Overcoming Depression and Improving Mental Health | Olympic Runner, Alexi Pappas

Alexi Pappas (0:00)

If they knew what I knew, the world would go to the word useful a lot more often. That's a word that I actually learned from my psychiatrist when I was really sick, which was he had me focus one on my actions, but two, to decide what actions, whether it's like, what do I do today, or what do I do with my life, to think about that word, what is useful? And that word is like a guiding light, is like pretty useful. The word useful is useful.

Michael Gervais (0:36)

Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais and by trade and training, I'm a sport and performance psychologist. Now, the whole idea behind this podcast, behind these conversations is to learn from people who have committed their life efforts towards mastery.

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Now, this week's conversation is with Alexi Pappas, an Olympic runner and an award-winning actor and writer. A Greek-American, Alexi is the Greek national record holder in the 10,000 meters. And what does that mean? 10,000 meters is about 25 laps around an Olympic level track. And it's also equivalent to just over six miles. If you're trying to kind of get your head around what 10,000 meters is. So she graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth College and also ran for the University of Oregon as a fifth year, leading the team to two NCAA victories. And so that just kind of sets up that she's got brains and bronze and she really understands what it means to perform at the highest level. So she's at the Olympics. So this context is really creating and begging the question, how? How did she do it? And to take it just a little bit further, she's been profiled on the cover of the New York Times sports page in Rolling Stone on NPR's All Things Considered. It was also featured on the cover of Runners World magazine 50th anniversary issue, named as one of the two faces of the new boom in running.