Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais

This week’s conversation is with Joe de Sena, the founder and CEO of Spartan, the world’s leading endurance sports and wellness brand.

Throughout his lifetime, Joe has competed in any extreme sports adventure he could find, testing his mental and physical endurance against nature. 

His racing resume is the stuff of legend – over 50 ultra-events overall and 14 Ironman events in one year alone.

And that led to Spartan – a global experiential sport and wellness brand with a 10 million+ strong community. 

It creates transformational experiences, products, and content to help people, companies and teams tear down boundaries and expand what they believe to be possible. 

I wanted to have this conversation with Joe to better understand what drove him to create Spartan.

We discuss purpose, sacrifice, work/life balance, habits for living healthier and so much more.

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This week’s conversation is with Ryan Holiday, the bestselling author of The Obstacle Is the Way; Ego Is the Enemy; Conspiracy and other books about marketing, culture, and the human condition. 

His work has been translated into over 30 languages and has appeared everywhere from the New York Times to Fast Company.

His company, Brass Check, has advised companies such as Google, TASER, and Complex, as well as multi platinum musicians and some of the biggest authors in the world. 

You may already be familiar with Ryan from his previous appearance on Finding Mastery a few years ago (episode #43).

Ryan is a proponent of stoicism and in this conversation, we discuss what led him down that path and why the underlying philosophy is so important to him.

As Ryan puts it: “A Stoic doesn't control the world, but they control always how they respond to the world. So it's a really great philosophy if you're doing something ambitious. If you're a leader or an athlete or a poet or a politician, it's there for the stresses of life.”

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This week’s conversation is with Joanne McCallie, better known as “Coach P” – one of the most highly decorated female college basketball coaches in the country. 

Over the last 28 years, Coach P has coached at Maine, Michigan State, and most recently Duke.

She’s the only Division I head coach to lead two different programs to 30-win seasons with three National Championship game appearances, and she won National Coach of the Year in 2005.

Coach P’s success on the court speaks for itself, but there was more that I wanted to explore with her.

She recently made her longtime battle with bipolar disorder public – something she didn’t feel comfortable revealing during her coaching career.

For those of you unfamiliar, bipolar disorder, or manic-depressive illness, is a brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in mood, energy, activity levels, and the ability to carry out day-to-day tasks.

So in this conversation, we discuss Coach P’s experience battling this disorder while leading one of the premier program’s in the nation.

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This week’s conversation is with Dr. Peter Attia, a physician focusing on the applied science of longevity. 

Peter earned his M.D. from Stanford University and holds a B.Sc. in mechanical engineering and applied mathematics.

He trained for five years at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in general surgery, where he was the recipient of several prestigious awards, including resident of the year, and the author of a comprehensive review of general surgery. 

Peter has since been mentored by some of the most experienced and innovative lipidologists, endocrinologists, gynecologists, sleep physiologists, and longevity scientists in the United States and Canada.

His practice deals extensively with nutritional interventions, exercise physiology, sleep physiology, emotional and mental health, and pharmacology to increase lifespan (delay the onset of chronic disease), while simultaneously improving healthspan (quality of life).

In this conversation, we discuss Peter’s journey – his battle with perfectionism, his quest to reinvent himself, and why emotional wellbeing is the thing that interests him the most right now.

Peter is downright one of the best at what he does so I think you’ll be fascinated to hear how his mind works.

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This week’s conversation is with Tony Blauer, a coach in the martial art, self-defense, defensive tactics, and combatives industry for over four decades.

He founded Blauer Tactical Systems (BTS) in 1985 and it has grown into one of the world's leading consulting companies specializing in the research and development of performance psychology, personal safety, and close quarter tactics & scenario-based training for law enforcement, military, and professional self-defense instructors.

After decades of interviewing victims of violent encounters and studying violence, he also created the KNOW FEAR® program which focuses on managing fear through self-awareness, resiliency, and a 'movement' mindset. This program has also been integrated by psychologists helping Vets to deal with PTSD.

You may be familiar with Tony’s work from his first time on Finding Mastery in early 2020 (episode #208).

The world has changed quite a bit since then so I wanted to have Tony back on to further discuss his approach to combatting fear.

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This week’s conversation is with Dr. Marv Dunphy, widely recognized as one of the premier coaches in the history of the sport of volleyball.

He directed Pepperdine to four NCAA men’s volleyball titles and concluded his 34th and final season as the Waves’ head coach in 2017. He remains involved with the program as its head coach emeritus.

Marv also had a long, successful coaching tenure with the U.S. National Team. 

The American squad maintained a No. 1 world ranking during his time as coach in the 1980s and the team won every major international tournament: the 1985 World Cup, the 1986 World Championships, the 1987 Pan American Games and, most importantly, the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea.

Since then, he has been an assistant coach for the men’s team at the 2000 Olympics and a consultant coach at the 1996, 2004 and 2008 Olympics. 

In 2012, Marv served as a consultant coach in London for the silver-medal winning women’s squad and most recently, in 2016, he was a scouting coach for the women’s team, helping the team to a bronze-medal finish.

We had the pleasure of rooming together during those 2016 Olympic games in Rio and I’m hoping this conversation gives you the opportunity to get to know Marv the way I got to know him then.

In this conversation, we discuss what great leadership looks like and what separates the outliers from the rest of the pack. 

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This week’s conversation is with Dr. Ethan Kross, one of the world’s leading experts on controlling the conscious mind. 

After graduating magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, Ethan earned his Ph.D. in Psychology from Columbia University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in social-affective neuroscience to learn about the neural systems that support self-control. 

He moved to the University of Michigan in 2008, where he founded the Emotion & Self Control Laboratory.

As an award-winning professor in the University of Michigan’s top-ranked Psychology Department and its Ross School of Business, Ethan studies how the conversations people have with themselves impact their health, performance, decisions, and relationships.

And Ethan just published his first book, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It.

I’d be surprised if anyone listening hasn’t experienced what Ethan describes as “Chatter.”

That process where you have a thought such as, “Why did I screw up this shot or presentation at work?” But rather than just identify how to fix it and move on, you keep getting stuck. 

Our ability to reflect on what we’re doing, learn from our experiences and optimize how we navigate the world is an incredibly powerful tool, but that introspective capacity can also steer us off course.

Ruminating and getting stuck in this cycle of negative thinking can make life miserable, so in this conversation, we discuss what to do when you find yourself stuck in that cycle.

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This week’s conversation is with Max Lugavere, a filmmaker, health and science journalist and author of the The Genius Life and the New York Times best-seller Genius Foods: Become Smarter, Happier, and More Productive While Protecting Your Brain for Life.

Max appears regularly on the Dr. Oz Show, the Rachael Ray Show, and The Doctors. 

After his mother was diagnosed with a mysterious form of dementia, Max put his successful media career on hold to learn everything he could about brain health and performance.

For the better half of a decade, he consumed the most up-to-date scientific research, talked to dozens of leading scientists and clinicians around the world, and visited the country’s best neurology departments—all in the hopes of understanding his mother’s condition. 

Sometimes with the non-traditional route of education, I have my doubts, as there's something to be said about formal training.

But Max’s purpose is clear – he knows what he’s talking about and offers some very practical strategies that you can begin implementing today. 

We discuss how critical diet is for both brain health and longevity – Max shares his nutritional recommendations and some tips for preparing healthy meals regularly.

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This week’s conversation is with Cal Newport, an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University, where he specializes in the theory of distributed systems.

Cal is also a New York Times bestselling author who writes about the intersection of technology and culture. 

He’s the author of seven books, including Digital Minimalism and Deep Work, which have been published in over thirty languages. 

In his latest book titled, A World Without Email, he makes the case that our current approach to work is broken, then lays out a series of principles and concrete instructions for fixing it.

And that sets the tone for this conversation.

We discuss how the modern work ecosystem has created the hyperactive hivemind… where everyone just grabs anyone as needed.

As Cal puts it, it’s convenient and flexible, but it's melting our brains and it's burning us out.

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This week’s conversation is with Dr. Trudy Goodman, the founding teacher of InsightLA and cofounder of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy. 

Trudy has trained in mindfulness and Zen since 1973, holds a graduate degree in developmental psychology from Harvard, and is one of the senior Buddhist teachers in the U.S.  

She has taught at universities and retreat centers worldwide for 25 years. 

Trudy is widely known for her role as Trudy the Love Barbarian in the Netflix series "Midnight Gospel”. 

She is a contributing author to the Clinical Handbook of Mindfulness, Compassion and Wisdom in Psychotherapy, and Mindfulness and Psychotherapy.

And she’s also married to Jack Kornfield, who we were fortunate to have on the podcast just a few weeks back!

Trudy is a truly, a special human being.

In this conversation we discuss so much… the importance of trusting yourself and why that ultimately starts with loving yourself, which can be a big hurdle for some of us.

We also touch on Trudy's spiritual framework, which focuses on the relationship between the mind and the heart.

It's about allowing herself to be informed by intuition (the wisdom of the heart) rather than solely her analytical, cerebral mind.

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