Depression Is the Past, Anxiety Is the Future – How to Live in the Present | Tim Ferriss

Tim Ferriss (0:00)

I do not have any social media apps on my phone. Haven't for two to three years, because it feeds the I, I, I, me, me, me disease. And if you want to experience these slivers of transcendence, you just need to do something that takes the focus off of yourself.

Michael Gervais (0:16)

What if reframing one simple word and one simple practice could reshape how you experience your life?

Tim Ferriss (0:21)

I think it's common for people to say, I have to do X. And there's a certain negative emotional valence to it. It's like, okay, instead of I have to, like, I get to. Like, this is actually something you get to do. And man, does that change your experience of things you might otherwise roll your eyes at, grind your teeth about.

Michael Gervais (0:39)

Welcome back, or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast, where we dive into the minds of the world's greatest thinkers and doers. I am your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade in training a high-performance psychologist. The idea behind these conversations is simple. It's to sit with the extraordinaries and to learn, to really learn how they work from the inside out. Now this week, I got to sit down with someone who's been shaping culture and performance for over two decades, Tim Ferriss. You likely know him as the best-selling author of The 4-Hour Workweek, host of The Tim Ferriss Show, tech angel investor, and a relentless experimenter in human potential.

Tim Ferriss (1:12)

So the idea that if I just work 20% harder, I'm going to leave this indelible mark on the universe. I find that when it becomes kind of an obsession, like I need to change the world and leave my mark and leave a legacy, there's often an underlying fear of death and a grasping for permanence that just isn't very fruitful.

Michael Gervais (1:32)

In this conversation, we explore the states that help us show up fully, being calm and focused, a playful awareness, deep presence, and how Tim cultivates those through practice, through language and life design.

Tim Ferriss (1:43)

I view something that seems as optional and squishy as play, basically like a recharging element that fuels the rest of the components of my life.

Michael Gervais (1:54)

So with that, let's drop into this week's conversation with my friend, Tim Ferriss. Okay, Tim, this is a conversation I've been wanting to reconnect with you for a long time. And so just let me just start by saying huge congrats on everything you've built, the way you've designed your life, the way you've impacted other people. And I'd be remiss to say that you were one of the first movers that really inspired me to push into the podcast space. So you've taken up a big space for me as well. So I just want to start off by saying thank you.

Tim Ferriss (2:32)

Thanks, man. It's really nice to reconnect. So I've been looking forward to this. I'm still looking forward to it. So I'm excited to see you do your thing and dance the dance.

Michael Gervais (2:42)

Yeah, there you go. So how do you prepare when you sit down? There's a preparation phase, there's a readiness phase, and then there's the actual conversation. Like how do you prepare?

Tim Ferriss (2:52)

Well, it's a bit different if I'm in the interviewer chair or if I'm in the interviewee chair. Since the interviewee is sort of return serve and the interviewer is server, right? But I would say, if we're talking about in the...

Michael Gervais (3:08)

Return serve, return serve.

Tim Ferriss (3:09)

Return serve, then a lot of it is state management. And what I mean by that is we were chatting a little bit before pressing record, had a little bit of trouble sleeping last night. Unclear why that's the case, who knows? And woke up, it's like, okay, I think it's time to do some state management, especially since I'm tracking HRV these days. And I looked at my HRV and I was like, good God, okay, this is not setting any upper bound records. If anything, it's going to be lower bound. So pretty much immediately did cold exposure, probably overdid that slightly, but cold plunge 45 degrees for about 10 minutes. I think that was honestly probably slightly overdosed, but good enough. And that'll interestingly for people who aren't really tracking. And this has been demonstrated in labs as well, probably mostly in animal models. But you go from really acute sympathetic nervous system activation, so fight or flight. But after a few minutes, you actually also simultaneously start to activate parasympathetic. And what I'm aiming for, before sitting down for a conversation like this, is a state of calm focus. You can have a somewhat jittery focus if you say overdose on caffeine.