How To Level Up Your Leadership with Chief of Navy Reserve - Vice Admiral John Mustin | Part 2

Michael Gervais (0:00)

Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training, a high-performance psychologist. And welcome to part two of our conversation with Vice Admiral John Mustin.

If you missed part one of the conversation, I strongly recommend you go back and check that one out first. It's the episode immediately preceding this one in your feed. And with that, let's jump right back into part two of our conversation with Vice Admiral John Mustin, CNR Chief of Navy Reserve. Navy Reserve.

Limitations. So what are some of the limits or limitations that you see that people bump into? And these are barriers, and I'm more interested in the internal barriers that people run up against, that get in the way of them living their best life. You know, being able to really fill in or pour into the mission that they're working on. So what are some of those limitations?

John Mustin (1:07)

The older I've gotten, the more I've seen the importance for the balance between mental, physical, and spiritual wellness. No question. And what I used to be able to get away with as a younger man was to eat terribly, exercise vigorously, and pull all-nighters and celebrate with a cup of coffee in the morning for breakfast kind of thing. And my famous line was, I can sleep when I'm dead.

And what I'm finding now, though, is I am not as cognitively sound if I don't get the right amount of sleep. I don't have the energy to perform like I know I need to if I don't exercise.

And so as a result, what I'm doing now is incorporating a far more rigorous and healthy approach to diet, to exercise. I look forward to exercising to the point where we're talking on the break. I get up pretty early. I get up at 3.3 to meet a friend at 4 so we can exercise. Together we'll lift and do some cardio between 4 and 5.30, which then allows me to get a little bit of breakfast and then get myself to the office by about 7.30.

And so when you say, what are the limitations? I'd say as I've aged, I've seen some differences there. Some of it is just how much energy do you have? You know, the energy management is critical. And then cognitive function is impacted by everything else I just described. And then the spiritual piece, you know, everybody can interpret spirituality differently. But having some time to either meditate or breathe or think or atone is important because anything that I find allows your brain to kind of shift gears a little bit from rigorous analytical behavior to thoughtful, quiet thinking. You know, I think that's a great unlock. And so I don't know that I can apply that to 60,000 people necessarily, but I've sure seen it myself as I've aged over time.

Michael Gervais (3:01)

I love that. So if I just to kind of play it back, the most significant limiter that you've experienced in your life is available energy, internal energy, like that volition, that kind of raw power to solve things, to do things, that if you don't take care of that, that there's just a limitation.

John Mustin (3:26)

Absolutely. Another example, peripherally related, but still germane, was I used to do a lot of running.

And over the span of two years, I broke each of my ankles in almost the same place.

Michael Gervais (3:39)

What kind of running?

John Mustin (3:41)

I wish there was a good story.

I was running along a river, and the tile shifted, which rolled my ankle. So in one of my ankles, I've got a synthetic ligament now. But after a couple of surgeries, and I remember saying to the doctor, as I was coming out of surgery, how long before I can run again? And he said, you should take your time on this, probably take about eight weeks.

And at eight weeks, I mean, I said, day one of week eight, I will be running. And it was excruciating. And I said, I'm not ready yet. But as a result, what I found was, I mean, it took me about six months before I could really run. And I went from 30 miles a week to five or something, which was not satisfying.

And at that point, I was doing a lot of cardio and not much else. So since then, I've learned, hey, at my age, I should be doing more strength and weight training, too. So anyway, but it was really enlightening to me that I recognized without being able to run, I don't feel the same.

I'm not as energetic. I'm not as excited. I'm not as...