Anna Levesque
My guest today, Mike Wang, is an entrepreneur, paddler, instructor, foiler, and diversity trainer. One of the things many people say about him is that it seems like he’s lived many lives. Growing up in China, Shanghai, Beijing, and Inner Mongolia until he was 15 and living in the US for the last 35 years while traveling in many countries over those years, makes it feel like he has lived a full life and has many stories to tell. He’s worked in tech startups, corporations, higher education, nonprofits, and has owned two businesses. He recently sold his business, Mike’s Paddle, a stand-up paddleboard school and shop, and is still operating an e-foiling shop called Bay Foils. He’s also in the process of being an intern for Stir Fry Online, Lei Mun Wah, for mindfulness facilitation for individuals and groups. Welcome, Mike. Thanks for being here.

Mike
Thank you.

Anna Levesque
So when I say discomfort zone, what comes up for you?

Mike
It reminded me of being on the river in a kayak and it used to be fun as a younger person and then as I got older, all the life’s problem came on with me on the water. When I was drifting in between rapids, things would come up about work or life.

It just seems like the discomfort of life was coming with me to a place of refuge for me when I was younger.

Anna Levesque
I was going to say, that still true for you now? And when, cause I know you also stand up paddle board. So is that true like across the board? Does life tend to kind of intrude on your paddling time or have you found that paddling has been able to be a kind of sacred space for you to retreat, I suppose.

Mike
Yeah, I think the question is, the answer is no, because always come up no matter how focused or how in present, you know, in present I am with the sport, things will always come up, you know, paddling for me is a form of meditation, if you will, you know, especially surfing, you have to be in the moment. I love stand up surfing, I love foiling. And so for those moments, sure, like, you know, the discomfort or the problems in my life don’t come in, but, you know, those are ever-present with me. And the discomfort itself is, you know, it requires work. If you look at the background that I have here,

It’s kind of interesting, isn’t it? You know, can you describe what feelings it comes up for you when you look at that?

Anna Levesque
Well, and I’ll describe what it looks like because this is for people listening to the podcast. Okay, for me, it looks fiery and also like a tale of dragon tales as well. And so it looks, it’s red and orange with some yellow and some purple. And what comes up for me, I suppose is a fiery feeling of, yeah, like energy fiery, you know, in my Ayurvedic yoga training, it’s, you fire is hot. Yeah.

Mike
Right, Yeah, and for me, discomfort is anger. Just for me personally, I grew up with both dominant parents and anger was the only way that they could release their emotion and it was erupted and it was sudden, unexpected. And that for me is the discomfort zone.

You know, basically all my life I had to mediate, I had to stay calm. I can never display anger. I had trouble with anger, with angry people. And so for me, the way to meditate or to get into a more comfort zone is actually face anger itself. And to stay calm in the storm, to be in the eye of the storm, but breathe and let me experience that, let me be looking at that and face it, ask tough questions, stand still, breathe, and that really helped.

Anna Levesque
Thanks for sharing that, Mike. A couple of things came up while you were sharing that. One is that, interestingly, water is not the opposite, but it is a, you know, in my Ayurvedic training, water is cooling, fire is hot. And so the fact that you were drawn to paddle sports, being on the water is interesting just from like a cooling, cooling the energy perspective that, and also stillness, even with moving water, there’s still moments of like there’s, it’s cooling and still compared to like the fiery, fireiness of anger.

Mike
Yeah.

Right. Yeah, and certainly you have to give up control in a river. because the water, the movement of water is always going to overpower you, right? And so you have to go with the flow and experience the flow and manage it yourself so that you can get to where you wanna go.

And I don’t know if you can see, there’s a little bit of water and a little bit of mountain on the bottom.

Anna Levesque
yeah, I do. can see it. It was behind you now that you just moved over. Yes.

Mike
Yeah. Yeah, and it’s just this image is by this Japanese artist, woodcut artist called Obata. And he was he was in the United States during the time that Ansel Adam was here and they were friends. And he did a lot of paintings and woodcuts of Yosemite. And this is this is one of the lakes in Yosemite, but with a fiery sky. And so it just reminds me of facing anger with calmness and being able to get to a place where you are confident of yourself in discomfort.

Anna Levesque
Yeah, so my next question that I wanted to ask was, what are your strategies to feel that calmness, like face the anger, be in the eye of the storm? You mentioned stillness, standing still. What are your strategies though, are you wanting to share with us?

Mike
Yeah, yeah, well, so first, you know, if you have to be in conflict, there are preparations that you have to do, there’s work that you have to do ahead of time to understand yourself. For example, I understand for myself that I come from immigration background, I come from a family of unresolved anger and I come from a family of physical abuse. And so I really had to face that and really understand what my role was in my family, in my nuclear family. And so I was always the mediator. I was always the person who was trying to calm everybody down, but I always put everybody else first.

So I never knew how to put myself first, how to take care of my own heart, right? And a story that I have that I tell people is that when I was in Inner Mongolia, my mom had to drop me off with my grandparents. And it was due to really difficult circumstances that she couldn’t take care of me. And so first I had to deal with the my…

my mom basically abandoned me, that’s the feeling, even though that’s not really what happened. But every morning I had to get up at 6 a.m. and look for the horses and the sheeps that are roaming in the steps. And the point of doing that is that we need to have breakfast. So as a seven-year-old, I had to get up in the morning, walk around, and really look for a horse so that I can gather up the sheep.

And then the sheep would be gathered, then my grandmother and my aunt would milk the sheep. We would make milk tea and bread in the morning before everybody start their day. And as a seven-year-old, I couldn’t always find the horse. And so if you imagine this endless open field and I couldn’t find the horse and as a confused seven-year-old child, you know, looking and looking and there’s time pressure and just feeling lost and feeling, you know, the pressure of family. It was really difficult for me to go back to that time. And often when I’m in conflict, that’s how I feel. And my therapist helped me in understanding that, yes, I carry that with me. I am still that seven year old child in conflict, but

You know, as you read my bio, people know that I’m a caretaker. You know, I take people all over the world, right? And I take care of them in very difficult situations, in rivers, oceans, know, mountains. And we figured out that if I, as an adult, had been there next to my seven-year-old self, I would have been the perfect person to take care of him.

I would have put my arms next to him. I would have said, it’s everything’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna find the horse. We’re gonna figure it out. And even if you didn’t, it’s gonna be okay. And your parents are gonna come back, you know? And so, I still get misty eyes every time I think about that.

But that’s the feeling that I will have when I have conflict. But that is also what I will have, the strength and the confidence knowing that I can take care of that seven-year-old child during conflict so I can have confidence.

Anna Levesque
That’s beautiful. Thanks for sharing. Yeah. Yeah, that’s really powerful.

So when you talk about preparation to know yourself, you have obviously worked with a therapist. Are there any other tools that you use for building self-awareness?

Mike
Yeah. Well, I would say the first thing is that when you’re in conflict or if you’re not used to be in that discomfort zone in conflict with people, you need to build up your skills. You need to build up your muscles. You’re not going to get there with your parents on the first try. They’re probably the hardest people, right? And so practice it with your friends with maybe a stranger in a place where you felt something was out of place and you had to speak up, or with your partner who is supportive of you and work out some small differences first and then work your way up to bigger and bigger things. And so that’s the first thing is like you need a ladder to climb, right? And in each step of those ladders, you’re gonna need different skills.

you’re gonna need courage to speak up. You’re gonna need breathing to stay calm and present. And you’re gonna need, you know, sort of some skills, quick thinking skills so that you are responding to something unexpected. And that only comes with practice. And the final thing I would say is this. There’s one word

that I encourage everyone to think about is curiosity.

Right. So curiosity puts you in a place of non defensiveness. Curiosity puts you in a place of inquiry, understanding, reaching out, connecting with the other person. Curiosity, you know, would pretty much work in a lot of conflict situations where the other person is feeling very angry and unheard and unseen. Right. So if you show curiosity,and you can practice that, then maybe you can teach the person you’re in conflict with and show them what curiosity looks like, because that’s what you want in conflict. You want to feel seen and you want to feel heard. Then you can build a connection and move forward.

Anna Levesque
Yeah, thanks. That’s really, really powerful. yes, others with, what’s the word, generous intent, viewing others with generous intent is something…

that I like to practice also being curious because it is a way for, you know, when we’re asked about ourselves, we do feel seen and heard. And so that exactly if, and it’s also important to,

What I find interesting in life is if I feel like there’s a lack of something in my life, then I always challenge myself to give that thing away. So if I don’t feel like I’m being acknowledged, then I challenge myself to acknowledge other people in my life. So that…

I step into that role, right? It’s like being in community when I’m, you know, in the paddling world, sometimes I feel like everyone wants community and people, not just in the paddling world, as humans. If we say we want community, we show up and we want community to happen to us. We want to show up in a space and have people contribute to us, which, you know, yeah, of course we want folks to contribute to us. And the key to successfully engaging in community is to show up in contribution to others first. And that looks different. Sometimes I’ll get into the habit of comparing myself to others, right? But I have something unique to contribute it that is not going to look like someone else’s contribution. And that’s great. We want that diversity of contribution of conversation, of experience. so, yeah, I think that curiosity that you’re talking about is so important. Like show up to being curious, not with your mind already made up. Sometimes we don’t even realize that our mind is already made up and that we’re listening to people with a certain listening or with a certain view of them, and it doesn’t then allow them to change.

But if we show up curious with curious listening, you know, or curiosity, then we allow the person to maybe even unfold into something new and the relationship to unfold into something new.

Mike
Yeah, yeah, what I heard you say is curiosity allows you to unfurl or I’ll use my words to deepen the conversation. And so many conversations that I hear is, you know, I’ll share an experience and then you’ll share a similar experience except it’s a little bit different but maybe a little bit better than mine or a little bit tougher than mine, you know, like.

I had trouble with my parents. Well, you know, my parents was even worse and it becomes either a competition or it shifts the, it shifts the focus from the speaker, right? Instead of getting deeper, we are just all staying at the surface and we’re staying at a comfort zone where we could just share sort of like the surface level stories instead of asking that person, well, wow, you had trouble with your parents? What were they? And what did that make you feel? And I’m so sorry that this had happened. What came up for you when you were in the hospital? What came up for you when you had to go home and take care of them? So these type of questions allows you to deepen your connection with that person and it shows curiosity and they will feel seen and heard and you would end up making a much better relationship.

Anna Levesque
Hmm.

Yeah. Do you think that also it may, it, it’s a comfort zone. Like what I heard you say is, you know, by not going deeper and asking more questions, we stay at a comfort zone. I think it also allows us to stay in complaining. you know, if, if it’s surface, you had problem with my parents. All my parents like sucked or.

whatever it is, you know, and then you just, then you can bond on like the suckiness of it without actually, whereas if you go deeper, you might learn something new. And of course there’s a time and a place, right? So if it’s, you know, there’s the time constraint or it’s in a very public place with folks that maybe haven’t earned your trust yet, or I don’t know, things like that.

You might not want to go into deeper conversation, but yeah, I just had that thought. It’s like, yeah, then it kind of, the surface conversations allow us to be in complaining and which doesn’t solve anything and just creates more negativity. What do you think about that?

Mike
Yeah, you know, actually it just reminded me of a lesson that I gave last Thursday. So a Vietnamese American woman in her 40s saw something online about foiling and she decides that she wants to come and take a foil lesson. know, her husband said, yeah, you should totally do it was very supportive. And so she came. And so I was teaching her this lesson and

You know, I didn’t, I didn’t dwell into her background. I understood that she has some trepidation about water and being separated from the board. And I can see that she was kind of distressed, did not wanna let go of the board when she fell in. And so I paused for a moment. said, you know, so what comes up for you when you’re separate from the board?

And she said, well, I’m really scared of the water. Believe it or not, I’m from Vietnam and I’ve seen people drown. being scared of the water has been troubling me for 40 years. This is the second time I’ve been in natural body of water in 40 years. And so at that point, I could have

Anna Levesque
Wow.

Mike
gone into, well, what was it like to watch people die? Right? I mean, if wanted to go deep, like I could have gone there, and we would have had a whole therapy session on the water about, you know, going back towards the trauma that she had. But we certainly did not have the time. And that’s not what she was there to do. Right. And so, so the thing that I did do, though, was I said, let’s get you comfortable in the water so that you’re not rushing back to the board, you’re not clutching the board. So I asked her to flip upside down and just float and take deep breaths for about 30 seconds. And that helped significantly. So the next time she got on the board, she not only foiled, she fell off. And when she fell off,

She laughed and she just floated and she didn’t try to get back to the board. She was like, already, I know how to float now and I can have fun just floating. I fell off, ha ha. And then now I can actually enjoy this experience.

Anna Levesque
Yeah, amazing.

Mike
Yeah, so I get the point of like, well, do we go deep or not? Often as instructors, have to be therapists at the same time because they really are dealing with some real life problems. And without overcoming those problems, it’s not gonna be successful. We’re really dealing with things at the moment, we’re dealing with their discomfort, and we’re probably dealing with our discomfort because I didn’t know how to comfort someone who’s had traumas of watching people drown.

Right? And so I had to take a deep breath and say, what am I going to do to help this person?

Anna Levesque
Right. Yeah, what tools are in my toolbox? Right. If you’re not trained as a therapist, you know, what tools are in your toolbox?

Yeah, that is an awesome story and example for many reasons. One of them being that I think that…

you know, she shared why she was scared, but not everyone, not every one of our students shares that. And yet they could be dealing with something similar. And especially in whitewater kayaking, I think now there is a much more of a an awareness, there’s much more of an awareness of the importance of underwater comfort. When I do my rolling myths busted webinars. I always, what’s that? Well, I always start with the number one, the first step in learning to roll a kayak is not the hip snap. And I can see like the confused looks as like it is underwater comfort. And it seems very obvious, but it’s not how I would say the greater whitewater culture has operated over time. It’s been more like, yeah, yeah, get into the boat, flip over, learn how to get out, all good. Let’s get to the good stuff now. You know, like the rapids or the hip snap or whatever. And so I think that it is important to assess what tools you have and not ever, at least for myself, not ever underestimating the tool of being
present and listening and giving space. Being present and giving space at the same time. So you’re not in their grill pushing them to the next step. You’re there, you’re listening deeply and actively and you know, providing a space for them to work. I don’t know if it’s work things out. And then sometimes it does take longer and as an instructor as we know it’s not your timeline. I mean you want to be there for what they wanted to accomplish at the same time when something like we really need to work on underwater comfort now taking the time to do that.

Mike
Right. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I love what you said. Underwater comfort. Never heard that term before, but it certainly makes a lot of sense. Right. And or even sitting in the boat comfort. For some people. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I love what you said about, you know, meeting the students where they are, not where you want to them to be. Right? And and they’re because they’re not going to get there if you don’t meet meet them where they are.

Anna Levesque
That’s right, and I’ve worked with clients who have been whitewater kayaking for years, who have been struggling with their role for years, because, you remember, coming back to the beginning of our conversation when you said face the anger, right? Or you could say face the discomfort, whatever that is. Face the fear, right? And admit it, you know, and…

stop resisting it and be like, yeah, I’m really nervous underwater. I’ve been kayaking for years and I’m nervous underwater. It’s okay. It’s okay that you’ve been kayaking for years and now let’s work on some water comfort, you know?

Mike
Yes.

Right. Right.

Anna Levesque
So the other thing about your story or it’s not about, let’s see. The other thing is that when you said you could have asked, what’s it like to, you know, watch people die. And this also comes from a whitewater perspective. There’s also wisdom in not having to share details with other people and be able to share the fear, right? So, and again, I say especially in Whitewater because there is also a culture of sharing scary stories and details of scary stories when they have no relevance on the present moment or the present river trip, right? Like if someone got hurt or…

and I have a friend, Stacey Lee Wilds. So give a shout out to Stacey. She’s in the Mind Body Paddle community and she talks about this a lot. She’s worked with trauma a lot in her life and she’s really advocating for folks to be able to share a fear and maybe even an experience without going into too much detail so that then it doesn’t…

I’m hearing what the word is, but it doesn’t also traumatize others who might be getting ready to run that river.

Mike
Mm-hmm.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, to there’s certainly something to be said about re traumatizing or revisiting the scene of crime and then bringing others with you. And so you really do have to have a good space to process that. You can certainly you can’t do it in the beginning of a trip. Right time and a place for it. But I’m a big advocate of revisiting the scene of crime when you have the right setting. So for example, me talking to my therapist about me being a seven-year-old child confused looking for a horse, that’s the perfect setting because it’s extremely upsetting. It’s a repeating problem that, that I experience. But without that epiphany, I would have never gotten to a place where I could be confident.

And I would say that many therapists are scared to go there, even though they are trained. And they’re scared to go there because they’re taught that they shouldn’t re-traumatize their patients. And often they are sort of, you I’ve had three therapists where they kind of stare at you with a blank face when you’re trying to explain something that traumatized you. And so, I have an aversion to that because I want them to feel it with me. I want them to know how, to at least be sympathizing, empathizing that pain that was real. And so I can trust them feel seen and heard. so while I also get that the scary story where people try to amp up and try to, you know, one up each other, well, on this rescue mission, we did this and on this trip, we did this and, you know, becomes a campfire story of escalating, you know, like more serious incidents. I would actually say, you know, we need some group facilitation around trauma about certain trips, and that doesn’t ever happen on river trips, and people don’t get to go deeper, and so they just repeat the story, and that’s not really helpful. Yeah.

Anna Levesque
Yeah, yeah, agree. And what I heard you say in that is the hut. is important for folks to seek out these spaces, professionals, folks that can help with the debrief, with the processing so that we’re not just trying to process our stuff with whoever or like the next trip down the river. Yeah.

Yeah, that’s important for sure. And I think that there are starting to, there are some interesting spaces opening up in that realm. And actually my friend Somerville, who’s a therapist is working with a former pro paddler, Chris Grotman’s on, I think it’s called Bright Shadow and they do retreats to help adventure athletes, adventure sports enthusiasts who have had scary experiences, especially lost someone to the sport process. So, and I don’t know if you have any resources you’d like to share while we’re on that subject.

Mike
Well, I really sought out Le Mouin, my mentor, during the pandemic because I had a really hard time processing what was happening with anti-Asian hate stuff that’s happening, with what’s happening with African-American community, and also what’s between the Asian and African-American community and all the racist things that were going on. And I needed a way to synthesize what was happening in the world for me. And Le Maman has worked with racism, worked with corporate groups, individuals, coaches for 35 years, training facilitators to really deal with conflict in present.

So his method of mindfulness facilitation really changed me. Started to change when I was taking a course from him and I, know, some childhood trauma came up. And then, so I didn’t quite know how to deal with that. So then I sought out a therapist that he recommended, started working on myself. Then, you know, then I got the courage to name some uncomfortable things with my partner and we worked through some of those things. And then that built up a lot of courage for me to actually talk to my father on this trip that I just went back to China for two months where he went through two different surgeries. And the hardest thing that he and I talked about was this. He physically abused me and my mother. And I said, to him, these things happen. I remember these things because he asked me about whether I still loved him. And I said, I do love you, but I need you to acknowledge that these things happened. Quickly after that, he denied them, you know, like he did many times before. But I basically was in the eye of the storm and I stayed calm and I persist and I said, no, I was there this happened, I saw this, and this happened, I saw this, I saw you hit mom, I saw you hit me, I felt it. And then I had to give them an out and I said, yes, in our family, we all hurt each other.

And what he said afterwards, you would probably never believe it. But he said, yeah, but I’ve hurt you and your mom more than you hurt me which really touched me in my heart in that he realized, he said it out loud, the hurt. I felt hurt, I felt seen, right? And then he asked me this question. He asked me, am I a bad person? So for an 80-year-old person to ask his son, am I bad person? That goes deeply into my heart. I was crying at that point, right?

had to say, no, I had to say but I, I said to him, I said, No, you’re not a bad person. I remember you loving me. I remember all the things that you did for me. But you did hurt. Right. And but you’re not a bad person. And I still love you.

Anna Levesque
So powerful. I hear forgiveness in that on from you. hear yeah, forgiveness. Is that true?

Mike
Yeah, yeah, it is. I wasn’t ready to forgive him. Because on my last trip down, he said he was sorry. But he never said why. You scared to say why? Because that meant admitting to himself, probably that he is a bad person that he thinks, right? And nobody wants nobody wants to think they’re a bad person. You know? Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Anna Levesque
No, it’s so vulnerable. So vulnerable.

Mike
Even Trump doesn’t want to think he’s a bad person.

Anna Levesque
Yeah, no one wants to. Yeah, it is so vulnerable to… Yeah, there’s fear even thinking of… when… Yeah, it took a lot of courage for your dad, I’m sure, to say that.

Mike
Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Yeah, and that would not have happened if if I wasn’t curious about his life or why he did the things he did, because the lead up to that station was more about, well, you know, do you remember what it was like being in United States? Do you remember the immigration experience? Do you remember, you know, coming to the States together and us having a really hard time living in a basement and all of us were working in restaurants, you know. And so, so me being curious about experience allowed him to open up and and really tap into the part of himself that, you know, that emotional part, not the brainy part.

Because you can you know, you could easily just say, well, this happened because this happened or, you know, give excuses and reasons, but not really say how you felt during

Anna Levesque
Mm-hmm.

And you know what’s so beautiful about that is that it would have been maybe easy for you and for your dad to just go on with how things have been and not have that conversation. you know, there’s as I know my parents are in their 80s, 80.

And I think of they’re not going to be here forever, you know, and not leaving unfinished business with the people that you love. You know, and what a gift that he was, what a gift that you are for him, that you could be so courageous and you’ve done all this work and eye of the storm and, you know, be vulnerable and hold your boundaries and all of it and

Mike
Right.

Anna Levesque
Like that’s so courageous, a gift for him.

I’m getting teary-eyed. What a gift for him to be able, like that you offered him in your strength, in your presence, to be able to get that off of his, like that’s baggage, right? To get some freedom around that. Like that’s a huge gift.

Mike
Yes.

Yeah, and I thank you.

Anna Levesque
Beautiful.

Anna Levesque
Yeah. What are we gonna say?

Mike
Well, first I was just gonna let the silence build a little because there’s also discomfort and silence when the emotion is filling up the room.

And I’m hoping your editor could actually fill in some silence there.

Anna Levesque
Well, you don’t want to leave the silence.

Mike
No

Anna Levesque
But it is, you know, it’s true. Something that someone told me a long time ago is to count to three after you’re done speaking, no, count to three after someone else is done speaking instead of like jumping right in. So you leave space in case there’s something else they wanna say or finish a thought and.

Mike
Yeah, I…

Anna Levesque
so that you let go of having to like say what you wanna say. You know?

Yeah, creating that space.

Mike
that really is being curious to process what they just have said to give respect to their words. I really appreciate that. And I, you know, I appreciate your tears. cause that touched me that, that, you know, you, you really understood intuitively what I was going through and you appreciated you know, the courage that it took for both me and my father to get to that place, to forgive each other.

And that’s miracle.

Anna Levesque
It is a miracle.

Anna Levesque
Thanks for sharing, Mike. Truly, yeah, powerful stuff.

Mike
Thank you.

Mike
And I guess I started out answering your question about, you know, what are some resources?

But I would highly recommend folks seek out Stir Fry Online and have a tea time with Le Manois. He holds these tea time on a Saturday morning on the West Coast and it’s a two hour tea time. Whoever shows up will hear about his stories which are very powerful.

He is also an Asian American, grew up in Oakland, first generation. He was a special ed teacher for 25 years. And then a really traumatic event happened in his life that changed his course. His mother was killed by a home robber, shot five.

And in order for him to deal with the grief and the tragedy that happened to him, he became a therapist. He sought out therapy and he became a therapist. And then he became a group facilitator for Asian men, multicultural men. He became a facilitator for racial conflicts in schools and in corporations. And then he made multiple films simultaneously five cameras pointing at eight men of different cultural backgrounds talking about racism. It caught Oprah Winfrey’s attention and he was on the show and gained a lot of audience that way. But he’s 80 years old, he’s my father’s age and he is still training people like me which he’s very admirable person, very honest, and very incisive in terms of getting to your psyche. So I really appreciate his teachings, and I encourage folks to go have tea with him.

Anna Levesque
Awesome, thank you. I’m gonna check that out. Yeah. Do you have any questions for me?

Mike
well, you’ve been doing, the discomfort zone for more than a year now, I think.

Anna Levesque
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Just over a year. Yeah.

Mike
Just over a year. Yeah. And so how does it feel to interview so many folks and talk about discomfort and what are your wisdoms? What have you learned?

Anna Levesque
Well, I love it. I love talking with folks. I love learning from folks. The conversations are, I feel like they’re meaningful and it is an opportunity for me to be curious and to learn so much. I, I love it. If I could hold on just a second. Okay. There was sorry, my internet.

said it went out for a second. If I could monetize the podcast, I might teach kayaking a little less, just a little bit. Don’t get me wrong, everyone. I love to teach kayaking. But I, because I just love this work so much. And putting it out there, I have received so many emails, messages, texts.

of how meaningful it has been to folks. And that brings joy to my heart. so even if I never monetize, it’s like a gift that I’m putting out into the world. And I’m very grateful, very grateful.

for folks who say yes to coming on and having a conversation with me. Because it makes a difference for a lot of folks. wisdom that I’ve learned.

I have learned that…

The breath, breath. Okay, one, self-awareness is key to being courageous. That’s a thread across all the conversations. Vulnerability is key in being courageous and accomplishing like amazing things. And by amazing things, you know, the conversation you had with your dad, like amazing, miracle, like you said. For someone else, it was running a

92 foot waterfall, right? Or for someone else, it’s, I don’t know, having a different conversation or accomplishing something in their career or their business or yeah, with their families. just, and that discomfort, even though it looks different for everyone, it has those threads of vulnerability, courage, self-awareness, and,

and the breath, tapping into the breath as a way to be present and courageous and move through discomfort has been a big threat as well. I did not expect that so much. How I used to think that breath work was very like yoga, you know, or people would consider it woo woo.

There really is, I mean, I guess more mainstream than I think. And of course it would make sense. We’re all human. It’s a resource that we all are born with. It doesn’t cost anything. It does take some time and training to like, you know, harness the breath and learn that it, can, you know, activate your parasympathetic nervous system with the breath. So, You have agency over how you feel.

Mike
Yeah, yeah, I really like that the first thing that you said was breath which is the first thing that we do as humans, right? Like we come out of the womb and the first thing the doctor is like, breathe, breathe, right? And one thing I really appreciate the breath is that, you know, I’m a singer. thank you. Yeah, so I sing jazz and I sing bossa nova. Yes.

Anna Levesque
I did not know that.
Really? Wow.

Mike
and I’ve sung, you know, rock and R &B and all that kind of stuff, but jazz and bossa nova is like my sweet spot. And, you know, I took it for granted that I could breathe with my belly. I didn’t know other people could or couldn’t or didn’t know how to. And I also took it for granted or I also was unconscious of it

Anna Levesque
Cool.

Mike
I was doing it or not doing it. And so during the pandemic, when I was feeling stressed, I didn’t realize I was breathing with a lot of my chest. I was already stressed out. My heart was already stressed out. And I was trying to like, because I felt compressed and my chest was feeling compressed and I was trying to expand my chest so that I was trying to get more air to my chest. this Pilates teacher said to me, you know, your heart is already stressed out. Your lung is already trying the best they could. They need a friend. You need to use your belly to help your heart and your lung. That’s their friend. And I was like, that unlocked something really quickly for me in conflict. I could unfurl my fist, which I know when I’m stressed out and I’m in conflict, I actually furl my fist and then

At the same time, I start to breathe with my belly and that kept me present. And so I’m actually teaching that to my father right now because he had a heart surgery and a brain surgery. So both of his biggest and most important organs need help from other organs.

Anna Levesque
Wow.

Yeah.

That’s very cool, thanks for sharing. Wise Pilate teacher. It’s a cool way of putting it, you know, very relatable.

Mike
Yes. Yeah. Yeah, your your heart and your brain needs friends.

Anna Levesque (54:54.339)
Yes, exactly. All right, are you ready for rapid fire? Okay, so these are designed to, these questions have answers that are like a sentence or a word or a sentence, kind of short little snippets. Okay, what’s a morning ritual that sets you up for success?

Mike
Okay, sure, let’s go.

making coffee slowly.

Anna Levesque
Okay, what’s a non-negotiable self-care practice?

Mike
One hour of walking solo and half an hour stretching every day.

Anna Levesque
What’s a favorite motivational book, talk or song?

Mike
Yeah, there’s a song called Brujas de Amor and there’s a of versions of it and I can send them to you.

Anna Levesque
Okay, good, was just putting it into Google. Because I love Latin music. so okay, I’m gonna, I just made a note. Okay. What do people get wrong about you?

Mike
They get wrong that I’m mostly a very easygoing person. The other day, somebody, we were in a staring exercise where you’re supposed to think about the expectation of a person. And she said, oh, you have a gentle, kind strength about you. And I said, yes, that’s only part of me. But I’m also angry, dynamic, impulsive, fun. All of that is me you know, it’s not the calm and easygoing part.

Anna Levesque
That’s awesome. Was she like surprised or was she like, okay?

Mike
Yeah, she was. Yeah, I mean, we didn’t know each other and then we were just sent into this exercise of staring at each other.

Anna Levesque
Yeah. Yeah.

That is hard by the way, I’ve been in a workshop also where you do the staring into someone’s eyes for several minutes. Talk about discomfort. It was one of the hardest things. Not someone you know and you’re, and wow, it is, is mind blowing. The feelings, the vulnerability, the opening, the connection.

At least for me that came from that. Yeah, wow. It’s hard though.

Mike
Yeah, yeah, that that opened many doors. And you know, when you open with that exercise, for sure people are going to start talking afterwards. Right? Yeah.

Anna Levesque
yeah totally yeah okay throughout the course of your life have you felt like the underdog or the favorite to win

Mike
me, do I feel like an underdog?

Anna Levesque
Yeah, or favored to win.

Mike
I often feel like an underdog, yes.

Anna Levesque
Okay, hard moves in easy water or flooding?

Mike
Hard moves in easy water.

Anna Levesque
What’s a word that describes your comfort zone?

Mike
cuddling.

Anna Levesque
I like that no one’s had that answer yet. love it. Okay freedom through discipline or I do what I want

Mike
I do what I want, even though the prior is probably what I should do.

Anna Levesque
I don’t know, I heard a lot of freedom through discipline in our conversation, but yeah. Okay, in one word, what do you think, sorry, in one word, what do you hope your legacy will be?

Mike
connections.

Anna Levesque
Is there anything else you’d like to tell our listeners, Mike?

Mike
Yeah, so I’m actually in the process of selling my e-foil shop now as well. And I am fully embracing coaching and group facilitation. And I’m gonna call my method Heartfelt Coaching.

Anna Levesque
awesome.

Mike
And so for anyone who’s, you know, want to have a conversation, sliding scale, reach out to me at mike at bayfoils.com and let’s make connections happen.

Anna Levesque
Awesome. Thanks for sharing that mic. And Bayfoils is B-A-Y-F-O-I-L-S. Yes. Dot com. Okay. And Mike is spelled M-I-K-E. Just to be clear, because folks are going to be listening and I’ll put that on my website. I have show notes and ways for folks to connect with each of my guests. So I’ll have your email there. So if y’all want to get in touch with Mike after listening to this, you can go to

AnnaLevesque.com/podcast and find Mike’s episode there and ways to connect with him. Mike, thank you so much. What a very deep, meaningful conversation. I’m really grateful that you took the time to come and speak with me. Thank you.

Mike
Yeah, thank you. I’m really grateful for you to invite me and also being there with me. So I felt seen and heard and I feel our relationship has gotten deeper from this conversation.

Anna Levesque
Yes, absolutely. Now we need to get on the water together, which would be so fun because I don’t think we have yet. Have we? I don’t think so.

Mike
No, we haven’t had a few almost run ins at the surf, but it didn’t happen. You know, you know, if you’re ever on the West Coast, hit me up. We’ll go surfing wherever, you know, so yeah.

Anna Levesque
Right. I know, I know. Yeah.