing? I got, this is sucks. I got to get. 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. I 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, like, we're not, we're taught, we're like, we're, we're still in the stone ages in so many ways.

1:12:20Go do the hard thing and suck it up. You know, 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 know what I mean? 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.

1:12:58I'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.

1:13:13Thanks 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. We appreciate it. I'll see you next episode.

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