Left Of Greg 078 High Performance Psychologist Dr. Michael Gervais

Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. I'm Brian, I'm the host of The Human Behavior Podcast. You're going to be watching the video version of our audio podcast. Please, guys, if you like the video, like it, subscribe to the channel. There's going to be more content on there if you're already a subscriber, and a better way for us to get you guys some more stuff. If you have any questions or comments, go ahead, leave them below. Check out our links down below to get a hold of us and to actually find out more places where you can get more information about this. Please like and subscribe. Follow us on Facebook at HBPRNA. Remember, all these cases that we discuss and all these discussions that we have are through the lenses of what we call human behavior pattern recognition and analysis. So please like it, share it, tell your friends about it, and we hope you enjoy the show.

Yeah, as you can see, you make it look easy. Greg always reminds everyone that the camera adds 60 or 80 pounds. At least he's got a lot of cameras on him then.

Wow. Thank you. All right.

All right, so we'll go ahead and get started. Dr. Gervais, thank you so much for coming on the show. We're fans of what you do. We're going to get into it. So we got a few things I'd love to talk to you about. You know, you're the high-performance psychologist. You work with all kinds of high-level folks. You do incredible work about human behavior and mastering kind of what you really need to focus on in terms of getting that high-performance level. But before we start and jump into you, I want to have actually Greg start with a funny story. So your business partner is Pete Carroll, a pretty well-known coach, as most of us know. So I'm going to go ahead and toss it to Greg to kind of, there's just a funny background story that I'd love to get out there first, kind of start the show off with.

Welcome, Dr. Gervais. Marren, if you have to explain the joke, it's not that funny. So it wasn't really a joke, it is a joke because you're having fun with my stupidity and it crushes me.

So Dr. Gervais, if I might call you Michael, there was a time between like 2007 and 2009 where about 95% of my time was occupied with JIADO (the Joint IED Defeat Organization), JFCOM (Joint Force Command), those type of things, in and out of theater. Bad things were happening. So I get a call and they said, "Hey, can you be in Alexandria, Virginia?" And I'm like, "I guess I can," because they don't call when they, you know, want to ask what your schedule is. So it's sometime, I'm thinking in 2009, Alexandria, and I'm meeting these people. The first guy I meet is Jason Kamiyah (General Kamiyah) who was the hedge med back then. He was a great guy. He introduced me to Bob Scales and then Marty Seligman, who I'd known since probably the mid-70s. And they're all saying like, "You're going to speak. Here's Colonel Mike Steele." And I'm like, "Hey Mike Steele, I knew you from Tartar Dam." And he's like, "Yeah, remember from Somalia."

So we're going around the room with all this think tank and there's hundreds of people and it's going to be three days. Nobody gets to leave. Twelve hours on, where everybody gets to speak and everybody is a keynote speaker. And then we break off into the small discussion group with the guys from Kolbe. Marren, you remember those guys? And so all of a sudden, somebody introduced me and they go, "Hey, the guy who's going on just before you has a book that's out called Win Forever and it's Pete Carroll." So I go, "Well, who the F is Pete Carroll?" No offense, but I had no idea who he was. And when I look at him, I go, "God, this guy's good looking enough, he could be an actor." And then I started listening to him talk and I'm going, "This guy's got it."

So he's talking and I wrote down a couple of points, like, you know, when we're talking to Special Forces or Delta guys or something, it's easy to confuse that you're choosing in the sports arena from the top, you know, one percent, well, one-tenth of one percent of all the best athletes in America, where the military's a little less discerning if you know what I'm saying. So I'm writing notes and everything and I look at the guy next to me who's Jim Mattis's chief of staff at the time. And I go, "So who's this guy?" He looked at me and he slapped his head and he goes, "That's Pete Carroll!" So I wasn't in on it until much later in the day when I finally walked up and I said, "Hey, great speech, love hearing yourself. Who the hell are you?"

So it was a small unit decision-making conference and I walked out of it feeling about this big, and I must admit, Dr. Gervais, I was the only one that didn't get a signed copy of Win Forever, your partner's book. I didn't get anything, but I most definitely earned it, you know what I'm saying? I really earned it.

You guys are legends already.

Oh my God, I felt so bad.

Oh man. Well, you know what, it is an actual gift to be able to talk about our mistakes because if we don't, I'll tell you what, we set this narrative that we need to be perfect, we need to look a certain way, we need to act a certain way. And so it's so forgiving to hear blunders that we make because I'm full of them too.

Yeah, yeah. So that's that's a relationship there. I just thought it was a good story.

At least most of my mistakes, most of my relationships start off as mistakes, Brian, wouldn't that be fair?

Yeah, that's a that's a real good explanation of that. So, so Dr. Gervais, you know, you're into this kind of, you know, high-performance psychology, right? And I'd love to give your kind of background, but one of the things you actually put it out on your website, so it's the perfect thing to kind of frame it. And you said, you know, what you study is: is there a common thread connecting how the greatest performers in the world use their minds to pursue the boundaries of human potential? So yeah, we could probably talk for days, weeks, months on all that. But so where is it that you fall in and what specifically that you do? We'll start there and we'll get into everything.

Okay, so let me add some color to this for a moment. Is that, so my perspective is I started out, and I'm going to hit like some important beats, but over the course of, let's say, 40 years, right? And so early days, I was much more attracted to action sports than traditional stick and ball sports. And why? Because I didn't like how it felt to have this artificial teacher. And I know it sounds awful, but I wanted to learn from the source. So the source is when you make a mistake on asphalt or in the ocean or something, Mother Nature will teach you, and it's oftentimes swift. And I didn't like how it felt to be coached by these adults that seemed to have these biases and seemed to have these other narratives that they were working from, and I couldn't understand the things that they were asking me to do. But left to my own accord, I could figure some stuff out. I'm not saying I was a great athlete. This was just my response to the coach of nature versus the coach of human.

And so in high school, let's fast forward. I was a good little athlete, and my most important activity was surfing. And there's two types of surfing: there was surfing that was consequential, it was called hardcore surfing. You don't talk about it. If you get the heaviest position on a wave and no one saw it, you just keep it to yourself and you know that you have what it takes, no bragging. And then there's competition surfing where there's people on the beaches and they're watching and they're flashing up numbers and it's timed and it's all that kind of show, if you will. And I was a mess. So I could do the hardcore thing, got it. But as soon as it became competitive in the sense that people were watching, the critic, the judges, if you will, I was a disaster.

So, 15-year-old kid surfing against a man, and he paddles by me and he says, "Hey Gervais, it's perfect conditions, right? Six foot glassy, three people out in the water, have your pick of which wave you're going to take." It just happens to be there's lots of people judging. And so he paddles by me and he goes, "Gervais, I see you out here every day." He says, "You got to stop worrying about what could go wrong." And he paddled off. And I thought, "How the hell does he know what's in my mind?" That's all I was doing. I was consumed with what could go wrong. And it set me down this path that the mind is an important part, and mine was a mess. I'm a 15-year-old kid. I don't even know what psychology is, matter of fact.

So I'm a licensed psychologist now with a specialization in sport and high performance, and a sub-specialty, if there is such a thing, in consequential environments. I'll get to that in a minute. I failed psychology in high school. I got an F. I keep it. I keep it right in my bookshelf. I've got a nice little thing that says, "Look, you know, you can come a long way when you apply yourself and you find something you love." So it took me a long time to figure it out, what it was, how to understand it. I didn't know anyone that had an advanced degree. My parents didn't go to college. I literally was this hillbilly, kind of off-axis punk kid with a good heart. Like I, you know, like I had this moral kind of code that I was living by. And so I found my way. Long way of me saying, I found my way to psychology.

And I was fascinated with people that were as, I don't want to say cursed, it's not the right word. They were as obsessed with potential as I was. And it was not going to come into the conversations of traditional psychology because that maniacal obsession was really about relieving suffering, and it was a, I felt to me that I was, I wasn't suited for it. So I found performance, like sport and performance psychology, which is really about like, okay, let's be wild about how to get better, how to push the boundaries and the frontier of human exploring, human potential. And so that's that's the narrative I want to shape, that I earned it anxiety. I earned anxiety at a young age, suffered from that for a long time. But really what was underneath the surface was like, how do we use our mind, our body and our craft together in rugged environments, stressful, pressure-filled environments?

That's that's one really, really cool story and probably in the best, it's a perfect reasoning why we're attracted to folks like you, right? Or specific areas, because there's a lot of experts out there and most of them are doing really good work or or intend really well. But like you just said, is, you know, you earned that right. You, you skinned your knees because that's that's our approach too and it's what works at the street level. I mean, because you can sit there and write books and write papers and sit on a shelf and get peer-reviewed this and that, but but what can you actually show me? Take me out on the street and show me. And your term of artificial teacher, I've never heard that before. I'm instantly stealing that. But don't worry, whenever I steal something, I always credit people. So I'm not very good at stealing it, but at least I say, "Hey, I didn't think of this, but I heard..."

Right. Right. There's no secrets now. You're right. This has already been spoken about. And so that's one of the things I like to say and remind people. You know, if you see if you see anything that says hacks or secrets or tips or tricks, there are no hacks, there are no secrets, there's no seven-step, there's no tricks. It's a fundamental organization of your life toward a specific aim. And then you hear people talk about playing the long game. Yeah, but like if you really want to figure it out, you're fundamentally organizing your life toward it. There's no, I mean, let's talk about wisdom for a minute. Let's talk about being a surgeon. Let's talk about being a tattoo artist. Do you want them to be hacks? No, no, exactly. Do you want your operators to be hacks, you know, your sniper? No. So like, listen, I'm fatigued by that part of the narrative of the shortcuts and all that because I know you guys know, but everything we're talking about, it's been said. It's just that we're reconnecting in a way that feels organically right to us. I am honored to stand on the shoulders of incredible researchers. And when I say stand on their shoulders, I don't mean I'm using them. I mean that like I feel like they've given me this boost, you know, like to be able to see some stuff that that is unique. And so anyways, no, that's that's incredible. Go ahead.

We nailed it. We we call that "on the shoulders of giants," because absolutely nothing that we ever bring out in any of our training or classes, or the practical application, it's all been done and somebody else mastered it a thousand years ago. And all we're doing is we're saying, "Hey, look at it from this aspect. Take a look at it. Now turn it this many degrees and then change your perspective here." And so that's magic. You said something about consequential environments and I think you can fold it into the the description and I I feel intuitively that I know about it, but I'd like to hear it from you, Doc. What do you want to, what part, what do you think is, what makes a specific environment more consequential than others? And how does that change, do you see what I'm saying? Kind of go from that aspect, please.

Well, let's let's talk about consequence in the two forms: physical, you know, there's physical danger, and then there's emotional danger. That's kind of it. You know, so we want to call it mental, you know, but it's really emotional, you know, like so either, so what's what's at stake is the heart of the question. And sometimes it's perceived consequence, and sometimes it's real. And knowing the difference between the two is an incredible accelerant to freedom. Most people are not living in real physical consequential environments. I have incredible respect for those that do, first responders, armed forces that are in the amphitheaters of real risk and consequence. You know, I mean, it's when you really strip it down and get quiet, it's amazing. Most people's ego (what's that consequence?) is an emotional experience of not being good enough. You know, and there is some financial stuff we could bifurcate it there because when you make a mistake in business, right, there can be some material consequence to mistakes, right? And so the big ones though for most people are ego, looking bad, and then real risk. But financial is another one that is a player in the mix.

Yeah, it's funny, we just did, we just did a podcast that we titled "Ego Driven Operations," and we we kind of talk about that, all humans, right? We have a very fragile ego system. And so a lot of times that gets in the way just just like you were talking about because you you hit it pretty much exactly what we did just from a different angle going forward. And one of the things since you brought it up, you said, you know, knowing the difference or understanding between a perceived and real issue or consequence or, I mean, really it could be a threat, whatever word we want to use, right? Real or perceived. And I I think a lot of times that that's hard. Now you gave the, you know, example of, okay, like military, first responders, law enforcement, there is an inherently real danger, you know, in that. But but a lot of, even in that field is perceived. So a lot of times people have, I imagine that's what you see a lot of, is that difficulty in understanding and articulating what is a perceived, you know, issue and what is a real one. So how do you how do people get through that? Or what's the what's the, not the hack behind that, but what what is the what have you found in your experience where you, you know, see where I'm getting at? Is how do we determine which one is which, like you just said?

Yeah, here's the, this is the nuance of this conversation, is that it feels exactly the same. So our brain, our ancient brain trying to sort out modern times, doesn't have the intelligence to know the difference between a real and perceived threat. So as soon as we, our mind senses something to be threatening or makes up a story that is threatening, then the same systems take over. The fight, flight, freeze, submit response start to activate. And when that happens, it's a very predictable experience, as you guys know, of constriction. There's a tightening that takes place. And when we physically feel tight, there's one or two things that we do: we look into the environment to see why we're tight and because we're looking for evidence, and or we look inside and we go, "Oh, because I'm not skilled, I don't have what it takes." And if we do both, we've, well, that's what choking really is about. "I don't have the tools, this is dangerous out here, this is big and I'm small," so to speak, right? And that's where people start to micro-choke. Most people don't choke, right, because most people aren't eating when they're performing, but...

If that's as good as it gets because right there, you kind of laid it out. That was wonderful. That'll be our highlight right there.

Oh my God. Psychologists are not funny people.

You know, I want to play it every once in a while. I want you to do that. Yeah, I could put that sound effect in later. And I think so, here's the thing. We're all talking the same thing, we're just talking it from different internal and external experiences as well, right? So if I come with the story and say it, you just sound a lot more eloquent and a lot more learned when you're bringing the story. But the idea is the takeaway. The idea to me is, did you learn something valuable that you can apply at this point in your life or share with somebody or use to make a situation de-escalate, for example, or make a situation more profoundly knowledge-inducing or experiential to somebody else?

So so we create what we call explanatory storylines as part of our operation to try to help people through those situations. And part of what we've seen in PTSD and working with suicide and all that other stuff is that certain people lack the ability, the resilience to to follow an explanatory storyline and use critical thinking to say, "Okay, what's likely to occur next?" And I don't think school prepares them for that. And I wonder if you you agree with that hypothesis or if that that plays into what you do.

Yeah, explanatory styles is really important. So we have narratives, and where I enter into the conversation is more on the front-loading. So the front-loading, there's three things as humans we can train: we can train our craft, our body, and our mind. The tip of the arrow, are not leaving one of those up to chance. And so just like, just like you would imagine physical and technical training, there's sets and reps that you have to do, same on the mental side. So the mental part of the experience or psychological part has two basic lanes: discovery and skill. Okay, so you can have mental skill and also this path to understand and discover. So the explanatory, the examination of the explanatory, is really important. So I think about that part happening at almost a hot wash. So there's an after-debrief, there's an experience to make sense, then you learn. That's an insight-gathering, self-discovery mechanism.

I like to go ahead of the game, like ahead of the event, just like we train physically and technically to be sound, to, you know, so we can manage an environment of consequence or ruggedness. We do the same mentally. So how do I train mental skills? How do I keep discovering? How do I work towards wisdom and insight as opposed to trying to figure everything out on the fly? And you can train confidence. It's a skill, absolutely. You can train the ability to be calm. It's a skill. You can train deep focus. By the way, deep focus is the entry to flow state, yeah. You know, so if you can't if if you can't quite get that thing right or your mind's ping-ponging back and forth between, you know, assessing and appraising the environment as opposed to "Do I have what it takes?", the internal narrative, it's really hard to get into an optimist state. You know, so so you can train sets and reps on the mind and you can also do discovery. I love what you're talking about because essentially you're talking about discovery slash insight work.

And I want to really hit, you know, Greg, the important note here is all of this work in 1980, it was about "be your best," period. It's different now: "be your best so that you can help others," right, on their adventure, on their journey, on whatever, however you want to capture it. This idea that like, just "be your best and collect all the toys," oh my God, is that nauseating? And so it's to create a rising tide for you, your community, and hopefully Mother Nature.

So to your discovery learning point, I first met Brian at a place where the infantry immersive trainer was specifically designed so that your last encounter there was no worse than your worst actual firefight in combat. And Brian, I think that's an important point for discovery learning. I'd roll the tape back just a little bit. When I was teaching folks out at Coronado and out of Camp Pendleton, and I decided that I can't actually see an ocean because I'm living in Colorado and I'm from Detroit, we ain't got an ocean, you know? So I said, "Well, if I'm going to be near that ocean, I'm going to swim in it." So the very first thing I decided was to surf. It took me a while going up and down from Oceanside to San Diego to find a surfboard that was the size of a French door that would actually hold me up. You see, there's physics.

And so the second thing was all day long I was killing it training and everybody was going, "You are the, you know, undoubtedly the street god in this specific skill set." So I would put my little unitard thing on, that little rubber dry suit thing, and I would go out and I would, whatever the hell it's called, and I would go out and I would try to surf. Well, the problem was, you know that zipper thing? I had it right here across my chest. And so I was getting all the people laughing and me dragging that board back in and trying to clean starfish out of the, you know, box canyon. And finally they walked up and they go, "Hey, you need to stick to teaching because you blow at surfing. We're willing to take the time to make you your personal best, but right now you're setting a very poor example." So that was my discovery learning just on surfing, which you've mastered.

Yeah, well, I haven't mastered.

No, no, and it that goes kind of goes back to discovery learning, but your artificial teacher description. And then you brought in you said the word training over and over again, which is our whole big point. And and I think a lot of people get confused. We always say there's a very distinct difference between education and training, right? So I can read up on all the books and every topic you just brought up, I could go read for the next 10 years and there'd be more coming out as I'm reading, right? But that's that's that's a little bit different than actually going out there and putting in a training plan, right? And I think a lot, from our experience, a lot of places, even in, you know, large Fortune 500, 100 organizations that are trying to make these changes, they go, "Well, we've got this," and they take this online thing, and we're like, "Yeah, that this is education, like this, that's not really going to get you to the goal." Meaning their intent is good, what their goal they want to achieve is great and it's awesome and and it's big, but sometimes that that capabilities gap in there is where people don't realize all that work is. And I don't know if you have a similar way of looking at it, or how you classify, how do you take that education into actual training?

So, the way that Coach Carroll and I actually built a course, and we built the course on the backs of what do we do to help elite athletes? You know, what are our best practices? He's got an advanced degree in psychology, he's got a master's degree, and he's unbelievably insightful about the systems to create culture, to help people flourish. And then mine really is about, my insights are really about how to train the mind for people who want to be their best. So you put those two together, it's, and it's, one plus one is eleven, you know? And so the question is, how? And so everything we do is grounded in science. There's a story to it, right? So that's part of the narrative piece. And then we put handles on how to train it. And then so we go, what we're working from is, we want to be around science, want to make it relatable, and show you exactly how to train it, and then hold you accountable in a small group to do just that.

And so we work from skill to state to trait. So we want to give you the science and stories of the skill and show you exactly how to do it. Show you how over time when you train that skill, it'll become a state that you're familiar with. And then over time it becomes an enduring trait. Where at one point, when I did keynotes, I do, maybe at one point, I think three years ago, I did like 70 keynotes. It was, I don't know what I was doing. And so I was trying to, we're using it as a way to train our staff, you know, and and so we did an international tour around it. It worked out for the right reasons. But at one point in my career, I had to do some pre-performance stuff to go on stage. But because I didn't have the trait of being present, I had the skills, but I didn't know how to find the state. So I needed some pre-performance thing in between. Now the state and the trait are enduring. So there's a freedom. And so that's how this inner game works: skill to state to trait.

And I would triple down on, it's got to be grounded in science, and there is something very powerful about doing it in a community with others. And that accountability metric where you have to present from a vulnerable, like, to somebody else, "Hey, did you do your work? And what was the nature of that work?" That vulnerability meets accountability is where you get this flywheel effect for change. And so that's how we designed our course. And I think I was so excited to say this to you, we have two. One is called Warrior's Edge, and we hooked up with a retired operator, a pilot in in the military, that helped us build out this course. It's called Warrior's Edge. And it's completely free in 2020 for all first responders. Flat out. If you're a first responder, and you're, you know, you got there with Janelle McCauley, that's it.

Dr. McCauley, yeah. Okay, I've sort of been in the same email chains as her as well.

I know. So we'll put that link up then too. But all you got to do is demonstrate like in whatever level that you're a first responder and it's our way to say, "We see you, we thank you, we appreciate you. If we can help you condition your mind to recover better and to be better loaded to deal with uncertainty, stress, pressure, consequence, we want to do our part as a thank you." So that's completely free, that product.

That that's awesome. And when you when you get into kind of that that process you have of skill and state and trait, you know, that's why anytime we work with, you know, same thing, Tier One units, whether that's in the military or an organization, whatever it is at that high-performance level, it's just it's really, you know, we call with some of the skills that you have to learn, it's just, it's, there's nothing high-speed. It's just mastering the basics, right? It's you're going to do this simple process so many times that you've mastered it to now your now your critical thinking during the incident because everything else is is is that trait. It's, "I built that trait and I don't ever have to think about that." And that gets into a lot of areas that people don't realize. It's it's taking these three things you're going to do every single day over and over again. And then by you fast-forward, however long that takes, now you are a master at that skill and now you're on to the next one, or your critical thinking during it. And I think just breaking that down and chunking it is a lot of times people don't realize it's it's sometimes just very simple things we have to do.

And you're exactly right. What we're trying to do is help help one, ourselves, and each other live in the present moment more often. And if we can be in the present moment, we can adjust to the unfolding moment because each moment is unfolding. Like even this moment isn't written yet. Like I'm adjusting to what I'm thinking, feeling and to what you just said, and vice versa. You are as well. So but if I'm having to manage my internal state because I don't have the skill to be calm, confident, focused, to be optimistic, that's a skill too. Optimism is a skill. We believe optimism, by the way, is at the center of mental toughness. All of our research points back to and our experience, you know, in rugged environments is that it's if there's not a fundamental belief that the future is going to work out, I don't think that's the point, yeah. I don't I don't think you make it in nearly, you know, I don't think you make it into the discussion about exploring your potential because the opposite is pessimism, criticism, and it's a whole thing. There's a reason we're cynics, there's a reason we're pessimists, it's kept us alive.

Well, in the chemical interactions, the chemical interactions, if you just balance the the joy on one side and the fear on the other side and a catacombing group is kicking in your electrochemical neurotransmitters, those are hard things to carry uphill both ways, you know what I'm saying? I ate eight miles to school and I had no shoes and it was uphill both ways. And so if you carve a little bit out of that a little at a time, you can improve your quality of life. And isn't that the first thing? I mean, that's why they still call it practice and medicine, you know, as we're still dancing around some of the issues, but there's some things that we know with concrete certainty and those are the things, the science, that we try to bring to bear.

I thought it was of great interest, Doc, when you were talking about that, you know, you didn't have the presence in the moment, so you decided that you were going to engage in some pre-performance, right? Well, this is one of the things that that I'm certain Brian did, and I have now for four decades seen with the epiphanies that have happened in military and police work. So, I was old-school military trained. There weren't things when I was first going through it with asymmetric warfare and certainly not the counterterrorism. You know, the biggest terrorist acts of the day were some bombings, of course, but they still had hijacking because, you know, there was a pendulous effect with security and and the TTPs, the methodology back then. But what everything was in the military at that time was procedurals. You do this, this is how your force moves, you do flanking maneuvers, this is what defense in place looks like, and all this stuff. And then all of a sudden with the asymmetric nature of the smaller groups, fast-moving supply lines, lines of com, what happened is the military found that it was in an impasse.

Well, police work is there now too because police work for generations has been procedural. This is when the shift starts. This is how you treat these people. Community policing is a division, it's a thing. You know, so it's a procedure. It's a check in the box. And therefore you don't know the humans in your community. You don't understand what it's going to be like that each operation is different. Doesn't matter that it's domestic violence, it's a panacea of these potential operations that are going to happen every time. And maybe your partner starts first. So that got you off on the wrong foot and guess what? There's these other things at play that I don't anticipate. So what happens is when we go into an agency, specifically if we're training first responders, triage medical coppers that are going to, you know, have to be in critical situations, we tell them, "Slow down. Everything is happening way over here, left of the incident. And almost all your training budget is shoot, move and communicate at incident."

So what I love hearing you say is that there are certain cues and clusters of cues and pre-event information that you can gather from an environment and from the humans in that environment. And you can leverage that knowledge to de-escalate a situation or mitigate it before it ever occurs. So if I'm if I'm hearing you right, two thumbs up. If not, we're going to rewind a little and I'll shut up and we'll go on to a different topic.

Ah, you're right on the money. And if we can't be present, we miss all of the most of the important variables. So we end up working in our environment with a strobe light. There you go. You get these flashes, just flashes where you're picking up reality, right? And like some people that strobe light's pretty fast, so it's like they're they're getting lots of frames per second. And those of us who can figure out how to dissolve pressure, that's a real thing. Dissolving pressure is real. And so it's not just, it's substandard to think about thriving under pressure. That's okay, it's good, you win some championships, you'll you'll, you know, do some stuff right in the amphitheater of war and stuff like, okay, good. But you can dissolve it. But you got to work at that. And so your frameworks that you're talking about, training the mind, that's where you learn how to operate in that thing where the the strobe light is always on. So you're collecting all of those frames for seconds. And then from that you end up picking up micro expressions, not just expressions. You end up picking up tendencies, nuances in the environment so that you can figure out like how to eloquently adjust what's likely occurring in that dark space. Because if you can predict that, if you can predict that with a greater certainty than your opponent, that's what John Boyd was trying to say. You know, those frames of film that are missing are the most important frames of film that you have to deal with. That's totally right on.

Yeah, no, hold on. Let me let me ask you.

Go ahead, guys. Is that we don't need to wait for real or perceived danger to get better at these skills, absolutely. So just like we train physical skills, we start in a calm environment and then we ramp them up artificially all the way up to rubber bullets, right? And so then we're going live, you know? And so let's start in calm environments. This is why mindfulness is so important. This is why breath work is so critical. This is why externalizing your internal hard drive so you can see what you say to yourself—that's self-talk—it's so critical and foundational.

No, that's and it's incredible you bring that up and you tie it to mindfulness, and we we try to talk about that with the number of folks that we have that we're good friends with that are kind of experts in that area when law enforcement, one former SEAL who called it when he told his team, he called that he has been meditating and doing this mindfulness approach, he called it coming out of the closet to his team because he had to tell a bunch of SEALs that he was like, "Hey man, I'm doing this," because they all came up to him and were like, "Hey man, like you're crushing it, what's going on?" That he's like, "Hey," but it's funny how it all goes.

How long is it? How long ago was that?

Just that we had that conversation? Oh, recently. That so that was for him like within the last year or two or a couple of years.

Yeah, that's interesting. So that group is a little late because they're on the cutting edge. It's just you don't share that information. So, you know that they always want to they want to assimilate the greatest, best, brightest everything. But listen, it's like a room full of coppers walking in and saying, "We're all going to do goat yoga," means you're going to get tuned up a little bit. You need to back off of that. You got to let them come to the realization. So isn't that true, Brian?

But no, it is. And it goes back to breath control. It's so funny because I'm at that point, like with different, in different like kind of sports related injuries and different stuff. I've beaten up my body for a long time and it's had an effect over the time to now where I'm like, "Oh, now I actually have to focus on this because this is a, this is a thing now." And literally goes back to one of my good friends. She's an incredible physical therapist and she's just like, "Guess where we started to fix my hip? We started with breath control and proper laying and positioning." And I'm like, I'm so I'm like slapping myself in the head going like, "I I should have known this." And she's like, "What?" I was like, "I should have known that this was the problem that needed to be addressed, not something down the road." And and I think it's so funny how even if that's trickling down even to like the average like fitness kind of level now to where people like, "Hey, this is not about this lift or this workout or that. It's everything that's going on in your head and controlling that with your breath. And once you master that, then you can go try and back squat 600 pounds or whatever you're trying to do," right? So and and I think that's been, and it kind of brought me to a question I want to ask you is, what would you define like high-performance psychology as? Like if I said, "What what does that mean?" Like how do you define that?

High-performance psychology is the study, the understanding, and the ability to help people pursue their potential by training their mind. And so it's, or it's the, it's the science of understanding best practices to become your very best. And there's again, there's two parts. It's like, how do you organize your inner life? That's the discovery part. That's the explanatory stuff that we're talking about earlier. And then how do you train your mind? And what is the science that would say this works? And I'm I'm going to stand on the shoulders of science and research. But I also, it's got to work in the amphitheater. It's got to work in the place where innovation takes place. So nothing that I'm ever going to talk about is going to waste people's time because it's already been through the BS filter of the alpha competitors of the world. If it doesn't work through that BS filter, go back to research, that's cool. But it's not working like that out here. And so for me, it's that intersection between the science to understand the thought and behavior of how to become your very best, but also the innovation strategies that come along with it.

It's a great definition. You know, the one thing that's happening, you know, a nation stands divided largely because we believe on narrative and sometimes there's competing narratives and confirmation bias and all these horrible things that come in to muddle the conversation. So one of the core conversations is human performance can increase if the person understands what it is that they have to improve upon. So you have to isolate it just like taking some of the symptoms and then saying, "Well, it's likely these things that happen." All of the police training that we audit, all of it, every time we go to police training, it starts at BANG. It starts with the conference jumping out of the car and encountering somebody. It starts with the person with the gun. Even the the targets are made visually modified, this MOD targets to show a hostage situation or this situation. None of them show that it's unfolding. Then if it's going to be a shooting situation, there's a chair that has the word "cover" written on it. So if you're going to take cover with your simunition rounds, you're going to notionally take cover.

We had a great Marine one time that said, "Hey, if we're going to do this much notional bullshit, I'm going to notionally attend your course. I'm out of here." And he walked out. The problem I think is that we're not granularity-filled enough or robust enough to say we have to dial it back before the event and start seeing critical incidents. And one conversation I had offline and your partner will never remember it, Pete Carroll, unless you say it was a guy with a really big head and really loud. But we were talking about how in football, being a game of inches, how the line has to read the atmospherics that are going on and they can sense that something's rapidly unfolding and that play isn't going to work. And some people have the ability to get ahead of that and some don't. So we cultivate that. We just cultivate that in the boardroom and on the battlefield. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, it does. And I would say, I would add to the conversation, is that two parts: one is traditional psychology is studying the dysfunction of the human mind, right? And patterns. And then high-performance psychology is the study of the extraordinaries. So what are those best practices? And then back to your point with the simulations and the mock kind of standardization of something that is actually quite messy, is that before we do that work, this is where the next wave is going, right? So okay, let me pin this. Okay, because I want to tell you a story and then I want to come into this.

It was probably 30 years ago when I sat, first introduced in this field, and I was working with a coach and I wasn't fully trained yet but I was fascinated by it. And I asked a coach, I said, "Hey, how important is the mental part of the game?" And he was in the pros. He says, "Ooh, up here, yeah, it's like 90% of the game is mental." You guys have heard that, right? Yeah, yeah, that's not new. And I say, "Okay, what percentage of the time do you spend on training the mind?" It's not everything. It's crickets.

Yeah, it's not. Did we write this script? This is exactly what we're facing.

Yeah, okay. So it's not in. So what's the next wave? So that coach, though, he was the life coach, he was the psychologist, he was the chef, he was the strength coach, he was the rehab special, he was part MD too, diagnosed. Like he did everything. And then he said, "You know what, there's this new field called S&C, strength and conditioning. Let's bring them in." Yeah, okay, so that's a check. Then they got bigger, faster, stronger, then who'd they bring in? ATCs and PTs, right? Because they're getting dinged up a little more. Check. Then it was nutrition. Guess where we are now?

Mind.

Yep. So, so first it starts in the silo, then it moves to integration. So the integration is where we're trying to get to on a regular basis. But the silo first bet on silo is, where is it in your daily calendar? If you're not integrating it, okay, but what if it's important? How have you built time? "Oh, we'll expect them to do it later after practice." No, that's not you. You'll do it on your own.

That's exactly what what we run into with everything. And it's, you know, that everyone, like you just said, I'm glad you you brought it up because that's what everyone talks about, "Oh, it's it's all in your head, it's mental performance this, there's mindfulness, there's this, there's that." And then everyone's like, "Hey, this is great stuff." And then we're like, "Okay, where is it in your training plan here?" And like, "Well, uh, you know, we do some stuff here." No, like, "No, no, you're you're spending this many hours on just this one specific area. I understand not every where is evenly weighted in terms of what you have to do and some things take a little bit longer. But but it's like where did you actually plan this in?" And it's it's funny you go that because my thing is there's crossover to my buddies who do a lot of strength and conditioning programming stuff and for all kinds of folks. And I go, you know, it's just everything starts and ends with the brain. So if you're not starting there with something, then you're not going to pick it up later. If you don't start with that at the beginning of even just a workout and end with it, and whatever that training session is, I don't care what you're doing, you kind of have to start with it there. And that's that you're right on the money right, because that's integration, right?

And then, and then we also, so we we understand the value of physical training, you know, and what's a physical training? 20 minutes to 90 minutes, you know, five, seven days a week, somewhere in that range, right? So how about if we did something like a minimum of 12 minutes a day for psychological skills training? That's that's doable. Actually, research would support a minimal effective dose for mindfulness to create these pretty incredible changes is that eight minutes a day. Optimal is more around 20. So this is just a 20-minute commitment. That's that's...

You know, what agency, what HR wouldn't allow that yet at on-duty and off-duty roll calls for the people that are in the most critical jobs on the face of the planet, in the most unpredictable environments? We're not doing that. We're talking about Bolos, you know, "Keep your be on a lookout for this, keep your head on this, do that." We always tell agencies when we go and train, "You got to do a mental warm-up before that person goes out on the street." Just like you want to stretch to get, you know, peak human performance, you got to give them something. So start off with a case all, "Hey, today we're going to talk about Tennessee versus Garner, and I just want to talk for a minute about that. So what does this mean to you tonight if you encounter that?" And then the next thing, "Hey, I want to throw this situation ahead. This person resists and here's the level of force that we're supposed to apply, but what are some of the other things I could do to de-escalate that earlier?" Because if not, it's a procedure, it's a TTP, and I go, "deadly force, non-deadly force, lessen lethal force, less lethal force," and I have to go through those in the moment. And that doesn't work. It hasn't worked. And this is where all these bad situations come out of is the lack of of the ability to critically think in the moment, to put yourself in the moment, and to be prepared for it. To be 100% prepared to to go out there and play it again.

You you think it's a Super Bowl if a guy walked in and goes, "Hey, F***, I overslept, had a couple of drinks last night, I'm sorry." You think he's even going to see the arena or the stadium? But but we hold our performers to that level, our artists and our our athletes, but we don't hold our police, our law enforcement, our first responders. It's ridiculous.

So Greg, I would go a step further. That to me is knowledge acquisition and expression. Those two are really important and it's a priming what you're doing is priming, quote unquote, right responses, right? That's so so that's really an important part of the process. There's one other step that I would go to, which is like, okay, take a look and and you do your confidence work or your breathing work or your meditation work or whatever, and you call that a chunk. There's four minutes to 20 minutes or whatever. But there's just a chunk of time. Even if you've only got two minutes, no problem. You know, but it's a bit like we're asking them to go into an intense environment with their cup full or completely empty, you know, like neither of those work. So prime them with your stuff and then prime them with an we call it the ideal competitive mindset. Call it the ideal competitive mindset or ideal performance or whatever. There's an ideal mindset to switch on, absolutely.

And and that is either emptying the cup or intensifying the cup. And Brian and I at the lowest possible level on the street, we call that up and out or down and in. And if you walk into a situation with your cup full, you got no room to put stuff in there. So it's going to lead to stress fractures and something's coming out. And that's something that's coming out is pent-up rage or, you know, the fact that, "Oh hey, my ego says that you can't get away with that," or, "I don't have the education or the training to respond to this, so I'm going to increase my level of force because intuitively that's what I would have done thousands of years ago." So those are things, those are risk factors, inherent risk factors in any organization where you're going to deal with people and the organization doesn't take the time or spend the money to address them. It what's changing now, you see how this, you're right here, you know, sadly, but look what the catalyst had to be to to get it to change. That's awful.

Yeah, so what are what are some of the the, I mean, what's the common thread you see among some of the folks that you work with? So the top of the top people, I've had a, you know, went through even going through your website when you're the guy who who jumped out of the plane without a parachute, and like I remember when that happened. I was like, holy, I mean, as terrifying as jumping out of a plane as I've done it a few times and like, you know, just to to get to that level. Now I understand everything that's involved. But because I'm sure you see like we see the same themes or the same things in in humans, no matter if we're at a Fortune 500 company or Tier One military, to us it's it's literally all the same. So I'm assuming you probably have similar things that you find that, hey, these are the things that I typically have to work with them on. But what are those those traits or what are the things already inherent in them and how do you build on that that you've kind of seen throughout all the different people you've worked with?

So yeah, the project you're talking about is it was called "Heaven Sent." It was one of my more recent projects. Luke Aikins went up to 30,000 feet in a small little plane and he's going to jump, which is cool. He needed oxygen, cool. But he did it without having a parachute. And he jumped into a 16-story net that we built. And I could do that. Yeah, I mean, so next time you're on the jetliner, look down, yeah, and see if you can see the size. It was 100 by 100, and so it's the size of a garage door. So see if you could see a garage door and that's what he had to hit. Now you can move around in air like he can, he's one of the best. He's flat out probably the best in the world. Like, and so but imagine that the command of craft, body and mind required for a binary experience that is voluntary.

So people often ask me like, "Why is he crazy?" No, he's not that different than the greatest mathematicians, some of the greatest historians that have a body of knowledge and they're committed to their craft. And they know what it takes to add to the body of knowledge in their craft. Right? Those men and women took incredible risk as well. It was emotional, it was reputational risk, it was financial risks. You know, when Einstein was trying to figure something that everyone said he didn't have what it took. And, you know, like there's other risks involved. These thin-heard men and women are more similar than dissimilar.

And if you want to get to the thin herd, to your question, Brian, like what are the commonalities? One of them is a commitment to the truth. You can't bullshit yourself. You can't. There's "fake it till you make it." What are we talking about? Never ever ever would we want anything to be fake. It's not beautiful in art and it's not beautiful in human art. And so it is a relentless commitment to the truth. It is a fundamental organization of one's life toward purpose and mission. So those are really clear for them. Ask most people if they know their purpose in life. It's foggy. It's really quite foggy. And that's okay because they haven't put in the work to know it. And you know what, right now if folks in your community are not clear with their purpose, it's okay. They could set a three-month purpose. They could set a six. They could set a purpose during the pandemic. They could set a purpose during, you know, the injustice movement. They could set a purpose as a as a practice for their life purpose. Right?

And and so okay, so back to your question. Relentless commitment, fundamental organization, clarity of purpose and mission is part of that, uh, why they organize their life. And they spend more time in the present moment than most. And so how do they do that? Because they understand how important this moment is to unlock something. And you have to be in the present moment to get the unlock, to get the growth, the rapid growth arc. If your life depended on you getting it right, you're going to be in, you're going to be focused. That's what they represent. That that is the essence of how to become. And so when I was first, yeah, when I was first experienced or exposed to mindfulness meditation, it was about 20, 22 years ago. And my teacher said, he says, "Okay, listen, you're going to focus on your inhale then your exhale as if your loved one's life depended on you getting it right. We are not half-stepping. This is not relaxation." This is, and it goes on about what it's not. "I want you to focus on your inhale as if your loved one depended on you getting it right. Then do the same on the exhale." That's how you train. That's the all-in nature of getting it right. So those are those are for the common criteria.

That's yeah, that's absolutely incredible. You, I mean, you you brought in so many things that that we talk about as well. You know, especially you brought in the, you know, yeah, now that you said them and we know, yeah, yeah, we're validated. Let's go here. Put that down.

Yeah. Say that again.

No, but but you call it, you know, commitment to the truth and that was our whole thing was like when someone would be like, "I gotta fake it till you make it," and we go, we have always said that doesn't fly in what we do. That's just people don't work. I mean, not if you're trying to be an expert at something, it's not. And and so I know they're all of those things that that organization, that framework, allows like that that's what people realize. It's getting to that area where you're in that present state where you're experiencing and feeling everything that's going on takes all that work up front. The work is all it's like when we go present somewhere, we're teaching a course or we're doing whatever, like that's our fun time because everything leading up to that is a pain in the ass and planning and programming and going over it because then we're on. Yeah, once it's like that that rubber band's being pulled back, it's like go. And now we're having fun and we get to know people and see stuff like. And I think all that work up front is is what does it. I know, Greg, you had something else.

Coach Carroll, Doc, you and Coach Carroll can see the results of your work. And sometimes people live in an environment where they don't see immediate results from their work, or even long-term results, you know, and talking someone down off a ledge, being able to improve somebody's quality of life, saving a life, even though you didn't hear about it until years later, that's why we do what we do. And I remember there was no greater compliment than when you build a program or do something. I'm nobody, I'm nothing, I've never been anywhere. But when we did the Advanced Situation Awareness Training, I built that program for the Army. And the Army was going through the T3 because the idea is to have them invest and and and, you know, be the ones that are training. The subject matter expertise is on the ground and you incentivize them to be the best them that they can be and train their others, right, to create that institutional knowledge. And you couldn't get them to answer the phone because we weren't booting doors and ramming cars and laser plasma charging doors. But then after they went through our first 22-day course, and again, remember this 22-day was specifically for the T3 process, they started naming ASAT with these acronyms: All Science All The Time, Ranger School For The Brain. And then people started going, "Huh, that's pretty cool."

Young young Marine, your little jarhead, on one of our training courses up at Camp Roberts, we were still dancing around with the name of "Combat Hunter." And somebody came by and and Mattis was there and a bunch of other generals. And General Emma said, "Hey son, what does it mean to be a combat hunter?" And he goes, "I'll tell you, General, it's better be the hunter than the hunted." And he ran back off to do his thing. And we were like, "Holy crap, there's the the most brilliant taglines." The idea is that we all possess knowledge, Dad and Grandma, and eating at the dinner table, and and whatever situation that you're in, if you can grab that low-hanging fruit, those gems, and not just turn it into a flipping T-shirt or a platitude, if you can actually look at those and go, "Wow, people that do these three or five things are much more successful, and there's 24 flipping hours in a day, and time is relative. If I can just carve out a little bit, I can be incrementally better in no time." And when we go to sell to an agency, they look at that and there's no line on them in the budget and HR has never heard of talking like this, and they don't have a psychologist on staff. So there's a lot of times that that door slams behind us and they never know what could have been. How do you how do you change that? Because everybody knows you. Hell, I I I love looking on the stuff that you're doing just to see how you are, you know, you're like one of the magicians that next, that's the elephant and the Cadillac, I don't know, and Carroll is the only one that actually epitomized his own words of winning forever. But but when you're not you and when you're not Pete Carroll, how do you get people to answer that phone and understand that this is the right thing at the right time? How do you do that?

Well, I think that that's a thank you for all the compliments in there. And I think the, it's changing, and it being a trusted source. The only way that I've gotten a future contract or future job is from somebody knowing the work and says, "Yeah, yeah, legit." And so, and there's been plenty of times when people are like, "I don't I don't get it," you know, I'm sure that that's part of the narrative. But for the most part, it's like just do really good work and then it's a, you know, this, it's a small community.

Oh yeah.

And from that, it's like, okay, so there you are, trusted resource in your community. And so, and if you stand for something, be really crisp. You know, what's the saying? Yeah, if you if you don't stand for something, you fall for everything or how's that go? Something like that, I think.

Did you coin that?

Yes. No, no, God, no. So, you know, really crisp about your point of view and how to be concrete with what the deliverables are. And you know, and that's why we've worked our ass off to science, story, and then skill. And like, how do you train that skill? And in our program, we've got five core pillars and then we've got 12 core skills that sit underneath those pillars. And we just say, listen, this is how the the best do it. There's no reason you can't as well. They're not reserved for just the elite. Exactly.

So I want to hit you guys with one thing. You know, both you had this this notion about, you know, you do the grind work to get to the other work. And I want I'd love to just see if I could put a pin up on your wall, which would be like, no, the the goal is the path. Like that for me, that's what really mastery is about. It's being on the path of unlocking insight, of sharing, of going deeper. You know, it's the exploratory nature that sometimes comes in the woodshed and sometimes comes on stage. But the goal is the path. And like, imagine if like you didn't have the chance to wrestle with concepts. That's the good stuff. It's where relationships are forged. It's where, you know, all things that you're really trying to sort out are really understood. You still need the amphitheater and you still need the innovations that can only come from forced metrics. But man, I just I'd love to put a pin on your wall like, "The goal is the path," and see if see if you can find some freedom.

No, no, you're absolutely right. We love, we just had another one with this group in this new project we're doing just the other day where that's what it was. It was, okay, now we, everyone went through their thing and now we sit down and everyone's got a yellow pad and we're at a table and it's warm and you're just grinding through, "Well, wait, what about that? Well, what about, okay, no, we don't like that." And that whole just the the emotional rollercoaster that it is, is like it's so needed because we just we just want to do that because we know what's going to come out of it. We know it's going to be, yeah, good coming because we're all going in with the same intent and purpose.

With with seven of geniuses in the room all trying to get work together, you know, and that's an inherent problem. The inherent problem with with being a really good human is it takes work. So so you gotta you gotta get up and you gotta study and you gotta work on you gotta eat right, you got to do that. And it's so much easier being assistant crack head. You've got like nothing on your plate for the day. I don't know. One time I'm going to get up at the crack of noon and, you know, bake up some rock. And so the hardest part is that people keep telling us that they don't have time. So this is not a temporal issue, it's a life. It's it's how you live your life. And and I I completely empathize, I completely understand the path. And I love the way you approach that. And there's a part of my life that's devoted to martial arts, but my problem is I compartmentalize things. So I see my martial arts me as a path, the art of the empty head, you know, the art of the empty self. But then I see this is like a driven goal where we constantly have to refine the message, you know, the right people at the right time. Only because when we make a mistake, somebody dies. And there's a lot of times that we've had to build the program on a plane into an AO that nobody's ever heard of and make sure that it's cognitively close enough to save a life.

And and we were just on another meeting, Brian and I are at a lot of these damn meetings. We're just on another meeting where we suggested, "Hey, listen, before we launch, we got to do a quick cognitive task analysis to make sure we're we're even on the topic," you know, "make sure that we're addressing the problem that we're hired to." And everybody looked around, went, "Wait a minute, we're already on the phone with these guys. We already got the, we're building the son of a gun." And we're like, "Timeout." So we both had this this ethical discussion, and Brian and I don't have to communicate anymore. You know, we've been together so many times that we just sent a question mark and then I sent him back a thumbs up and pretty much all of our answers are there. And that's why we're so looking forward to get off that call to get on with you because we knew at least we'd be able to cleanse the palate. You know?

Yeah, that's the idea. Is that you're therapeutic, we're not paying you for this. Right, exactly.

Well, tell us, I mean, I don't I don't want to take too much of your time, but you do have the book coming out. We're excited for that and about you have the Finding Mastery podcasts and all if you're listening. Just check the episode details, I'll put the links in there. But but tell us about what you're working on right now, what the book's about and everything you got going on.

Yeah, awesome. So we, my my purpose, my life purpose, is to help people live in the present moment more often. But independent of great purpose, great great message. I love it. Yeah. And and the reason is is because in the present moment is where high performance is expressed. It's where wisdom is revealed and it's where all things that are true and good and beautiful are experienced. And so how do you increase the amount of time we spend in the present moment? Training your mind. So that's purpose. Everything I do is going to ladder back up to that. And my hope is that we create a rising tide, a community of people that are doing them that for themselves so that they can help others do the same.

And then so we built an eight-week online course, Compete to Create, and it's good, you know, I think it's my best work. I think it's it's really solid. And then it's an expensive price point. And so it's 500, you know, per. And I want to give a discount to your listeners. We've got a 50% off special if they're into it.

I will put that up. Appreciate that. Absolutely wonderful.

Yeah, but that's what that's going to go away after you tell Pete Carroll I didn't know who he was. I know him first and me pronouncing your ass on the last name. Yeah, no, it's all good. And then the other piece is, you know, we wanted to capitalize, or we wanted to, capitalize that that information and give it into a way that is more available to more people. And so we did an Audible book. We're trying to save the environment. But every time we can, it's an Audible Original. They do 10 a year. We feel fortunate to be part of one of those, yeah. And it drops July 9th. And if you send us a note, we're going to, and we'll get you on a pre-launch. We're going to do a bunch of fun stuff. You know, enter to maybe even like, whatever, like lots of fun stuff, but we don't have it all worked out yet. But send us an email and the best way to do that is go to competetocreate.net and just sign up for the book pre-launch. And we got some fun stuff. Like we're going to give away courses, of course. Maybe there's some seats and tickets to the Seahawks game.

Oh, there we go.

Maybe we're flying people around, you know, like, you know, if we can grab that open, like we're going to do some fun stuff. But we want to amplify it and that's why I'm grateful to be on your community or experience in your community.

I I got to tell you that this has been a month. And I I called Marren a couple, you know, Marren and I communicate all the time. But like, I'm I'm the worst scheduler of anything. And so your name's on my notes and I was so excited. And I got all this other stuff. I go, "Marren, we're doing Gervais, did I get it, this afternoon?" He goes, "No, dude, he had a punt. Remember his people called in this and any other." And I go, "Oh, well, was it like punt, but we're going to do it again, or was it like he found out who we were? You know, did we do, did we do something wrong?" I was like, you know, right after a podcast. So I know from your perspective, Doc, it's a lot like The Jetsons looking back towards The Flintstones, and remember, we're a really narrow bandwidth of greatness. But listen, so when can we expect those Seahawks? Your message, your message is going to be well received specifically in the circles that we operate and you're exactly right, it's a very small community and my word is my bond. And and and I'm sure you have the same thing. I've never had a business card. And your message on our show, I think it's going to have likes. I think a lot of our viewers, it's going to be one of the favs.

Listen, last thing before we jump. Remember that Warrior's Edge is free for all first responders.

You know? Yeah.

And it's the exact same course. It's the, it's the eight-week course that we sell to individuals and corporations, but we modified it for first responders. So it's that's, you know, and if there's anything we can do to help support, amplify the the work you guys are doing, let us know. And I just want to leave on this note is I love you guys' humor. This has been a fun conversation for me. I love the mission that you're on. And the last note here is that there is so much more inside of us. There is so much more. And this this revolution that we're in right now about becoming more, being more grounded, creative, empathetic, more more authentic, you know, to what we're capable of doing is really exciting. And you guys are right at the tip with it. So I just want to say thanks again.

I I we really appreciate that. That's awesome. It's what we've always said, we, you know, each individually and have a lot more value than we realize. And other people, that person that even is not going along with anything, giving you a hard time, they they have something to add to, you know, so they have add value too. And I think realizing that is is huge. And we're at that point.

Well, here's so here's what I, last note here's what I, if I can, here's what I love about our online course for the first responders. Guess who gets to watch it at the same time? Your family.

The family. You got it. That's awesome. Yeah.

It's one, that's incredible. That that, right? Yeah, as soon as you said it, I was like, "Oh, you get that. The whole family gets to." That's so cool because that they need it too, right? Kids too. Where do you learn in high school, college, junior high? Like where do you learn how to train your mind?

Preaching to the choir, brother. Yeah, you're exactly right. So we just got to get that message out. That's great. Can't wait, can't wait to see the book. Awesome. Appreciate you guys. Thanks so much for coming on. We really appreciate it. I'll get all that stuff out there and everyone listen. Don't forget that training changes behavior.