201 Michael Gervais: Finding Mastery

We need each other. Nobody does anything alone. We need other people in our life, whether they're on that side of the tape or this side of the tape. And without them sharpening their sword, we don't get to know how to really refine the craft of doing the same here. So it's a long winded way of me saying that relationships are at the center of us becoming our very best. And it starts with our relationship with ourselves. And that inward journey is heavy.

That's Dr. Michael Gervais and this is.

Episode 201 of Wellness Force Radio.

What's up my friend? It's your host, Josh Trent. And welcome back to another episode for your weekly access to global experts in all things wellness as we discover the physical and emotional intelligence we need to live life well.

In this episode, we talk with Michael Gervais live from the Surf Movement Masterclass in partnership with Intelliskin. This is the continuation of our Stand Tall series bringing you the best of the best in physical intelligence, including our.

Posture, our breath work, our eating, moving.

And sleeping and strength training. And in this podcast, we're talking about finding mastery, not just physically, but emotionally as well. Co founder of Compete to Create A licensed psychologist and industry visionary, Dr. Michael Gervais focuses most of his time on people at the top of their game. From the NFL's Seattle Seahawks and NBA players to Olympians, military personnel and corporate leaders. He has spent years in the trenches of high stakes circumstances and also has developed a unique clarity for the tools that allow people to thrive under pressure. Gervais is a published peer reviewed author and a nationally recognized speaker on issues related to high performance for those who want to excel on some of the largest stages in the world. Now in this episode, we're going to learn so much about Dr. Gervais. We're talking about how we can better handle the distractions in our life. Why Michael believes that multitasking doesn't actually exist. What he believes, really it's called, is cognitive shifting. Why both athletes and everyday people have such a hard time with being emotionally present and also vulnerable to real emotion when the spotlight is on. And a review of the ancient brain, how extreme events and rejection are essentially just signals in our brain, in our body, designed to keep us alive. We'll also talk about why optimizing human potential, Michael believes, only comes through connection of body, mind and spirit. You're going to love Michael. He is a very educated man. He's also a very spiritual man and this quote sums him up. Michael believes the work is not to avoid Stress. That's the misnomer. The work is to ask and understand how do I stop creating stress that's not needed, and how do I facilitate the right amount of stress so that I can create adaptations? Let's step in live and in person from the Surf Movement Masterclass at the Hurley Headquarters with Dr. Michael Gervais. Josh Trent. With Dr. Michael Gervais. Thank you so much for sharing time with us today.

My pleasure.

We are at the Surf Movement Masterclass here live at Hurley Headquarters. And Finding Mastery is what people know about you. This Finding Mastery phrase, how did you even come up with this? What does that mean to you?

Well, yeah, thank you. It's. I don't know. It's something that just happened. The phrase. It's been an important phrase for me for a long time, and. And really, if you pull back the curtain on it a little bit, Finding Mastery podcast is meant to understand what is a living masterpiece. And so I'm fortunate enough to have inspired conversations with people that have dedicated their life efforts to understanding the nuances of craft and self. And that's what those conversations are about.

This conversation around our physical and emotional intelligence. We talk about it so much. I got the pleasure of meeting you this morning, and there was something in my curiosity that was sparked. It was this discovery of both, how do we have both? And in a world where we're constantly distracted, Gay Hendricks calls it weapons of mass distraction. How do we deal with this. This bombardment of our nervous system? So many things coming at us, from calendar notifications to everything else.

You know, I spent a lot of time understanding the science of how the mind works, and there's no easy answer to that question. And so the new currency, though, is attention. That is our new currency. And we are aware that multitasking doesn't exist. It's actually called cognitive shifting. And when we shift cognitively from one thought or activity to another, there's a cost to it. There's a cost of time and a cost of depth. So multitasking is something that is, I don't know, a symptom of a wanting to do a lot in life. And I think you can find that people say, you know, you say, hey, how you doing? You busy? Like, you're doing a lot. And it used to be a badge of honor, and it's no longer a badge of honor. It's almost like when people say, oh, man, I am so busy. It doesn't mean that I'm in high demand and I'm doing good work. It means that I'm not organizing my life purpose well enough. And I haven't figured out how to really have dignity and regard for the way I spend my time, both from a quality standpoint and obviously quantity. So the new wealth, the old wealth was a big house, big car, big watch, you know, big attention if you will. And the new wealth is not that. It's the new wealth will be an output of the quality of the inner experience. So we're no longer heralding that the outer doing, if you will, is the, is the thing that people are striving for. I'm not suggesting that it's not okay to have a beautiful car, watch, whatever, whatever. I'm suggesting though that what I'm finding from people that are in the trenches, they're deeply committed to exploring the nuances of their talents, is that they are finding and sharing and the science isn't there yet. And again, you know, a long history, an academic and personal history, trying to find out, you know, how does the mind and body work together? And there's no easy answer, but what people are, what's happening for me on the street, if you will, so to speak, of high stakes environments is they're like listening. My job is to do dangerous things like in high consequence environments. I don't see them as dangerous as you see them, but there's high consequence environments. And what I'm really searching for is to be me. And we need men and women that are going to push to the edge of their envelope and come back from the frontier and tell us how it is out there and then what they've learned. And mystical sages have been doing that for years as well as, you know, modern action sport athletes and, and entrepreneurs that are changing the world. And you know, so we need those men and women to remind us what is really real.

I think about what Jordan Peterson quotes in his work. We have really what is called the beast of burden methodology that we work from. So this eustress and distress model. I know that you work with people at the top of performance edge. How do we maintain too much stress for a, you know, according period of time? And then how do we adjust from that? You know, we have so much stress going on, but then yet we are these beasts of burden. Too much stress is too much, but what's enough?

Well, it's the way we regulate stress. I mean the idea is not to escape stress, it's to understand how we create it and how we work with it. So we're not trying. No one's gonna get very good at anything without stress. So stress is really about change, you know, and adaptation eventually. So what we're really looking for is the ability to trust ourselves in the present moment so that we can be present enough to embrace the unpredictable unfolding unknown, which is always right now. And that is not an easy thing to do, especially when we've got this internal noise, this self dialogue and meaning making machine of our mind that's oftentimes undisciplined because it's untrained. And so the work is not to avoid stress. That's the misnomer. The work is to understand how do I create stress that is not needed and how do I facilitate the right amount of stress so that I can create adaptations, which is a marker of growth for any organism. Organism, yeah. And how do we create adaptations? Well, we get to the edge, the razor's edge of our capacity and we hang out there as long as we possibly can. Even if it's a nanosecond.

Yeah.

And you know, I'm sure you're familiar with this, but a long exhale will do that. And if you just took all of the oxygen in. Brian McKenzie is beautiful about this. If you're familiar with his work and he's just suggest challenge. People exhale everything and we want to inhale and we're okay. There's plenty of oxygen, you know. Right. And so that'll create some anxiousness. Saying difficult, intimate things to people that's really hard for us to do as well. So how do we get to the edge of our capacity? No longer do we need to just lift heavy things or run really far. Yeah, those are cool, they work. But there's an emotional way to do it as well.

This vulnerability. Brene Brown, obviously she's been seen by millions of people. Now. It's funny that we're really talking, talking about this more often than anything else. It's this emotional vulnerability that seems so much harder than any physical feat ever. Why is that?

Well, it's something that we can all relate to. But why is it so hard is because we don't practice it. I mean, you know, anything that we don't practice is hard.

Do you feel like it's more scary though than climbing Mount Whitney?

I mean, at times, no, they're equally, equally different. You know. You climb Mount Whitney? Well, Whitney's. I mean, let's do what Alex and all just recently did. He climbed, climbed El Capitan without any ropes or assistance. 3,000ft. Sheer granite. And it was him and his hands and his feet and that's it and so is that he reports that to not be dangerous. He reports that to be high consequence. And so what, you know, saying I love you to somebody or saying, hey, when you said that, it really hurts my feelings or something emotional. You know, in a vulnerable thing, there's just different consequences, you know. So what is the worst thing that happens if you say something that someone disapproves? They use it against you later. So it's mistrust, it's betrayal. So betrayal is like the thing that we're more afraid of. And, you know, so we've got lots of layers of protections from that. So. But in the physical world, what we're afraid of is looking bad. Right. And maybe crashing and burning and losing limbs or potentially life of loved ones. So I think there's far worse things than dying.

Yeah. There's a cascade of hormones that happen, though, and it seems like, you know, our ancient brain, it gives us these messages as if we're dying in these moments of rejection. How do we overcome that? Or even are we meant to?

Yeah, it's there for a reason. But, you know, I'm not sure it's like necessarily overcoming, but it's the path through it is to observe it.

Yeah.

To recognize it, to, you know, you don't need to judge it or whatever. Like, just feel it. And then what ends up happening when you do that without critique and judgment, is that you just realize, like, oh, shit, that's not so bad. It's not as bad as I thought, you know?

Yes.

And so I don't know if there's a greater freedom than authenticity and being truthful about your experiences and what you know and what you don't know and what you care about and what you're confused by and, you know. So an authentic expression of oneself is right at the center of what mastery looks like and feels like. And that is available to all of us. But it requires an inward journey. There's a real journey that's required to get to the core insights of what makes you, you. And fulfillment and peace and happiness and contentment and joy and high performance all happen in the present moment.

Yeah.

And so conditioning our minds to be in the present moment every day. And then, you know, eventually that skill of being present turns into the state of being aware, you know, so skill to state. And then when you have the state long enough, it eventually turns into a trait. And so that's like, where it really gets.

This is the true practice of mindfulness. You describe mindfulness as really being in the present moment without Judgment. I love that so much.

It's not. It's not mine, but yes, that's a well accepted.

Sounded great coming out of your mouth. Where did you come across that? And what do you want people to feel when they hear that?

I'm not sure I want them to feel anything with that. I want them. Actually, it's a great question and I don't have an answer for you because I've never thought about it. So when I describe mindfulness, I will say this. Is that what's hard about it is that it's invisible. And Cat Stevens is a beautiful poet and author and musician. And Cat Stevens has a line that I just think rings so true, is he says, I listen to my words and they fall far below. So trying to articulate what mindfulness is is nearly impossible for me. And so when I give a definition, it's just to give some mechanics and some words to something that is available to all of us. But it really is the experience and the embodiment, to use a little bit more tangible words, of being complete and connected to this moment. And so I don't know if we're not careful, it sounds really trite if you're not careful. It sounds so mystic.

Yes.

But, you know, the concreteness of it, once you experience it is. Speaks for itself.

One of the powerful things you said during the Q and A is you said very first, I'm a spiritual man, which, which hit me and it made me take a breath and I thought, how do we blend this, how do we blend practicality with spirituality in this world right now?

Well, I mean, that's a really thoughtful question. I say that because undergrad psychology, master's degree, kinesiology, what's now known as sports science, Back to a PhD in Psychology, licensed as a psychologist. So I've got the, you know, the real appreciation for the value of science. And so much so that Coach Carol, my business partner, Coach Carol is the head coach of the Seattle Seahawks. And he and I fired up a business together about taking his insights on how he's organized cultures to become alive and then my insights about how to train the minds of people that want to be great. And one plus one, his insights and my insights together turned in not two, but like 11. And so it's working. And we've been sharing those practices with businesses. And then we built a with at USC School of Marshall, University of Southern California, at the School of Marshall, the Performance Science Institute, which is a whole institute to measure, to understand, to really get deep into the weeds about what does it mean to be human and perform to our optimal levels? And so we've got a full institute with, with the support of USC that we're right in the fledging of right now. So it's phenomenal. So to answer your question, I don't know, it's hard. It's really hard. You know, where's that intersection nexus between science and spirituality? I think that if I had the answer, I'd appreciate it, but I don't.

You quite possibly could be levitating as well. One other thing you said is really, when it comes to visualization for athletes and everyday athletes.

Imagery, imagery, imagery. Yeah.

There's no time for extra, which I thought that's so true. There's never the right time to go on your run, to eat healthy, to go to the gym. There's never going to be, quote, the right time. But what is the time that we can allow ourselves to have? What does that look like?

Well, that goes back, I think, to that thought that people are busy, busy. We are busy, busy, busy. And so there is no extra, you know, and this. If the, If a new currency is attention, and attention meaning coming back to the present moment and having the mental skills to be back in the present moment, is that there is no time for extra because there is always an option to do more. And I think many of us have swallowed based on our great, great grandparents who came through the Industrial Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, your parents and my family and our great parents and my families as well. They came home because we're. We're figuring it out right now the best, you and I, I'm looking at you here.

Yeah.

Is that they came home some kind of way and said, hey, machines are not taking over. Machines are coming. They're, you know, this Industrial Revolution, I'll be damned if they, you know, replace the human. And in this family, we. We're going to figure it out and I'm going to watch. And so there was like this pride of work, and it's migrated over a couple generations that we need to do more, to be more. And there's lots of doing, but it will never provide what it feels like to be you. And so what I'm learning from some of the best in the world across multiple domains. Arts and music and business and entrepreneurship and, of course, athletics. Is that. No, no, no, no. It's about being my work in this craft of doing is to be me. And if I can be grounded and present and focused and authentic and express myself. The expression is the doing, then it's going to work consistently in any environment. Whether the lights are on, they're off, whether it's the quote unquote rivals or whatever. We, by the way, what is a rival? We need each other. Nobody does anything alone. We need other people in our life. And whether they're on that side of the tape, you know, the, whatever the tape is, or this side of the tape, we need them. And without them, and without them sharpening their sword, we don't get to know how, you know, to really refine the craft of doing the same here. So it's a long winded way of me saying that relationships are at the center of us becoming our very best. And it starts with our relationship with ourself. And that inward journey is heavy and.

There'S twists and turns. It's not so sexy. I mean, it's not like a guide you can download from a website. This takes deep work. The introspection, though, that, that process of going within. Who has taught you that? Is this self taught for you? I mean, who's been like a deep mentor for you? That's really guided you along that way?

That's a good question. What's, what's leaking that I've needed mentorship, you know, Yes, I needed mentors growing up. And I was fortunate enough, what's up, Gary de Blasio, you know, to have mentors. I've had many mentors that have helped be further down the path of understanding, you know, and I was ripping and running and thought that meditation was the stupidest thing. What are we talking about?

Why are these people sitting still?

What? You know, what a waste of time. And so that was, you know, I'm new to the art and science and 20 years practicing mindfulness. And then, you know, I was fortunate enough to be exposed to a professor in graduate school that started every class with about a six or eight minute meditation. He didn't call it that. He didn't say anything. He said, okay, we're going to get focused here. Let's start class the way we start. And I looked around like, we really doing this? What are we doing? Like, I want to hear, I want to learn. And so it was his way of introducing a quiet mind to learn more efficiently. And so back to, back to, oh, this is really fun. Back to that business model that coach and I, Carol and I fired up is that we've been fortunate enough to work with enterprises large, large Fortune 25 companies and 50 companies, I guess I should say. And one of the practices over the last two years, we've done 240,000 human hours of mindset training inside of one corporation. And what's ended up happening is that they're starting to take the practice of mindfulness and mindset training. Mindfulness is necessary but not sufficient. And they've taken these practices and rolled it into their daily rhythms in work. So many of them are starting their meetings with mindfulness a la what happened 20 years ago to me. Because what ends up happening is you quiet your mind down. Everyone's busy, busy, busy. Right, Right. We're running, gunning. Okay. Those of us that are working to be more grounded and centered, go. Because I'm going to learn more. If my mind is focused and present and I have a way about taking in information and it's not competing with the internal noise that's also there, then what ends up happening is I learn more and I'll be more effective if I can have a more grounded output. So it's about an input output process. And I don't know, it's been really fun to watch these, some of the brightest minds in business adopt and be interested in the mental game.

I liked how you reconnected it to what you're doing with Coach. One other thing you mentioned was systematic desensitization, which is essentially. I've heard Dr. Courtney Warren on the show talk about this, where you put somebody in a stimulus where it scares them, but it doesn't scare them so much to where they're not curious about how they could overcome it. Next time, can you expound upon that a little bit? This systematic desensitization.

Yeah. Well, so there's two words and these are all psychological, well understood and research methodologies. Systematic desensitization and. Or flooding. Right. And so let's talk about a systematic way to desensitize somebody to a stimulus. Is that. I don't know, call it whatever, whatever. The thing is that you're afraid of.

Scared of an elevator. Scared of heights.

Yeah. It doesn't matter.

Yeah.

And so you get clarity on what the thing is you want to work on. And then you just create a hierarchy sheet like walk, getting out of my car and walking to the building that has an elevator. Score that one out of ten. Let's call it one. Walking into being in the lobby and hearing the doorbell or the elevator door, you know, that's a two. Maybe pushing the button is a three. Walking in is a four. So you're building up like until you're actually in the thing. And it's a 10, right? 10. 10 out of 10. And then so you systematically create a chain of intensity, right? Then we arm them with the, with skills to be able to regulate their emotional and arousal experience. So that, that's simple. It's about thinking, patterns of thinking that to override the DNA or override the automatic response or the learned response in many cases and, or, and or breathing techniques to actually calm the physiology of fear. And so it's, we arm them with them, we train them. And it's not like you just walk them into a difficult situation and say, figure it out, okay, you're done, get out, you're done. You know, it's not like that. You systematically walk them through a process of exposing them to the stimulus, having them have the fear response using their tools, and then when they graduate from level one, they can go to level two. That's it. I mean it's good science and it's really hard to do. And so, you know, it's hard.

And this probably applies to athletes because you think about somebody that crashes on a 50 foot wave, they're probably having the same neuroconnect response. Their nervous system is flooded the next time they go out to that same experience.

Sometimes, you know, sometimes we don't know. We don't have a signature heat map of why something's going to be traumatic or, you know, over, over aroused, if you will. So sometimes and sometimes not. So we don't want to make a big deal about things because it's not like it's always there. Like you've been through heavy things and you're like, ah. And sometimes you've been through little things are like, whoa, that freaks out, you know. So true. Yeah, yeah.

All right, well, as we say goodbye here, let's wrap up with this one thing. The practicality and the spirituality. You are the spiritual man, but yet you, you have such academia behind you. For people that are interested in walking this line that you're walking right now, this introspective, spiritual and logical discovery of what it means to be a human being, what are some starting steps for them?

Figure out your edges. So there's, you know, it's not like this, I don't know.

I want to.

Use a reference to Christianity for a minute, like this is probably going to get me a lot of trouble in a lot of circles. But the disciples were nuts, you know, they were, they were madmen. You know, they left everything. They were, they were literally the rebels of the town that left everything and followed this guy because he was onto something. So I like that, I like that. Appreciation of get on the edges, that's where you find home. You know, travel internally and externally to figure out what are your edges, what are literally what is the razor's edge of vulnerability for you? What is the razor's edge of focus? Or what is the razor's edge of lifting something heavy? So figuring out those razor's edge and the situations that provoke them and then spend more time in them to master them. So that's how you figure out how to create more space so that you can play more often. And what I found from people that play the most, they are pretty damn free.

Absolutely.

Yeah. And that's gonna sound trite, but it's a state of mind and we can set our mind. We talk about mindset training, we can set our mind. And that just takes a little training as well.

How would you define this then? I always ask people this question and I'm so curious how you might answer this. This wellness that we always want to achieve, it's the state of living well, what does wellness mean to you? How would you define wellness?

That's good. That's a really thoughtful question. I like the idea of wellness, that it's a well. And so my job as a craftsman of being a psychologist is that my well needs to be as deep as any other person that's going to sit across from me. And so wellness is about a reservoir of being able to stay present in any environment. And I'm not saying I'm master that, I'm not trying to say that by any means. What I'm saying is my job. Wellness for me is having a deep reservoir, the depth of emotional experiences and emotional feelings in the moment and knowing how to tolerate and be and accept and embrace and keep going so that people around me that are have hired me to do the work can do the same. So when we have a deep well, that's what wellness is for me. And there's really, for me, there's four parts of wellness. There's sleeping well. This is part of like a recovery program. Sleeping well, eating and hydrating well, moving well. And then when you get those things together and can think well, that is really what physical, mental, spiritual, emotional wellness is about getting onto the edge, pushing limits as often as you possibly can, recovering in a world class way so that you can build a well of depth and so that you can explore the depth of the human experience.

Well, drop the mic, we're done. That was a phenomenal answer. Thank you so much for spending time with us.

I appreciate. Yeah, this is a great event and great questions.

Thank you very much. Where can people learn more about you if they want to check you out more? Findingmastery.com.net.

Net findingmastery.net is the podcast and then the company with Coach and I is called Compete to create dot net. Yeah, Compete to create. So his philosophy is always compete to become your very best. And my philosophy is every day is an opportunity to create a living masterpiece. So it's create, compete to create. And then social media stuff is good, which is Instagram is Ichael Gervais. We've got Twitter is at Michael Gervais. We've also got an Instagram on Finding Mastery. And then we've got this tribe that we've built on Facebook that's just been rad.

What's the tribe called on Facebook?

Yeah, it's called Finding Mastery Tribe.

Finding Mastery Tribe.

And it's just, it's like thousands and thousands of people that are supporting and challenging each other, each other on their paths of mastery. It's rad. It's really cool. So that's been one of the, some of the gold dust of creating Finding Mastery is this tribe that's taken place and then the last place is LinkedIn. And yeah, Michael Gervais on LinkedIn.

Michael Gervais, Josh Trepp. Michael Gervais saying goodbye from Hurley headquarters for the surf movement masterclass. We'll talk to you soon.

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