Bonus Episode: Aaron Lazar & Dr. Michael Gervais on the Mastery of Self and the Journey to Reverse ALS | Impossible Dreams Podcast

Dr. Michael Gervais (0:00)

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I wanted to raise awareness and to also honor Aaron's message about purpose, connection, and resilience in the face of life's hardest challenges. So with that, here's my conversation with Aaron Lazar from Impossible Dream Podcast.

Aaron Lazar (2:37)

Dr. Michael Gervais, welcome to Impossible Dreams. I'm so excited to have you here.

Dr. Michael Gervais (2:40)

I'm stoked to be here with you. Thank you for creating this space to make this happen.

Aaron Lazar (2:44)

Oh, man.

Dr. Michael Gervais (2:44)

For me.

Aaron Lazar (2:45)

I appreciate that, thank you. So, you are by not just my account, but the accounts of so many incredibly top performing elite athletes, humans, right? Not just elite performers in their fields, but performers as human beings. You are the master of helping all these people find mastery. How did that start for you?

Dr. Michael Gervais (3:16)

Very kind. First, I think that I would not accept the position of being a master.

Aaron Lazar (3:21)

Okay.

Dr. Michael Gervais (3:23)

I'm on the path and I'm committed to the path of understanding mastery of self through mastery of craft. And so, the craft is just this thing that somebody can do exceptionally well, or they're really deeply interested in it, whatever it might be. And it's almost like I don't want to sound blasphemous to the communities I'm in, but I'm not that interested in the craft. I'm interested in the way that the person orientates their mind, orientates their relationships with others, orientates their relationship with experience, to be able to pour in to something that looks really easy, but is incredibly intricate and complicated to do. So I'm much more interested in Mastery of Self than Mastery of Craft, but you put the two together, you got something that's pretty special.

Aaron Lazar (4:10)

I mean, I think that just leads me right back to, would you say that Mastery of Self is, is in essence a spiritual practice?

Dr. Michael Gervais (4:19)

I think it can be. I think when, I think you'll recognize what I'm about to say here, is that when you speak to people that are extraordinary in the way that they live their life, so they have a great life, it is, it's not something that is dictated by the external conditions. It's primarily dictated from the way that they work from the inside out. And the spiritual, when you talk about the spiritual path, this is the part I was going to say, is that most of those extraordinaries, they talk about the same things. Most of the 11 world, or all of the 11 world religions kind of talk about the same thing, you know, which is the deeper principles and working from those deep principles, to line up your thoughts, your words and your actions eloquently in even the most rugged and hostile of conditions. So we would never throw somebody to a hostile condition and say, you know, be your very best right now, without training how to line up thoughts, words and actions in calm environments, and then a little more stressful, and then even more stressful, and then you keep pushing it. To one day, you have this sense of full command, or early on the path, kind of a haphazard command, but you still have a sense of like, how do I work? How does thought one and thought two work together? With emotion A and emotion B. And until we become aware, I'm going to bring this back to spiritual, until we become aware of how our inner world works, we'll never really be able to be so settled and fully present to understand all of the gifts of life. And those gifts are relational, they're gifts with the experience, they're gifts with the sense of awe that Mother Nature can provide us. So we do need to work on the internal experience to be able to experience the riches of the external experience.