Author Robert Rabbin on Fighting Cancer, Curiosity, Authenticity

Robert Rabbin (0:00)

The why, the questioning, the wondering, has been maybe the signature characteristic of my life.

Michael Gervais (0:21)

Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery Podcast. I'm Michael Gervais. And the idea behind these conversations is to learn. Like really, that's the first starting point, is to learn, to increase our awareness of different ways of understanding the human experience, of understanding how people pursue their very best, and how they've been through tough times, and how they accelerate through those periods so that they can explore the deeper meanings in life, but at the same time, explore high performance. And we wanna understand at the same time, like how they've cultivated particular mindset skills to deal with challenges and strategies, and to be able to pivot and adjust in difficult scenarios. And that's really what the mental skills are about, is it's easy to be calm and confident and focused and optimistic in calm settings, or easily focused settings. It's a totally different ball game when we're about to be punched in the mouth, or kicked in the stomach, or we feel like there's something that's looming around the corner, or we've gotten really bad information. That's a totally different inner experience to be able to eloquently be you, or for me to be me in those scenarios, let alone be able to pursue and perform at a high level.

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Okay, for this week's conversation, it's with Robert Rabbin. Some of you know his work and some of you haven't met him yet. And the reason maybe you haven't met him is because he's deep in the insights and traditions of mindfulness and he's got a very unique story. So in 2012, Robert was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer and he was told that he had just a few months to live.