Michael Gervais on His Initial Thoughts from Rio

Dr. Michael Gervais (0:09)

All right, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. And I'm sure you noticed my voice is a little bit different today. So I've been struggling with a, I don't know, some sort of a head cold or something for the last four or five days, but I just, I didn't want to wait. I wanted to try to capture the three week experience I was just on down in Rio. And so I just want to spend a few minutes and talk out loud. So this is going to be different than the other podcasts and conversations that we do with world leading thinkers and doers. And I just wanted to take a minute and a few minutes maybe and just think out loud as a way to help generate clarity both for me and share those experiences with you.

And in particular, just using the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio as a way to capture some thinking. So what I want to do is just bounce off a few experiences and then see if we can organize those thoughts in an applied way. And my intent is just to use this as a marker of my initial thoughts and more like a work in progress, if you will. So bear with me. I think that we're gonna wind and weave a little bit. This is just off the top of my head and I hope that there'll be some clarity as we go. And maybe in a couple of months or a couple of weeks maybe, I'll take another pass in a more formal way as more clarity is experienced. So as an extroverted thinker, which I am, some of you are, some of you are not, I just want to reserve the right to change my mind a few times. Even during this conversation, I might jump back and forth. And I know sometimes that drives introverts like my wife crazy. And just on that note, introversion and extroversion is an important marker for world games. And it's also an important marker for relationships. So extroverts gather energy from people. And they are stimulated by people. And extroverts think when they're speaking. And so introverts do something very different. They gather energy from being alone. And how you know an introvert's thinking is they're paying attention. And maybe later they reflect and they write. So as an extroverted thinker, I hope it doesn't drive too many of you nuts, but I've found that stream of consciousness can just be a great way to initially sift through thoughts and some that ring instantly true when they present aloud and I'll notice them and maybe you'll notice them. And some that trigger a cringe, even as I say them, based on the words that were chosen to try to capture the truth. And so that's what I'm trying to do is just capture the truth. Sometimes they'll cringe as I string some words together. And I know that I'm off mark. If that happens in this conversation, I'll say it out loud. And yeah, so let's just kind of use that as a framework for this conversation.

The truth is, you know, well, let's just start with the truth for a minute. I was going to say the truth about the games, but let's just start with the truth. It's a really fricking hard thing to get to.

It's like it's always in plain sight and it's always just underneath the surface.

And the meeting of both of those conditions, meeting in plain sight and just under the surface, you know, through the filter of language, which is what we're doing here and in most relationships, is where the translation seems to fall short so often. And, you know, I know that, you know, Cat Stevens' great line rings true with me often. I'll share it again is that I listen to my words and they fall far below. And so that's if we're trying to get to the truth. If we're going to talk about, I don't know, pizza or beer or wine or something like it's simple to talk about the concrete, but it's very difficult to talk about the intangibles, the experiences, the space between the things that you cannot see, but know to be true. And I don't know why I'm, you know, articulate on this path, but I think that I've just come off of three weeks being around world-leading elite performers and doers and thinkers where their bodies are in elite form and their minds are in elite form. And there's something that happens in that experience that is noticeable. And so I want to try to explain it, but I'm falling for my words are falling below that. So I have so much respect for the craft of expression. And I think that's what's happening down at the Olympics for sure, whatever it is. And it can be movement, it can be music, it can be lyrics, it can be writings of any sort. And it's where a person or a group of people are able to express in a way that is uniquely true to them. And I think that's the really important part. And when that happens and it's universally captivating, there's something really powerful about that, that unique expression that is universally captivating. And it's amazing to watch world class athletes literally become children watching other world class athletes in other sports go for it. And that children thing I mean is like they're captivated by it. They can't look away. They're giddy about how amazing it is because they recognize how challenging and difficult it is to be artistic and to express in a unique way that is masterful. And that ability to be sucked right in is also part of the mark of those that are world leading is that they know how to pull. No, no, that's not it. They know how to, I want to say be pulled. That's not it. They know how to let go, to be emerged, immersed in the environment at hand. They know how to allow all of them. No, they know how to allow all of oneself to be completely engaged in the moment. And some play it cool or whatever, and they're just too cool for school for it. And they just rely on skills and being a tactician to be able to be on the world stage. But others, like so many, have gone to that space where they're just allow themselves and know that that deep embodiment and deep engagement is where the really rich transformation and expression takes place. But they don't only do it when they have a ball in their hand or they're in the water or whatever in their craft. They also recognize the importance of doing it in conversations. They recognize the importance of doing it while watching other people compete. And that's a really cool thing. Being around communities of people or tribes of people that understand and value the importance of letting go to be fully in is an accelerant, a radical accelerant. And so the conversations with those people and I hope my deep hope is that all of us, anyone listening to this conversation, this monologue, is finding relationships within their life on a daily basis where the people, where you and the people in your lives are finding deep, deep, engaging conversations. That means you got to shut up sometimes and listen. I'm speaking to myself here. And there's times we got to talk.