Dr. Michael Gervais On Elite Performance & The Psychology of Self-Mastery

At the highest echelon of elite performance, all the athletes possess otherworldly talent. Their thirst for glory is equally preternatural. All of them train to the outer limits of physical possibility. And they are all extraordinarily adroit at focusing on almost inhuman, impossible goals. So what accounts for the distance between the Olympic gold medalist standing proudly atop the podium and the athlete watching the games on television at home? Is it luck? Talent? Support? Resources? Of course every result is significantly influenced by some combination of these important variables. But all things being equal, the difference between the champion and the also ran boils down to one distinct variable: The mind. Once the embarrassing last stop on a flailing athlete’s career, the world's top sports psychologists now enjoys a highly influential and respected role proactively honing the mental and emotional edge of today's most successful athletes, CEOs and creatives looking to elevate peak performance beyond the imaginable. Enter Dr. Michael Gervais — the go to high performance psychologist everyone is talking about. A key member of the Red Bull High Performance Program, Michael works in the trenches of high-stakes environments with some of the world's most prolific Olympic and professional athletes — rare air where there is no luxury for mistakes, hesitation, or failure to respond. Dr. Gervais' results are beyond impressive. If you follow the NFL, then you might recall Michael as the guy Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll credits as integral in their 2014 Super Bowl win for the meditation, mindfulness and other crucial team building techniques he helped foster and instill into the fabric of the Seahawks organization and team culture that paved the team’s path towards incredible success. You might also remember that Felix Baumgartner’s now-infamous Red Bull Stratos jump from an altitude of 128,000 feet almost never was simply because Felix simply could not overcome the high level of anxiety and claustrophobia he experienced every time he donned the jump suit. It was none other than Gervais who helped Baumagartner resolve the issue and get Stratos back on track. No Gervais, no history making jump. And more recently, Michael is the man behind Luke Aikins, who astonished the world this past July by becoming the first skydiver to jump from a plane at 25,000 feet without a parachute or wingsuit and live to tell the story. Dr. Gervais has also worked intimately with US Olympic Team members like beach volleyball superstar Kerry Walsh Jennings, as well as swimmers, snowboarders, golfers, basketball players, track and field athletes, an impressive array of top collegiate programs, and professional sports organizations including the NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB and UFC. In addition, his work has played an integral role in the US Military, as well as several collegiate and high school programs. While Dr. Gervais’ roster includes some of the sports world’s most elite, this isn’t just about high performance athletes. Enjoy! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Michael Gervais?

  Mastery is available for all of us, especially the journey of self-discovery. And that's really what mastery of self is about. This journey of self-discovery that is available for everybody. Some people use a craft to better understand themselves and to better understand people in general. The craft of sport, or music, or whatever business. That craft is really just as really rich experience to learn more about who you are.

• 1:30Rich Roll?

  That's high-performance sports psychologist Michael Gervais, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:45Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How you guys doing? What's going on? My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. Welcome, or welcome back, to the podcast where I have the great honor, the great privilege, of going deep and wide with some of the most inspiring thought leaders and positive paradigm-breaking change-makers all across the globe. People who have devoted their lives to making the world a better place. And I do this, I bring you these conversations, to help all of us unlock and unleash our best, most authentic self. So, I've got a great guest for you guys today, an amazing conversation. But before I get into that, let's acknowledge the awesome organizations that make this show possible.

• 2:29Rich Roll?

  Super excited about today's guest. I know I say that every week, but it is true. And this week, it's particularly true. Today on the show marks the return of my good friend, Michael Gervais, who, as I said earlier, is a high-performance sports psychologist. And he's a guy who works with some of the most high-profile professional and Olympic athletes in the world. You might know him as the man who pioneered meditation, mindfulness, and team-building practices with the Seattle Seahawks under legendary coach Pete Carroll. Coach Carroll credits Michael as integral in their Super Bowl win. And Michael's also the guy who helped Felix Baumgartner get his head right so he could jump out of the

• 3:11Rich Roll?

  Red Bull Stratos capsule at 128,000 feet. And more recently, Michael is the man behind a guy named Luke Atkins. And Luke is the guy who set a world record this past July by becoming the first skydiver to jump from a plane at 25,000 feet without a parachute. No parachute, no wingsuit. He landed in a net. He lived to tell the story. And we talk about that in the podcast near the end. I first sat down with Michael in December of 2014. That's RRP 120. It was such a great conversation. We've become friends since. And that was a conversation about the opportunity we all have every day to create a living masterpiece.

• 3:54Rich Roll?

  And what was really cool about that initial podcast was that it was the catalyst, it was the inspiration for Michael to start his own podcast, which is awesome. I take a lot of pride and satisfaction in helping to inspire him to do this because I think he's just so gifted and it's a perfect medium for him sharing his expertise. His podcast is called Finding Mastery. I've been fortunate to be a guest on his show and it's really fantastic and totally unique. You should all check it out. It's about deeply mining the mindset and the practices of high performers in a wide array of disciplines. And Michael just has a knack, a touch, a level of experience.

• 4:36Rich Roll?

  And expertise that he could just go deeper than anybody else in a really unique and profound way. So definitely check that out. Okay, so this conversation picks up where RRP 120, my original conversation with Michael leaves off, and we delve much deeper into what makes Michael tick. And we even venture into some really fascinating and surprisingly mystical areas here. But at its core, this is a conversation about the crucial components of maximizing performance in sport and life. We explore the freedom of courage. We talk about something Michael calls an off axis nature. We discuss the principles of effective coaching, pursuing the razor's edge, and the power of positive thinking, and what is really required to master

• 5:21Rich Roll?

  the self. Michael is truly, truly one of my favorite people. He's just a really magical, amazing person. And this is just such a cool conversation. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed having it. So let's do it.

• 5:40Rich Roll?

  How's it going?

• 5:41Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, so good.

• 5:43Rich Roll?

  It's so great to see you. It's been a while, but when I walked in here, and we had a nice hug, it was like, we're brothers, man, in this podcast game.

• 5:53Michael Gervais?

  Well, you know, it's funny is that so when you're coming down, I was just curious about what we're going to talk about. And can you hear that, you think, in the background?

• 6:03Rich Roll?

  It's okay. It's just the vibe.

• 6:05Michael Gervais?

  We've done this every time. Like, the first time we did this, there was something like-

• 6:08Rich Roll?

  We don't live in a hermetically sealed universe that we can control, Michael. Isn't this the focus of your practice with the athletes you work with?

• 6:15Michael Gervais?

  So as you're coming down, I was wondering what we're going to talk about. And I thought that, God, you know, like, the first time we met, it was such an awakening. Because I'd done other podcasts, but it was really an awakening of what it felt like to be in a podcast. So I just want to thank you again for introducing me to the way it felt to have an organic and real conversation with someone that was really curious. And it wasn't about media and broadcasting, but it was really just a curious conversation. So I want to thank you for for opening that up to me.

• 6:44Rich Roll?

  Well, thank you for being so- Open and having so much candor in our initial conversation. In the wake of that, yeah, like we had communicated via email a number of times. And you were like, hey, what's up with this? You know, I'm thinking about doing a podcast. And I was like, that's great. Like, I think it's the perfect medium for your message and your disposition and your personality. And so it's been very-

• 7:08Michael Gervais?

  Did you just say I have like a face and a personality for ready? You did. Oh, my God.

• 7:11Rich Roll?

  Oh, you see, that's interesting. You're interpreting it as a negative. Wow. If I was you, I'd be like, what's behind that, Michael?

• 7:19Michael Gervais?

  That's really good.

• 7:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 7:22Rich Roll?

  No, I think that you're, you're, you're perfect for the, like, your temperament is beautifully suited for this medium. And so it wasn't a surprise to me that you would be interested in exploring this medium. And then it's been cool to just kind of sit back and answer a couple of questions for you here and there. And to see you create this, not just a show, but a community.

• 7:42Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, I'm super grateful. Thank you.

• 7:44Rich Roll?

  You've grown this thing into a really cool thing, and I love the show. And, you know, as predicted, you are very good at it. It's been really cool. So I guess the first thing I want to talk about is just what has that, what has this, you know, podcast adventure and experience? You know, how has it been for you? And what have you learned from it? And what's it all about?

• 8:04Michael Gervais?

  Phew. Okay, so I think we're somewhere in, we're about at a year mark of doing it. And it, there's been some cycles. So at first, the first cycle was, wow, this is going to be great. Like, I'm, I'm looking forward to this. I can't wait to meet some people and celebrate. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. Like, I was really, like, gung ho and on it about. And then the first hurdle is like, okay, technology and how do you set up the process? And, you know, that's relatively easy now. And so thank you again for the help. And so that was like the first ways, the first phase of like preparation and getting ready. And then, The setbacks and obstacles were like getting the look and feel of the website right. And like, what is the right way to develop a platform?

• 8:47Michael Gervais?

  And then the second, right after that was like, well, okay, so my mom, my dad, my wife, my, you know, like, who's listening? You know, like, not many people from the get. And then building the right community to, or inviting people to be part of the community was, is challenging.

• 9:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 9:04Michael Gervais?

  And so.

• 9:05Rich Roll?

  Well, it's tricky for you. I mean, first of all, everything you've done is super pro, like the website looks phenomenal. It's like the perfect website for a podcast. And everything is top notch, like right out of the gate. But I would imagine it's tricky for you because in the business that you're in, a lot of the people that I would imagine would be interesting to have on the podcast are people that you're working with professionally. And that creates this weird, you know, sort of line that you probably can't cross.

• 9:33Michael Gervais?

  It's it. So I made a commitment to not have anyone that I've worked with in the past in a professional capacity, like via craft of psychology, to not have them on the podcast. And for some.

• 9:46Rich Roll?

  Even if they say they want to?

• 9:47Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, and many, most have. And some that are best in the world and it's very public that we've worked together. And, you know, I'm grinning right now because I'd love, I'd love to do it. But I don't want to cross any lines ever perception wise or undue influence or introduce something that is just a different mix other than our shared agreement, which is it's about that person being the best version of themselves. And that's our primary agreement. So, yeah, it's a little bit of a bummer.

• 10:19Rich Roll?

  You've gotten very good at using pronouns in your show, though, instead of proper names. And I'm like, I wonder who he's talking about? Like, I'm like, well, I was talking to this guy. He's the absolute best in the world and has been forever. I mean, the best. And he said this to me and you can't help but go, all right, who would that be? Would it be this guy? Is it Michael Phelps? Is it like?

• 10:37Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 10:37Rich Roll?

  Like, who's Michael working with behind the lines? So you create this mystique.

• 10:41Michael Gervais?

  Oh, is that? Well, so I try to figure out.

• 10:43Rich Roll?

  The practice of Michael Gervais.

• 10:44Michael Gervais?

  That's funny, because I try to figure out the right way to be vague enough, but also. Capture the right essence of the story or the insight that was shared with me. That is tricky because I've learned so much from people that are in the amphitheater, whatever amphitheater that they're most attracted to. I've learned so much from them. And that's one of the reasons that this experience for me to have a podcast has been phenomenal. Because now I'm able to celebrate others that I haven't worked with, but that are deep into their craft, have some insight and understanding about how they work, the world works, or their world works. And that part's been just a continued learning for me.

• 11:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's cool. I mean, despite your expertise and your experience, it's not the teaching mastery podcast. It's the finding mastery podcast. So you're putting yourself in the position of the audience member like, let's go explore these other people. And I'm not going to tell them what's what. They're going to tell me what's what, or we're just going to have this cool conversation. And it's impossible, at least in my experience, when I have these conversations, to not walk away feeling like, oh yeah, of course I've learned all kinds of things, right? Now it's up to me, how am I going to implement this into my life? And for you perhaps, how am I going to sort of take this nugget and incorporate it into the work that I do with the athletes that I work with?

• 12:03Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, so that's the part. I'd love to get your take on this because so if there was a couple hurdles upfront, a lot of excitement, a couple hurdles, but the excitement and passion carries through to figure things out on the podcast or to get the podcast going. And then there's lots of insight that people have that have been deep in the trenches of any craft. And working to understand those insights is one thing. And that's kind of what the conversation is about. Organizing those is a totally different thing. And we're doing that like behind the scenes in preparation for getting better, to try to make sense of what people are saying, putting things in themes and organizing them that way.

• 12:42Rich Roll?

  Right, like trying to canonize like the consistencies or the actual kernels of wisdom that are coming out of each one of them?

• 12:49Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, because some people, person A and person B conflict, and they see things completely different. So I'll ask a question about pressure. Where does pressure come from? And I can't remember who says internal and who says external right now, but plenty of people say, oh, it's totally from within. Most people say that, but there's some that are world-class that say, oh, it's always from outside. So like, what do we do with that? Like, how do we make sense of that? And so that's what I'm trying to sort out now. So I'd love to know how you learn from the people that you're spending time with, and then apply it within yourself. Are you, do you have a way that you're assimilating this information?

• 13:29Rich Roll?

  First of all, you're just, you're trying to flip it on me here. Don't think I don't know that.

• 13:33Michael Gervais?

  I'm not.

• 13:35Rich Roll?

  You know, like, I know you can't help it because of what you do.

• 13:39Rich Roll?

  But it's cool. I'll try to answer that. I don't know that I have a systemic approach to that. I expect that everybody's going to have their own personal experiences and those are going to be all over the map. And I look for consistencies, you know, more than I look for conflicts, I suppose, but

• 13:59Rich Roll?

  I don't know. I think, I think I take what resonates with me and I discard the rest, you know? And I think if you're just looking to, I think, I try to empathize and put myself in the shoes of the guest and try to, you know, walk a mile or walk a couple of blocks and see how that feels.

• 14:21Rich Roll?

  And there's always going to be something that works, but I try to challenge my own like worldview and my own like perception of dogma and all of that that I carry around, because unless you do that, you're not going to grow and change, right? But I think there are certain things that you're just, you're hardwired one way or the other. Like, if you're somebody who is motivated by internal pressure versus external pressure, I don't think that's going to change, you know? I just think that there are different kinds of people, like, it's not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing, where you can say, here's your protocol for finding mastery, or, you know, becoming your best self, or whatever it is. Like, there's many paths to that, as, you know, I'm sure you would agree.

• 15:01Michael Gervais?

  Thousand percent.

• 15:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So, so when you're doing that, I mean, what, how, I mean, have there been, has it been, have there been surprises? Like, have you learned in ways that you didn't expect and has that changed how you do what you do?

• 15:14Michael Gervais?

  Cool question. I don't think there's been like these dramatic shifts in what I've come to understand. There's lots of reinforcements. There's different ways of saying, I think the same thing. And so I'm struck by as the variance in ways that people are saying the same thing. So that part's been really fun and it almost feels playful. It feels like many of the folks that I'm spending time with on the podcast, their new questions, they haven't necessarily thought a lot about them and they're dancing in a way with the question that is on the spot. They're illuminating the essence of how they think and do. And so that part has been like just to see them work has been really fun. There was one person that right afterwards came,

• 15:59Michael Gervais?

  you know, like the mics turned off and right, almost right after said, that was really hard. Like, like that was really hard. And because we're trying to get to something that is like authentic and real and not talk about pizza and not talk about like favorite restaurants and, you know, like all that stuff, but like down in the depths of like the deepest part of a person, how do they understand and where are they coming from?

• 16:27Rich Roll?

  And it's hard to get to that place, especially if you have somebody who's media savvy and is used to doing interviews. It's like 15 minutes of building rapport, then, you know, 15 to 30 minutes of them sort of spitting out what they usually spit out when they're being interviewed, until you exhaust that. And then you're like, okay, now we can get to who you really are. But you have like this, you know, you have like the turnpike, like the, the, the hyperloop approach to getting right to who they are pretty quickly. Of course, that's through all of your experience and training and all of that. But I love when you kind of identify something interesting or special and you get so excited. You're like, oh, that's it. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Let's go.

• 17:10Michael Gervais?

  What is that? You know, I, I got some feedback recently from a couple of folks. And then I saw that the person who's helped me, Trevor, is helping me on the backend on the website piece.

• 17:23Michael Gervais?

  And so there's some feedback that came in, like, why does Mike keep cutting people off? And so I'd love to give you this this nugget for you. Maybe you can use it and play with it. When you disrupt somebody's flow of thought and you disrupt somebody's cadence in their own rhythm of their own mind, there's like, there's a neurochemical release that takes place where attention is heightened. And now, once that happens, then it becomes easier to get right to the truth. Right? So as soon as people are media savvy and they're answering the question that they know they should answer it, and they tripped onto something that's really good, and that you know they're not going to go any further. And that's a really wonderful moment to interrupt somebody. But sometimes it feels rude, because in social

• 18:07Michael Gervais?

  settings, it is. But in depth of conversation, it doesn't have to be that way.

• 18:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I get that. I struggle with that, too. I mean, I've gotten that feedback in the past, and then I've gone too far in the other direction. And when you have somebody who's media savvy, and you just let them run wild, it ends up being a pretty tepid conversation.

• 18:26Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, it feels like an interview that you would get on fill in the blanks news network.

• 18:29Rich Roll?

  Right, exactly. So how do you find that? You know, how do you make it special? How do you make it different? And it's been interesting for me, because we've shared a couple of the same guests, right? We've had, we've had, I made a little list here, Colin O'Brady, Anthony Irvin, Ryan Holiday, Dan Harris are all people that, there's probably some others, too, but those are the ones that come to mind. And, and I think, maybe in every case, I interviewed them before you did, or at least my episode aired first. So then it's like, oh, I think I did a pretty good job with that. And then I listen to you, and I'm like, oh, that's so good. Totally different, but like, totally different. You're getting a, you're getting a very interesting perspective on this person's life in a way

• 19:11Rich Roll?

  that's very unique, very unique, and very, very much you, very different from me, but, you know, amazing in its own right. And it's cool that those can kind of coexist. But I thank you because I've learned a lot about how to talk to people and how to make it interesting from listening to how you've, you know, talked to people that I've had a good portion of meeting.

• 19:29Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, and all of those people are on it, aren't they?

• 19:32Rich Roll?

  Oh, my God. It's crazy.

• 19:34Michael Gervais?

  How fun was it to follow Anthony Irvin during the Olympics?

• 19:37Rich Roll?

  It was, it was the most amazing thing. And I see his book sitting right over there, Chasing Water. And you happen to be there in person, but I can tell you from being in Los Angeles, and I think we actually did. We interviewed him on the same day. I think he was with you in the morning and then he came over to my house.

• 19:56Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 19:56Rich Roll?

  And I had technical glitches with that, like, and like, my dog kept interrupting, like, it didn't go to plan. You know what I mean? Like, I got some great stuff out of him and we ended up hanging out all afternoon and I really bonded with him and I feel very close to that guy. Like, I just, I feel like I understand him and I feel like we bonded in a really cool way and I'm not sure I did the best job of getting that recorded and I would like to do it again with him, but.

• 20:21Michael Gervais?

  That thought is real for me is that after a conversation, I walk away from any conversation I have with somebody and I just have this sense like, did I honor and capture the truth of who they are?

• 20:35Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 20:35Michael Gervais?

  And how they really understand the world and was there enough space where the questions, right? And I mean, like, emotional and psychological and spiritual space to get to the essence of the person.

• 20:45Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 20:46Michael Gervais?

  And, you know, I think, and then the other part that's, uh, drives me crazy is that when I feel like it's, it was a good connection, a good rapport, good insights, and we held that relationship in esteem, with esteem, that, you know, I wish 10 million people were listening.

• 21:03Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 21:03Michael Gervais?

  I wish 100 million people could hear it and be, and resonate with it as well.

• 21:07Rich Roll?

  But it's there and it's there forever and it exists, you know?

• 21:11Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 21:11Rich Roll?

  Um, and the, the, I want to get back to, to Tony in a second, but the thing that I struggle with, with athletes is that it's very easy to default to kind of going episodically through their resume, especially when they're extremely accomplished, like in 2008. Tell me about this race and then that race and then this happened. And, you know, it's like, I feel like I need to cover everything. And I noticed when you spoke to Anthony, it's like, okay, you can look at the Wikipedia page, like, let's just get to who you really are, you know, and I, and I was like, that's the way you do it, right? And I think I spent, like, I just had this experience with, um, I went up to Portland and I interviewed Shalane Flanagan, the marathon runner.

• 21:54Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 21:55Rich Roll?

  And, and I felt like I kind of did that, like, I, it was, it was great and I got tons of really cool stuff out of. them and I feel good about the interview, but I if I was to do it again, I think I wouldn't have felt that pressure to go through all the races and just, you know, pick, pick and choose maybe one or two, but then go beyond that. Right. And it's tough with athletes because athletes are for me, they're very difficult to interview because they live lives, they live very sort of cloistered lives as opposed to some other people. And, you know, if you have a comedian on, it's like they do all the work for you, right? It's easy. You know, they can make it entertaining and fun and whatever. But I feel like with an athlete, like it's, I have

• 22:34Rich Roll?

  the pressures more on me to make it move and make it special. Do you feel that? I mean, you do mostly athletes, but

• 22:43Michael Gervais?

  Actually, I don't think I have. I think it's been, it feels like it's been one for every four or five, you know, so I'm trying not to do too many athletes, but there's enough in there, of course. I think that the athlete challenge is that they're doers more than thinkers. And that's why we're so fascinated by them, you know, and the greatest, the greatest of the greatest, I'm not sure they can capture how they've done what they've done.

• 23:08Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 23:08Michael Gervais?

  You know, I'm not saying they're not smart, but it's like, how do you

• 23:11Rich Roll?

  How do you articulate what that is? That's just the core of who they are.

• 23:15Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, it's really special, though. I mean, it is really special when you get close to

• 23:21Michael Gervais?

  that level of brilliance, whatever form it's in, whether it's moving or moving, meaning, you know, the, the intelligence of movement, like it's very special.

• 23:31Rich Roll?

  And you can extract perspectives and practices out of those people, but you can't teach like who they are and what they do.

• 23:39Michael Gervais?

  That's right. Well, how they see the world is, how anybody sees the world is challenging to articulate because it's so massive and so big. And if, unless you've spent the lonely time, the alone time to articulate a philosophy or a way of seeing the world or insights that make sense to you, unless you've framed it in some kind of way, it just feels like, I don't know, like snowflakes falling around you, like it's hard to, to capture it in a meaningful way. But the people that have taken the snowflakes and fell in love with the wonderment of the uniqueness of each one, and then organize it in a way that it takes shape and form and more than just one snowflake at a time, it's, while still honoring one snowflake at a time,

• 24:23Michael Gervais?

  it's wonderful. And it's hard. It's really hard.

• 24:26Rich Roll?

  Right, right. Well, I think Anthony is not only a doer, I think he is a thinker.

• 24:33Michael Gervais?

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:33Rich Roll?

  I think that makes him.

• 24:34Michael Gervais?

  He's an explorer. Yeah, Anthony went on a ride.

• 24:37Rich Roll?

  And I just know, you know, we, so we, we both spoke to him on the same day. And this was before the Olympic trials, like six weeks, I think. And, you know, after the podcast was over, and I don't think I'm speaking out of school. I think he would be okay talking about this. You know, he was not all that confident. He was sort of going into Olympic trials thinking, you know, this is going to be my swan song. I'm not going to make the team, but I'm going to use this as a way to, you know, wave goodbye graciously to the sport. He had been training at USC. It wasn't going that great. But he had made this decision that he was going to go to North Carolina and train with Dave Marsh. And he's gone on record, there's been articles about this, but Dave Marsh kind of took him and said,

• 25:20Rich Roll?

  we're going to start over, you know, we're going to rebuild you in this very short period of time, especially his start, which has always been his Achilles heel. They started him off like he was an eight-year-old, teaching him how to dive again.

• 25:31Michael Gervais?

  Wow.

• 25:32Rich Roll?

  And, and then he goes to the Olympics and he had a couple lousy starts in the earlier prelims in some of his swims, but when he got up on the blocks for that final, he got off the blocks the way he was, you know, the way everyone else did. It wasn't that he had a better start than anyone, but he just didn't have a bad start. And to see him win that gold medal, like after making the team, like everything, you know, what his mindset was when I spoke to him to that place was just absolutely the most spectacular, extraordinary thing. And I was like, I don't think people realize like how amazing that is when you see, when you read his book and you understand the context and everything that he's gone through, all these phases of his life to be in that spot, I think was the story of the Olympics.

• 26:15Michael Gervais?

  You know, both of us should see if we, I don't like the word should, and I just caught myself saying it, but wouldn't it be fun if both of us also talked to Marsh, Coach Marsh? Because to take a absolute physical genius that's rusty and suggest to redo the framework, that's radical.

• 26:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 26:35Michael Gervais?

  And, you know.

• 26:36Rich Roll?

  And not like over a year.

• 26:37Michael Gervais?

  No, like conventional wisdom is that it rarely works.

• 26:41Rich Roll?

  And like, don't do anything, don't do anything new at the last minute.

• 26:44Michael Gervais?

  Yep, right. Oh my God. So like there's that was a really bold, aggressive move and they both committed to it completely. And the risk is that they get caught right in the middle of something. New habit and old habit and it comes out just really below average. And to see him, you know, throw his hands up in the air, that's, that's, that's rad. So.

• 27:04Rich Roll?

  And, and I think he said, when you spoke to him, that he was somebody who was motivated externally, right? And, and he said that the reason he, you know, sort of celebrated in the way that he did after he won, wasn't for himself. It was for everybody else that had supported him and believed in him, which is a really beautiful sentiment. Yeah. And it was interesting. I don't know. Were you there? Were you there in person to watch him, watch that race or?

• 27:26Michael Gervais?

  I was in Rio, but not at the race.

• 27:28Rich Roll?

  And I want to talk about that in a minute. But it was interesting on television to see these, uh, the 50 freestylers are like just beasts. These guys are behemoths. You know, they're all just like massive and they're super cut and like just, they just, they're so physically intimidating. And Tony's a big guy, like he's tall. Uh, but when they kind of showed all the athletes individually and then they got to him, I'm like, he looked so much like more slender and lean and he's not as, um, you know, ectomorphic as these other guys. And you wouldn't have picked him out of a lineup to say, that's the guy who's going to take the gold.

• 28:05Michael Gervais?

  You know, here's, so on that, on that thought, like picking a lineup, can I take a story in a different direction? So this was a thought that was introduced to me maybe 15 years ago. And it was like an experimental thought and the thought was, um, and I can't remember right now as I'm, I'm recapturing this, if this, if this actually, if the experience actually happened to the person who shared the thought with me, or he was just kind of proposing a dilemma. And I think it actually happened for him. But so anyways, um, if you could line, so have, um, GMs and media people in a room. So a couple of GMs, general managers of a team who are good at talent identification and some media folks.

• 28:49Michael Gervais?

  And if you were to line up, let's say it's a in basketball and you were to line up fifteen athletes and say, pick the five to win the championship tomorrow. And you had some that look, they were tatted, they definitely partied last night. They've got some earrings, you know, in odd places and they just look ragged. But they've been in the league for a long time. And then you have all the clean cut, you know, buttoned down. They look the physical part of the stereotypical elite athlete. Which do you choose? And the conventional wisdom would probably say, well, don't pick the guy that's hungover. And so the way that this dilemma went is that the media folks, they picked the guys that were hungover with tattoos and like, because they know that they know how to go for it.

• 29:34Michael Gervais?

  Might not be able to sustain it, but they know how to let it rip.

• 29:38Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 29:38Michael Gervais?

  And I'm not saying that because Anthony's got tattoos. I'm saying that, but this idea of knowing how to let it rip, there's something really important. I know you know this side of, of, of life, but really understanding the freedom that takes place and the courage to do so on the razor's edge.

• 29:56Rich Roll?

  I think when you were talking to Dan Harris, you called that being off axis, right? Which is a defining sort of characteristic of your own life as well.

• 30:05Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, for me, off axis is, I don't know if I articulate it well enough then, or off axis is just when it's a bit off center. And so going for it.

• 30:15Rich Roll?

  Axis A X I S.

• 30:18Michael Gervais?

  That's correct.

• 30:18Rich Roll?

  Not access C C E S, right?

• 30:20Michael Gervais?

  Thank you. Yeah, axis, like as in three hundred and sixty degrees or whatever, right? So when things are tilted in just a particular way and it's unique and it's different, that off axis nature is really fun. And it's counterintuitive and counterculture sometimes and seeing something or doing something in just a bit different, in a different way. And. That's not necessarily what I'm talking about, about going for it, but the courage to go for it and then the freedom that's felt when you do go for it is especially when it's on the razor's edge.

• 30:51Rich Roll?

  But you have to, you have to have some level of independent spirit and confidence and you know, the ability to perceive the world a little bit differently to say, I'm going to go left when everyone's going right.

• 31:03Michael Gervais?

  That's correct.

• 31:04Rich Roll?

  Even if it's just one step to the left, you know, if you're on, if you're in a team sport, that can cause all kinds of problems too.

• 31:11Michael Gervais?

  Lot of problems.

• 31:12Rich Roll?

  So, you know, there has to be kind, kind of some, you know, unique internal driver, but in general, that's what leads to exceptionalism. We don't smile upon it when it's happening. We'll recognize it later after the accomplishment has been vetted, but while it's percolating, right, we're like, that guy's out of control, right? The same thing, you would say that to Tony in college, like he's partying, what is he doing? This guy's, you know, he's a deadbeat, get him off the team, right?

• 31:38Michael Gervais?

  What's funny is it doesn't work unless they get the results.

• 31:40Rich Roll?

  Well, they have to have a coach, they have to have a mentor who can see through that and, and figure out like Tony did with Mike Bottom, who said, you know, there's something special here and I gotta, I gotta be able to like tap into that and figure it out, right? And that requires patience, perception, a level of emotional investment, like all the things that you do, right?

• 32:00Michael Gervais?

  Maybe.

• 32:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So, it's like every, every coach from Pop Warner to NCAA to the Olympics should be listening to your podcast because there's so much bad advice.

• 32:10Michael Gervais?

  Hey.

• 32:10Rich Roll?

  You know, and, and, and kind of errant, you know, perspectives that are, that are being thrown around by coaches all across the world.

• 32:18Michael Gervais?

  So this is not a complicated model, but if you think about a model of coaching, and we're talking about coaching humans, right? So not life coaching, I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about coaching in some sort of craft. It could be business, but it's easier to think about this in sport that, and it, you know, using a, I'm making a pyramid with my hand right now, that at the base are amateur coaches and then you move up a level and there's performance coaches. They're more similar than the next two levels and the next level up is high performance coaches. And then at the very tip is elite performance coaches. And the amateur and performance coaches are more similar in that they don't ask many questions. They do a lot of telling and talking. And they're not always accurate.

• 33:02Michael Gervais?

  And they haven't done that internal lonely work to really understand the craft and really understand the person across from them to know how to help reveal the insight and wisdom from that person. But when you go up the pyramid to the high performance and the elite performance coaches is that they have such a regard for the people around them. They ask great questions. They pull the best out of people. They challenge them like it's like in a relentless way, but they build a relationship that is built on something, not just outcome. And so when you're talking about like folks to listen, most people are amateur in the way that they coach others because they haven't gone through a formalized training program on coaching. You know, so.

• 33:43Rich Roll?

  Right, there's no barrier to entry to being a coach.

• 33:45Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, and it certainly, so how do any of us learn it? Like there's some, pedagogy is a study that you can actually take coursework and degrees in at universities, which is the study, you know, like of learning and teaching, but like you gotta be around people that are exceptional at what they do and are able to translate that to help others become exceptional. And that is incredible to be around.

• 34:18Rich Roll?

  I feel like in the most general sense, and correct me if I'm wrong, but in the most sort of global sense, there's kind of two kinds of coaches, right? And maybe these are lower on that tier that you just described, but in a dualistic way, there's coaches that are trying to elicit performance out of their athletes through negative reinforcement. If you don't do well, you're off the team. You know, you better, you better perform or, you know, we're gonna have to have a big talk or, you know, whatever it is, like a lot of stick and not a lot of carrot. And then you have the positive reinforcement coaches who are like, you did great, that was awesome, we're gonna get it next time, or, you know, you know what I mean? And, and so where do you fall in that spectrum?

• 35:02Rich Roll?

  What's good about each of these? What's wrong with this? Obviously, as you go up, it becomes a more nuanced thing, but you know what I mean? Like, I feel like, like, you know, look, you go to your little kid's soccer game, right? And you got screaming parents and all kinds of insanity that goes on that just makes me think like I'm in a, you know, a lunatic asylum. And I'm like, how are people seeing the world this way?

• 35:25Michael Gervais?

  Well, that's fear is a real deal that gets like, it's a filter for people's communication and the lenses that they see the world through. So when people are afraid, they talk about what could go wrong. And it's really tough to play the long game from fear, you know, because you can, you can help somebody, you know, in the short game, you know, like to, to shift their physiology or to wake up some intensity.

• 35:50Rich Roll?

  You mean with a little negative barb like, hey?

• 35:52Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, but it's not sustainable.

• 35:53Rich Roll?

  Snap to it, right?

• 35:54Michael Gervais?

  Right, and, and, and then you can't play the card too many times. So it's like, for me, it's like a, it's just a bad strategy. It's a really bad strategy. So there's so many.

• 36:05Rich Roll?

  I mean, I never responded to that as an athlete and I've been under coaches that came from that perspective and it doesn't work. All it does is make me not want to play anymore, not want to participate.

• 36:17Michael Gervais?

  A thousand percent. So that's why kids leave sport, the ride home.

• 36:21Michael Gervais?

  It's the, it's based on the questions.

• 36:22Rich Roll?

  But I would imagine as you're moving up and the proficiency and the professionalism of these coaches, you know, notches upward and until you get to that highest level, none of those people are coming from that perspective.

• 36:33Michael Gervais?

  Some are.

• 36:34Rich Roll?

  Are they?

• 36:35Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, oh yeah, like there's all types and I think that, I think this is important to recognize is that at the elite, there's not one, and you know this, that there's not just one way to do it. And whether that's the performer or the coach. And there's people that break every model, you know, they don't train, they don't eat right, they sleep awfully and.

• 36:59Rich Roll?

  How are you going to write a book about this now?

• 37:00Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, right.

• 37:01Rich Roll?

  When it's all over the place.

• 37:02Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, it is really, they're rare, but those genetic freaks, they party, they do whatever, those genetic freaks that don't need a whole lot of training.

• 37:13Michael Gervais?

  To be great, it's rare, but it's there. And there's some coaches that are, you would never want to go to dinner with them. It wouldn't be, there'd be nothing enjoyable about it. There are more that work hard, are diligent, care deeply, and are a bit overwhelmed by the pressure from having to do well. That's the typical model, both from coaches and athletes.

• 37:36Rich Roll?

  And would you agree that the best coaches are the ones who will adjust their approach based upon what's going to work best for the specific athlete? Like, they're malleable to some extent in order to get to that thing that's going to get the best performance out of that athlete. And that's going to be different athlete to athlete.

• 37:54Michael Gervais?

  I think the best coaches, to support your idea, they operate from love. And they have a level of love for what's actually taking place between the exchange of two people. And they love the way it feels to go for it. They love the way it feels to help others go for it and to learn. So there's a love of learning and a love of people and a love of exploring and a love of pressure. And there's a love that they work from as opposed to a fear.

• 38:21Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 38:21Michael Gervais?

  And so that's, yeah.

• 38:23Rich Roll?

  But that means that they have to be in it for the right reasons, right? You can't like compel somebody to adopt that level of love. They either have it or they don't.

• 38:31Michael Gervais?

  Well, you know, it's funny because there's so many coaches that I do know that get great results that don't operate from love. So that's the challenge. You know, so that like, there's no one way that this really works. And, but if you're like, this question that I'm answering is really like my and maybe your biased interpretation of who you and I would like to be coached by.

• 38:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's probably true.

• 38:56Michael Gervais?

  And the relationships that we see that seem to matter, you know? But research would not hold up that there's just one way to bring the best out of people. Like, look at, look at the NFL, for example. Coach Carroll from the Seattle Seahawks has a 180-degree approach, a different approach than Bill Belichick from the Patriots. Completely opposite.

• 39:19Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 39:19Michael Gervais?

  Proceed, I don't know Coach Belichick, but it looks, it sounds that way to me.

• 39:24Rich Roll?

  I would imagine, you know, the difference between like a Dave Marsh coaching,

• 39:31Rich Roll?

  you know, Tony, six weeks before the Olympics versus an NFL coach where you're, you know, a general with legion of, you know, athletes that you're in charge of, you know, how do you, you can't, I mean, you have to have like an overarching philosophy, right? That's sort of applicable to everybody because you can't get overly invested in any one athlete.

• 39:50Michael Gervais?

  Well, that's rare. What you just said is really rare is for people to have a grounded, real philosophy. And that's what I was trying to articulate with the snowflakes earlier, right? Having a grounded, clear philosophy that is unique and true to you and it feels really authentic when you say it out loud and you say it out loud a lot and so that you can pressure test it, you can acid test it, you can make sure it still works. That is really rare and it takes a lot of work to get that thing just right.

• 40:22Rich Roll?

  But don't the greats have that? Whether it's Vince Lombardi or Pat Riley or, you know, Pete Carroll? Like that's what defines, you know, who they are, right?

• 40:31Michael Gervais?

  And so a philosophy is a decision-making framework about how you make decisions in your life. And we know the philosophy of the, the, the, the most dynamic changers of the globe. We know what they are. Martin Luther King Jr. We know his philosophy. Eleanor Roosevelt, we know her philosophy. You know, um, Mother Teresa, we know her philosophy because she talked about it and she lived, she walked about it. It was really clear. And so, yes, those that shift and influence individuals at scale, and that's an interesting, I think, way to think about it. They definitely know what they stand for.

• 41:08Rich Roll?

  Let's talk about the Olympics.

• 41:09Michael Gervais?

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:10Rich Roll?

  How was your Rio experience?

• 41:11Michael Gervais?

  It was hard.

• 41:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 41:13Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, it was hard. It was really hard.

• 41:14Rich Roll?

  Because?

• 41:16Michael Gervais?

  Well, um, I guess there's lots of ways to think about it is that the first part of the hardship is to see the suffering of the people that live in.

• 41:26Rich Roll?

  In the favelas.

• 41:28Michael Gervais?

  Yes. Well, not even the favelas, even the town folk. The, the level of suffering is real and it feels like paradise that's been ruined. It's beautiful. It's amazing. There's love from people and they've also, because of the misallocation or the lack of resources.

• 41:51Michael Gervais?

  For the country, people, the, the, the, the community of people have at some level agreed that lying, sneaking, robbing, you know, at some level is acceptable because I need to put bread on my table for my kids. And I really, I, I one thousand percent understand it. And, but there is suffering. There's real suffering.

• 42:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So there's this crazy juxtaposition of this unbelievable event on top of this template of human pain.

• 42:22Michael Gervais?

  Yeah. And if you go to the coast, um, for Rio in Brazil, there is like, uh, Ipanema Beach and Copacabana Beach are some of the most beautiful and expensive real estate in the world. And literally one or two blocks right behind it, you, you're, if there's two or three males walking together, definitely the entire time my antenna was up, was, was up. And, you know, it, it's exactly what you would imagine from a really tough, deprived city in the inner city of any, uh, anywhere that we would go to in, in America. But, but at the same time, there's something even more disparaging about it because the upside,

• 43:05Michael Gervais?

  the, the delta between the poor and the rich is so radical. It, where, you know, there's, there's just more hope in first world countries that you could figure some things out. And not that it's easy in any, any condition where poverty is a real deal, but man, it was hard. So that's one reason it was hard. Another reason, oh, sorry.

• 43:25Rich Roll?

  Oh, I was gonna say, the, the weird thing is that in the, in the United States though, um, generally as you move up the hillsides, that's where the fancy nice houses are, right? But it's the opposite there, right?

• 43:37Michael Gervais?

  That's exactly right.

• 43:38Rich Roll?

  The poorest people live up in the hillsides and on the mountains.

• 43:41Michael Gervais?

  Yeah. And they value the, the coastline. They value the beach. So they get great views, but you know, it's like, maybe you have electricity, maybe you don't.

• 43:50Rich Roll?

  So all that's going on like a low sort of hum as you're trying to do what you do and work with the athletes. I mean, you were there kind of in a in a official capacity with the women's volleyball team, right?

• 44:02Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, for sure. Official capacity with indoor women's volleyball and a team on the women's beach side of volleyball.

• 44:09Rich Roll?

  Can you talk about that at all?

• 44:11Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:11Rich Roll?

  I mean, it was, you know, Carrie Walsh is somebody that, you know, it's been publicly said that you you've been working with her and her husband, so much so that like the commentators even commented on it during the competition.

• 44:26Michael Gervais?

  I heard.

• 44:26Rich Roll?

  Competition, you got name called. I mean, you made a video with them. So, you know, I'm assuming that we could talk about it a little bit, but maybe, you know, walk me through kind of some of the work that you you did with her and her husband to kind of get her in that mindset to do what she does.

• 44:43Michael Gervais?

  So here's the tricky part is that she made it really public, I think at the last Olympics that we'd spent a lot of time and done some a lot of work. But what hasn't ever been public is the nature of the work and the things that we've done. So like the broads, let's talk broad broadly, if you will.

• 45:01Rich Roll?

  Look, talk about what you're comfortable talking about.

• 45:03Michael Gervais?

  Yeah. So it's like really unbecoming for me to talk about like, you know, so.

• 45:07Rich Roll?

  Well, I've been going back and forth with Carrie. I'm going to get her on the podcast because I know you can't. But she's, you know, we're just trying to figure out a date. So I'm gonna I'll make her spill all those beans.

• 45:16Michael Gervais?

  That's rad. I mean, and you're gonna absolutely have.

• 45:20Rich Roll?

  She seems fantastic.

• 45:21Michael Gervais?

  And really understands it. And so I will love to tune into that podcast for sure. But here's the general relationships are challenging on the world stage, just like for the rest of us, and things become amplified. So they did some relationship work early that is all public and great. And here's here's the takeaway is that I don't I don't know if this is completely accurate, but I think most people meet a moment in time in their relationships where everything is questioned. And it did it for me in my in my life. And my wife and I were married for a long time. And she basically at one moment had said, hey, listen, I love you, but I don't think I can be with you anymore.

• 46:02Rich Roll?

  I've been in that situation.

• 46:04Michael Gervais?

  Have you? Yeah. And so that's really good. You know, like at the time was the hardest thing in the world. And it was because I was being selfish and I was not attending properly. Um, as a, as a good lover and a support system. And so I'll tell you what, um. I hope, my hope is that most people in intimate, deep, meaningful relationships go through that type of fire alone and together. And so they did the hard work that I, I would, that I'm talking about now. And it was beautiful and it was amazing. They, the way that I think about relationships is that. You're carrying two buckets and I'm carrying two buckets of full water. And if you want to put a bucket down, I'll pick your bucket up.

• 46:45Michael Gervais?

  You want to put the second one down? Okay. I'm gonna pick this up. Now I'm at capacity now. And I'll do it as long as I possibly can.

• 46:52Rich Roll?

  I'll carry it for a little while.

• 46:54Michael Gervais?

  As long as I possibly can.

• 46:55Rich Roll?

  I can go the whole distance with it.

• 46:56Michael Gervais?

  That's right. And, and I hope that you're gonna like, give me some love and like, I'm doing it and like, let, let's at least honor it. And then can I put one down? And will you pick it back up? And can we, you know, and then you, can I give two of them back or? Empty somehow, some kind of way and give you one back. And like, that's kind of the thing. And as long as one person. Doesn't take advantage and walk without buckets for too long of a time, relationships will work. But when both people put their buckets down. That's when you got a problem.

• 47:26Rich Roll?

  The interesting thing, thing about that beyond the obvious is that it has nothing to do with playing volleyball.

• 47:33Michael Gervais?

  You're right. And, and then you layer on top of it, all of the mindset skills to take advantage of, you know, so. You know, baseline stuff is, is super important to be able to have a sustainable framework. And the baseline stuff I'm talking about is like, who are you? Who are you in relationships with others? How do you want to live your life? Uh, you know, when sport is done, like all of that basic, basic stuff. How do you want to live your life in sport? And that's all really important framework stuff that allows for the long game to be played. Cause I'm telling you, it's, it's not that complicated to be the best in your city at something. But it is complicated to be the best in the world over an extended period of time.

• 48:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's the extended period of time part. I think that, you know, but beneath all of this, basically what you're saying is to perform to your maximum potential and capacity, you need to be, you know, a happy person in the other aspects of your life, right? You need to be able to be balanced and functional, you know, in your personal life and your, you know, your mental game, your emotional game, your, you know, obviously your physical game, whatever your form of spirituality is like, these things need to be attended to in order for you to be kind of fully vetted and, and prepared for the pressures that come with being on the world stage.

• 48:48Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, I don't, everything except the word happy. So I don't think happiness actually is a prerequisite. It makes it better. You know, when there's joy and contentment and peace, that's really cool. But there's something almost required to do the nauseatingly difficult, crazy-making, stay-on-the-razor's-edge experiences day in and day out that, you know, breeds some really, or it requires, let me say it differently, requires some sort of

• 49:20Michael Gervais?

  unhealthy tendencies that might facilitate people to be great. And so there is a, it can be tricky. I would say that people do, to play the long game, to pursue the best version of yourself and whatever the craft that anyone might be interested in, whether that is a mom or a dad or, or a parent or a business person, entrepreneur or athlete included, is that they need to have a sense of autonomy. They need to have, like, that they are not alone, but that they are uniquely themselves, autonomous in thought and autonomous in action. They also need to be able to relate to others. So a sense of relatedness and connectivity that takes place.

• 50:04Michael Gervais?

  And then also, you know, the ability to commit to exploring and doing the difficult work. And so I think that those three parts, what's nice about those three at least, is that they're all developmental.

• 50:16Rich Roll?

  And I think that that gets amplified when you're talking about perpetuating the longevity of a career, right? Because you can blaze onto the scene at age 21 and, you know, do your thing and, you know, rise to the top and win your gold medal and do it in a very diff- without kind of some of those tools. Because when you're young, you're much more, you know, sort of malleable and, and you can go deep in that hole like, you know, Michael Phelps living in a dorm room, you know, by himself, playing video games and, you know, eating junk food. That works when he's getting ready for that, you know, big moment when he's at that age. But when you're looking at your third Olympics, your fourth Olympics, your fifth Olympics, and life gets larger and more complicated and there's

• 51:00Rich Roll?

  other people involved and you've matured to an extent and you're trying to find ways to, you know, maintain your peak performance, but also, you know, continue to have the, the joy and the enthusiasm that got you into it in the first place, which is a key component in succeeding. Because inevitably, otherwise, it's a chore and you're going to burn out and all these other things, right? And I would imagine that must have been part of what was going on with Carrie and, and, you know, infecting the relationship and et cetera.

• 51:30Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, just, just laying the groundwork. And I think my hope is that for people is that we all invest in that foundational groundwork stuff. Spiritual framework, psychological framework. Who am I? What are we doing here? And how do I want to do relationships? Right? Because that's, I don't know, we're, we're, that's kind of the essence of it. And then on, once you have that in place, all the other stuff, it's not easy.

• 51:52Rich Roll?

  And you gotta want it. You gotta want to do the work, right?

• 51:55Michael Gervais?

  And I think that this is now, let's go back to the coaching piece. You have to want it, but why do people change? I think my observation, and there's some research around this, is that people change because of pain. And so it's the pain of I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired, which I know you know that phrase. I'm, I'm, I'm sick of this. This- And so when people can experience a level of pain, they will do change. But changing for itself, that's hard now.

• 52:22Rich Roll?

  What is the personality type that can commit to change and growth and evolution without meeting that pain threshold? Cause that's a unique person, like, I wish I was that guy.

• 52:34Michael Gervais?

  So you, okay, well, maybe after I describe it, you might not wish you were that guy.

• 52:39Rich Roll?

  So some kind of like sociopathy or something?

• 52:42Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, I mean, so I think what I hear you saying is without pain, who, what is the personality type or the characteristics of people that work relentlessly to pursue their potential? Is that right?

• 52:54Rich Roll?

  Or even maybe in a broader construct, just people that are always like growing and, and, you know, trying new things and they don't have to come to some place of suffering and, you know, meeting their maker in order to say, you know what, I can make my relationship better, or I could try a little bit harder, or maybe, you know, maybe I should start doing ice baths or, you know, like always like people that are exploring and always, you know, committed on some level to expand, expansion, right? Without like, you know, you know what I mean? With like, without like destroying their relationships first or all that kind of stuff that compels most people to come into the fold and say, okay, now I gotta like look at a bunch of stuff I don't want to look at.

• 53:34Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, I, I don't know many of them.

• 53:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's hard, right?

• 53:37Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, I don't know many of them. I, I know lots of beautiful people. Well, I think that there's.

• 53:42Rich Roll?

  Human condition?

• 53:43Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, there's, there's a wanting and there's a, um, a hole that most of us have.

• 53:49Rich Roll?

  Right. And without that hole, there's no driver.

• 53:52Michael Gervais?

  Yeah. And that hole is like, if you put a spiritual lens on it, like it's the loneliness being disconnected from the deity that you call God or whatever that might be for you. That like, there's lots of ways to think about it, but. Yeah, um, I love it though. I love the light and the dark side of the human experience. I love the, the, the, the crater that I think we all have, the loneliness that we all have and the want and the desire to fill it. And sometimes we fill it with things that are um, not healthy, not wonderful, not good for us, but they keep us busy and they keep us stimulated and they release all the right chemicals in our brain to want us to want more.

• 54:32Rich Roll?

  You gotta appreciate the dark too. Like, there's a lot of talk about, you know, especially in like new age circles, like it's all light and beauty and rainbows and unicorns and

• 54:41Michael Gervais?

  I don't trust one of them.

• 54:42Rich Roll?

  The secret and all of that, but it's like, no, you have to embrace that dark aspect of, of, you know, who we are innately and only by recognizing it and, and owning it on some level can you move away from it.

• 54:56Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, I was given a gift, I think from one of my early supervisors and it just rings true. What she said to me is, "Do not trust people that are all light."

• 55:04Rich Roll?

  I was like, "Oh, they're hiding something, man."

• 55:06Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 55:07Rich Roll?

  It's not right.

• 55:08Michael Gervais?

  Oh, okay. Let me figure that out. Yeah.

• 55:10Rich Roll?

  The guy who, uh, you shake his hand or he gives you a hug and then you got that 10,000 yard stare to the back of your skull and you're like, "What's going on with that guy? I don't know if I trust him." You know what I mean? Interesting. Well, I wanna, when we, when we first did our podcast, I mean, that was so long ago. We kind of, you know, went on the trajectory of, you know, your arc, your life that got you to this place. And I don't want to rehash that too much, but one of the things that I thought was interesting in your conversation with Dan Harris, you were touching on a couple of things that, that we didn't really talk about last time. And I think I remember, well, I'm interested in, you know, kind of the superhero

• 55:52Rich Roll?

  origin story, you know, like Spider-Man gets bit by the spider. And in your case, I think it's fair to boil that down to that anxiety that you experienced as a young surfer when you were sort of thrown into competition for the first time and that being kind of this defining catalyzing moment of getting you interested in how the mind works, right? That set you on this course. And I'm interested In your perspective and your thoughts in the wake of your recent podcast with Anders Ericsson? Is that his name? Who really, is it fair to say that he's really the guy who came up with the 10,000?

• 56:28Michael Gervais?

  Oh, yeah.

• 56:29Rich Roll?

  Hour rule, right?

• 56:29Michael Gervais?

  Yeah. Well, yeah. So he wouldn't say that phrase.

• 56:32Rich Roll?

  No, I know. You were trying to get him to, you know, like, sort of like he's, it's not Malcolm Gladwell. It was actually this guy who did the research on this. And it's not quite how we kind of, you know, reduce it. It's a little more nuanced and complicated than that. But the essence of it, I think, is, you know, sort of intact. But do you think that that was the beginning of your 10,000 hour practice in your own life? Like, do you see yourself as somebody who put in your 10,000 hours, starting around that time of being interested in the mind and how it works and psychology and performance? Because I thought it was really fascinating that, you know, you weren't like this naturally gifted student. Like, you struggled, you were in community college.

• 57:14Rich Roll?

  And, and yet, even in community college, where most people are just kind of way stationed, you were able to connect with some pretty, you know, interesting teachers, some professors, who lit a spark for you and set you on this path.

• 57:30Michael Gervais?

  Really cool.

• 57:30Rich Roll?

  Is that?

• 57:31Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, no, you're right on the money. I think that the, when I was 15 and I had that moment where I, I just couldn't be me out in the water, the way that I knew I, I, I needed to be because I wasn't honoring myself. Right? So I was, I was literally floundering as a mind and as a body and as a person who's trying to access a craft, floundering. And I'm just thinking of like, not floundering in life, but in those moments where I couldn't honor myself. And so that was the beginning of the pain. Let me strike that. That was the beginning of me being aware of the pain and that there was actually something I could do about it. When a competitor served by me and just basically said, stop worrying about what could go wrong.

• 58:16Michael Gervais?

  I didn't realize I was anxious. I didn't know that. I had no ideas.

• 58:19Rich Roll?

  Obviously, it's written all over your face.

• 58:21Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, well, yeah, it must have been, I, you know what? You're the first person that brought that up. Like, I can't, I've never thought about what I must have looked like to him. That's a really cool thought, but. That was the beginning of me going, oh, it was like a lightbulb moment. And then another lightbulb moment happened when I met a mentor. And another lightbulb moment happened when I met those three professors at junior college. And then, so I think that that early, it was for me, it was like working out things while I was learning things. So I was working out how all the theorists in psychology and spiritual frameworks and philosophers,

• 59:02Michael Gervais?

  because those are the three professors that inspired me, how they were thinking or the thoughts that they had way back when, how could I apply them to surfing now? So I was tinkering, but I don't think it was training. And so I was tinkering for a long time, like in my own Petri dish.

• 59:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it was like applied psychology, you were applying these principles to your own life.

• 59:21Michael Gervais?

  But I didn't have, yes, and I didn't have a framework to know how those principles really organized and fit together. So it was really, I do think it was tinkering and it was, it was fun to tinker and.

• 59:33Rich Roll?

  But it wasn't this conscious decision, like this is my path, like this is just what's going on.

• 59:38Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, it was more, almost self-absorbed, you know, like I didn't, I think, I don't know, I just didn't know how else I was inspired by, I love surfing and I loved this knowledge I was learning. And I, what else was I gonna do, how else was I gonna apply it other than to the thing I, surfing, so.

• 59:56Rich Roll?

  What did you think you were gonna do?

• 59:57Michael Gervais?

  Uh, when I was younger?

• 59:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 59:59Michael Gervais?

  I traveled the world and surfed.

• 1:00:01Rich Roll?

  Surf, right?

• 1:00:02Michael Gervais?

  That was it.

• 1:00:02Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:00:03Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:03Rich Roll?

  And you got married really young, right?

• 1:00:05Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:05Rich Roll?

  So your wife was on board with that plan?

• 1:00:07Michael Gervais?

  No, that's why we almost got a divorce, yeah. So, no, that, that's one of the reasons, like, you know, looking back, what, I had no business, no business being in an intimate relationship with someone so beautiful, no business. I'm so thankful that, that I was because it has helped shape me to refine a craft. And so it was, you know, there was a big influences by her and her family, my parents and lots of people that said, listen, keep going.

• 1:00:37Rich Roll?

  If I was to talk to her right now, would she say, oh, I always saw this version of Mike way back then? Like I knew that he had the potential to be this guy that he is today? Like, did she hold that vision for you or is she surprised by everything?

• 1:00:54Michael Gervais?

  No, she did, she did, yeah, she did, she said it, yeah, she, I mean, it wasn't like. No, nobody I don't think had an idea of how to, um, what the thing that I was gonna do in my life was. I didn't even know what sports psychology was or performance psychology. I had no idea. So I don't think anyone had that thought, but the thought, let me tell you a funny story. Okay. Did we talk about like a mystic experience that happened to me?

• 1:01:17Rich Roll?

  No, but I'd love to hear that.

• 1:01:19Michael Gervais?

  Would you like to hear this? So I don't, so it's funny because I'm now, now that I'm like, I don't know, 20 years removed from the beginnings of like me studying this stuff and um, I, I feel like almost like an old man in a, like a relatively young person's body. And so this old man part of me is now talking about things I didn't talk about 20 years ago. Like on Dan Harris, I talked about, um, you know, healing imagery.

• 1:01:50Rich Roll?

  And that was something that I really want to get, wanted to reprise with you. Yeah. Because, because when we first talked, and I haven't gone back and listened to our interview, but I'm pretty sure like I asked you, you know, questions like, you know, do you have a daily meditation practice? And you were like, not really, you know, I get up and I, I just take a big inhale and I try to think of be grateful for some, it was very like informal. I mean, it was specific, but it wasn't like, oh yes, you know, I, I do these certain things and I believe in these certain things. And then I heard that story that you told with Dan and I was like, oh my God, like that's, maybe you just weren't ready to tell that story at that time?

• 1:02:25Michael Gervais?

  I, I remember, I remember our conversation. I remember after our conversation thinking, I don't think I like told that part of my life well enough. I've been meditating for a long time.

• 1:02:35Rich Roll?

  Right. So that's why I was surprised because I was like, really? Like I thought I would have pegged you as a guy who's, you know, all about, all about that.

• 1:02:42Michael Gervais?

  Yeah. And I don't use the word meditation. I think that's probably why, um, I like using the word mindfulness. It conjures something up that feels better to me than meditation. But

• 1:02:51Rich Roll?

  Dan was always like, okay, so let's get to the meditation part. He kept pushing.

• 1:02:55Michael Gervais?

  That's what he's most, for sure, he's most interested in.

• 1:02:57Rich Roll?

  Okay. So when did the meditation come in? Anyway, go ahead.

• 1:03:01Michael Gervais?

  Uh, so what was the story? Okay. So, uh, mother, my mother-in-law. What's up, Rita? Um, so we. Uh, she's been going back and forth with me for a long time about coming and seeing uh, this flower reader. So it's this guy that reads flowers and I'm in college at the time and I'm deep in the science field and Is she like a hippie? No, not at all. Your parents were kinda hippie. Parents were, yeah, and um, so my mother-in-law and father-in-law, my wife's parents, obviously, they, my mother-in-law came from Cuba, uh, they left thinking that Castro was gonna be expelled, so they're the kind of the first wave out of Cuba, and then he never left, I mean, he wasn't ever kicked out, so they left with, you know, a couple hundred

• 1:03:44Michael Gervais?

  bucks in their pocket and came here and figured out life, pretty rad, so they're Cuban. And then my, um, my father-in-law, he, he came to this country with twenty dollars in his pocket as a fifteen-year-old, and that's it. And they fit, they cracked the American dream. Two Latins that didn't speak English, and they cracked the American dream and created businesses that, and they did wonderfully for themselves, both in lifestyle and financially. And so, she is everything you imagine from, uh, just a lovable, loving, charismatic, gregarious, fun person to be around, flirting on the edge of just about everything in life and having a good time. And, um, so she says, "You've gotta come up. You've got to come up and do this flower reading. I'm gonna have another party, you are gonna love it, Michael."

• 1:04:27Michael Gervais?

  And I said, "There's no frickin' way that I'm going to like, the, the, this, like, and I just kinda fed it back that, okay, what's he gonna do? He's gonna look at me and like, read my body language and figure out just the right vague thing to say, and then latch on to that vague thing and tell me a story, and then I wanna believe him, so I nod my head, and we keep going in this dance where, you know, it's just a, a voodoo experience, you know? And so, so we end up having this throw-down argument up in Whistler, and it was, we're on a little family vacation skiing, and this throw-down argument in a bar, in a restaurant bar, and she's, "We are not talking about this again, this is the last time we're talking about this, until you come up here, I don't care what you say, you have to experience it in full Latin form." And so, I said, "Fine."

• 1:05:12Michael Gervais?

  Right, so we get back and she throws this candle, uh, I'm sorry, um, flower reading party. So, long story shorter is that you you pick a flower and you hold it for a little bit of time and

• 1:05:24Rich Roll?

  like in your imagination or you actually have

• 1:05:26Michael Gervais?

  like out of your yard, out of your yard, right? Pick a flower, you drive up and you put it in your lap or hold it while you're driving up. And then he's not there yet. And so there was like six of us, family and friends that arrive and uh, there's a little tray and you put your flower that you've been holding. It sounds ridiculous. Puts a flower on, you put a flower on a tray. Okay. And no one knows what flower I had because I came by myself. Okay. And I didn't know what my wife had. I didn't know what anyone had. But you just put the flower and you come in.

• 1:05:57Michael Gervais?

  So mother in law didn't know, and certainly this guy didn't know. So he came in. And he says, okay, everybody, let's, let's, let's go have this experience. So he says, this is how it works. And he closes his eyes and he says, um, oh, no, he asked us to close our eyes. And he says, I'm going to close my eyes too. He says, if you want, you can keep them open just to see that I'm not doing anything weird. I have no idea whose flower this is, whatever, whatever. And I'm just going to pick one. I'm going to feel it. And then I'm going to talk about what I feel. And I'm not going to tell you the future, but I'm going to tell you what I feel.

• 1:06:29Michael Gervais?

  And so I'm like, oh, here we go. Like, I'm just, I, I'm doing this just so

• 1:06:32Rich Roll?

  is he like in robes? Like, does he have all the costuming and trappings? Or is he just like a dude?

• 1:06:38Michael Gervais?

  He's a, he's a guy, for sure, a guy. And so, um, remind me to come back to what a guy is in a minute. And so, um, all right, so he, and so I closed my eyes and I opened them. I'm like, I'm not like, I want to see what this guy's about. And I this, I'm deep in science. I'm really, you know, studying some of the great minds and theories and, and, and so I look at him. And he's kind of, you know, feeling something and he picks up mine. Mine was the first one that happened. He happened to pick up. And so he, he's looking and his eyes are still closed. I'm sorry, he's feeling and his eyes are still closed. And he says, oh, we have a skeptic in the room. I said, oh, this, come on. I look over at my mother in law and she's looking at me and I'm

• 1:07:19Rich Roll?

  are you the only guy?

• 1:07:20Michael Gervais?

  No, no, no, there was like, there was like, uh, three, three or four of us.

• 1:07:23Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:07:23Michael Gervais?

  One of them was a cousin who was a flat out struggling with drugs. Nailed him. Nailed him. So anyways, he gets, we have a skeptic. And then he says, okay, so this skeptic.

• 1:07:37Michael Gervais?

  I'm telling you, Rich, he like, I started sweating, flat out sweating because he said, this, this person, um, he has a injury and he has an injury in his neck and if he is working relentlessly to adjust this injury, that was that injury I was talking about with like with my C spine. And then he says he's got three gifts. Now, at this point, I'm really sweating and I look around and, and, um, the whole family's looking at me. His eyes are still closed. The whole family's looking at me. Three gifts, spirit, sport, and the mind. I said, oh my God. He said, one day he's gonna put all three of these together, but he's still struggling now. I was like, holy, like,

• 1:08:22Rich Roll?

  He said he wasn't gonna tell the future, but he basically laid out your fortune right there. Are you thinking like there's a mole in the room?

• 1:08:28Michael Gervais?

  Totally. You know, and so I just wanna bust everyone, you know, about it. And so I just kept my mouth shut and he, and so whatever. And then, but he just kept getting people and I am, I am a skeptic. I still am a skeptic, but something happened.

• 1:08:42Rich Roll?

  As a man of science, and you're always going back to the science, I know.

• 1:08:46Michael Gervais?

  For sure.

• 1:08:46Rich Roll?

  You know, that's your practice. What do you make of that?

• 1:08:49Michael Gervais?

  I don't know. It's not the answer you probably want. I don't know. Can I tell you one more?

• 1:08:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:55Michael Gervais?

  While we're on a roll.

• 1:08:56Rich Roll?

  And I want, and I want to play out this story of what was going on with your neck too.

• 1:09:00Michael Gervais?

  Okay. Yeah, for sure. So here's, I've had a handfuls of these kind of mystic experiences in my life and that was one of them. I can't explain it. I have no idea to this day and I totally trust my mother-in-law and everyone in that room. They did not set me up in that way. Okay.

• 1:09:15Rich Roll?

  So what was your interaction with your mother-in-law in the wake of that?

• 1:09:18Michael Gervais?

  Afterwards?

• 1:09:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:20Michael Gervais?

  Yeah. She's like, so what do you think?

• 1:09:23Michael Gervais?

  You know, so, um, we laugh about it now.

• 1:09:25Rich Roll?

  Have you gone back to see the guy? Or you just got what you needed and that was it?

• 1:09:29Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:30Rich Roll?

  Does he live around here?

• 1:09:31Michael Gervais?

  A little scared.

• 1:09:31Rich Roll?

  I feel like I need to go see him.

• 1:09:33Michael Gervais?

  You know what? Let me find him. Maybe we could do it together.

• 1:09:36Rich Roll?

  That would be good.

• 1:09:36Michael Gervais?

  Yeah. That was wild. So here's another mystic experience and I'm, I'm becoming more open to mystic experiences. I've spent so much time in the trenches of science and working out. The rigid ways to say something. So, science creates that rigidity allows you to say something with some clarity, right? And at least it could be wrong, but at least you have a basis of why it might be wrong. And then from that, it feels like I could play on the edges, you know, and that's how I've designed most of, I think, my professional career. That being said, I went down and had, this is all around this injury. I am so thankful for this injury. So, I was in incredible pain. So, I drove all the way to San Diego because I met somebody who I believed was,

• 1:10:19Michael Gervais?

  he was a chiropractor, Oriental medicine, doctor of Oriental medicine and a chiropractor.

• 1:10:25Rich Roll?

  And it was, it was a surfing injury. You had a pretty serious, like injury to the top of your spine.

• 1:10:31Michael Gervais?

  That's right. Yeah. So, two, one, two herniations, one went out like a normal herniation of a disc and one popped in and that matter was floating around my spinal cord and pushing against my spinal cord. So, I had incredible nerve, kind of deep, deep, deep pain.

• 1:10:46Rich Roll?

  And the neurologists or the, the Western medicine specialist that you went to see diagnosed you with what? Like, what was the protocol?

• 1:10:54Michael Gervais?

  Oh, well, the protocol was like herniated discs, one with an extrusion, one with an intrusion, and just kind of manage the pain the best you can.

• 1:11:02Rich Roll?

  So, there was no surgical procedure that you could?

• 1:11:05Michael Gervais?

  We're heading towards it. Yeah, we're heading towards it, but I want to do all the conservative things first. Everything. You name it. I tried it first. Everything, you know, and there's a good book, Healing Back Pain by John Sarno. I don't know if you've read that. And it's, there's no science to it. It's all, if you pick it up, you'd look at it and say like, this sounds crazy, but it was really a pretty good book about the mind and, and chronic pain. So, anyways, I went, I've, I've met a man who was a flat out a healer and he, he wouldn't eat after 6:00 PM so that when he would work on people in the morning, he would be clean and he would have a, his vessel was well dialed in. Like, it was amazing. Like, he dedicated his whole

• 1:11:48Michael Gervais?

  life to healing and he, but he'd also studied some science. So, I went down and I drove two and a half hours to go meet him for an experience. And so, he, the Oriental medicine, he was gonna do some acupressure and he was also gonna use some dry neveling.

• 1:12:06Michael Gervais?

  So we're talking, oh, and he also has a master's degrees in psych, uh, master's degree in psychology. So he understands good science and

• 1:12:14Rich Roll?

  You guys have a language commonality.

• 1:12:16Michael Gervais?

  It's beautiful, yeah, beautiful man. What's up, Roy? And so, um, so he, he, he gets me on the table and he starts just kind of doing some acupressure, moving some blood around and whatever, whatever. And we're talking and we're having a good conversation. And long story of this short is that, um, he says, okay, so I'm going to put some needles in you. First time I've had acupuncture. And, um, he puts it one needle, small little needle in between my toes, my big toe, um, on each foot. And he goes, ooh, when he put them in, that's all he said. And I said, what's that? Anxious mind, right? What's that? And he says, um, your body's just ready for this. And I'm going, oh, jeez, he's just doing some psychobabble priming, like, come on, doc.

• 1:12:58Michael Gervais?

  And so anyway, so he puts them in and then he puts them in between my, my thumb and my first finger, like the meat of your, your, your hand. And, um, they kind of, they had a little pain. There was a little ache in that. And he put a couple on my perineals, uh, like on the side of my calf muscle, right? And, um, I think he put one on the top of my head and maybe a forehead. And so, um, as he put the last one in, he says, I'm going to be outside. And, um, if you need anything, just let me know, but just appreciate the experience. So as he's walking out the door, I had this, I had this flood. I can't, there's no other way for me to describe this, but I had this opening and I literally opening and it felt like the top of my head, um, above my head, this opening of pure emotion that was coming.

• 1:13:42Michael Gervais?

  And the pure emotion, I could, I could turn it off or let it flow. Uh, there was awareness. I could do either one of those. And I knew it was going to be uncontrollable. And it was one of two things, uncontrollable laughter or uncontrollable tears. It's going to be one of those two.

• 1:13:57Rich Roll?

  Those things are pretty close to each other though, right?

• 1:13:59Michael Gervais?

  I did, I I guess so.

• 1:14:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:02Michael Gervais?

  For for me, they were like, it was on. And I think prior to that, much of my life, I didn't know that there was such this expansive, like, large amount of emotion that could flood in such a way. And so I said, shit, I came for healing. And so I just let it happen. That this is when I talk about, I think you and I've talked about this, like, it starts with the decision. And and then the decision, part of the decision is to go for it. And then the other part of the decision is to stay on the razor's edge as long as you can. Love is the razor's edge. Joy is the razor's edge. So is hard work. So is fighting. You know, there's razor's edge in not

• 1:14:42Michael Gervais?

  just like, working hard. So this was a razor's edge. I opened it up and I felt all of it and it was uncontrollable laughter. And I couldn't pick between the two. It was a roll of the dice. And I was gonna go either way for both of them. And it was uncontrollable laughter. And I started with this little giggle. And then this little giggle started and it built and it built and I was like, I'm out of control. Like, look at the wait, let it go and stop talking, Mike, just feel it. And it's bigger and it's bigger. And I'm laughing and I'm on the table and I can't stop laughing. And I'm now like, I'm freaking myself out. And I call Roy, you know, Doc, Doc, and he comes running in because he hears me laughing uncontrollably.

• 1:15:20Rich Roll?

  So he gives you this treatment and then he leaves the room and you're just lying on the table or something?

• 1:15:25Michael Gervais?

  As he's walking out, I felt this that opening. So I don't know what to make of it. Right. And he came in and he like, he grounded me, he touched me.

• 1:15:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:37Michael Gervais?

  This happens all the time. Yeah, right. And so he grounded me, touched me, and he said, um, he said, good job. He said, how you doing?

• 1:15:44Rich Roll?

  And so was that like a, I would imagine that was emotionally cathartic.

• 1:15:49Michael Gervais?

  I don't know what it was, but I just laid there. You know, I do know what it was. It was an incredible cathartic, meaning release. It was a radical release, but it was something bigger than just a release. I became more, I became now aware of something, a larger capacity. I became aware of that decision making. I became better able to go deep with emotion. And so, yeah, it was really, really good for me.

• 1:16:16Rich Roll?

  It's interesting because as somebody whose profession is all about the mind and the power of the mind and the elasticity of the mind and how to control and channel, you know, mental, you know, mental powers.

• 1:16:30Michael Gervais?

  Whatever those are.

• 1:16:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly. There's and and rooting that in science. There's still so much we don't understand about that, about consciousness. And I think it's cool to leave room for that wonder, you know? And I think with that comes a little humility. Because I think when people are like, well, this is the way it is, you know, and we understand everything. It's like, clearly, we don't. You know what I mean? And if you can't recognize that, you're you're pretty myopic. Like, we're only just beginning to understand certain things about the human body in general. And the brain is like, you know, that's like the Big Bang.

• 1:17:11Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, those those three, 3.3 pounds are like, that's like.

• 1:17:15Rich Roll?

  And so I think it's cool to be able to say, yeah, we don't understand everything. And I don't know what that means, but I can appreciate it. And I know in my own experience that it was real. That doesn't mean that there's some double-blind, you know, study that controls for all the multivariate factors or whatever, you know, whatever language that you guys speak in science. But to me, it was real and I can file that away and I can not only remember that, but use that in my work.

• 1:17:43Michael Gervais?

  Thousand percent. And I think that for all of us that want to grow, we have to put ourselves on the edge. And, you know, sometimes that feels like we need to just hold on to the side of the cliff, just dig our nails into it and hold on. And sometimes it's a simple decision. And sometimes it's just holding an eye gaze longer. And there's so many ways that we that we don't know how growth really takes place. And so, yeah, I just think being able to play on the edges is wonderful. And if you don't have something to anchor to, you don't know what an edges. So doing that first work of building the base and having an anchor, a framework, a psychological framework that we, you know, I talk about a lot, it's not easy to build in.

• 1:18:28Michael Gervais?

  Somebody's building it for you if you're not building it yourself.

• 1:18:31Rich Roll?

  And just to play the story out, ultimately, you end up healing this injury in your neck. And you attribute a great deal of that to this consistent meditation practice, this healing technique of visualizing yourself, like your sort of, your body parts sort of reassembling in a healthy way. Right?

• 1:18:49Michael Gervais?

  Again, yes.

• 1:18:50Rich Roll?

  Talk about that a little bit?

• 1:18:51Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, sure. Here we go. Not great science.

• 1:18:55Michael Gervais?

  Right? And so this is the mad.

• 1:18:56Rich Roll?

  You can talk about science with other people.

• 1:18:58Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, right. Not here.

• 1:18:59Rich Roll?

  We're going down like this spiritual black hole.

• 1:19:01Michael Gervais?

  Yeah. Yeah. So I think, okay, so right now, your body, my body, we're both trying to heal. Our bodies are trying to heal. And because all day long, we're stressing our body, the recovery part is compromised. Especially if you've had one or two or 12 glasses of wine, especially if you think about things that are anxious and produce cortisol, or are sad and produce cortisol. And especially if there's, you know, we're not using our mind optimally, or we're not sleeping optimally, and we're working really hard, welcome to just about everyone we know. So.

• 1:19:37Rich Roll?

  Or even if you're exercising, you're creating all those free radicals. That's its own form of stress, or, you know, breathing air that's not clean. Like, all of these things contribute to that.

• 1:19:46Michael Gervais?

  That's right. And eating.

• 1:19:48Rich Roll?

  Eating terrible food.

• 1:19:49Michael Gervais?

  That's right. So our body, so the point, I think that we're, that I want to set up is that our body is trying to repair and recover, and we're not helping it well. And from all those external factors and also internal thinking factors. And so if it's trying to recover, how can I best use and apply concentration? And focused energy? When I say energy, I don't mean woo woo, like focusing my concentration to accelerate the biological structures to do what they're trying to do better. Okay? If that's possible, who am I to know? And so that's where the idea comes from, is that can you focus well enough to quiet your body down?

• 1:20:33Michael Gervais?

  And really direct your attention to seeing and feeling a particular structure that's already part of you?

• 1:20:42Michael Gervais?

  Doing it better. What am I talking about? Oxygen and blood flow and all the nutrients that and neurochemicals that are working to be able to to repair, they're already happening right now in our body. So with some basic understandings of some structure and like what ligaments look like, or in my case, what discs look like and and the spinal column and spinal cord and all the right nutrients that are that are being carried by blood.

• 1:21:08Michael Gervais?

  How to accelerate that. That's all I did. So I just quiet down my body so that I can have clear pictures and hold that image as long as I possibly can of seeing my body repair. And literally ceiling, seeing the image.

• 1:21:21Rich Roll?

  Like, but very specifically, like seeing these little parts of your spine rearranging around your spinal cord in a healthy way.

• 1:21:28Michael Gervais?

  That's exactly it.

• 1:21:29Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:21:29Michael Gervais?

  Yeah. So seeing the, seeing the facet joint like moving more clearly, clearing out the, the, the opening so the nerve could fit just a little bit better. Seeing that intrusion that extrusion and intrusion, extrusion, sorry, sticking to the bone structure instead of floating on the spinal cord. And it's relentless. It was relentless and

• 1:21:53Rich Roll?

  So you did that, it was like 17 minutes every evening?

• 1:21:56Michael Gervais?

  Yeah. My target was 20, but and very rarely could I get to 20 at that time.

• 1:22:00Rich Roll?

  And this went on for, how long did you practice this?

• 1:22:03Michael Gervais?

  It was about 31 days to be exact. Not very long. So there's lots of room like in the science mind to say, well, there there's lots that could have happened. Maybe it already was healed. Maybe this is just a funny little story that you feel good about yourself, Mike, or whatever. You know, like, there's lots of ways to think about it.

• 1:22:21Rich Roll?

  Dismissing it is easy.

• 1:22:22Michael Gervais?

  I think so. And either way, the idea that, the, the idea, not the application, but the idea that our body's trying to heal. And if we can quiet our system down, our body, and we can focus our mind, we can do some stuff. There's, I don't think that that's wild. I think it's wild, though, to be able to quiet your body down and have that much focus and concentration. And now stitch this back to our early part of our conversation today is that I was in pain. So I was ready to do whatever it would take, you know, and I wanted to try everything before surgery. So when we love people, we'll do whatever it takes.

• 1:23:01Rich Roll?

  Right. There's so much I want to get into with this. This is like super amazing. But to kind of just, you know, put an end cap on the story, ultimately you went back for a, for an MRI and everything looked good, right? Was all like sort of resolved and you asked the, the, the doctor like, hey, well, you know, you, you told me like I was going to need surgery. Now look at it like, how do you think, how do you think this happened? Instead of saying, here's what I did and I healed myself. You were asking him, right?

• 1:23:28Michael Gervais?

  Well, the film just came up and, and he said, well, huh, how do you feel? I said, oh, okay. Now, mind you, this is, this will tell you about me is that, uh, as an N of one, a number of one is that when I saw the film the first time and I saw this gnarly thing pushing against my spine, I got worse. So that's just, that was an anxious mind.

• 1:23:50Rich Roll?

  Fear.

• 1:23:51Michael Gervais?

  And I saw it. I saw the thing that was broken. I saw, like with my eyes, I saw it. So now I had this image to attach to. It was the worst thing I could have done. I bet you, I bet you if I didn't see it and I didn't have a white coat, you know, somebody like that was supposed to really take care of me, but was really scaring me.

• 1:24:09Michael Gervais?

  I bet I wouldn't, uh, my body would have eventually kind of figured this thing out. But I made, I know I made it worse. I know I didn't. I, I, looking back, that's, I have such empathy for people, me included, that when we scare ourselves and anxiety, you know, and thoughts that are scary because it was gnarly. But so we popped the disc or popped the MRI up and I said, what do you see? Or no, he says, how do you feel? And I said, well, okay. You know, it's not, it wasn't burning as bad, but it was still there. It's not like all the pain went away. And, um, he said, you know, funny thing is that it looks like your extrusion, your extrusion is gone.

• 1:24:47Michael Gervais?

  I said, I didn't want to give them away. I'd give anything away and I didn't want to sound like a quack. And I said, well, how do you make sense of that? He says, well, sometimes, um, the body just eats them up, like the gas and stuff, you know, your body just eats it up. And sometimes they move. And now I really started freaking out like, could it, could, could it move down? But I knew, I knew it didn't move. And he said, no, we would see it in the film. Like we got enough vertebrae that we'd see it. It doesn't move like swimming. It doesn't swim up and down your spine.

• 1:25:13Rich Roll?

  Down to the base of your spine.

• 1:25:14Michael Gervais?

  Come on, Gervais, you know, and so, um, he says, no, right where it was, it looks like there's a little calcium buildup, but that looks like it's just kind of gone.

• 1:25:21Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:25:23Rich Roll?

  You said earlier that you didn't think it was crazy that this idea that, you know, we have some domain, some power, some control over, you know, the trajectory of our, of our health and our lives through the power of our mind. And of course, like, look at people that are excelling at life, like they have a certain worldview or perspective of themselves that is probably, you know, self-assured, confident, you know, not without fear, but maybe a little healthier than somebody who's struggling. So, you know, you don't need to look any further than that to understand how powerful it is. But I think it's interesting that you took it upon yourself to try to heal yourself. I mean, most people would have just said, okay, doc, like, you know, cut me open and fix it, or whatever.

• 1:26:06Michael Gervais?

  Well, okay, so this is-

• 1:26:07Rich Roll?

  But to kind of go on this journey-

• 1:26:09Michael Gervais?

  Okay, this is really important, I think, for, for the nuance of the story is that I wanted, I didn't know this until hindsight, I wanted other people to heal me. I did. I was afraid of surgery because like I was 20 some years old and the surgery, like, athletes didn't do well with the surgery that I knew. And so I was afraid of it. I wasn't ready for that. But I wanted, boy, when someone would do soft tissue work on me-

• 1:26:34Rich Roll?

  Somebody else to do it for you.

• 1:26:35Michael Gervais?

  Ice, heat, stim, acupressure, acupuncture, whatever, chiro, everything. Like, I just wanted, I, so that was exhausted, I exhausted, I'm sure, people, you know, not knowing better. Because I was, I was hurting. And so, okay, so then, I said, well, I gotta, I gotta do my own work now. But I did not do it without a spiritual framework. So, part of the early work that I didn't talk about on healing meditation or healing mindfulness is that I would just get really spiritually connected. And so, there's lots of ways that somebody could do that. For me, it happened to be, because I believe that the Trinity is beautiful, beautiful story, and I'm really open to all the world religions of what they teach.

• 1:27:18Michael Gervais?

  And the Trinity is just a beautiful capture of what's true, beautiful and good to me. And so I had this image that I would conjure up and I would just be like that flood that I was talking about earlier. I had that same opening and I would connect to a spiritual, um, my spirit, a spiritual groundedness or spiritual sense. So it sounds wacky, but I didn't do it by myself.

• 1:27:37Rich Roll?

  Right. And but you were taking, it was when you decided to take ownership of it.

• 1:27:41Michael Gervais?

  A thousand percent.

• 1:27:42Rich Roll?

  And not advocate that to all of these other people.

• 1:27:44Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:45Rich Roll?

  Um, you know, my wife has a really similar story and that, that was very influential to me because it occurred before kind of my transformation. Ironically, it also occurred in the neck and around the vertebrae.

• 1:27:57Michael Gervais?

  For you or for her?

• 1:27:58Rich Roll?

  For her. Yeah. She developed a cyst on her neck. It was diagnosed as a thyroglossal duct cyst, which I guess is rare in adults. It occurs in very young, like infants, I suppose, is what I understand. Um, and she was told that, you know, it swelled to the size of a golf ball. So it was very pronounced. And, you know, embarrassing for a woman to walk around. Uh, and the doctor said, you know, you don't have to panic. It's not like a malignant cancerous tumor, but it's also not going to go away on its own. Like, we're going to have to cut it out. And it was attached to, I don't know which vertebrae, but you know, it was tricky. It was a tricky surgery. There were some nerves around it that made it semi complicated.

• 1:28:40Rich Roll?

  And she had undergone a botched tonsillectomy some years prior that left her bedridden. You know, a simple procedure that went awry. So she was like, I'm not, I don't, I don't want to, I'm not going to do that again. And she went on this journey of trying to figure out how to heal herself. And that led her through a variety of modalities, but ultimately to the counsel of an Ayurvedic doctor. And Ayurveda is all about balancing your energy systems and all of that to allow the body to heal itself. And he put her on a protocol that was essentially plant-based diet, uh, reduction in stress, no work after five o'clock, sleep, you know, all these sorts of things that are obviously, you know, you need to do to be healthy.

• 1:29:21Rich Roll?

  Um, and all these crazy herbs that made her house smell like a sewage depot. She was rubbing. Stuff on her neck and putting this Band-Aid on it and brewing these strange, you know, witches brew teas and like, and you know, I'm still like a lawyer, like I'm all up in my head, you know, but I like being married and it's like you gotta support your spouse. So I was like, I wasn't crazy about this, but I was like, all right, well, you know, I'll let her play this out and we'll see where it goes. And it also involved deep spiritual connection, meditation, visualization of, of, of, of being a healed person. And it didn't happen in 30 days. It took about nine months, but it went away and it never came back. And, and people ask her like,

• 1:30:05Rich Roll?

  well, did you ever go back to those doctors and ask them like, you know, how could this happen? You told me this could never happen. She's like, no, because they'll kind of say what your guys, you know, they'll, they'll say, well, this happens sometimes or, you know, whatever comports with that worldview, because she was doing some pretty woo woo stuff. And I don't know what that means, but I, but what I extract from that is that, is that sense of humility and wonder that, that we are more powerful than we allow ourselves to believe, right? That, that the mind went channeled properly and when the spirit is in alignment and we can kind of marshal these, these, you know, amorphous invisible resources to our own benefit, that we can do things that our culture, you know, doesn't really focus on as being real

• 1:30:49Rich Roll?

  things. You know what I mean? Ultimately, just look, if you, if you eat the right foods and you treat your body right, perhaps you're able to heal yourself in, in a way that maybe you wouldn't imagine.

• 1:30:59Michael Gervais?

  Or your body's already trying to do it.

• 1:31:01Rich Roll?

  It's trying to do it.

• 1:31:02Michael Gervais?

  Help that. We don't, we don't, I don't know. I don't know if anyone knows like how we even, this body even happened. Like there's, that's a still wild ass guess how this thing even like really works. So that's pretty phenomenal in and of itself. And, you know, then the scientists in, in, for me, for probably for you too, would be like placebo, just a placebo effect.

• 1:31:23Rich Roll?

  And as a scientist who's had these experiences, how do you reconcile that?

• 1:31:28Michael Gervais?

  Maybe it's a placebo, but then what is a placebo? You think it's going to work. So it works. That's crazy.

• 1:31:34Rich Roll?

  Who cares?

• 1:31:35Michael Gervais?

  Yeah. But is, but isn't that interesting? Like if you think it's going to work, that's what a placebo is. You give people, somebody a sugar pill.

• 1:31:40Rich Roll?

  That's something.

• 1:31:41Michael Gervais?

  And a real medicine and you say that this is going to change you and then it does change them. It changes, something happens. That is crazy. There's also a nocebo that we don't talk about enough. So there's placebo, introducing a thought to impact a result that's not founded in anything. And then nocebo is when you tell somebody that you're going to do this and it's not going to work. And sure enough, more often than not, that plays true as well. That's a cool concept, nocebo. We don't talk about it enough, though.

• 1:32:11Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. Alright, so, um,

• 1:32:16Rich Roll?

  you know, a lot of people, not everyone who listens to this podcast, contrary to popular opinion, is an elite athlete at the Olympics.

• 1:32:24Rich Roll?

  You know, a lot of people are just trying to, you know, to coin Dan Harris's phrase, be 10% happier. Like, how can they be more productive? How can they be more mindful? You know, they're not necessarily looking to master every aspect of their life, but to perhaps bring a little bit more purpose and vitality and health and satisfaction into their, you know, daily existence. So, you know, what is your kind of message to that person?

• 1:32:54Michael Gervais?

  Well, I think that mastery is, um, it feels like it's really

• 1:33:02Michael Gervais?

  for the rare elite, which is wrong. Mastery of self, mastery of craft. So I think that-

• 1:33:10Rich Roll?

  How do you define mastery? Maybe we should start there.

• 1:33:13Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, I'm still working it out. You know, um, I'll tell you where I am with it now, but I'm still, I'm still working this thing out. I want to talk about, there's so many variables in my head that flood when we talk about it, but I really do think it's an understanding of the nuances better than you did before. And mastery is playing in the nuances in a way that is exceptional.

• 1:33:41Michael Gervais?

  And the nuances really like in in for thinking, the nuances of thinking are the space between thoughts and the space between words and the space like that nuanced place inside is really beautiful and rare. And for a basketball player or a chef or somebody, it's like playing with ingredients or playing with time and temperatures in such a way that it is exceptional and it's beautiful and it's amazing and it's um it's hard to reproduce. So it's the nuances that I'm I'm most interested in right now. Um, so anyways, the I don't want to get too lost on that because I want to talk about this concept that I mastery is available for all of us, especially the journey of self-discovery. And that's really what mastery

• 1:34:24Michael Gervais?

  of self is about. This journey of self-discovery that is available for everybody. Some people use a craft to better understand themselves and to better understand people in general, the craft of sport or music or whatever the business that craft is really just as really rich experience to learn more about who you are.

• 1:34:45Rich Roll?

  Or an external manifestation of wherever you are in your journey, right? So whether you're, you know, uh, standing on the starting blocks at the Olympics or a CEO or suffering through a job that you hate in a cubicle, we're all on that journey of self-discovery, whether we're consciously pursuing it or not.

• 1:35:05Michael Gervais?

  I I hundred percent agree with that idea. Self-discovery is the process of becoming masterful of your experience in life. But you need to have some basic commands of some things to do mastery right. And so it's not for the elite. It's it. This is for all of us. And this is stuff that 5000 years ago, as people were talking about, this is no different than the ancient thoughts of the of from great philosophers. What is the meaning of life? What are we doing, guys? What are we doing here? And answering that fundamental question, I think, is really important for every person. What are you doing? And if you have an afterlife, cool. If you don't, okay. What are you doing here in physical form while we're together?

• 1:35:48Rich Roll?

  And why are you doing it?

• 1:35:50Michael Gervais?

  Well, yeah. So all of that, you know, and getting really clear. It's hard to answer that now. And then there's the other question, the most, one of the most fundamental questions is who am I?

• 1:36:02Michael Gervais?

  So answering that stuff and using your daily experiences and the awareness that you can bring to those daily experiences, which requires training, awareness requires training, unless you're two and you know, or before where it's just you're purely aware of everything all day long, that for most, for adults, we need to train our mind to be aware because busyness and distraction are real. So I think that for all of us, understanding how the mind works better, there's only three things as humans we can train, and train your body, your craft, and your mind. There might be an asterisk that you can train your spirit. I'm not willing to put that in right now, but you can, if you can train your mind, and

• 1:36:45Michael Gervais?

  I bet you, most of your listeners have trained their mind in some kind of way because that's why they're listening to you, but doing a formal, structured investment in training one's own mind is, the return on investment is wild.

• 1:37:00Rich Roll?

  Right. And so, let's say somebody's listening and they're like, I want to make that commitment, but you know, I'm not going to be able to be a client of Mike, you know?

• 1:37:09Michael Gervais?

  Sure.

• 1:37:10Rich Roll?

  And I don't even know if there's somebody who does what you do, where they live, and beyond, you know, listening to your podcast and doing their own sort of self-styled exploration, like what is the starting point for that person? What are the resources? What are the practices? What are the books that, you know, could provide a launchpad to embarking somebody on that journey?

• 1:37:30Michael Gervais?

  Twenty, thirty years ago, the field of psychology was burdened by secrecy and burdened by the study of dysfunction. So if you're using a psychologist to get better, it meant that you were not well. The field has shifted in radical ways, and it's like now we get to stand on the shoulders of giants that have studied the disease of the mind for a long time. And I don't even like the word disease of the mind, but the parts of the mind that were not structured and working optimally for people. And so, right now, it's a really exciting time because you can also go, those very smart people that are highly trained, that have a PhD and advanced degree or master's degree in the science and the art of how the mind works optimally, there's lots of them.

• 1:38:15Michael Gervais?

  And there's more people that are studying the dysfunction of the mind in the field of psychology. But in, in wherever local area that you are, if there's somebody that understands performance or sports psychology, and you're not an athlete, no problem. They understand how the mind works. It's just that athletes are willing to pay for it more than most people at the outset. It's not happening like that anymore. So sport and performance psychology is a very nuanced and it requires real training. And if, I would suggest that if you want to understand how the mind works, go to somebody that studied it and lived it at the highest level. And there's people in your neighborhood for sure that have done that.

• 1:38:54Rich Roll?

  Are there online resources where you can help find, find those people?

• 1:38:57Michael Gervais?

  American Psychological Association, Division 47 is a great resource. And so APA.

• 1:39:05Rich Roll?

  Division 47?

• 1:39:06Michael Gervais?

  That's right.

• 1:39:07Rich Roll?

  The performance division?

• 1:39:08Michael Gervais?

  That's right. Yeah, it's a sport performance.

• 1:39:10Rich Roll?

  Deep underground, like you know, the subterranean?

• 1:39:13Michael Gervais?

  That's exactly right.

• 1:39:14Rich Roll?

  Benefits of psychology.

• 1:39:16Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, and so that's, that's where I would start. And I even start with like people that are really switched on in your local community and you know, connecting with people that they have already tested. Even if they don't, they're not part of Division 47, but they have, you know, solid foundation in psychology and understand it. Like it's a, it's an exciting time right now, flat out.

• 1:39:38Rich Roll?

  It's gotta be really gratifying for you as somebody who's been in this game for, for quite some time, to see it like exploding and flourishing to the extent that it is right now. To, to be, you know, in a culture where talking about mindfulness and like, you know, flow states and, and the relationship of psychology to athletic performance is now like, it's totally fine to talk about that. You're not like a weirdo or some outlier, you know?

• 1:40:05Michael Gervais?

  It's also because of people like you, Rich, that went through some heavy stuff, got training, got your mind right, understood the baseline of like how your mind works, and then you fueled it and have talked about it, you know? So, yeah, it is a really exciting time. I don't know if it's gratifying, but it's really exciting to see the amount of lift that's taken. Making place for people in becoming more of who they want to become and having a deeper meaning in life and more in richer relationships and output is through the roof of things that they never thought was possible. And like, yes, all of that is possible. And it does start with this kind of, I don't know, this trite thought, like invest in yourself first. But what are you investing in? Your mind? Like, Jesus, like, I don't know who trained you in your mind, like,

• 1:40:50Michael Gervais?

  before you did some formal work. It was your mom, your dad, your coach?

• 1:40:54Rich Roll?

  Right, whatever your environment dictated. Right? There was no conscious choosing of that. It was just whatever you were exposed to.

• 1:41:01Michael Gervais?

  You can totally rewrite the story once you understand the alphabet.

• 1:41:03Rich Roll?

  Right. And I feel like we're, we're really just at the very beginning of this.

• 1:41:07Michael Gervais?

  I think so too.

• 1:41:08Rich Roll?

  I've said this before, maybe I even talked to you about it, but look, you know, the difference between the guy who's, you know, hearing the national anthem and standing on top of the podium in Rio, having a medal put around his neck, and the guy who's at home watching it on TV, that ain't much.

• 1:41:24Michael Gervais?

  It really isn't.

• 1:41:25Rich Roll?

  The slightest of advantage. And those guys are all incredibly talented women, you know, he's and she's, they're all training to their maximum physical capacities. So what's the difference? You know, it's the mental game. And to overlook that is insane. If you're, if you're trying to play at that level, right?

• 1:41:44Michael Gervais?

  And then, and then, and bring it all the way for the rest of us too, is that, man, I don't know, I like, I just want to know that I matter. I want to know that I can love and play and have a good time in life and I'm doing good and I'm connected to my unique journey. I think all of us want that. And so to do that better, why not, why not be more present?

• 1:42:06Rich Roll?

  Right. And yet, it goes back to that pain thing. Like, if you've suffered some kind of pain, it's easier to jump on that bandwagon. It's harder. And I think it's harder for younger people, younger athletes. Like, I, I can't remember whether I talked about this with you before, but I went out to the Olympic Training Center and they have like meditation pods and mindfulness, kind of, there's a mindfulness, like, sort of, I don't know if you'd call it a center, but like, you know, a physical space in the, in Colorado Springs at the Training Center.

• 1:42:37Rich Roll?

  People aren't really using it yet. You know what I mean? Like, so there's still plenty of work to be done.

• 1:42:41Michael Gervais?

  Lots of room to grow.

• 1:42:42Rich Roll?

  I think it's harder to convince an 18-year-old that this is something they need than somebody who's going into their fourth Olympics and knows the game and is, you know, needs that, appreciates what that extra edge can avail them.

• 1:42:57Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, I think that it's a rising tide right now. It's a real rising tide. We don't know how far it's gonna go, but I think that there'll be a pendulum swing at some point about something, you know, but it's a rising tide right now for interest in.

• 1:43:11Rich Roll?

  I think it's gonna rise for a while.

• 1:43:12Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, investing in the mind. And it's not, it's not complicated. It's literally not complicated. It's just invisible. And it's, if you're guided by somebody that understands the good science, it's not hard. But to do it on your own feels just really overwhelming. Like, which book do I read?

• 1:43:31Rich Roll?

  I was gonna say, like, until you write your book, what is, what is like a book that somebody could pick up?

• 1:43:36Michael Gervais?

  There's loads of good books. And that, you know, like, this is part of my challenges that, that everything's already been said, like, in really beautiful ways in the world of poetry and philosophy and writings. And so I want to say that reading a book is cool. Working with somebody that understands the science and the art and that can customize the hundreds of years of good science for you, way better accelerant.

• 1:44:02Rich Roll?

  Right, because a book might just reinforce the idea that you can do it by yourself.

• 1:44:05Michael Gervais?

  And what we, most of us do, I, yes, when most of us read a book, we're looking for the thing that we can do easily, but maybe that's not the thing we need, you know, so.

• 1:44:14Rich Roll?

  How dare you?

• 1:44:15Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, I know. So, I don't know. What's a good book that comes to mind right now for me? Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl, I think the first, the first half of that book. Yeah, it's like, it's a foundation book. Tao Te Ching is like, you know, by Lao Tzu, is one of the kind of original, deep, deep mystic thinkings of, from Taoism. Certainly, any spiritual text, the Bible, the Quran, you know, that like, like.

• 1:44:47Rich Roll?

  Bhagavad Gita?

• 1:44:48Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, that's, it's hard.

• 1:44:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, that's a, that's a commitment.

• 1:44:53Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, it's hard. I caught myself because it's, it's tough. Tao, the Tao Te Ching is hard, too.

• 1:44:59Rich Roll?

  But Bhagavad Gita is stories, though. Like, you can immerse yourself in the stories.

• 1:45:04Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, those are wonderful. So I think all of those spiritual texts I think are important. Man's Search for Meaning, wonderful. If you want a light read, I think like the kind of the classics like The Alchemist and Way of the Champ, not Way of the Champion, that's a good book. Way of a Peaceful Warrior.

• 1:45:21Rich Roll?

  Way of a Peaceful Warrior.

• 1:45:22Michael Gervais?

  Those are all kind of iconic, classic, easy, simple, little nugget, digestible reads, but anything by John Kabat-Zinn, I think he's really on it for mindfulness.

• 1:45:31Rich Roll?

  I've never read.

• 1:45:32Michael Gervais?

  Oh. Full Catastrophe Living was original. He's kind of the science, the first scientist to come to mindfulness in the States.

• 1:45:42Michael Gervais?

  So anything by him is rad. And, you know, I don't know, sometimes books choose you, so.

• 1:45:47Rich Roll?

  Cool, man. I think we did it.

• 1:45:49Michael Gervais?

  Thank you, brother.

• 1:45:50Rich Roll?

  How do you feel?

• 1:45:51Michael Gervais?

  Awesome. I, I love having conversations with you, so.

• 1:45:53Rich Roll?

  It's so great, man. We should do this all the time.

• 1:45:55Michael Gervais?

  Yeah. Yeah, as I was like, sharing some of the stories, I had this other edit mind going like, does anyone care? Like, it's a really bizarre story. Like, what are we talking about? So.

• 1:46:08Rich Roll?

  It's good, man. You talked about a few things that you haven't talked about before, I feel like, I hope. And, you know, listen, if, if, if this is new to you, go back and listen to our other one, because then you get the whole sort of full picture of your life and all that. And there were so many things we actually didn't even get into, like, all right, like, am I going to end this without asking you at least one question about the guy who jumped out of a plane without a parachute?

• 1:46:30Michael Gervais?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:46:32Rich Roll?

  Because I know you've worked with him and you've tweeted about it and there's been newspaper, there's articles about it that acknowledges that you were involved and you probably can't talk about anything specific about that, but that is just insane. Like, that was just the most amazing thing to watch. And I cannot imagine the mindset that you would have to be in to, to, to accomplish that.

• 1:46:53Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, Luke Aikins jumped out of a plane at 25,000 feet, which requires oxygen, and he landed in a series of nets that he designed. You know, that was X stories tall. And it was, I said to my wife, the night before it happened, I said, you know, tomorrow, our lives will be fundamentally different. And you know, she's like nodding like, yeah.

• 1:47:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's an either or.

• 1:47:18Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, either he lands and he or he doesn't. Either he survives or he doesn't. There's no kind of real space in between here. And um, his life is fundamentally different and it was just an honor to be part of the project. And it was a beautiful demonstration of a complete command of craft and a complete command of mind to be able to execute when the stakes are as high as they get.

• 1:47:43Rich Roll?

  They don't get any higher.

• 1:47:44Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, for your own life and he has and his three year old son and his beautiful wife Monica. And so like, I'm just honored to be part of that project and it scared the, you know what out of me. And I, and it was um, it was wonderful and he's epic at it. And he, he, we need people like Luke to remind us of what the frontier is, to remind us of what uh, true is. And he did it.

• 1:48:08Rich Roll?

  He really did. I mean, after Felix Baumgartner, I didn't, I wasn't sure it could get any crazier, but that's pretty, that is about as out there as it's gonna come. You know, but the day's gonna come. I mean, as you continue to push that envelope out, the day's gonna come where the guy doesn't serve, you know, whoever is doing whatever is not gonna make it.

• 1:48:26Michael Gervais?

  I know. Yeah, I, I know that. And the, the running joke amongst my friends is like, you know, maybe you shouldn't be doing anything in the air. Anytime recent, you know, it's because those are really heavy, heavy experiences that fortunately went well.

• 1:48:40Rich Roll?

  And you see it with the wingsuit guys and, and sponsors pulling out of getting behind those athletes. And as the pressure ramps up, you gotta GoPro everything and everything's gotta be on Instagram. And what's your YouTube channel look like? Like those externalities start to creep in and inform decisions in an unhealthy way, I think.

• 1:48:58Michael Gervais?

  It really warps. Yeah, it really warps um, decision making.

• 1:49:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:02Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:03Rich Roll?

  We could have a whole other podcast about that. Yeah, we gotta, we gotta lock it down. Do you have anything exciting coming up? Are you like going out and doing public speaking? What's going on with win forever?

• 1:49:13Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, so Coach Carol and I partnered, created a joint venture for a business together. We're right in the middle of changing the name, so we're going through that process right now.

• 1:49:23Rich Roll?

  Why? That's such a cool name.

• 1:49:25Michael Gervais?

  I love that you love it. Yeah. So we're trying to map what we've created together and really kind of capture something. And so it's great. And so like, literally alive about the process, the business path that we've created with some beautiful partners to be able to, hopefully, here's a crazy number, but you know, I'm gonna back myself into a corner at some kind of way. 1.5 billion people we want to impact. And that's a big, big, big, big number.

• 1:49:51Rich Roll?

  Why 1.5?

• 1:49:52Michael Gervais?

  Because everybody's got five friends. And then so that's 7 billion. And so if we could impact 1.5, maybe we need half that really. But that, and you know, if we could help, here's the mission, 1.5 billion people, to help them increase the frequency of them being fully present in their lives. And so if they can increase the frequency, then we're living in access of what is true, beautiful, and good. And people are able to be more connected to what is authentically meant, you know, on their life journey. So that's a mouthful, I know. But that's what we're doing. We've got a plan. It's really exciting of how it could go. And so that's, that's how we're gonna hopefully take from, from

• 1:50:33Michael Gervais?

  the elite and the mountaintop of spiritual and the elite of performers and all different businesses and sports, and provide some access for all the rest of us.

• 1:50:43Rich Roll?

  I love it. That's a beautiful, laudable goal, but you're not messing around.

• 1:50:47Michael Gervais?

  No, we're not.

• 1:50:48Rich Roll?

  You're going big, man.

• 1:50:49Michael Gervais?

  We got some folks that, yeah, have really forced us to think that way. So.

• 1:50:53Rich Roll?

  That's, that's interesting. I will read, I will infer between the lines on that.

• 1:50:57Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:57Rich Roll?

  That's pretty cool. And I look forward to hearing more about that.

• 1:51:00Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, we'd love to get you involved in some kind of way too, Rich.

• 1:51:02Rich Roll?

  Whatever, man. Whatever you need.

• 1:51:03Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:04Rich Roll?

  Whatever you need. Cool. Alright, so first off, definitely check out Finding Mastery Podcast on iTunes. And then the other one, the kind of spinoff is Moments in Mastery. What's it called?

• 1:51:14Michael Gervais?

  Minutes on Mastery.

• 1:51:15Rich Roll?

  Minutes on Mastery, which is just kind of shortcuts from the interviews, if you're time crunched. FindingMastery.net, @MichaelGervais on Twitter and Instagram too. Is it the same on Instagram?

• 1:51:27Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, it's both. Yeah, good job.

• 1:51:29Rich Roll?

  So you're easy to find.

• 1:51:31Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, thank you.

• 1:51:31Rich Roll?

  And keep rocking, man. I love it. It's beautiful, this journey that you're on, and I can't wait to see where you take it.

• 1:51:38Michael Gervais?

  So again, I can't leave without thanking you for breathing life into me wanting to do this. So again, sincere thanks and appreciative of all that you've done for all of us.

• 1:51:47Rich Roll?

  My pleasure, man. Thank you. Peace. Plants.

• 1:51:54Rich Roll?

  All right, we did it. What'd you guys think? Pretty amazing, right? Michael always blows my hair back and gives me so many things to ponder and consider and think about when it comes to self-mastery, the main subject of today's conversation. Of course, check out his Finding Mastery podcast and to delve deeper into all things Michael Gervais. Check out the show notes on the episode page at ritual.com. We've got tons of links and resources to take your edification and your infotainment beyond the earbuds. As always, I appreciate you guys sharing the show with your friends, your coworkers, your family members around the water cooler. Thank you so much. If you haven't done so already, please take a moment to leave us a short review on iTunes. We really appreciate that.

• 1:52:36Rich Roll?

  And go ahead and click that subscribe button on iTunes if you haven't already. Mad love and big shout out to everybody who has made a practice of using the Amazon banner ad at ritual.com for all your Amazon purchases. That really does help us out tremendously. So thank you so much for that. You can find that banner ad right on any episode page on my website. And if you're inspired to support the mission even further, we have a Patreon and you can find the banner for that right where you find the Amazon banner. If you guys want to hear from me via email, I have a free short weekly blast that I send out called Roll Call. It goes out every Thursday.

• 1:53:15Rich Roll?

  And basically, I just share a few tips, some tools, some resources, documentaries, books that I'm enjoying, articles that I've read, things like that, that I have found interesting and just feel like I wanted to share them. That's it. No spam. Again, it's totally free and you can subscribe to that also on my website, ritual.com. Plenty of places where you can add your email. Address and for all your plant power, merch and swag needs, go to richroll.com. We got signed copies of Finding Ultra, signed copies of Plant Power Way. We got T-shirts, we've got tech tees, all kinds of good stuff. I want to thank everybody who helped put on today's show. Jason Camiello for audio engineering and production, also Sean Patterson for all

• 1:53:56Rich Roll?

  of his graphics wizardry, and Chris Swan for additional production assistance. And Chris does a lot of heavy lifting and legwork around putting together and compiling each week's resources, the show notes. So thanks, Chris, for that. And theme music, as always, by Anna Lima. Thanks for the love, you guys. And I want to leave you with a final question for the three people that are still listening at this point. A big portion of today's conversation, obviously pivoted around self mastery. And self mastery requires upfront, it requires self-understanding, self-knowledge, an understanding of one's strengths, an understanding of one's limiters, weaknesses, and the patterns that hold us back. So my question to you is, what

• 1:54:39Rich Roll?

  is limiting you from self mastery? What habit or practice or behavior do you continue to perpetuate that is at odds with your goals and who you want to be and your best, most authentic self? And the way out of that, the way through that, I think, it always begins with getting out pen and paper. Get out that journal, start writing it down, and then begin to map your way out. Hatch a plan to eradicate, abandon, give up, or transcend that limiter by replacing it with a new habit, a new pattern, or a behavior that is consistent with the person that you'd like to look at in the mirror every morning. I can't do this for you. I can provide the information, the understanding, the knowledge through these

• 1:55:23Rich Roll?

  podcasts and through all the writing that I do, but the action is up to you. So are you going to take that action? And the final question I'll leave you with is, what do you have to lose? See you soon. Peace.

• 1:55:40Rich Roll?

  Plants.

• 1:56:10Rich Roll?

  ...