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Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais

Courage, Risk, and Creative Expression | BASE Jumper, Chris McNamara

Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais

Dr. Michael Gervais

Sport Psychology, Finding Mastery, Mental Health, Mindfulness, Business, Self Help, Michael Gervais, Health & Fitness, Mindset, Psychology, Self-improvement, Education

4.71.7K Ratings

🗓️ 12 February 2020

⏱️ 80 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week’s conversation is with Chris McNamara, a Big Wall Climber and ex-wingsuit BASE jumper.

He is also the founder of OutdoorGearLab, one of the most popular outdoor gear review sites in the world.

Outside Magazine has called Chris one of the world's finest climbers.

Climbing Magazine once computed that three percent of Chris's life on earth had been spent on the face of El Capitan, an accomplishment that left friends and family pondering Chris's sanity.

He has climbed El Capitan more than 80 times and holds nine big wall speed climbing records.

Chris has also authored five guidebooks to rock climbing in Yosemite National Park and eight other climbing guidebooks.

As a wingsuit BASE jumper, he claimed a slice of the "Golden Age of Wingsuit BASE first descents" by finding and jumping 10-plus significant new exits in the United States and Baffin Island.

This conversation is about meaning, it’s about creative expression, it’s about risk.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

L-Caps 3,000 feet tall, we're halfway up, and you hear this really loud noise.

0:05.3

And anyone who's skydiver, seen a bass jumper, knows that there's no kind of wishing sound.

0:10.0

It's more like the air being ripped in half.

0:12.5

It's a really violent loud noise.

0:14.3

So we were pretty certain a rock was about to kill us

0:17.3

and just clean us off the wall, like this was it.

0:20.6

But looked up and you see this perfectly composed body falling, you know, flat, going right by you, and then flying away from the cliff, opening a parachute, and it was both kind of the most terrifying experience I'd ever seen but also one of the more inspiring like wow

0:38.6

Human flight is something that I think people have been thinking about forever and I just kind of witnessed it.

0:44.6

I just got a little glimpse of it.

0:46.2

Like I'm probably never gonna do that,

0:48.7

but man, that's gotta be one of the coolest things ever. Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast.

0:54.0

I'm Michael Jervay and by trade and training,

1:07.6

I'm a sports psychologist and the co-founder of Compete to Create. And the whole idea behind these conversations

1:14.0

is to sit down with people who are pushing into the edges of their capacity

1:18.0

and at the same time,

1:21.0

potentially changing the way we understand

1:22.0

how their industry works or the world works and

1:24.7

certainly what we're working to understand is if they can do that push into their potential

1:30.9

how can the rest of us also do the same? What are the practices? What are the approaches? What are the

1:35.7

principles? What are the strategies that they use? And when we dig underneath the surface, what are those

1:40.7

mental skills that they're using to build and refine their craft.

1:44.7

FindingMaster is brought to you by nets.com. There's a reason that many of the

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