The Single Mindset Shift That Unlocks Mastery

The noise is the outcome. The signal is the inputs. If you've ever felt like you're doing the work, but still getting pulled off your best, this episode is the reset. Dr. Michael Gervais has coached Super Bowl champions, Olympic gold medalists, world record adventures, and Fortune 50 executives. We all learned a lot about winning in dramatic fashion and losing in dramatic fashion also taught a lot. We were treating those impostors of victory and defeat with too much of a regard. The present moment is where high performance is expressed, it's where wisdom is revealed. It's where all things that are amazing are experienced.

Fear of others' opinions is one of the greatest constrictors of potential. The messy edge is that place where it feels like you could fall apart into a thousand pieces. But it's also in that messy edge where the unlock happens. So here's the question. In a world where AI makes the work faster, what keeps you great? This is the episode on mastery, fear, and the psychology of elite performance without losing yourself. Dr. Michael Gervais, let's get into it. On a personal note, Dr. Gervais, I am very excited to have you here today because I read your book right when it came out. I thought it was just phenomenal.

And I spent six years working for Dr. Mike Check sent me high back when I was in graduate school who wrote the book Flow and was one of the leaders in the positive psychology movement, taking psychological tools and not just looking at illness, but applying it to high performance. And for what it's worth, I know if he were still with us today and could see you taking Flow and your own work and all these positive psychology tools and then applying it in so many spheres and making such a huge impact, I know he would just love what you have done and you are doing. And so it's a real honor to have you here today and I couldn't be more excited.

Nick, thank you. What a treat of an introduction. And the fact that you got this study with Check sent me Holly is pretty cool. I mean, what an innovator and frontier pusher himself. So thank you for the high compliments. Absolutely. So I wanted to start with, where did you grow up? Grow up. What were mom and dad like? And what's a lesson you learned from your father? Very cool. So I grew up in my first, I think it was nine years, 10 years in a small town in Virginia, where it was a farm setting, it was dirt roads, no streetlights during the winter, running water was suspect, because we were kind of out in the sticks of the whole thing.

And what I learned from that environment was a bit of self-reliance. My parents were very laissez-faire in their approach. I knew my parents loved me and cared for me, but they didn't have a whole lot of rules. And so I started learning early the rules of mother nature. And so if I was out late as a young kid, you know, and I'm talking before the age of 10 and there's a lot of freedom here. And it got dark, it got scary. And so, you know, trying to navigate your way through, you know, the dark, whatever, just seeing your house in the distance as a young kid was very normal for me. And so my parents in that laissez-faire approach, basically what they did is they kind of dropped out from society, this is back in the 70s.

And they said, there's got to be a better way. And so they went to the mother nature in a remote type of farm experience. There was neighbors around. So it wasn't like we were the wild cabin in the middle of the woods. There was neighbors around, but not very many. And dad was an alcoholic drug addict and mom was codependent. And that led me to really question, you know, what is the truth? Because dad was, you know, awesome from time to time and then really edgy from time to time. And then mom would kind of spin a narrative to kind of quell the anxiety or to kind of even out the disequilibrium that would happen throughout the family.

So I never really kind of knew what was up. And so I really liked mother nature as a teacher because the lessons were pretty swift, they were honest in that way. And what that did is it led me to kind of anchor to what they taught really well, which is like a set of moral principles that mattered to them. Even though that, you know, they had their own issues and I have my own issues and you've got your own issues. Like we all do. We all do. Yeah, we're all kind of going through something. And that kind of the moral code that they helped and still was really important to me. And then the combination of the two led me to, my parents moved west when I was in fourth grade.

So whatever age that is, and kind of dropped me right into the middle of suburbia and I fell in love with action sports. So I didn't have mother nature, but I had another kind of attraction which was the environments that had swift consequences. And it was surfing and motocross and skateboarding and those types of environments where you make a mistake, you could pay. Yeah, and so right. I found an honest teacher in those environments as well. Wow. And before we dive into the heart of your work, I just have to ask what's it like to win a Super Bowl and was it like to lose a Super Bowl? Yeah, I wish that everybody could have those two experiences.

I also wish that, you know, like, I don't know, Tom Brady won six or whatever the number is. Like that's also nice too. It would have been nice to win too, right? We were at the Seattle Seahawks, we went back to bat and which is rare in and of itself. And I learned a lot. We all learned a lot about winning in dramatic fashion. It was like, in all practical purposes, you know, it was a blowout, meaning that our team was incredibly tuned and the other team kind of messed up a little bit, which was, they were an extraordinary team in their own right, the Denver Broncos, just had a great team. And losing in dramatic fashion also taught a lot.

And what it taught is we were treating those impostors of victory and defeat, you know, with too much of a regard. We talked a lot about investing in the process, investing in the psychological, physical and technical skills for us to be our very best together. And we were winning a lot on that first year. And so it was kind of easy to run that input to output ratio, invest in the controllables, invest in the things that you can master and the outcomes take care of itself. And that was great, it was working. And we did it the second year. But we didn't, and it was working a lot until the last game and until the last 20 seconds.

So when it up happening in that loss is that there was, there's a lot of emotion that was difficult to work through. So big sport like the Olympics or the Super Bowl or even the NFL in general is for big emotions. And processing those emotions with speed, with some eloquence with other people, it's harder than it sounds. And it's hard enough to get like, I don't know, 10 noses pointed in the same direction, let alone, you know, on an American football team, it's like 70 athletes and then another 25 to 50 staff trying to get that 100 plus in noses in the same direction is hard. And all of the emotions that come with it is really tricky.

There's a sophistication in psychology that is required to do those types of high stress, high speed environments well, let alone like Microsoft, let's say 200,000 employees. That's a whole different ball game. Now you said the imposters of winning and losing. What do you mean by that specifically? You know, it's think about in engineering, there's a model like the signal to noise ratio and you're trying to maximize the signal and you know, decrease the noise so that you can get to the beauty of the signal, whatever that might be. It's also a psychological principle and the noise is the outcome.

The signal is the inputs. The signal are the things that are completely available in the present moment that are honest and true and here right now, like the present moment is where high performance is expressed, it's where wisdom is revealed, it's where all things that are amazing are experienced. So the signal is always in the present moment and the noise are all the things that could happen, have happens, might happen, we're close to happening, you know, the noise is the way other people are having opinions about us. The noise is when the plans are not going to, you know, according the way you would hope them to go, you'd start to grasp and hold on to, you know, and tighten up, there's a lot of noise in our world, okay?

Let alone all the social media stuff that we're constantly navigating but signal to noise ratio. And so the noise is this obsession with winning, this obsession with being on top, this obsession with being better than others, it's really noisy. And when I sit down over less, 25 years or so, with so many of the world's best, and I ask like, what are you trying to do here? And they'll say, I'm trying to be the best. I say, what do you mean by that? And they go, well, I'm actually trying to be my best. And I think my best is when I'm at my best, I'm pretty sure if I'm doing that consistently, like I've got the goods.

There's a lot of horsepower that I bring to high speed environments. And so they're straddling those two principles. Are you fundamentally trying to be the best or you fundamentally trying to be your best? And the straddling between the two gets a little tricky, gets a little noisy. And so if we're not honest, we are actually chasing the outcomes that give us relief. So that's the imposter. The imposter is like, you know, that victory is going to allow us to feel special. And that avoiding losing is like, you know, a better strategy. Both of them are not life changing in modern time. They can be consequential.

200,000 years ago, though, when your tribe and my tribe was at war and one of us lost, like it was really problematic for the family. Modern sport does not have those same set of consequences. So treating those imposters the same as opposed to treating the unfolding present moment with the highest regard, as opposed to that later outcome with high regard. Okay, there's so much to unpack there. So the imposter part of it really comes from our base instincts from survival mode from many thousands of years ago that it all feels like life or death. And yet what you're saying is to get to a place of actual mastery of your highest level performance.

We've got to recognize that those markers of winning and losing might feel like life or death, but they're not really what we're pursuing. And it can feel like it because of those are genetic programming from back in the day when it actually was life or death. Well, we need to look at that to get where we want to go. I think so. I think we need to, if you can let go of it, that's pretty sophisticated. If you can work well with it, that's good too. It's a lot easier when you let go of needing something to go a certain way to be okay. And I want to reinforce what you said. It's like there's a survival bias that we are working from and our brains are constantly scanning the world to keep us alive.

Okay. If we don't work with that dictum for the brain, that mandate by the brain, the brain is going to win. So if you think about your tissue that sits in the skull, like the 3.2 pounds of tissue, it's got a lot of electricity and a bunch of nerve chemistry and like it's amazing tissue. We don't really know how this thing works, but it is a strong mandate for survival, constantly scanning for all the threats in the world. And if that's to over simplify the relationship between brain and mind for just a minute, if the brain is the hardware and your mind is the software, this falls apart pretty quickly, okay?

But just for simplicity, if your mind is the software, you do need to program, you need to upgrade, you need to optimize that set of software to work with this very powerful mandate to survive, okay? So the investment in psychology, your software, is like a prerequisite for people that want to live a great life. And I think that what I am so impressed by over the last 25 years of working with world class across multiple disciplines is that they are not just training technical and physical skills and leaving the mental programming up the chance. They're saying, look, there's only three things that we can train.

We can train our craft, our technical skills, our body, then we can train our mind. Why would I leave one of the three levers up the chance? And I'll tell you why. Your parents, your grandparents, maybe their great-grandparents, handed us a narrative of psychology. And they said, hmm, really? You know, isn't that for people that are quote-unquote crazy? And I'm licensed psychologist, right? So I am trying to be respectful of the narrative that we've been working from. And we didn't help it necessarily because the science of psychology has studied disorder and dysfunction. We've clustered symptomology to say, oh, if you've got five of these things, that's called narcissism.

If you've got three of these things, that's called clinical anxiety. We didn't do a great job of studying the above-the-line experiences for humans. Dr. Chixette Mihaly did. And he was early in that. And so did the early pioneers in the psychology of sport. They were studying how did the best minds, how did the best performers use their mind? And I know you know many of those answers. So it's fun to have this conversation with you. Absolutely. Now, the other thing you mentioned there, and I don't know if I completely caught up the ever unfolding present moment. Was that the term you used there?

Let's run with that for a second because that sounds really exciting. This moment is kind of flowing into the next moment, flowing to the next moment, flowing to the next moment. And if you can be on time with the unfolding moments, that's pretty cool. And if you can extend your ability to be on time with the moment, this moment, and the next and the next and the next, and you can stitch those together, you find yourself in flow state pretty quickly. So that type of deep committed focus, as you well know, loving the challenge, you know, undertow, and being on time with the unfolding moment is kind of the way we find our very best capabilities.

We're able to express what we're capable of expressing. That doesn't mean we're good. If you're just marginal at shooting a bow and arrow, if you're just marginal at shooting a basketball, but you can figure out how to be fully immersed in it, you'll get the best of yourself in that. But if you're highly skilled at shooting free throws or bows and arrows or whatever it might be, or being in conversations, and you can find yourself in a disciplined way to be on time with the unfolding present moment, you kind of slip into that place where it's like, you know, it just feels fluid. As the original researcher, again, Dr.

Chixet Mayali, you know, coined flow state. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's a natural segue into the FOPO, which is at the heart of your book, The Fear of Other People's Opinions. How does all of that get in the way of achieving a flow state, get in the way of mastery and achieving these high performance experiences? Let's start with like thinking about mastery for a minute. You know, mastery, it's not like an end destination that at some point in time you say, or somebody says, oh, you're a master, it's not really what this thing is about. That might happen, you know. If you spend enough time under tension with the things that you are enthralled with and want to understand deeper, you just might arrive in that place.

But everyone that I've spoken to that talks about mastery from a learned like student position is they describe it as a, it's like a life commitment, a path. And there's two types of mastery, mastery of self and mastery of craft. And I'm not interested in mastery of craft. It's good. I'm interested in like how the craft serves mastery of self. So for me, like the, I am disinterested in the actual craft, but I am in complete, like a enthralled with how somebody is able to use their set of internal capabilities to express themselves through the craft. So it's the combination of those two, whether it's in business or parenting or sports or the arts, I'm like, okay.

So it's like the craft is almost the excuse to really, really, really, really understand how to express yourself in a very sophisticated way. And the best in the world at them on a piano, right? Like if they're just masterful on the keyboard, but a disaster in the rest of their life, I'm like, oh, I think we missed the mark here a little bit. And so, FOPO, fear of people's opinions, I think it's one of those things, I'm gonna call back the signal to noise ratio. It's one of those noisy bits that, it's one of those noisy bits that pulls us away from the signal, pulls us out of the present moment, pulls us into kind of a strobe light effect of life where like you're in the present moment, the light goes off and you're kind of worried about what they're thinking and then you're trying to come back, the lights are on again.

And then just like a strobe light, the lights turn off and you're up in your head thinking about, am I okay in their eyes? And if you're not quite sure, maybe you played this secondary game to get their approval and the lights come back on and you're, it's like that strobe light kind of thing of life is just exhausting. So what we've found in our research is that the fear of others opinions is one of the greatest constrictors of potential. It is this subtle little narrative. It's this subtle little anticipation that is happening all the time for people. Am I okay in the eyes of others? Are they accepting me?

Are they rejecting me? Will they accept me later at the holiday party I'm going to? Or will I not be good enough? And there's a thing called pre-holiday anxiety. Like we get all worked up before we actually arrive at the place we're going to supposed to celebrate. So FOPO is a thing. I thought it was just me that I had it. Then I started recognizing working with Worlds Best is that they have it too. And so I wrote a quick little article about it in the Harvard Business Review. And then 12 months later, they called and said, hey, that little three-pager you wrote was the number one downloaded article for the whole year.

You should do some research here. And so I did a bunch of research around it. And then that led to the book and everything else. Yeah. What year was that? Were you already coaching for, I mean, involved as a mental skills coach for the Seahawks when you wrote that article? Yeah. Yeah. So I've been with the Seahawks for probably eight seasons. And it was like a little throwaway article that I wrote for HBR. And it was titled Stop Worrying about what people think of you. And it was a thing that I was struggling with. And it was a thing that I had noticed in a lot of high performers is this obsessive worry, like, am I OK?

Am I OK in the eyes of others? Do they? Am I going to be OK if I blow it? Am I going to be OK if I underperform and let a bunch of people down? There's a lot of people counting on me. There's agents and managers and coaches and teammates and moms and dads and uncles and aunts and cousins. And like, there's a lot of people counting on me. I've kind of lost my way a little bit that I am a performer. And it makes perfect sense, certainly in the Western world, in our performance obsessed culture, that we would develop a performance-based identity. And that simply is, I am not who I am. I am how well I do something next to you.

And so my identity rests on how well I'm able to execute. And so when I go step into the batter's box of whatever arena that we're talking about, my entire identity is at stake. It's not just me seeing the ball hitting the ball, which is hard to do. It's all of this other stuff that is so important because it's like a near-death sentence. This way it feels, our heart is pounding in a fight-or-flight mechanism, our breathing is changing, our skin is flush, we're starting to sweat in weird places like this whole kind of mechanism like, this is dangerous. What is dangerous? What's dangerous is that somebody might reject your identity.

I mean, and not until you really hold that up in the light and work with it, I think, will you really find freedom from it? And that's just what I'm kind of, just I need to write the book, I need to understand it for myself. And that's the kind of the gift of writing, I think, one of them. Yeah, I mean, this is slightly off topic, but I worry that with the advent of artificial intelligence, especially with young people doing so much writing for them, that they are missing that experience where they think writing is about communicating what they think to other people. And yet, oftentimes, maybe more often than not, it's really about discovering what you really think about something.

I have heard more than one guest come on who has written a book on a topic who described that process of writing a book on whatever it was and saying, yeah, now I'm clear on what I really think about this and can talk about it freely. It's almost like it was preparation for these podcast appearances. You have nailed it. That is so true. Like, there is some nearly indescribable forcing function when you are trying to, of all the words that are available to create the sentence or to express the idea of all the words in your native tongue, like you're going to choose those 14. And changing one or two of those words changes a lot of the thought or the sentiment or the feel.

It's like, it is a really cool forcing function. And it's hard because I'm not very good at it, but it's hard. And so, and I had help. I had a person, he's on the cover with me that was much better at structuring paragraphs than me. And so he really was a great thought partner. Yeah. Book pause. This is important. There are only three things you can train in life. Your craft, your body, and your mind. Most people work on the first two and just hope the third one shows up when it matters. That's why I'm recommending Finding Your Best by Michael Gervais. I've done the course myself. It's excellent.

It's not motivational, not fluffy. It's structured to train the skills that actually drive performance, confidence, recovery, trust, grit, clarity, under pressure. If you ever feel capable on paper, but inconsistent in real life, this is about closing that gap. I don't put my name behind a whole lot of things. This one earns it. You can find the link below. No urgency. Just a genuinely solid tool if you're serious about getting better. You, in some of your most recent interviews, you've talked about the messy edge. And I wanted to get into what that is because I love that turn of phrase, the messy edge.

That is how it feels when we're on the cusp of big risk and super high performance. So I want to let you run with that one. Yeah. You know, the fact that you resonate with that and me knowing what I know about you, I know you understand what that feels like to be there. And to in spite of that messy edge, still have a command of yourself. Still have the access to the faculty that you've invested in. And so the messy edge is that place where it feels like you can fall apart into a thousand pieces. They could all kind of, it could all go wrong. But it's also in that messy edge where the unlock happens.

It's where the insight takes place. It's where the actual sinking between maybe mind, body, and craft in a new elevated way takes place. So it's that messy edge. And the messy edge, it's a funny thing. It's like, it's not like it's universal to all people. That's a messy edge for all humans. The messy edge is really built on your interpretation of the danger line. And there's a danger line that you decide what it is. And when you are unskilled at operating or approaching the danger line, the danger line starts closing in on you. And more things get scary. When you operate at your danger line, at your messy edge, and you survive it, you're successful, you navigated it, it extends out just a little further.

So that danger line keeps moving out when you are practiced being at that messy edge with it. And your danger line is determined by your unique life experiences. My danger line is a compilation of all of my unique life experiences. And I want to be great with that danger line. So I need to think through this. Is that really dangerous? Or is that a perception of danger based on my identity, based on what they might think of me, based on real consequences that if I'm at that danger line and I make a mistake, do I fall off in edge? That's a physical danger line. Most of us don't operate in physical danger lines.

Most of us operate, most of the time, at emotional danger lines. So the messy edge for most of us is emotions. And you know what, Nick, I think you'll appreciate this, is that most of us in the Western world, and I don't want to put you on the spot. So like, but I've come to learn that most people don't know the difference between feelings and emotions. And emotions are running the whole show. Okay, so like I said, the Super Bowl, the Olympics, a board meeting, an intimate conversation with a loved one, those are all emotionally charged experiences. And if emotions are like 10 out of 10, if they're at full tilt and like, they're really charged and on board, it is so hard to think clearly and creatively and to stay connected to the other person or to the task at hand.

Emotions are running the whole thing. Yeah. So I don't know, like you're studied on this. Do you have a way of being able to articulate the difference between feelings and emotions? Gosh, I'm struggling to put it into words. I feel like I know it when I see it. Emotions would be a bigger experience. I have a feeling you can articulate it better than I can. Wow. I'm not funny. Yeah. So, I also, okay, so here's the clearest way to think about it. Yeah. Emotions are physiological experiences that are observable. Yeah. Okay. So, if you're in a scary situation, you know, like if something's happening and your heart is pounding, your skin flushes, your pupils dilate, your, you know, your hands start to rattle a little bit.

That's an emotion. Those are a set of emotions. Okay, that's an emotion experience. And then the feeling is private. So I have to ask you, if I want to know your feelings, I have to ask you. If I want to know your emotions, I have to observe you. So if I were to say to you, hey, Nick, you know, it looks like your temperature just heated up a bunch. And you say it did. And then I'd have to say, is that mean you're scared? Are you afraid of something? Is something going on? You say, no, I'm so excited. This is what happened. You know, fear and excitement are like cousins, right? Yes. So you can't just tell what the feeling is by observing the emotion.

You have to ask. Yeah. And so again, feelings are private, emotions are public. Feelings are the interpretation of the emotion. When it's so, I think interesting that you can talk about the feelings. And I might be feeling terrified and nervous right now to talk to you. But then you say, Nick, please don't do that. Just as an example. Yeah, right, of course. And say, Nick, what if we reframe that as that feeling as excitement, which also jives with all the heart rate and the sweaty palms and the, what could be framed as nervousness, we can reframe as excitement, suddenly performance will improve.

Yeah, you know that you're right. You know the thing about that though, is that like, I can't convince myself like that. So, excitement and fear are cousins. They kind of look similar. But if I'm, my heart's pounding and I'm sweating and I'm shaking and I've got a cotton mouth and you can tell I'm really activated. And you say, Mike, what's up? And I go, dude, I'm freaked out. And you say, you sure that's not excitement? I go, yeah, I'm sure. And you say, well, they're the same. They're like the same. Are you sure you just don't want to be excited? I go, no, I'm freaking freaked out here. Like, I'm not prepared.

So I can't go, oh, you're right. You mean this is excitement and I've just been labeling it wrong? I can't, I can't. I can't. I can't do that. Maybe somebody can. I just can't. So what I need to do is I need somebody to say, hey, listen, your body is switched on. Okay, you're activated. And then this is how it happened for me that it was a massive unlock. I was rattling, if you will, in all those ways I described it. And a person I really trust saw the emotions, all the physical, logical stuff and said, ooh, you're switched on now. I said, and I was like getting embarrassed like they saw, you know, cause that, my first my feeling was fear and now it's embarrassment.

So, like, yeah. So then, so I said, yeah. And they said, what if, what if you just thought like your body's totally activated right now and you decided how much you wanted? So that put me in the position of control. And so I was like, wait, what do you mean? Well, okay, call it a scale one to 10. You're like an eight. I think a nine you might throw up, you know, like you're at an eight. Where do you wanna be? You don't wanna be at like a two where you're super mellow and whatever. And just think about a universe, like the inverted U, you know, type of model where like a five is the highest, most, oh, hold on, let me say this more clearly.

Porridge is too cold, porridge is too hot, porridge is just right. You know, so this is like this middle temperature, if you will, of activation. And I said, no, no, no, I don't like all this. It didn't matter to me if it was fear or excitement. I had too much going on. And then Mike, how do you back it down? I got a shit, I don't know. Breathe. And like, yeah, well, why don't you go do that? So then I just had to like breathe and it doesn't take it all down to like a zero, but it takes a little bit of an edge off. And then, then from that point, I'm starting to feel like I'm kind of back in something that's not so wild in my body.

So I backed it down with some breathing. Now I go, wait, hold on, how do I wanna frame this situation? You know what? I put in some work. Man, I do get freaked out. You know what? What could I get excited by? Do you see, I'm not just like flipping it like it's a taboo or like a thing, not taboo, I don't know where that word came from. I'm not just flipping it. I actually have to get myself back in control. And then I have to, from that framing, go, wait, how do I want to see this? Dude, I want to be excited about this thing, but I get so freaked out. What do you freaked out about? I don't know.

If I blow it, I won't get a new contract. If I blow it, whatever, fill in the narratives. Well, okay, if you think about those things, you're gonna walk yourself right into fear. You know, okay? What are other ways to think about it? What are you excited about? Well, I'm excited that if I capture this thing, whoo, man, like there's a new trajectory. There's a new thing that opens up for me. And so now I can kind of fill that narrative in. So anyways, I'm getting a little into the weeds of, for me, how the two skills, two kind of power alley skills in psychology work, breathing and self-talk. And I think you and I could spend a lot of time on that side.

We could, we could. I, and I think you just to wrap up that section, got to some interesting points there on that. It's not as simple as just saying, my anxiety is excitement. But understanding the nuances of this are really important where you can go, I am activated right now. My body's preparing for action. And that self-talk process can lead you from the anxiety over to excitement, which will help performance. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, that's, I think it's like, I don't know, I just never kind of understood how to just say something and it be true. I need to have some evidence. You know, like, I think I'm cult-proof.

I don't think I can, I don't think I'll ever find myself in a cult because I'm like, wait, what is that? Well, I just say that. Where do you get that from? You know, like the, I need some evidence. Which is a sure. I also come into the world like I described earlier from my parents like, my water table of trust is kind of low. You know, it's not totally low, but I'm like, trust is earned. So let's take our time, show me that, you know, that you are trustworthy. And I'll show you that I've, how I want to show up at my best consistently. And over time we built some trust. Trust is earned for myself, for myself, and trust is earned from others, you know, from their behaviors and how they show up.

So I just think that that trust equation is important to understand as like a water table. Nick, you came into this conversation with your resting water table of trust. And so did I. And if I don't understand yours and you don't understand mine, it makes it really hard to be good teammates to each other. Yeah. Because I'll be constantly like, or maybe you would be constantly like, how come I like, Jervais always asking me these questions. Like, doesn't he trust me? I'm not yet, dude. You know, like, not yet. Trying to find out where you're at. Yeah. Yeah, I really want to, because I know that trust is like an accelerant for speed.

I'm sorry, trust is an accelerant for performance. There's like a speed nature when you can trust each other. So I just, I want to get there as fast as we possibly can. Well, okay. I'll give you an example here that of, maybe that brings all these things together with the self-talk trust, all of that. So yesterday, I'm preparing for this interview and I was on a bike ride and listening to you on Rich Roles podcast. Yeah, isn't Rich fun? Oh, he's the best. I mean, yeah. I mean, his show, Your Show, there's a handful of others that I hold in really high regard. So it was very, I was like, oh yeah, I'm absolutely going to check this one out because you're, the two of you were so great.

And you said, Thank you. Who do you want to become? And I think you said it rhetorically initially, but he kind of jumped on it. Like, are you asking me that question? And then you guys went down that alleyway. And I thought it was, it was an interesting experience for me because I heard the question and started to answer it myself. And- Nick, I think that's the most fun part of podcast. I think you're nailing what is the most fun part. It's like, you hear a question, like, wait, pause. How would I answer that? Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry to interrupt. Like I just- No, no, go ahead. Well, and my brain started to go, the mind started to go and overdrive on that, right?

It was like picturing a lot of finite games that I want to win. Cause, and I was really thinking about it in terms of the podcast. And it was very superficial things that I wouldn't, they wouldn't be proud of my initial minds answers. We're like, yeah, huge following and celebrities coming on and the adulation of thousands of strangers. And I pulled over, I pulled off the bike path and was like, that is not the correct answer to that question. And I need to take a moment to like breathe and think about this. And for me, what I find just works personally is not to answer big questions like that in words.

I try to tap into the imagination and visualize something. Oh, wow. And I find I will come back with a better answer. And so I visualized over on the side of the bike path and it was a vision of what I want is to talk to people that I admire, whose ideas I would like to see spread in order to do that. Yeah, there needs to be a following as the fuel for that. So that people that don't know me where there is no trust would go, okay, this will help me advance me towards my goal. So yes, I will come on the show. But what I really want to have happen is to someone is for someone to come on and to have an experience that is worth it in and of itself, just the time we spent talking to each other and they go, yeah, that was time well spent.

And that incidentally, ironically, will also lead to an audience resonating with that conversation. Will lead to that increasing that following that makes it easier to get access to people who have ideas that can create fulfillment and in people's lives, create purpose in their lives and help them to flourish. It was a very different answer when I went to the visual versus the thinking mind. It's cool. You are hitting on the inputs to outputs, that ratio. And I do think that that's one of the hallmarks of people that are committing to the path of mastery, which is like, look, there's so, so such, there's not many things that I really get to control.

And so what I need to do is like figure out what is ultimately in my control and then work on mastering those very few things. Because when you're doing that, you're putting yourself in a position of power. And I don't mean power over somebody. I mean, you're in a power alley where you can be powerful, where you can, with great articulation, express what you're trying to either understand or share with another person or an experience. So like, the inputs to outputs is like this very simple calculus. And I think that that, what I heard you in your answers like, yeah, who do you wanna become? I wanna become a person that does A, B, and C and those were all investment in inputs.

And if I ask you that question even right now, like, who are you working on becoming? How do you say it in a sentence or two? At the time, I mean, I was thinking about it with the show where I struggle with that question is I feel like there's so many levels to it. I mean, who do I wanna become? I wanna become the best example I possibly can to my children. Is that's at the base level? And then everything kind of builds on that. Where it's like, okay, if you're into podcasting, we'll be really prepared when you show up to talk to somebody. Don't just wing it. Come in with, even if you throw all the plans out the window, you're really prepared, it will, I mean, plans never survive contact with the enemy, something to that effect.

But the planning helps you be prepared to take in the present moment, be present and perform at the best level you can. There you go. Yeah, that's very cool, man. I'm rooting for you. We need more of that. I don't think there's a right or wrong answer. How are you answering that question right now? Yeah, I'll finish this thought and then I'll answer that. Oh, yeah, yeah. If I lived in your body and experiences over the last X number of decades, I'm pretty sure I'd have a nearly identical answer. So I'm really curious about how we arrive at the choices we make and thought, the choices we make in words and the choices we make in actions.

I am really curious how people come to it. So who am I working on becoming? The relationship between being and doing, I'm working on being more than doing. So who am I working on becoming? Is a returning to connecting to what is already within me? So what does that mean? And that's not something I just made up. Like that's what I've been thinking about a lot. Who am I working on becoming? I'm working on returning to that which is already within me. I for much of my life was working on this model that I need to do cool things to be cool. I need to do high performing things to be high performing.

I needed to do extraordinary to be extraordinary. And I was like, what the hell am I doing? And I missed this kind of thought that like, no, I need to reorder that. I need to be more present, be more creative, be more connected, be more authentic. And when I do that and I let the doing flow from that place, the reward is already taking place that is independent from the outcome. So who am I working on becoming? Returning back to the person who's returning back to what's already home. And the way I'm thinking about excellence right now is like excellence is the ability to be at home with myself wherever I am.

The ability to be at home with yourself wherever you are is how I'm understanding the mark of mastery and the mark of excellence. So to be at home with yourself in the moments when you're alone and there's nothing happening and to be there when you're at the messy edge, whatever that means for someone as an individual. That's exactly it. You know, not trying to, that idea fake it to you make it is just fundamentally flawed. The idea that you're supposed to be something for other people, like you're supposed to be poised, you're supposed to have it all together, you're supposed to be, I don't know, whatever in the eyes of others, that's fundamentally flawed.

So, you know, knowing who you are and then dressing, quote unquote, accordingly, I think is a very difficult aspiration. And that's, like I do believe that everything you need is already inside you. It's just how often can you access it? And are you aware of what pulls you away from being at home with yourself? You know, is it a perfume from the person that broke your heart? Is it a scowl that somebody gives you across the room? Is it like a certain look that somebody gives you and you've interpreted that look as like, oh, they're being critical, but actually they're thinking deeply, like there's all these little trip wires, you know, that are going on inside of us that pull us away from that sense of being at home of ourselves.

Which usually have to deal with people's opinions of us. Yeah, it's always under there. I, so one thing from the book that I think ties into this that it really stuck with me, because I read it right when it came out and I still hold this one. I mean, it just stuck in my head because so much of what you're talking about right now comes back to being able to sit quietly by yourself and be with yourself. And the study that you quoted with the people that were put in a room where there was a little electric shocker and they said they would pay not to be shocked by it after doing it. They're like, yeah, that hurts.

And then they're left alone in there and two thirds of the people who were left alone for long enough with nothing to do, but just be with themselves, started shocking themselves just for something to do. Isn't that remarkable? Like most people I know are like, oh, I just can't wait to get to the weekend. Which is like this, that's a design problem in life is that I'm gonna, my life sucks between Monday and Friday. Or is like compromised so I get two days of whatever. Like that's a design. It's like chunk of life sucking when it's all out of it. And even if it's like not sucking, but like if it's like I'm doing this thing for 40 to 60 hours a week so that I get other time, it's a tough, tough life design thing.

And I'm saying that like with all the compassion for what it takes to put money on, money in the bank and bread on the table, like all of that compassion. My family was not wealthy. And so I get what I'm saying here. Okay, but this idea that I'm paying the piper now, or I'm paying the price now for some sort of joy later, it never quite squares correctly. Okay, where was I going with this? That we oftentimes people say like, I just need some alone time. I just need, you know, I just need a little quiet time. And then given that quiet time, according to this research, they didn't really walk quiet time.

Because they were starting to shock themselves because being with your own thoughts can lead to some pretty tricky places. Wait, your own thoughts, you start feeling some things, you start recognizing like, what am I really doing with my life? And I don't really know how to be okay with just kind of being with myself. You know that idea, do you like the company you keep? Yeah. I mean, it's not an easy path to get to know yourself. And so that's really what that study is about. It's getting to know yourself being with your own thoughts and feelings and emotions. It's a tricky thing. And people would rather shock themselves.

What thoughts do you have for people that want to do this sort of work, want to dig deeper into that? But that sitting by themselves sounds a little frightening or uncomfortable. Oh, I think it is. I think there's a messy edge there, you know. I, you know, I struggle with advice actually. I do struggle with it because I don't know your path. I don't know what you know, led you here. But I would just say I understand that. And I also don't know how I would be navigating the complexity of life without investing in how my own psychology works. And what do I mean by that? Is like, I think it's a radical advantage in living a great life.

If I know how my thoughts and my emotions work together, like I think that that's an advantage. Like, hey, when I have thought one, it tends to lead to thought two. And then thought two tends to lead to thought three, you know. And I don't really like thought three. Like I feel very good about like my future myself, other people like, so wait, I need to go from thought one to thought two to maybe two A to two B to two C. And then I eventually reroute it during this to a different type of thought stream. So knowing how to work with your thoughts is really cool. Knowing how to work with your emotions is really cool.

So where do you start? I think there's three ways to begin that developing the skills to be more aware, which is meditation, which I think what we're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. So that's one journaling is another, which we have spoken about. Conversations with people of wisdom is another way. A fourth way that's relatively dangerous is you really get to meet yourself in environments of consequence. So I don't recommend this one because you can get hurt. You know, but when you're in a compromised situation, you really learn quickly the things that are most important to you. I do not recommend that.

That's something that with a lot of time and tension, adventure sport athletes, people that are like doing things in very dangerous environments, there's this like pretty rich insight about how they work. Because if they don't get their inner world right, meaning that they're if they're not aware of how their thoughts and emotions are working, I mean, they they don't live to tell a story. So those are the four. If you don't like conversations with people with them, you don't like journaling and you don't want to put yourself in a dangerous situation, mindfulness is next. Yeah. So start small, you know, start with two minutes, focus with all of your might on your inhale and all of your might on your exhale and do that over and over again.

Your mind will eventually wander, you'll start questioning, what am I doing with myself? What is this really doing? And at the moment you recognize that you're not focusing on your inhale or your exhale, the moment you recognize that you're away from that thing, that's the moment of awareness. So you can kind of light up like cool, I just strengthen my ability to be more aware and then you start over, you know, and meditations mechanically, it's like starting over a thousand times in a three minute span, you know, like constantly just kind of reworking. It's not so exciting, you know, but it's really quite marvelous, the places you can go.

Yeah, I think it can be pretty exciting if you think about it. Like it is, it's the messy edge of going into yourself and it is difficult and you will discover some things about yourself that will surprise you. Yeah, so why bother? Why do that? That sounds terrible. Like I can hear my, you know, 20 year old self, like what are you talking about? Just go get on the dangerous edge and like it'll all be fine. But like, it's not that simple. You know, the reason to could do that exploring is because you really do need to know how your thoughts work. I mean, your thoughts are the, it's kind of the thing that runs everything.

Yeah. Thoughts and emotions, right? Emotions are running the show, but emotions and thoughts are like this bang bang experience. What comes first? Well, sometimes it's an emotion changes thoughts and sometimes our thoughts impact our emotions. So you kind of know how to work with these things. And that's what people that are extraordinarily happy, extraordinarily joyful, extraordinarily at peace, extraordinarily like present, extraordinarily extraordinary at like a skill. They know how they're working. Their internal world is working. And so I don't mind if unless it's great. It really is good.

And it's, and next sometimes just to kind of wrap it up on this piece is that sometimes like, I've been, I've been meditating for like, I guess like 26 years now. Yeah, 26, 27 years is that sometimes the 10 minutes that I have or the 12 or the 18 or 20 minutes I have on a, any given point in time throughout my day. It's like a standing civil war. It's hard. Other times those 20 minutes just kind of ripped by and I'm like, whoa, that was awesome. Yeah. Well, and I certainly have found about nine, north of 90% of my thoughts are to dumb, silly, can just be completely discarded. And that, from that your thoughts are good ones.

Yeah, right. I think it has made all the difference for me personally because then you don't have to take everything you think seriously. Are you meditating on a regular basis? Yeah. Yeah. Have been for a long time. Are you meditating in the morning? Are you meditating midday? When is your go to for the most part? I would say midday is the go to for me. It's a nice like reset. It almost feels like taking a nap like where you just wake up refreshed except I don't actually go to sleep. And the combination of like a cold plunge that only takes a couple of minutes. And then I find that that's like a hack for me to get to a much easier meditation.

Then I can just sit down and just do it and then see all those silly thoughts and try to decide what, okay, that one is was actually a good one. You finally found a good one, Nick. Let's keep that one and yeah, just refocuses on what, okay, what matters? What doesn't most of it doesn't matter? You know, it's another way to think about like entryway into mindfulness. The two of us yapping about how great it is does not instigate somebody to start meditating. Yes. It doesn't. And we could point to a lot of research. Oddly enough, before I get to my main point is that according to research, those are practiced mindfulness have an increased frequency and flow state.

How about that? Sure. You know, that research I think came out around 2012 that if you're practicing my phone's meditation, you increase the frequency of being in your most optimal state. You kind of got me at a low there. Anyways, what I was going to say is that a way in is like if you can find a masseuse that doesn't kind of hold court through conversation. And as they're kind of working on your calf muscle, let's say, that you are just going on a tour of your body. And there's a stimulus that's, I don't know, they call it moderate pressure and just kind of moving across your calf. And you're just following that motion without judgment, without critique.

And you're literally going on a tour of an assistant, assisted tour of your body. That's a cool way to start meditation. That's a good one. Massage is not for everybody. I get that. But if that feels like there's a fit there, I think it's a nice way to do it. How important are these skills of mastery for everyone as AI is on the rise and doing a lot of rudimentary work for us? My sense is that it will be more important than ever, but I want to know where you come down on this. Well, let's just talk about mastery of self for a minute, not mastery of craft. But mastery of self is really a deep understanding of how you work and the ability to navigate well using your own psychology, your own tools to navigate your physiology.

Like that is something that is agnostic to AI or whatever. So there's an opinion that we could develop about, well, how is AI going to help or hinder the process? And you could create as an optimist, you could say, well, as some of the mundane tasks are being, you know, identified and there's copilates that are doing some of the mundane task force, it's going to leave us with some available time and space to do more of the internal work. I'm not that optimistic about that piece. I think with a little bit more set of solutions to organize the mundane or to do the mundane for us, I think we're going to fill it with things that are not necessarily mastery of craft fueling.

I think we're going to fill it with more scrolling, maybe more fitness, maybe more social time, which are all fine and good. I just think that I don't think our society is ready to say, oh, if I can kind of have a better workflow and I say 30% of my workday because of an agent that I'm going to now finally go journal, meditate, you know, and have conversations with people with wisdom, I'm going to go learn, you know, a self discovery process. I don't think so. But I do think that as the world in the pace of the world is speeding up that one of two things is going to happen. We're going to kind of crash and it looks like we're leading that way a little bit.

If you look at health indicators, you know, addiction, anxiety, depression, suicidality, loneliness are all in the rise. Yeah. So I feel like there's a crash or a swell that's taking place. And so unfortunately, the reason most people change is because there's pain and they say I'm sick and tired of doing it this way. So I'm going to, I have to go a new way. And I think that with just how fast our world is that there's going to be this counter rotation to I need to slow it down. And I think there's going to be the frontier pushing people that are saying no agent for me, no cell phone for me, no Wi-Fi for me, you know, like I'm kind of moving off the grid.

I think we're going to see more of those folks that are just kind of tired with this rat race. And I think that that's going to have a small intake up, not a big one, but there's going to be more people that are swinging that way. And there's going to be the bulk of us that are going, you know, full all in, hey, how can I get the chip inserted into my, you know, left eye so that I can see how fast I'm skiing down a hill and I'll deal with the infections later, you know, right, right. I think we're moving more of that direction. So that feels to me less of a commitment to mastery. Yeah. But I will say that when we look at the research from the workforce right now, overwhelmingly people are more interested, young people are more interested in purpose and meaning than they are payment.

So they're saying, no one's going to ever say, don't pay me. Sure. But they are saying when it comes down to it, like, look, I need to be connected to something that really matters. Yeah. That's the entryway. That's the portal into helping people work with their psychology better because all of those health indicators are health and behavioral issues that I talked about addiction, anxiety, depression, loneliness, those are all psychological in nature, meaning that we're struggling with the psychology to live well. And I don't think that's, I don't think that's a confusing thought. I think that that's actually pretty clear.

So if the workplace is where we're spending most of our time, young people in the workplace are saying, hey, I want to get paid. And I also want to know that I'm connected to something that matters. I want help with my life purpose. And I think that the purpose of this organization is pretty interesting. But I want help with my life purpose is what they're saying. I'm going to make this parallel link is that big sport is about 15 years ahead of big business when it comes to investing in human capabilities. Because the only product in sport is the human. The main product, I should say in sport is the human.

And in business, the human is in service of a service or a product. And now we're starting to see, wait, hold on. No, no, no, no. The human is at the center of this whole thing. They're not factory worker kind of slotting widgets onto treadmills like that's not what this thing is. So people are saying, I'm going to kind of quietly quit. I'm going to disengage. I'm just going to kind of be average until I know that this thing, this thing that we're doing together is serving me well. And or I'm so stimulated by it that the collective energy is really exciting. Like the shared mission is really cool.

And or my personal purpose is being expressed through it. And so that's what we're doing at one of the three largest tech firms in the world is that senior leader has said, listen, we want all 226,000 employees. We want you to help them know their purpose, walk through a self discovery process, and invest in the psychological skills that world class athletes do to be their very best. And that part is exciting that the workplace is going to become the gym for wellness, for high performance. Like I'm actually pretty bullish on this idea. Well, that really strikes a chord with me because I'm imagining a company that talks about achieving goals as an organization the way you were talking about it with the Seattle Seahawks.

Right? We're going to optimize all of these individual humans to move towards this collective goal, get our noses pointed in the same direction. And equally, that would also talk about it the way you did. We said after losing a Super Bowl, we're going to unpack what what is it we're really after? What what matters here? Did we do all the things that put ourselves in a position to succeed? That's the thing we can control. We can't always control the end outcome. And that would be an amazing place to work. Yes, yes. It doesn't mean it's the easy path, you know, and it's actually quite challenging, but really rewarding.

The path is rewarding. And so too are some of the outputs that come your way. Yeah, yeah. To end things on a really upbeat note, I wanted to talk about death for a second because that's that's in the book, but I'm a big fan of ghost dog, the way of the samurai with forced Whittaker and because it's just some of these ideas where when we acknowledge that we will die someday and contemplate death a little bit, we see what matters, what doesn't. To us. And it really aligns with what you said about putting yourself in extreme situations where you might get hurt. You've got to come to peace with what matters and what doesn't.

I'm going to I'm just going to let you run with that. Yeah. Yeah, cool. I love the potency of the idea you're you're talking about. It's hard to to to like really embrace like, I'm not going to be here. I don't know when either. You know, and when you have children, if you have children, like that comes clear into focus at some point. If you have a near death experience, it's like right in your lap when you are in the throws of losing someone or somebody that you love is no longer with you. Like there's this intimate connection, but then it kind of like, this weird thing, it kind of fades away a little bit in this mystical haze of denial that, you know, that's going to happen to me later.

Yeah. True statement, but it could happen today. And I so I do this thing like, I don't want to be somber about it. I want to like use that as a way to be more buoyant. You know, like I don't know, Nick, if you and I will ever get to meet in person. So I want to be here to my best ability, you know, because this might be the only time we connect. And I want to live my life without aliveness in that zest. And it does oddly enough help me. That logic sequence helps me that I don't know if this will ever happen again. So I want to be as good as I possibly can as like alive with this experience as I possibly can.

I don't mean good, like good, bad. I mean, like alive is a better way of saying it. And so one of the practices that I have is I think gratitude is a good practice. But what helps me more is when I say goodbye to somebody, I and now you know what's going to happen for me in a few minutes with you is like, when I say goodbye, I really mean it. And so when I say goodbye to I do not know if I'm going to see you again. There's big buses that travel on the road. There's like, you know, weird trees that are falling. I mean, there's just weird stuff that happens. We don't know our number. Okay. We don't know what is going to happen.

Right. And so that helps me go to my next relationship with a little bit more buoyancy, a little bit more aliveness with a little bit more like appreciation of the fragility, the impermanence of all things. So I'm going to take a bite in a few minutes and I'm going to mean it. And there's like this quick little hit like, shed, I don't know. And I mean, like, you know, great to spend some time with your neck. And I'm going to mean that because I don't know if I'm going to see you again. And then boom, I'm going to go into my next room and I'm going to see some of my teammates. And there's going to be, they get the benefit of that little prick of impermanence.

You know, so. I think that's a wonderful idea to wrap this up on. And I mean, I say it jokingly, but at the same time, like I think it is really uplifting when you talk about impermanence and our mortality, the way you just did. I think it can be uplifting. It's just the way that we decide to examine it for people that want to find you online. We're all the great places to find Dr. Michael Dravet. Well, first, Dick, thank you for a fun conversation. Let me kind of jam on some stuff that's I think is kind of hard to talk about. Like it's, you know, there's a lot of nuances in it. So thank you for that.

It is. And thank you, honestly, I don't mean to interrupt, but I could, I could talk to you for three hours, no problem. Clearly, I just don't want to take up your entire afternoon, but I don't really appreciate the conversation and the time. But awesome. Let's continue. Thank you. Yeah. So the website is this probably the easiest to find everything. It's findingmastery.com. Our podcast, Finding Mastery, is like a great way to kind of, you know, hang out. You know, yeah. It's a fun way. And then, you know, I'd love to send your folks a morning mindset routine. And so it's an audio file that is quite simple.

It's like the thing that I do with most elite performers. It's a 90 second little training on how to start your day by waking up very particular parts of your brain that I think are important to wake up. And so that's a little 90 second drill. And like you can figure out how you want to share it with them, but we can do that offline. And I think they can also go to the website, findingmastery.com slash morning mindset. I think it's there. And so I'll make sure that that link is accurate. We'll link to it in the show notes as well. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a fun way. I send you something, you send me your email and then, you know, we can stay in contact that way.

Fantastic. Yeah. I like it. And before we actually push the button, do you want to say goodbye so everyone can experience this good. Yeah, it's pretty casual. Yeah, it's pretty casual. Nick, like the way it's like this private thing, right? So I'm going to say I'll say it right now. Nick, thank you. Like I really enjoyed our time. I appreciate you. Nice. Nice. Well, thank you. I really appreciate you and really enjoyed having this conversation. Okay, everybody. Until next time. Ask questions. Don't accept the status quo and be curious.