Rebounding Stronger: Building Adaptability Through Flow with Matt Schollard

Welcome to Flow Radio. I'm Ryan Wicks, Chief of Staff here at the Flow Research Collective. And today our head coach, Dr. Tori Higgins, and I are thrilled to have Matt Scholler join us on the show. Matt's journey has taken him from leading an Air Force Special Operations pararescue team to directing executive protection for ultra-high net worth individuals to being a professional athlete. Today, he's the co-founder and president of the Beneath the Surface Foundation, a nonprofit that serves special operations combat veterans post-traumatic growth through wind and water sports and mindfulness practices. As a peak performance coach, Matt helps individuals and teams push beyond their perceived limits, working with peak performers in high-stakes arenas from Red Bull to United States Special Operations Command. Today, we're diving into how Matt blends his skills and experiences to shape his role as a husband, father, an entrepreneur focusing on building resilience and unlocking our highest potential. Matt, it's an honor to have you with us, man.

Yeah, it's an honor to be here. I was like, who's this guy you're talking about? Like, whoa, thank you for such a warm introduction, Ryan. So nice to see you, Tori. Excellent to see you. I'm so pumped to be here with you guys today.

So good to see you, my friend. Happy to have you here.

So, Matt, I want to kick us off. You know this. The concept of resilience, I think it's a little bit misunderstood, right? In that it— I think oftentimes people confuse it with just this trait that we have that's fixed with us, whereas I kind of look at it as this trajectory of health over, you know, longer periods of time. But I want to know, man, what does resilience mean to you, and how critical has it been to you on your journey?

Yeah, excellent two-part question. Uh, First off, I completely agree with you. I don't think resilience is this like one and done thing. It's not like, okay, boom, now I'm all resilient with whatever hardships I'm facing. I think resilience is something that's like perpetually needs to be trained and practiced. Ultimately, what it means to me is the ability to adapt. I'm not, you know, a lot of people like to have this like adapt and overcome type mentality, especially in my previous life in special operations. There's this theme of like dominance that whatever challenges you're facing, you will ultimately overcome. And I think that kind of sets people up for failure in the long run. I think adaptability and learning how to navigate these challenges, emotional, physical, mental, whatever it is that you're experiencing, which is testing your resilience or testing your ability to adapt. I think acknowledging that like it is a lifestyle, it's a trajectory that it's not just, okay, boom, one day you wake up and you go and you know, do an ice bath and now you're resilient. It's this prolonged practice that you need to, you need to find sustainable ways to, to test that and to test your resiliency and also like have a practical application for it. So that's kind of my, my 10,000-foot view on resiliency there. I'm sure, I'm sure we'll get a little deeper into it.

Yeah. I mean, let's, I want to right now, please. Let's go. I want to double-click. So because I think what you're saying is, is super, super important. Um, that resilience isn't like a one-size-fits-all. It's not a once you've learned how to be resilient in one space, you immediately will be resilient in others. And I think your journey is a, is a really nice way to kind of highlight the truth in that because you've had a career with Special Forces. You're also a water sport athlete. You're also an entrepreneur, right? You're a father, right? So how does resiliency look different in some of those different spaces for you?

So I think my first, like, real exposure to the art form of resiliency was when I was going through the, the Para Rescue indoctrination course, like our selection program. And the way I've summed it up for people is they take ordinary, ordinary young men and their goal is to, to turn them into the baddest dudes on the planet. And in order to do that, there needs to be a pretty tremendous catalyst for, you know, this, this type of metamorphosis. And it's through what has kind of been, you know, thrown around in a lot of different arenas, this idea of like stress inoculation where I'm going to like overwhelm you. And through this, like, prolonged exposure to things that are, you know, designed to cause you to panic, to freak out, to sort of confront your demons, you start to, like, inherently adopt these, these practices. Sometimes they're, they're coached or they're guided from, from people like yourself. And I know the work that you've done, you know, with the military and also like we kind of have to, like, learn these on our own. We have to learn, like, our little creative hacks to tap into our own form of resiliency. So what I learned to being like very physically resilient and to being very like tenacious and mentally resilient to overcome all these challenges that were thrown at me maybe did not apply to the emotional resilience of, you know, some of the moral injuries that I experienced during, during combat. But, and those took their toll. But trusting that you, you are trainable, that you are adaptive, and that you have this like demonstrated ability to overcome adversity, to become resilient. I think knowing that I'm capable of it was always sort of that foundation. And then I would, you know, try to incorporate different modalities. I would, you know, study or go to the latest trending psychological or physical resilience practice, and I would just take it for what it's worth, but ultimately trusting that, like, I've demonstrated resiliency. So while it may not be interchangeable, my ability to learn and, you know, the plasticity of my brain and all that, I think was the most important thing for me.

I love that. And I think that's, that's so in alignment with, you know, the, the paper that Steven put out recently with Dr. Menino, The First Few Seconds of Flow, that they, they found that, you know, this idea, this sense of control and personal agency in the situation is a huge predictor of going towards flow rather than experiencing something as trauma. And, you know, we had Dr. George Bonanno on the podcast a couple of weeks ago, expert in resilience. And, you know, he talked a lot about having a repertoire. So having a whole bunch of tools in the toolbox and then identifying kind of what's going on, what's the problem, and then pulling out one of those tools and seeing if it works, right? If it does, let's keep doing it. That's the coping strategy I'm going to use now to be resilient. If it doesn't, let's go back to the toolbox. So it's exactly what I just heard you say is continue to build the toolbox, right? And then believe that you have the power to respond. Maybe it won't be the right way the first time, but if, if, if it wasn't, go back to the toolbox, pull something else out, try to try it again, right?

Absolutely. I love that. And then, I mean, leveraging— part of what I did was leveraging like my experiences in, in action adventure sports, these little microcosms of progression and like resilience that is paired with a very flow-rich activity. Absolutely. I, I, I love that.

I'm so happy that you brought this up because it, Matt, as I was getting ready for this, I really learned how often you were just drawn back to the water, right? And it seems like that is like the most high-flow environment for you and it's consistently been there for you throughout your life. You know, what are your high-flow activities, man? What do you go back to when you just need to clear your head? You know, both, both in work and your professional life.

Well, I think work and professional life, it always does gravitate back toward the water. I remember reading— I remember reading The Rise of Superman in 2014, and it was interesting. I was sitting on a plane. I think I was flying to Tokyo or something. I had a long flight and I was determined to read this entire book. And Stephen described his first experience on the wave and, you know, his like, where do I end? Where does the wave begin? And it was just— it's— I felt like the, you know, the drunk girl at the bar, like, this song's about me. It was like, this chapter is literally like this guy is describing something that I have felt so many times, and he's able to articulate this feeling that has been so elusive for me, but it's been so important to me. It's at 8 years old, little 7 and a half, I learned how to windsurf. And that was my— I was done after that, right? Here's this experience where I had all of these flow triggers and I was exposed to such a high flow activity at a young age. Of course, I had no concept of flow state. It just felt good and it was very it, it pulled me back. It was a place where I could organize my thoughts. It was a place where I could, you know, go to feel good about myself, to boost my self-confidence. And over the years, I always returned to that environment for all of the reasons that any of us return to a high-flow activity, whether we know it or not. It just, it feels good. It's, it's that, it's that enjoyable versus pleasurable response where I have to earn it. I have to work for it. It provides immediate feedback. It gives me this lifetime to pursue mastery, but I'll never get there. And then at the end of it, it's just, it's just fun. It's just a place where I've connected very spiritually, very emotionally. I've gone back to the water following my, my career as a PJ, you know, dealing with post-traumatic stress. My, my resilience practice was resorting back to the water. And I think what I like to tell people, my attraction for the water post-military life. No matter what I experienced in combat between me and my peers and, you know, other special operation units, no matter how well-prepared a person was or how resilient or how strong or, you know, how many cool Punisher neck tattoos they had, they were always subjected to this concept where like nothing will ever be fair. There's no fairness in combat. You can still be the most prepared person on earth. but there is always a chance that something will, you know, will, will show up. And I've seen it unfortunately way too many times where some of the most capable and incredible men and women were, you know, their lives were taken by, by acts of complete randomness. And what I just have always loved about the ocean and water sports in general is there's a fairness to them. There's nothing that you, if you choose to go out on a, you know, a 40-foot day at Mavericks, or you choose to paddle out at Pi'ahi, or you choose to go and send a, you know, a huge kite loop off of, you know, Blouberg in Cape Town, you know what you're getting into. There's no deceit. There's no— if you show up prepared and accepting these conditions, you can be rewarded with the ride of your life. If you show up unprepared and you don't respect the conditions, then, you know, you'll, you'll pay dearly for that. And there's just something that's so fulfilling to me that there's this fairness. And I choose throughout my life to put myself in more and more of these critical situations because I have practiced resilience, I have practiced progression, I have, and I just, I'm, I'm drawn to this idea. And I think as we, you know, bring it back to this concept of resilience, like that's my proving ground. That's where I go out and I, I, I, I test my, my thesis of like, well, okay, I, I have developed this form of resiliency in training. Let me see if I can apply it to the real world. Kind of a very roundabout and ambiguous answer for your question there, Ryan.

But I think Well, I, I love it though. And I, I wanna point out that, you know, that story started with, with you just noting that you were drawn to, to the water and you found flow there just kind of inherently, right? It wasn't a purposeful thing. It felt good. You wanted to continue doing it. It's that self-perpetuating feedback loop for flow, right? Um, but it sounds like as you've gotten older and learned more, You're now intentionally deploying your primary flow activity to build resilience. And so is that something that you, you teach other people to do as well? Because you're a coach, you're a dad, right? How does that show up for you?

I do. It's one of my favorite things is to teach people. I just wrapped up in the, in the professional big air kiteboarding world. There's this culmination. It's the Red Bull King of the Air. It's kind of like the ultimate competition for these, for these young athletes to go and just do these like mind-blowing applications of confidence and athleticism and creativity and spontaneity. It's just mind-blowing. And one of my favorite, I work with a lot of those athletes individually. They don't know it, but then like they all like, ooh, I only work with Matt. The truth, I work with like half of them. So they're all, they're all like, I do mind games against them all. And one of my favorite applications is, is to really teach these, these young athletes the flow cycle. And I feel like that's something that is lost on so many people, especially at these high-level stakes of, you know, military special operations, extreme athletics. We're so busy chasing that flow. We're so busy chasing the flow that, like, ultimately everybody seems to hit a wall, seems to hit this, like, plateau, goes into a post-competition slump because there's no— there's not a prioritization on recovery. And I think that kind of recovery and resilience are like, they kind of go hand in hand. They're definitely not synonymous, but they definitely complement one another for sure. So that's when I'm working with these people who are already at the peak, the peak of their athleticism. Sure, I can teach them some, you know, some fun kettlebell movements and how to hold their breath just a, you know, a few seconds longer. But the real magic happens is when you teach them to, like, to recover from such a flow-rich lifestyle. And in those opportunities, they deal with things like injury, they deal with loss in competition. And like, those for me are the more rewarding. You can't shake a tree around the Red Bull campus without, like, 19 performance coaches falling out of it. But what's lacking, I think, is this very concept of like, how do you develop these, these very malleable and flow-saturated brains and give them something that they can be like, okay, I recognize that like, I am not gonna, I'm not gonna perform. And like, how do I deal with that moving forward? And then of course, the, the, the adventure sport is just the, just the, you know, one application of it. You can apply the same thing when you, when you walk into Walmart, you know, if you're like, feeling that sense of overwhelm. So that's one end of the spectrum. Simultaneously, I run a program here in Hood River where I teach, I teach water confidence, like sort of a little, a little diluted special operations selection course. But I very much teach people these, these immediate adaptations to become resilient in a real-time format and has nothing to do with the pool ultimately or the water. It all has to do with those applications to life. So those are my, my two like primary favorite ways that I love introducing these concepts to people.

Can you give us a flavor for some of those adaptations, particularly maybe the ones that you teach that you think are, you know, the most resonant with folks that they can use not just in the pool to build confidence, but boardroom, etc.?

Absolutely. So, so without spilling the beans on the upcoming training over this last weekend, we had two primary focuses and, and one was the perception of difficulty and the other was resource management. So I had a group of people, all varying levels of ability. You have, you know, the Hood River Olympic athlete caliber level, and then you have the person who's maybe not so athletic, but they're very curious. And they had this, this, they're leaning into their curiosity, you know, trying to feed those passions of self-improvement. So what we focused on with resource, or excuse me, with the perception of difficulty was this concept that all of us have very active imaginations, right? Our brains are just hardwired to perceive threat and opportunity. It seems like we tend to perceive threat more often than anything. So as they're all sitting on the gunnel of the pool and, you know, I walk around all menacingly and, you know, I do it intentionally. I wear my angry face, you know, and it's like I kind of stir up that internal environment. I don't, you know, I don't do anything. I don't push the standard anymore aggressively. I don't demand anything more of them, but they create these scenarios in their brains of it's just going to be this like incredibly heinous pool session and like, Maybe I'm way too far outside of my comfort zone. I like to elicit just a little bit of, I feel there's a lot of fear, but I, I'm intentionally trying to elicit a little bit.

A little intentional sympathetic nervous system activation.

A little bit.

Push that button. Yeah. Just, yeah.

Get there. But what I, what I'm really trying to drive home is that when they, when they enter the water and they perform these drills very successfully and they come up and they're fist bumping and they're high-fiving and they're just like, you know, taking all their selfies and they're just so stoked, it's like, okay. How can you then apply this perception of difficulty? How can you learn to just approach these narratives that you're feeling with just a little bit of skepticism, especially the ones that are like not serving you? Like, definitely be like, well, wait a minute, is this actually like an authentic narrative or is this my imagination giving me this, giving me this, this run that maybe I'm, I'm doing something I shouldn't be doing. And as it relates to these progressive type experiences for people, athletics, extreme sports, water confidence, where you can have this immediate feedback. I, I find it, it really resonates and it really sticks. And, and part of my introduction every, every weekend when I, when I bring the group together, it's like, hey, give me how you applied the lessons that you learned in the pool to your real life. And of course everyone's just like, oh man, let me tell you, I had this call from hell and I was just sitting there. I was, I was holding my breath the whole time. And it's just, it's wonderful because it's like you're giving them, you're giving these like purposeful, real, applications that they can do and, and they're ultimately developing resilience. And that's, they, they just have this, they have this saturated training environment to prove it and then they can validate it and then it just creates those like, uh, reward circuits in the brain. They're like, well, I want more of this and I love it.

That makes so much sense. I love, that's brilliant how you're training that. Number one, also very fun sounding for you. So it's pretty rad. Great job on that front. Yeah, but I think that, you know, there, there is research to show that having a more optimistic mindset paves the way to actually have this more flexible way of responding. We become more resilient. And what you're really teaching people through that exercise is to question when you think things are going to be bad, you're perceiving a high level of difficulty, immediately take that step back and maybe start to challenge that. It's likely not true, especially when there's a high level of uncertainty in the system when you don't really know exactly what's going on, we tend to skew more negative, right? We perceive more threat. So you're, you're really kind of instilling this like brake pump of like, but what if it's not going to be that bad? Right? And like, immediately that like creates some space for some more optimism and like, I can, and room for, and I can handle it. Right?

Yeah, the whole like, well, what could go wrong? It's like, ooh, what could go right?

What could go right?

What could you learn from this experience? And like, what, how can you accomplish something that up until a minute ago was, was in your brain, like unattainable, impossible, but then you just did the thing, right? And you just, you just, you just nullified all of this, this, this like defeating talk in your brain. I love it.

Yeah.

That's killer, Matt. I've been dying to ask another father this question. I've got 3 boys here at home. Comes with the challenges being a parent, right? On a peak performance journey. You find yourself switching contexts and task switching so often during the day, especially when there's like snow days or, you know, school's delayed for some reason. Um, but when it comes to recovery during that phase of the flow cycle, man, I feel like it's like the ultimate advantage, right? Like when I get to lay down with my kids and read books at night and have them read to me, like there's nothing better than that.

That's the magic right there.

Yeah, that's the magic right there, right? Like that. That connection with my family around the dinner table, you know, around books, around telling jokes, laughing, learning about how their day went. I'm curious how you perceive, you know, kind of within the family, do you leverage that in those relationships to kind of help you transition through your day and through the different cycles?

Absolutely. That's a wonderful question. And I think my boys are a little bit older. They're almost 18 and 16. But you bring up such a pivotal point that a core memory where when my sons were young, I was, I unfortunately was, you know, it was kind of the height of the global war on terrorism. I was gone a lot. But I always, my purposeful connection with them was always surrounded by something that was very authentic to me. And as you describe this idea of like reading books and reading stories, one of my just most rich experiences with my young boys was like, I love doing like voices and creating little characters for all their books. So like I had a whole collection of books where like every, Every character within it, like, was a— had a very unique, like, like voice or, you know, mannerism that I would bring to life for them. And that was always like this transition of like, okay, I'm not Matt the pararescueman. I'm not, I'm not Matt the guy who's talking into like an old school generation digital camera and I'm going to mail them the SD card. I'm like, I'm their dad. I'm bringing them this like authentic piece of me. And one thing that was always so important to me was to show up very authentically for them, to like, you know, give them honest answers, obviously age appropriate for, you know, what they were asking, but to give them very honest answers to the questions they had about life. And as they got older, I just— I was still so determined to show up authentically and to share with them what I felt were like the real valuable lessons in life that maybe I didn't learn growing up that I really wanted to offer them. And so much of it was these tools for resiliency. And one thing, my, my older son just loves to, he loves to tell this story to his peers. And when he was like 4 years old, I, I used to stick him on my back and there's these pictures on social media. He was just in his little board shorts, like little hugging on my back and we'd go kiting and it would just be the funnest experience and we'd be jumping and screaming and playing and just having a good time. And then as he got older, it's like, well, the first thing he wants to do is gravitate toward kiteboarding. He wants to gravitate towards surfing his brother. Like we lived in Hawaii when I got out of the military and I would paddle in the waves and here's this little 3-year-old boy jumping off the surfboard because he wanted to get pounded and tumbled by the waves. And it was just this like really deep connection with something that, that ultimately would, would bring them a lifetime of, of, of experience and joy and something that they could grow and spend their life doing. My older son gravitated. He's a professional big air kiteboarder. He's an absolute weapon in the air. I watch him sometimes and just like, man, I cannot believe that, like, this kid is doing what he is doing. And, you know, he has goals to, to, to redirect his purpose and go even, even beyond, uh, he wants to be, you know, Coast Guard rescue swimmer. So he's like, he's just continuously looking for opportunity to express himself and to be authentic. And my younger son just became a, a lifeguard at the pool and he leans into these concepts and he's, you know, he's the thespian, he's got the voice and he's got the humor and the jokes. So it's like a little piece of me, of my authentic self was given to both of them and we just like nurtured the environment for, for them to blossom into the, the brilliant and wonderful young and they are. Hope that answered the question. It wasn't just me.

Oh, that's amazing.

Reminiscing lovely.

Maybe it's worth pointing out here that you being in touch and creating space in your own life to authentically explore what brings you flow has really positioned your, positioned you to be able to bring that into your kids' life as well. So that speaks to me as, you know, I talk to lots of different entrepreneurs, executives, people who are, you know, putting in 80-plus hour weeks, and we talk a lot about what they do and do not have time for. Do you have any kind of suggestions, uh, recommendations on how to make space and connect with that authentic piece of you so you know what that— those primary flow activities even are? Because it feels like that's so wrapped up in how you're resilient and how you teach resiliency to other people as well.

Yeah, great question. The quagmire of all coaches: how can we create more time and space for, for people who have such busy schedules? Well, I very admittedly was not always so guarding of, of my, of my boundaries. You know, 12 years in special operations, definitely. You don't— you don't— can't say no to assignments. Following that, found myself in this ultra high net worth space, globetrotting, private islands, and, you know, like prioritizing the time when I was home to make it most effective and, you know, flow-heavy family activities. But also, like, I was gone for a very large portion of it. Yeah. At a certain point, I don't— I think it's different for everybody, but at a certain point, like, I think all of us are, are forced to, to like accept what are the most important things in our life. It could be, you know, any number of triggers that, that sort of forces this deep reflection. And at a certain point, I was just so decisive that I would relentlessly guard the thing that was most important to me, which was like a very quality experience and time with my family. I just made that conscious decision and it leveraged some of those resilient lessons because obviously there's a little bit of fear associated with it. Well, if I say no to this assignment, that's, you know, potentially now I'm putting myself in some type of fiduciary stress. Is that gonna carry over? All the what-ifs, right? We can what-if every scenario, but just like we do in the pools, it's like, well, what could go wrong? Well, what could go right? What could go right as I, as I develop these boundaries around my personal life, around my time with my family. I prioritize time with my wife. We go on dates. We, you know, don't bring our phone. We look at each other. We have deep intellectual conversation. I spend quality time with each one of my sons. We go snowboarding. We go out on the water. I share life lessons. We skip stones like the old school, you know, ads from the '80s. And we do all that stuff, but it's so structured and guarded. And that was something that I, I, I really took away from my early lessons in the, like, the kind of the FLOW curriculum and especially a lot of the work that, uh, from the FLOW Research Collective was it's like you can leverage these, these tools to work for your advantage, right? We talk about like, you know, op optimal time prioritization and, and guarding and chunking and all of these things. So I think when I work with people, it's just like, first you need to identify your why. What is it do we even want to do, right? If you're just like, well, you know, I, I want to be shredded, It's like, okay, that's a really— I'm going to need like way more substance and way more like definitive goal to work towards. But when you, when you narrow it down to like, well, I want to spend, you know, very quality time present with my children. I want to pass on these life lessons. And it's like, okay, cool. Well, that's something that you can work with. And then it's really just about anything worth doing in life is just about having the discipline to establish boundaries around it and to invest time into doing that thing. Um, without necessarily allowing all of the periphery to infiltrate. Because if it's infiltrating and you're stuck on this, like, then you're, you're not doing anything effectively. You're not doing anything efficient. You're not being an effective parent. You're not being an effective entrepreneur or business person. You're not being an effective spouse. So it's like you're, you're, you're prioritizing these little vignettes of, of, uh, of parenting, of, of prioritizing your own high flow activity. And it's just really giving people the tools to like crawl, walk, run into this type of progression. You can't just be like, all right, cool, here's the thing, you know, 80-hour work week, boom, you're only working 40 hours. Being like, okay, this guy's a total kook. But if you like work with them at a very titrated level and you get that, like, you get that a little immediate feedback of like, cool, man, I read a book to my kid last night, hung out with my wife after he went to bed, didn't think about work, woke up today, had the most productive day ever. It's cool. You know, you kind of like sink your hooks in just a little bit and then over time you, you know, you give them more tools. That's kind of my approach to it.

That's totally, I mean, I share, I share that approach for the record. I, I call it, you know, making sure people get a taste of the high value dopamine of like that more purpose filled, like the good stuff versus the like cheap, low value dopamine of I streamed a bunch of stuff off Netflix or, you know, hung out on TikTok for a few hours after work. 'Cause that's all I had the energy for. Um, and it, look, so I, I wanna, I wanna pull the thread on something else. So when you and I first met, you came to, to FRC to do some training and you were living a very high flow lifestyle in terms of you are working really hard, but then when you had time off, you were either connecting meaningfully with your family or doing some rad adventure, like some kind of flow mission, right? Surfing. Whatever. Um, and, but when, when we were working together, you were trying to figure out how do you impart this lifestyle of just meaning, whether it's your primary flow activities or you're doing really great work professionally, how do you impart that to your team? Because you were a leader at the time and you were trying to bring more flow to all of them because it felt like you really saw the value in not only bringing more meaning to people's lives, right? A more fulfilling life, but also resilience as well, because you were putting in long hours on the job too. Lots of travel, right? So any, any lessons that you learned as a leader to help connect people with more flow and lead a more kind of meaningful, purpose-driven life?

Definitely. I look back on those days so fondly, our little clandestine operations of meeting. We're going to try this this week. Hey, check in with me. I want to know how it goes. I learned so much in those days and The biggest lesson that I took away as a leader was there's no like one-size-fits-all approach. I very much wanted, because I had relatability with all of my team, a lot of them were, you know, some form of former operator or maybe had, you know, experience that was somewhat similar to mine. But my approach was very, I think you used to call me like a flow evangelist. You know, I was very much like, everybody needs an action adventure sport to build their life around. I just like, That was just like my, you know, like, go out and learn to surf, go out and learn to snowboard. And it took a little bit of time to realize like, okay, maybe I'm being a little aggressive with this. And maybe though I think it's the shortest path to enlightenment, it may not resonate with everybody else. But what I did was I did not allow that to like dim my little candle, to dim my light at all. I was just like, okay, maybe this is not the appropriate audience for this very passionate and authentic message that I want to share, where can I actually apply this so that people will want to hear what it is I have to say? And it took a little bit of— it took a little bit of research and experimentation on my part. But ultimately what I, what I came to realize, what there— there's an entire field of people who are just like, so they, they, they— everything that I said made sense to them and they could apply it real time and get that that immediate feedback loop, that validation of like, okay, cool, this makes sense. So I ultimately stepped away from what I did and I went, you know, I faced my little demon and angel on my shoulder of like, ah, don't do it. Ah, do it. And ultimately decided like, hey, I'm going to try and I'm going to put myself out there and I'm going to move into the space very intentionally so that I can have an opportunity to authentically share the messages that are so passionate and so meaningful to me. And I persevered. I leaned into that resilience and that tenacity that I'd forged 20 years ago becoming a paraescument. And I showed up every day and I had my, I guarded, I protected my, I hate to use the word grind. I think that's such an overused word. I protected my work ethic and showed up and did the things that I knew I needed to accomplish every day, trusted in the process. And And before long it was like, boom, it's, this is like actually a very, very powerful and rewarding thing, right? It's ultimately about serving others, but the amount of reward that I received in the process was overwhelming. I have my little cheesy tagline where when I was a pararescueman, our life motto was that others may live, right? These things we do that others may live. Our concept is like, it's so beaten into our heads. That was, you know, my, my purpose, my North Star. And what I realized was that like, it's still my guiding purpose. That's still what I do. It's just living just has a little bit more definition, a little more clarity. It's not just vital signs anymore. Now it's quality of life. Now it's perceived rate of happiness. It's meaningful relationships with your family. It's excelling in your athletics. It's finding and defining your own purpose. So my purpose is still that others may live. I just leaned into it. I just reshaped it in a way that was very authentic. To me.

I really appreciate this answer because I heard two, I think, really important, worth repeating things is that as a leader, you know, you were trying to, to spread the gift of flow all over the place in, in the way that you knew best how to find it at the time and recognize that, you know, that wasn't necessarily serving everyone on your team, right? That it needed, they needed to find flow kind of in their own way. Um, and, and that can look like lots of different things. Um, but also recognizing in that journey that your true purpose looked a little different than where your feet were at the time, and you followed that to craft truly what is a more purposeful pursuit for you, right? And is more authentic.

Truly.

Right? So truly amazing.

Yeah. I mean, I definitely, I, it was not without a, you know, a few PowerPoints of like, okay, we can all go surfing. Here's how we do it. You know?

I remember, I remember. I was like, what if they don't want that? What if that's not intrinsically motivating to the whole team? That could be okay also.

No, but those who do— and then there's like nepotism, like, oh, he only wants to hang out with the surfers. I'm like, okay, this is, this is like a landmine waiting to happen. But what about those that do? What about those that do? And that was the, the like, what could go right, um, level of trust that I had. And I had that trust in my own inner resilience of like, you know what, I'm, I'm gonna be dealing with, uh, with doubt. I'm gonna be dealing with, you know, potential failure, but I have the tools to, to be resilient. I have proved that to myself time and time and time again. So just at least, at least give it a shot. That was my approach.

And the resilience, the resilience shows up again too in noticing maybe I'm currently in a role that is lucrative, that is allowing me a lifestyle that I, that I enjoy. I'm working with cool people, um, but it's not checking every single one of my intrinsic motivators. There might be something better for me out there. I have the agency and control to like step into the struggle in a new thing and a new path that's scary and uncertain, right? Talk about being resilient, right? Forging a new path, but look at where it's led you. Now all of your flow activities of helping other people, bringing out the best in them, helping them find flow. Right, and also back to the water, right?

So yeah, well, I work with a small little demographic in Silicon Valley, kind of some of those, those people who work in these, in the shadows and these ultra-high-net-worth private family offices. And I like to, I like to use the phrase golden handcuffs. Like they're, they're in these incredibly lucrative positions. You know, they're making exorbitant amounts of money, but there's no purpose there. They're watching somebody else live their own purpose and they're watching from the sidelines, somebody else get to wake up every day and have these purposeful, meaningful interactions changing and revolutionizing the world. And like, they're using a micro fraction of their potential. And that's stuff. It's like, let's go, let's go in there. Yeah.

So much opportunity.

So much, so much potential. I love it.

Amazing. Matt, this has been so much fun. Where can we, where can we follow you? Where, where can we continue to follow your journey? As a coach and an action sport athlete.

You can follow me anywhere, Ryan. I will lead the way, my friend.

I will, I will.

Yeah, I'll follow you.

Game on, man.

Yeah, for sure. Uh, I'm definitely— I definitely enjoy the, uh, the Instagram, the little, the little glimpses of, of artificial reality. And I try to show up very authentically on Instagram at Matt Scolard, um, all one word, uh, or SessionX coaching.com. SessionX Coaching. That's sort of my, my little catch-all platform, um, to— that speaks— it's still the intersection, uh, of, of action adventure sports and ultimate human potential. But there's definitely some wiggle room and subjective definitions of action sport. If you're in Hood River, you know where to find me on Saturday mornings, 10:30 to noon, the Hood River Aquatic Center, where we apply these lessons of resiliency and very, very high-flow real-world applications of, of this badassery that the Flow Research Collective does a phenomenal job with sharing with the world. Dude, I love your guys' mission, always have, and it was just an absolute pleasure to chat with you both today.

Likewise, Matt. Thanks for, thanks for hanging. It's always an absolute pleasure to, to spend time with you and, uh, I appreciate you for doing all the work you do and, and continuing to evangelize flow out in the universe. So thanks, man.

Yeah, thanks, Matt. Absolute honor, man.

Likewise.