High Performance Mindset Training with Dr. Michael Gervais and Lewis Howes

if you listen to espn or you listen to fox boards they'll say that big game defining play defining moment and there really isn't such a thing and so when it matters most is now it's not later it's not the super bowl it's not your everest it's not the pitch that you're the that you're gonna give to a vc firm that's not the moment the moment is now and it's always now [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome back everyone to the school of grants podcast we have dr michael gervais in the house good to see you my friend how you doing my pleasure thank you for having me of course man i'm very excited now you are a high performance psychologist uh with 20 years of experience working with a lot of high level olympians athletes executives to just high-stakes performers in general that's right um and i'm curious how did this begin for you was it originally in sports psychology i think a lot of people originate from sports or was it something else for you yeah great question i'll take you back to how it started for me which um i think that most trajectories in life begin with some sort of pain and so yeah if we can get clear on what that is then um you know i think the path gets much easier so i'll start there but before i go there the mechanical part is pretty simple undergraduate degree in psychology master's degree in kinesiology i'll put an asterisk on that for a minute and then back to a phd in psychology with an emphasis in sport and then licensed as a psychologist in california and then figured out i didn't know anything at that point i still didn't know anything i knew all the theories yeah i mean with all those training but what i did know is all the base theory and i got to stand on the shoulders of giants that have researched over and over again like how the human mind and body work together and what those theoretical orientations were right phenomenal but you weren't like a tactician at the time yeah like working in the weeds with people's minds no not yet fears not enough yeah and then so then i went more like role-playing in class or something yeah yeah it was right you're about to go on stage let's walk through your fears yeah i remember the first time i'll get to the first question in a minute but the first time that so before you before you become licensed you have to be supervised for 3000 hours and that's by another psychologist saying hey why did you put your pencil down at minute 22 in the conversation you know and how come you took the conversation this way did you miss a b and c and so like there's an intense amount of training that goes into sitting in front of another human being and having them express what's deep within them right their aspirations their pains the dark side the light side and there's incredible training just to say that for me it was incredible training for me to say that now at that point after the 3000 hours i still didn't know anything wow yeah and so the reason that i knew i didn't know anything is because um i hadn't been in the trenches yet with people that were masterful people that were off had created enough training that they could authentically express what's within themselves and so therein lies why i got started is that i grew up here in california and my first sport was surfing and i was there's free surfing and there's competitive surfing there's two types of surfing and free surfing i was a good little you know 15 year old free surfer meaning when it was just me and mother nature no problem like it was really good you know and a man out there yeah right like every wave i could figure it out well enough with the boys like it was fun and then as soon as competition happened um and there was people on the beach and those judges and yeah the whole thing was happening that i felt like a shell of myself and i'm a 15 16 year old kid at this point shaking out in the water in you know surf that i'm super comfortable in and there was one day where a surfer passed by me and i we were in heat there's only three guys out in the heat and he paddles by me now he's like a grown man and he paddles by me and he says gervais you gotta stop thinking about what could go wrong i thought i said how the hell does he know what's in my head that's it like i couldn't feel my feet i couldn't feel my body it was dis completely disconnected to my board and so like a good competitor he didn't tell me what to do yeah yeah he just told me not to think about like with all the things that i was worrying about so i sat for a minute and i said okay well if that's the case let me start thinking about what i want to have happen and so i just kind of mused and you know created some imagination about that about what it would feel like to surf at my best so that was the first introduction looking back with hindsight that i had to sport psychology and it and i got out of that heat and i said you know there's something to like how my mind's worked it screwed up my mind screwed up like i can't be myself as soon as there's people watching and judging me right and so call it performance anxiety call it whatever you want i didn't have command in my mind and i didn't know there was such a thing as sport psychology but i knew that the mind and my craft were there was an intimate link at that point and so um that's what started it that intersection of pain of not being able to authentically express what was inside of me and that's what kind of took me down this path and so you started researching and studying this while you're in high school no yeah i wish i was that switched on no i mean i barely got out of high school and um i was the first person in my family you know to go to college i started junior college because there was this moment in time when my my mom i specifically remember she pulled me aside it was my senior year in high school and she pulled me aside and she said you know mike we tried and your father and i you know we went to the school of hard knocks and we you know we didn't we didn't know how to support you in this way but at this point in your life you need to do one of two things you need to go to junior college and we'll help you there or you need to get out and get a job and i thought about 18. yeah i was like 17 18 i started school early and i said no i i know how to go to school and surf so let me just let me extend like year 12 to 13 and 14 let me see if i can just play this game a little bit longer and um yeah so i went to a junior college and i've it was at that place that i there was three professors that saw this you know grommet that's what they call young surfers this little grommet you know bouncing around school just trying to figure out how to get out of class again i tested in this is all sounds really unbecoming but i think there's a good story to it is that i tested into remedial math and remedial english and it's not because i didn't understand the concepts it's because i didn't understand how to study and i missed high school which is a in some ways an assault on um you know heist public high schools yeah yeah so i missed i missed high school literally i was in the water surfing more than i was in class it felt like i tested a remedial math remedial english there was three professors up at this school marymount college and it was a psychologist a theologian and a um philosopher those are three professors and i'll tell you what i'd fell in love they showed me how to fall in love with working to understand the invisible and it was like from that point forward no one ever had to ask me to read another book that was it it just took off for me wow yeah she was a catalyst you had a great catalyst that like yeah finally made you understand the power of learning and yeah it was pain and love it was those two things the pain of not being myself and the love of like this learning that took place and so i i love to share that story it's not has very little to do with me it has to do with um you know those three professors yeah and so now is was there a moment when um you kept competing and you realized okay now i know what's going on my mind and i know that i have this anxiety or this fear or whatever it was holding you back and i'm learning how to switch it off so that i can step into my vision or to what i want to create as opposed to what i want what's going to happen wrong was our mum when i started happening in the water you're like wow it finally started to click yes and no i wish i wish i had that dramatic thing you know and like yeah for me it never quite worked that way it was like this gradual progression and the way i liken it to is i think it's the case for most of us is that you know when you have like a toothache or you have something that is like aching or if there's a pain and then or hiccups and then you look back like time progresses and you go oh my god my tooth is gone or my hiccups are gone like this is great so this is like this gradual progression but not this one kind of instantaneous lightning rod moment at least for me you know in my life so uh no there's this gradual progression where i felt that i was more grounded i understood um because of increased awareness and then i was but at the same time i was learning from these really bright men and women some of the best doers in the world and they were on a very similar journey and the only difference i had is that they were in the amphitheater doing it and at this young phase of my life i just had some theoretical orientation so early on in my career i felt like i learned much more than they learned yeah and then um i'm not saying it's different now i'm still like i want to be a beginner and everywhere i go so of course um yeah so yeah that's kind of the the arc if you sure sure what do you think is the the main thing that holds people back from high performance when it matters the most well i think there's two parts to that question you know you add the one that matters the most and that's a really important nuanced esoteric phrase and i love this phrase when it matters most because if you listen to espn or you listen to fox sports or you listen to any of those you know types of shows they'll say that big game defining play defining moment and there really isn't such a thing and so when it matters most is now it's not later it's not the super bowl it's not your everest it's not the pitch that you're the that you're going to give to a vc firm that's not the moment the moment is now and it's always now and it's now again and if we are present it's now again and it's always now and so the idea is that there's no such thing as a moment later that's more important than the one you have now because again this is very esoteric if we were to strip away your ability and my ability to live in this present moment then we don't have life right it's the absence of life yeah but what happens for most of us is that if you think about um this moment a little bit like a raindrop like it's moving okay and eventually it'll crash uh death if you will but like this raindrop that's moving we can be on the edges of the raindrop or we could be right in the center we don't ever leave our raindrop our unique raindrop but when we go to the edges of the raindrop it's like we are not fully in the present moment and so what gets in the way anxiety you know worry what do they think of me what if it goes wrong yeah do i have what it takes am i gonna embarrass myself am i going to let people down you know so that anxiety is a real condition it's estimated that well the research suggests that 15 of americans suffer and that's the word from anxiety the estimate is probably more like 30 percent suffer and it's a mental disorder and anxiety by definition is the excessive worry about what could go wrong so that's at the root that's that's what's the opposite of anxiety groundedness yeah a sense of poise and presence focusing on what could go right yeah well not even not even that but like yes right so if if anxiety is worrying about what could go wrong an anecdote for that experience is focusing on what could go right what could be fantastic living in gratitude that's right yeah which i'm obviously you're familiar with but the essence of it is coming back to the center of that raindrop that esoteric thing i'm talking about like that falling raindrop to time your ability to be right in the center and what what does that mean that you're grounded you're present your your mind is on time with what's happening and so you've heard great athletes talk about the game slows down yeah it doesn't slow down that's not what happens is that our mind becomes fully syncopated at the speed of life and we're on time and so when we're finally on time it's such a like a relief like oh my god this is this is the speed of light this is amazing and so we don't have ever have the power to slow down time we just have the power to increase our ability to be on time right in this moment then the next moment the next moment yeah the worried mind is behind time or ahead of time right and so there are times to do there are moments where we need to think about the future don't i mean for sure but it's the excessive worry about what could go wrong yeah and i think that that would be um so it's fear and fatigue are the two kind of cripplers of potential and so if we get the fear thing right and we have a relationship with fear and we look for moments to challenge our relationship with fear i can talk a lot i love to talk about that with you and the other is getting the fatigue thing right and we we've come in modern times to believe that we need to do more to be more and it's broken right it's fundamentally broken the idea is that we need to be more and let the doing flow from there be yourself be your authentic self be here now you know be grateful be present and let the doing flow from those that orientation is a completely different model that you know it's like i i've i'm spending my life efforts i think working to share that and to help the some of the best doers and thinkers in the world to reorientate what got them good but is slowing them down from being their absolute personal best what's slowing them down fear and fatigue still yeah well the idea the framework the psychological framework that i need to do more to be more and that's born out of anxiety mm-hmm right not doing enough yeah could be doing more in the trip stressing about yeah flat out and the trick though there is that that guy that'll get people good i need to do more damn i miss that jumper how am i going to miss that jumper let's keep like you know drive them to be practiced more to yeah yeah so that's this um you know it's like just enough anxiety will get you good but it will slow you down for being your absolute best at some point you know so it's tricky yeah right there's an edge because you need to be driven to train and practice with that edge in order to be great at something that's right yeah you know if you're just doing it for fun it's different but to be to be a winner to be a champion in sports let's say or to be a great performer on stage musician whatever you've got to put in the time yeah and i think the deliberate time right well yeah it's nauseatingly how how truly challenging it is to focus deeply yeah and it's rare you know our the natural state of our mind is like a drunk monkey and for some people it's double fisted it's all over the place it's you know so emotionally erratic good thing i don't drink otherwise would be messed up would you yeah did you have a run with that i've never been drunk in my life just stop it never been drunk is there is that i have like a sip i have like a bailey's on ice every now and then like a couple times a year but i've never felt like a buzz or anything um i think when i went in high school first time i went to a private boarding school so there was no you weren't allowed to drink and i was just kind of like i don't really care some kids were but i was in the dorm and didn't have access to it and didn't care what were you focused on sports i mean my vision was to be the best athlete i could be and to go you know get a college scholarship play play professionally and so when i went to college i remember when i graduated high school all my siblings were like you're gonna be this drunk jock like we already know it and i think out of spite i was like i'm gonna bet you i'm not gonna have a single sip of alcohol my entire career in college there you go so i didn't have a single sip yeah i went to so many college like parties after football games just like crazy drunken parties it was never even like tempted i think because i just had in my mind like these my teammates are losing their edge the more they drink and like the sloppier they are they weren't recovered for the next day and it was holding them back the whole week and you know performance so for me i was just like i need every edge i was just uh i didn't have the speed the strength the skill as everyone else i was like i need the mental edge yeah there you go and you know if being hung over is a significant problem to be consistently great like that becomes problematic and so i had a similar experience too right and mine was born a little bit differently that i had a family of addiction yes right so it was in my family i saw it and i said i'm not going down yeah so it's easy to repeat that when one feels like it's not enough one drink feels like it's not enough but a thousands you know you know what's the saying uh one's two one's too many thousands not enough so there's like this craving that i felt early on to it and i said wow i said whoa whoa you know which i'm so thankful that i had um such dysfunction that i was able to witness sure but i knew that if i'm doing what my boys are doing that i'm not getting up in the morning and surfing yeah so forget about it no you're sleeping yeah i love it exhausted yeah yeah um so fear and anxiety so no fear and fatigue fair fatigue sorry why so it's hard to perform if you're fatigued physically and emotionally right um but why do we fear so much about what could go wrong what other people think about us who we're going to let down that we're not worthy enough good enough why do we fear that it's a great question so much yeah it's a really great question whole life yeah is that so there's some biological things we can take a look at and then there's also psychological right and then so it's the interaction of those two biologically our brain as best as we think and it's three pounds of silly putty that sits in our skull that's more complicated than you know like the brightest minds in neuroscience are still amazed by how our brain works and so um but we think that our brain is designed to scan the world and find what's dangerous right and so our ancestors pass that gift on to us your lineage passed that gift on to you that they were able to survive and so how survived way back in ancient times that they could scan the world and easily discern how to be ready between now let me say it more eloquently they could scan the world and find what was dangerous or what was threatening so that they wouldn't be eaten eaten by the sabretooth tiger as the story goes right right or they want to eat something bad or they want it whatever protect themselves that's right so and then so then not only was nature dangerous and all the elements in nature but other humans became dangerous to each other so now what we've created is the ability the heightened ability to read micro expressions and micro expressions are the small squinting of the eyes the frontalis muscles between the eyes and when those squint or don't move it's a sense of threat right because we don't know what's happening to that from that person and so if you got this ancient brain that's programmed beautifully to find what's dangerous and we scanned in an undisciplined way our environment around us we're going to find dangerous things and in modern times we're not chased by saber-tooths anymore the new modern saber-tooth are other people's opinions and so um we're well conditioned from an early age and this next generation is going to be even more well conditioned you know with insta highlight reels for everything my life is better than yours i'm going to show you via a snap picture is that um you know so we've got this real challenge that to pursue a path of our personal best we have to override our dna that's that's hard to do that's really hard to do it requires deep commitment to training yeah and that's like that's what psychology the optimal opportunities that psychology offers us is just that how to train our minds to override our dna and to use the smaller parts of our brain to scan the world and find opportunity how can we train our minds every single day throughout the day to do that yeah overcome this fear what are the things that we could be doing i will not i could i will rattle off as many as you want to hear like tactics and then i also want to put a small little asterisk next to this is that the tactic alone is not enough right it's the stitching of the tactics it's the stitching of the mental skills training to each other and to one's personal philosophy so without a personal philosophy it's like you we end up just trying all these different things to get better but what are we getting better at what other people want us to be so there's a fundamental piece of work first got it right what would be your personal philosophy i'll i'll share mine cool um it i've spent a lot of time with it and i'll tell if i could tell a story of how it worked i think it will harden a little bit is that um so i needed a mentor when i was growing up and i'm thankful what's up gary like i'm thankful for gary he helped me out in so many different ways even currently today um and so one day he says um hey mike i want to introduce you to my mentor wow great i didn't know there was such a thing as like a grand mentor like am i ready and so you know this moment i said okay here we go and it was this um but to my surprise it was this um small um you know two uh three bedroom two bedroom a three bedroom two bath home um and it was well manicured and it was this pleasant like 78 82 year old woman comes out and i was just so pleasantly surprised like okay this is going to get good because she just had that sense of wise woman and it's the setting that you would imagine the shag carpet was a little bit long the drapes were just a little bit you know um you know outdated yeah and so we sat at the table and she's pouring me tea and and she says you know welcome and so interested to meet you then we sat down and she said so tell me what you're about i said okay well um [Music] uh what well the things that i'm most interest well okay let me start this way and she looked at me and she looked at my mentor and she said i thought you said he was ready that's all i am i i am ready wait wait no no no i want to answer that and she grabbed my tea and she said you know when you're ready sweetie i'd like to share this tea with you oh yeah so i was like super embarrassed in that moment like i thought i let my my mentor down and you know it was like this really intense experience wow how old were you i was at that point um it was right after it was like 26 27 somewhere in that range and so i didn't know what to do and so it was this awkward moment but i knew that i had i was not prepared to even answer the most basic question who are you and so that's where that's where i just want to anchor that because i think that that captures what most of us feel like a lot most people don't feel like they know who they are yeah and so i had this dramatic moment for me but you know i think it's a really important process to go through so let's call a personal philosophy but then let's extract one one level out from that the greatest and the most influential people across the globe are very clear about their philosophy the greatest movers and shakers and change makers are spiritual leaders and political leaders for the most part and now we're starting to see business leaders you know to do that um what was confucius philosophy what was buddha's philosophy what was jesus philosophy they're really clear jesus was and i want to oversimplify a beautiful set of traditions but jesus was more about love and service buddha was more about you know that all people are suffering and then so let's work through compassion to live with love and kindness what was martin luther king jr's dr king jr's was about equality you know malcolm x equality totally different tone totally different approach mother teresa helen keller what was helen keller's like okay i'm gonna go for it and like i deserve to be educated as well she changed the educational system so the most influential people were very clear why because they lined up their thoughts their words and actions to the thing that matters most to them that's what a philosophy is about everybody already has one you have one i have one whether we could articulate it at knife point in a dark alley totally different element right and so i think that that's a nice litmus test like could you get it out in front of a deranged person who's got a knife to your throat like could you do you are you that clear what you stand for and do you have your personal philosophy so that's the litmus test for for folks that i work with and i'll share mine it's every day is an opportunity to create a living masterpiece and so there's um there's optimism embedded in there there's creative juices embedded in there and then there's you know this idea of a living masterpiece and so um when i met coach carroll head coach of the seattle seahawks about six years ago six seven years ago one of our first conversations it was it was over dinner mutual friend put us together and we had this really wonderful conversation and it was born out of like what is your philosophy so he had been on the same similar journey i should say where he was fired from two head coach jobs in the nfl and on on the second time he was fired so from pain creates change uncomfortableness is how we grow but change is how we i'm sorry uncomfortable and this is how we grow but pain is why we change so he experienced pain and said if i get another chance i'm going to do it exactly the way that is authentic to me but i got to figure out what that is yeah so he just went and scratched down on you know multiple pads spiral you know old school spiral notebooks just wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote took a second pass at it and said what are the words that keep showing up circled those words wrote more about those words and that's how it eventually spilled out of him his philosophy is always compete always compete for what you say always compete to be a great dad to be a great coach to be a great friend to be a great partner like always compete and so he says at his core he's a competitor and he's always trying to become better wow and so so he's built his whole life around you know that and including the seattle seahawks and usc before that so yeah so philosophy is really important to us and so that would be the most significant investment first how can someone create their own philosophy the three ways to do it okay so now we're into some tactics right which i think is really important as well so the tactics there's three ways to get clear um be around wise people and have conversations about philosophy and wisdom right be around them if you don't know one um go try to they're rare but you know maybe pray about it maybe talk about like find wise people in your lives or become one yeah okay or you can watch videos of them or read their books to get started you know yeah and yes start down that path nice nice job you know and and there's something about being in their presence if you can that that is different of course you know of course okay and there's you know synagogues and churches and there's there's folks that you can find these people and they don't have to be spiritual they can be um secular as well so be around wise people write journal you know there's something about forcing words out of your native tongue all the words of your native tongue to write down the words and to have a forcing function to choose words that matter like there's something about that and then the last the third is and all of them are equally important is listening so mindfulness practice so listening to it's one of the most ancient mindfulness traditions is asking yourself it's called contemplative mindfulness is ask yourself the question who am i and just go down that path who am i and you'll learn you'll learn some ugly things you'll learn some wonderful things and you'll really learn who you are and so those are three ways right and then there's another easy way i don't know if it's on our website or whatever but we've developed a philosophy primer you know and i don't think it's up on our website but those would be the three tactics that get closer yeah you know and then if i if i do you want me to go one click cheaper you know if mechanically what i would suggest you do is write down a list of all the people that really inspire you like who are those people just write down that list and you don't have to know them then write to the right of that column for each person write down the characteristics that that that they embody that that inspiration comes from so if it was like so let's say martin luther king jr and you say you know courage or intelligence or people person or conviction okay those words matter and then as you go down your list you'll start to see some characteristics you'll start to see some stuff yeah and then once you're clear um i don't know we we talk about going from clarity to conviction and that's that's the entire arc of mental training is first you got to get some clarity and then invest in your craft and invest in your your mind so that you can live a life of conviction yeah in any environment you can be about you in any environment and as humans there's only three things we can train everything falls within one of these three buckets we can train our body you know that professional sport you know and and has done great to show us what that looks like you can train your craft and we all have a craft right like athletics or arts or music it's easy to see that you know your your craft of interviewing and writing um and many more probably but there's also other crafts that you have and that we all have it might be things that we're not paid for but we're passionate about yeah okay so it could be parenting it could be a guitar it could be lots of different things okay so you can train your body you can train your craft and you can train your mind that's it those are the only three so we don't see training the mind as being extra who's got extra time nowadays there's no extra there's it's fundamental to becoming your very best is training one of those three elements and if you train all three of them it's an accelerated path that's you know what's the best way someone could train their mind on a daily basis they have 30 minutes a day yeah good so start with your philosophies that's that would be mentally get clear down your philosophy that's the first part figure that out yeah and that's lonely deep deep work and that might take years or could pop right spill right out of you you know right so start now um yeah the dialogue has something or it was actually a former dalai lama said um enlightenment takes lifetimes or the next moment so pay attention exactly yeah so that's the first and then the second i would say the second largest pillar would be to invest in mindfulness i'm happy to talk about that but you can train confidence you can train calm you can train your ability to be focused in the present moment uh you can train optimism um which is an accelerant is an accelerant to mental toughness i know that you have great value for training gratitude and so um martin seligman did a wonderful piece of research out of u pen that um just writing down at the end of the day three amazing things that you experienced has a significant impact in life satisfaction it can it can impact your relationships with others if you are depressed people that came into his study stabilized their depression people that were not depressed that came into their study after uh i think was one month three month and six month follow-up they had a significant overall increase in their overall life satisfaction it's as simple as writing down three amazing things right and so that's one way to train optimism and gratitude so there's lots of ways to do it and i don't know if you want a specific tactic or mindfulness do you mean meditation or give me another type of practice so mindfulness um yeah you can you could substitute the word meditation for mindfulness meditation for for us conjures up a term that there's a lot of stigma attached to and that stigma is changing but in i spend most of my time in very rugged and hostile environments and to talk about mindfulness in those environments is a stretch you know although no i'm sorry to talk about meditation is the stretch mindfulness feels like okay mindfulness training what is that yeah what's about increasing your awareness oh i yeah that's important meditation has that all other baggage so is it the same thing close mindfulness is a state and a skill meditation is the skill training mechanism for it and so let's just for simplicity call it mindfulness training and i mean i do you want to go deeper than that yeah well if mindful if the definition of mindfulness is the ability to be here now to be where your feet are without judgment without this the noise the idea is to get to the signal and the signal is always now and to gate out the noise i mean engineers right now are going yeah that's what it's about you know signal to noise ratio um but that's what it is for our minds as well and remember our natural state of our mind is like a drunken monkey so a disciplined mind a still mind is rare and mindfulness is increasing your ability to recognize when your mind is away from the present moment and bringing it back and it's not about not having thoughts that's that's an old thought that most people are recognizing that that's not the case but mindfulness is really about rec when you once you recognize that your mind is wandered from a particular state or there's judgment around it to gently bring it back to the to now and that now can be a breath it could be the next thought it whatever right and so there's two types of mindfulness single point mindfulness training and then the contemplative style single point mindfulness is as simple as focusing on one thing for an extended period of time so master the inhale then the exhale and then master the inhale again and then the exhale so that's just focusing on your breathing right one breath at a time for let's call it six seven eight minutes that's the minimal effective dose to get some therapeutic effect from it and then the optimal dose is 20 minutes a day according to research and science focusing on single point just single point and then so on your inhale your mind will wander right and an inhale takes about four seconds so just the inhale your mind will wander and then once you notice that it's wandered great that's the moment of awareness and then just bring it back gently you know swiftly quickly and so you're training the skill of refocus you're training the skill of awareness that's single point mindfulness it could be a dot on the wall it could be a mantra it could be a sound it could be your breath it could be lots of things right that's single point and then the other is contemplative which is involves some sort of relaxation strategy to relax yourself just like the single point and then just watch just watch what happens watch your thoughts you know watch where thought a how it transforms to b to to b1 to b2 to b3 to maybe over to c and just watch without critiquing or judging and just go on that ride and that's um that's the kind of the second tactic to mindfulness who are some of the most impressive performers you've worked with that you're allowed to talk about yeah yeah thank you for that um yeah there's so many that i would love to share with you yeah well i'll i'll do one that's nameless right now and then i'll do a couple that um have been public about it and this is one of the challenges of being licensed as a psychologist is that we create an environment between client and myself we create an environment that is unlike anything else where the sanctuary of trust and the depth of the conversation that we go in are like no other normal conversation so out of respect and trust for the code that we've established that i don't share names in that way and but some some have been public and they've shared names and so i'm happy to talk about um within scope of what i can talk about there but there's an there's a artist that i'm working with right now and a musician producer that has had um when he he he worked last year 50 nights and every night that he books it's 1.6 million a night so a significant global influencer from a music perspective oh no no yeah he's you know his music everyone listening but what's impressive is that it seems like they are from a different planet but they're not they're they're just like you and i they're they're humans that have the same exact ambitions the same exact fears and worries the same relationship struggles that we both have and they have just figured out how to be more tuned to the signal than the noise the signal meaning what the present moment that is aligned with his philosophy and also matches the vision of how he'd like to see himself in the future the vision of what he'd like to see and one of the great psychologists of our era is his name is dr albert bandura and dr albert brendor introduced so many really influential theories about how the mind works in optimization one of his theories is self-efficacy efficacy is a word for power and part of having uh being an efficacious or powerful person is that we have clarity of how we would like our future to be yeah it doesn't mean it's gonna happen yeah yeah yeah right like because you got it back into incredible work but right imagination of having a vision of what that is and then back into how to make that happen this sounds so like it sounds so simple and you know psychologists and and folks for years have been talking about this it really is powerful though it's a really powerful tactic to do so so anyways um this musician has the same fragility that you and i have and at the same time is more attuned to the signal and that's who who am i my philosophy where am i going my vision and then great awareness of my thoughts words and actions lining up to make that work so they're better attuned to signal yeah okay now i'd be remiss to not include um two world-class performers that i've learned so much from felix baumgartner and so you know you might not recognize the name some people might but he it was um he was the athlete in the red bull stratos project and so the rebel stratus project it was back in 2012 where a team of scientists and an athlete read um felix were working to sort out what would happen if a human were to jump from the edges of space without a capsule it's crazy oh it was it was it was like it was a life-changing experience for everyone involved crazy i remember watching it on youtube or something or whatever streaming yeah yeah it was what was your experience watching it um my experience first was like man this guy must be in a lonely isolated space right now physically but also mentally i'm sure there was earpiece and you know he had communication radio and everything but the place your mind goes with that much time like the more you rise and the pressure you're feeling and all the worries and fears of what could go wrong and feeling like i'm alone in this situation even though there's millions of people watching and i have people in my ear or whatever it was i don't know if it was an earpiece or if there was a radio communication that wasn't it was yeah even with that they're however many miles away from me right now and i'm by myself here no one can save me or help me essentially something goes wrong it's over so the amount of fear pressure uncertainty uh insecurity what could go wrong what if the whole world sees me die or fail you know all of that and so i'm just wondering how he was able to train for that yeah so um okay great insight because the loneliness that comes from pushing on your edges is a real human experience and it's so it's so hard to push right on the edge of instability psychological emotional instability is really hard to do for a long time we thought we could get people there from physical exertion you know get their heart rate pounding inside you know that's not quite it that's it's yeah yeah yeah i see how you're responding to that that's not it's it's pushing to the edges of emotional instability emotional capacity and so if you don't practice that you cannot ex you cannot become the best version and it's a little bit like a balloon right so you blow air into a balloon and it stretches and then there's more space inside the the balloon to play okay and then it contracts and if you blow more air into it and that blowing of air is pushing to the capacity of the balloon two breaths it's like it okay there's even more space but there's lots more to go right there's twenty forty pops that's that's the interesting thing yeah when's it gonna pop how much can it go it actually doesn't yeah you know so we have this fear about like psychologically cracking now that can happen it can happen i'm putting an asterisk next to us it can't but it is so rare that a person in so extreme circum such extreme circumstances that a person mentally has a breakdown it's actually more rare than we think what we're actually feeling most of the time for people is this chronic level of stress where we feel overwhelmed but we're not ready to break that's not that's not what's happening we're just exhausted we're overwhelmed yeah fatigued we're in modern times like we're not sleeping enough yeah we're emotionally overwhelmed our nutrition is bad or whatever yeah exactly relationships everything we on the world stage we don't talk about working harder yeah that's a given everyone on the world stage is like grinding you know at a world-class clip we spend more time on the science and art of recovery you know to get that right so that we can wake up tomorrow and perform high again be ready you know for for what pushing against the limits physically and emotionally yeah you know that's it okay so back to yeah felix back to felix yeah um yeah he changed he changed the way the world understands what's possible and he pushed right up against his limits now this was like a multiple year project about halfway through the project he reached a limit where he became claustrophobic and he wasn't able to be in his spacesuit anymore and that that's where i was asked to be part of the project you know could we work with his mind to extinguish fear wow no pressure mistakes were high you know yeah and i look back in that experience and all the bright minds and the scientists that were part of it beautiful experience and yes we successfully helped felix extinguish his fear of being in the suit so that he could have clarity and command of his mind to execute a lifelong dream that he had as well as change the nature of what the rest of us think is possible yeah yeah what were some of the things you guys did well there was there was yeah so all the stuff philosophy and vision that we just talked about how does it get his philosophy on his uh you know and so ideally you want to try to get it down to a page and then try to get down to 25 words and then a sentence or maybe three words or whatever you know so what did he come up with yeah that's not public okay that's a great question i wish it was there's going to be a documentary coming up um i'll share that yeah so it's coming out soon so i'm sure he'll share that assuming it's breaking limits or something you know yeah be it'll be yeah yeah anything's possible you know yeah something you didn't say it but i'm saying yeah yeah that's good and so um okay so that was part of it and then the other part is um if we need to extinguish fear so anyone that's before we go there when he got clear on that did a lot of his fears start to fade then or was there so much more that needed to happen yeah there's still more right then we need to actually train the mind so getting cl clarity is really great it's the foundation and then it's like the two anchors clarity and i'm sorry philosophy and vision are two really important pillars or anchors in the system and then and then the space between clarity and conviction is is the place of training the mind so we spent time identifying the thoughts that got in his way and then we spent time on strategies on um how to change those thoughts to or work with those thoughts to have more optimal productive progressive thoughts give me an example of um maybe for example example yeah yeah cool um i'm afraid i'm gonna die this again you know like that's a thought like i got to do this again that's one something like that or another one would be like oh my god the pressure's really on today or something like man i'm gonna let some people down it's all the stuff that we've already talked about but it's increasing the awareness of that destructive negative counterproductive thought so if we're forever going to look bad or if we're to let someone down what's someone something we could do to reframe that go well okay so go back to your philosophy probably doesn't have anything to do with others you know like like living to their standards it probably has to do with caring about others not caring what they think about you right somewhere in that range so there's a there's this necessary work i think that is required for most of us which is a decoupling between what we do and who we are and if you can pull those two things apart and no longer be bound by by i am what i do and if you can pull those two things apart then then there's great freedom and it's the freedom to say you know i can love you and not give a what you think about me and if you can find that space to love other people as best as you possibly can which is can only happen by the way that you love yourself right so our relationship with ourselves is really important so i love you and i don't care what you think about me anymore incredible freedom on that side so we needed to get some of that um and the other part was recognizing that the the counterproductive thoughts having a way to work with those thoughts to get over to something that is more productive more positive and that sounds all wonderful but the way that you do that is that you've got to be credible with what you say to yourself incredible incredible you can't say to yourself like i'm a tough mfr and you're not if you haven't done the work yeah you know like what what was your first sport i mean was it i played everything i played basketball football football yeah so listen to college and then yeah that's what i thought so let's say i play with the usa handball team right now still oh yeah i knew that yeah yeah that's really cool that's really cool okay so let's let's go eye hand coordination or something you know and if i say yeah i'm freaking i'm good at that now and then you say oh okay cool let's go play i just i'm not that i'm not as good as you and i'm certainly not as good as i could be i haven't trained it so i'm gonna get exposed so i can't say to myself yeah yeah i'm gonna take him down i can't i can't say it can't fake it you can't there's there was some ways you could fake teammate but you got to put on the reps and yeah yeah that there was some some um idea there's some scant research on fake it to make it i i just cannot nod my head to that idea yeah yeah it's like you've changing your phys your physical body posture does not alone change your thoughts the awareness that you've got a bad posture and the awareness that you've got negative thoughts that's the game increasing the awareness of what's happening inside of you and then the so it's two-part game awareness and then the skill to refocus yeah okay yeah and then so if you're going to say that i'm a stud at something or i'm good at something whatever like i've got what it takes then what we say is for every epic thought that you're going to have write down at least three reasons to give you the right to say that thought mm-hmm so we call it back in practice every day for two hours because i do this because i've had i've done this i've done that like i've owned it here i've owned it there and if i've done that i can do this right and so it's like you got to back it up but just saying it to yourself um you know thoughts are invisible so they're hard to work with so write it down you know get it out of your head externalize that that hard drive that is so powerful for all of us our thoughts our mind is invisible so get out of your head so so we did that some of that work we did a bunch of breathing work we did a bunch of mindfulness work um and um just re-anchored him to like how is he gonna tell this part of his story so that's a nice way to kind of think about in the future how are you going to tell the story to yourself this moment in time this phase of your life how would you tell it to your unborn son yeah you know whatever like how will you tell the story and so that helps to shape and govern behavior as well right that i failed miserably or that year well i got scared and i couldn't do it that's okay but that just needs to be your authentic story or i you know so there's there's in high stakes environments there's only a few outcomes that you for story i trained i and i backed off right because of the fear like i got to the edge and then i backed off that's one story another story is i trained ridiculously i got to the edge and i jumped and i died you don't get to tell the story but that is the story i went for it i went for it yeah right uh the third story is that i trained ridiculously i got to the edge and i hesitated i worked it out and i committed and i you know it was successful you know so there's only like in binary situations there's only three outcomes and i think it's a situation well i think to all of ours actually yeah um the stakes are really high in life you only get one pass at it as we know as we can confirm there might be multiple lies i you know i don't know that science um there's lots of traditions that would suggest that but so we get one go at it and we only get one go at this moment so the work really is the stakes are really high if we only get 1440 minutes a day that's it that's all we get and then once one is spent you can't get it back so the stakes are super high life is happening it's happening fast and we're really busy as a human race so figuring out how to be more present more often the stakes could not be higher and so that's why training the mind to be here now is feels fundamental it doesn't feel like it's extra and if you can't train your mind to be in this present moment you cannot access your craft yeah the thing that you care most about parenting or business or communication or sport whatever it might be you know there's people that i feel like they're isolating their minds a lot they feel alone even when there's people around or if there's a team around them they feel alone and isolated and it's especially when there's not a team around them you know felix had a team but no one was actually physically touching him and like you got this you know he was by himself in a capsule right for how long was the ride up and yeah five plus hours five hours yeah so for those that feel you know alone like they're about to go out on stage or they're alone in the interview or they're alone in whatever game you know tennis match where you're just by yourself there and everyone's watching how can we is it just like what you said it's a little bit of the breathing the philosophy you know reframing the thoughts is that how we can continue to make sure that when these high stakes moments are happening obviously every moment is high stake but when it's like yeah the whole world is watching high stakes how can we i don't know just overcome those moments okay isolation and fear in that moment i want to be really thoughtful about that because it's it's a really important conversation to have and the first part of deconstructing that is that just because people are watching if you haven't done the work to say i love you and at the same time i don't care what you think of me i'm not going to be beholden to what my imagination tells me you might be thinking about that's the first thing that's really caring caring but not caring no the first thing i think is to genuinely love other people right to start there no matter what they think of you yeah no matter what like that's not that's you never really know anyways like right as much as we're having a really cool conversation now and let's say we did this conversation every day for the rest of our lives and we really went under and under and under the surface it still i think would be almost impossible for you to know me i don't think it's possible for another human to really know another human and i've been in my relationship with my wife for you know 20 i should know this like married 22 years but dated before that like for you know sub 30 years and it's still it's still a mystery that's unfolding so to really love another person not but not care what they think of you that's the first part so when you do that you find more freedom and that freedom to go on stage if you will to use that analogy it just changes the nature of the moment because it moves from a threat-based opportunity a threat-based experience to an opportunity-based experience what's the opportunity to express the ideas that you care a lot about you know but and hold that opportunity with high regard because you're asking other people to be present with you on on the ideas that you have found to be important and then there's a high responsibility to be able to articulate as clearly as you can you know with regard for other people's attention so that that that's the first thing that i would suggest to do you know yeah and then so how do we know how to love others we have to figure out how to love ourselves and it sounds really soft and i spend my time in the most alpha competitive rugged environments you know seattle seahawks are full alpha competitors and i've been fortunate enough to learn and be part of that ecosystem for a number of years with coach carroll and felix baumgartner alpha male the most intense human being that you'll find if it doesn't work with those types of people carrie lee carrie lee walsh jennings you know um four-time olympian gold medalist you know unbelievable alpha competitor and it it keeps coming back to the relationship you have with yourself first so the dialogue and the conversations we have with ourselves are really important we are our best coach or our worst coach we are our best friend or our worst friend we are our you know an asset to ourselves or we are debilitator to our future and so that's where it begins and without awareness um every world-class athlete and i'm that's a huge word i just said every every world-class athlete that really is interested in pursuing their best they have great awareness there are knuckleheads that eat mcdonald's that show up they're freaks of nature they don't train they usually don't sustain that for a decade of time it's like a couple years and then uh something happens yeah a thousand percent agree with you you know and but those that are deeply pursuing their personal best awareness is part of the mix yeah and that's a trainable skill yeah yeah mindfulness is the way to train it who's the most impressive uh trained mind human that you've seen i don't i don't want to answer that right yeah so many clients you know they're saying is it me you know like i i'll tell you this statement humans are amazing people are amazing um we are not fragile uh psychologically and emotionally we can do amazing things um and so i've got stories in my head right now of an athlete who i asked what was your hardest moment in your life he said you know you'd think it was when my mom was chasing me around the house with a two by four nails in it to kill me that that would be the hardest time but it wasn't the hardest time of my life and he's a he's an elite athlete right now yeah the hardest time in my life is repeatedly showing up and all of my things and my family's things were on the lawn because we're evicted again that was the hardest time yeah so to be able to go from those places to be able to you know i don't know who cares what they drive but they drive the nicest cars wonderful houses yeah but to tap into their potential and to know what it feels like to be an artist of craft of words or movement you know like we are people are not fragile we have fragile body parts yeah body parts break yeah you know and some are some are so intense that they could take life but for the most part we are really um robust highly resilient is it possible to reach our potential or is it always expanding i love that question um the word potential is problematic right because it's a crippler for many people oh you have so much potential uh oh you know like like the pressure's on now right yeah well because of the way that we've just interpreted what that means and that usually that's what you can do you'll do it oh he's not doing what he could do or she could do that's right they could do and then but that there's like this thought that comes with it like oh that person sees potential in me so i don't want to let that person down so that's why i got to go back to that decoupling who i am from what i do also the decoupling of loving other people and not caring what they think but when somebody sees potential us it can be a great gift if we say yes there is more show me how you know like what do you see well i see this what do you see mike well i never saw that really you think that's possible i mean we have to be around people like that to bring the best you know out of us to really challenge us to say that's not good enough i love you but that's not good enough that's what a great coach does yeah i'm sure coach carroll is doing that constantly like we got to be better every day how do we step up yeah the seattle seahawks under coach carroll's guidance is a relationship-based organization we produce football and some some alpha alpha tough minded people right but we are a relationship-based organization it begins with our relation that there are each person's relationship with themselves and then so we can have a great relationship with others because to do extraordinary things we don't do it alone there's always other people but most of the time the execution is alone yeah so felix was alone that loneliness that you were talking about before is a real deal it's one of the sick as we call it the six dimensions of being human like every human has that place that recess in their experience where they are truly lonely going back to that thought that i'm not sure that others can really know all of you so there's an aloneness we come into the world alone we leave it alone um i'm not sure what happens you know in between after death but that loneliness and tapping into and feeling it knowing it being familiar with it that's a very powerful experience to do yeah and i know it's super heavy but it's really you know i remember used to be really insecure growing up and scared to be alone i hated being by myself and when i was like 15 16 17 and then in my early 20s i was just like i am gonna conquer this because i just hate the feeling of feeling scared or like no one cares or whatever feeling alone and so i said okay i'm gonna go out as often as i can by myself i'm gonna go to dinner by myself a movie by myself i'm gonna like take walks by myself whatever it was i was gonna be alone and start to learn more about myself and that craft or that art or that practice was one of the best things for me because now it's like i love being alone in certain moments i love being around other people but then i'm like okay i need some space to actually be alone and i'll go to dinner by myself and go to movies by myself still and i find it powerful personally where did that come from that for you that that he was just i was afraid i just hated the feeling of being alone i just didn't like that feeling because i didn't have any much friends growing up and so i was just like no one's gonna like me what's wrong with me you know why am i not good enough to have like friends and i was just like screw it i gotta figure out who i am i think in that time and start to fall in love with myself so i just wanted to discover who i was and figure out all these things then it's a beautiful model that you're describing because from pain mm-hmm yeah right um is a wonderful impetus to go on a journey of self-discovery sure and part of that self-discovery journey requi it's a requirement to push on the edges of instability and for you being alone there was those edges and really it's about alone with your thoughts yeah but alone is different than loneliness so loneliness is that sixth dimension i was talking about even in a group of surrounded by a group of friends or loved ones so lonely you can still feel desperately alone lonely and so yeah it sounds like you've done exactly what um i've seen so many people that are on the path of mastery do is that they push on their edges as often as they possibly can and they're hungry for it and it's not like there there are some that are unsettled by not doing enough there are some of those but there is a general sense of like man i put a solid day of work in today can i do this again tomorrow mm-hmm yeah okay let's let's get it right yeah you know there's that sort of tone to get natural it sounds like you you did exactly that yeah i mean for me it's just like i had a lot of emotional mental pain growing up and i just like i don't want to feel this anymore did you did you adopt the model like i need to do more is that why you got into elite sport um i think early on it was just like i didn't have any friends and i remember getting picked last on sports teams a lot like in elementary school and i was just i hated that feeling of not being wanted or needed or like that was good enough and so i just said i'm going to be the best in the world at what i can do so that i'm always needed yeah it was kind of like that early drive that's right it left me feeling very unfulfilled trying to prove others wrong you know i would achieve i was all stayed in multiple sports all american you know whatever but it was like i was always unhappy like it wasn't enough so it drove me to do more until i realized i was doing it for the wrong reasons like yes i found joy in my craft and i was like fun and all these things but at the end of the day when i achieved the goals it was so unfulfilling that's that that's that model i was referring to that is broken we need to do more to be more it never arrives yeah the being it never arrives you know so we need to be more be more of yourself and each one of us has an authentic self that is wanting and craving to be expressed and that journey of self-discovery is a lifelong journey is wonderful it's hard it's rare yeah and it sounds like you know from pain that you you figured out a broken model yeah and then figured out like like okay that didn't work and now what is the upgraded model okay i gotta figure out who i am and like exactly about it yeah when i started to figure out like oh okay all these achievements i'm i'm having acquiring aren't filling me up then i started to shift my model even more i was like okay why am i doing these things and what's the reason i'm gonna be doing these things moving in the in the future and started shifting from trying to prove people wrong to trying to lift people up and you know lift myself up and show myself what i'm capable of creating and to also have a more loving joyful experience but i'm always thinking of like where is my biggest pain and how can i look at it straighten the eye kind of embrace it to a point that i like go deep within and see why i'm feeling this pain and then how can i work on it and practice on it so it's just yeah i can be alone for weeks and be okay you know i don't need to be worried anymore because i've done years of practice you know same thing with girls i was terrified of like talking to girls when i was a teenager and i gave myself a summer project where every day whenever i felt nervous around a girl just a random girl i didn't know i was going to go up to her and say hello and then go up and ask for a number and then you know try to ask for a date it terrified me to do this but i was just like i don't want to be afraid to be able to just have a conversation with another human being just because they're attractive or whatever and so i try to find that in every area of my life at every stage you know i was public speaking in my early 20s i was terrified to speak so i went to toastmasters every week and practiced and you know stuttered in front of people and just continued to fumble until i gained a little more confidence and put in the reps so for me it's all about discovering the pain having a clear vision of what i want to overcome and then just putting in the reps like like a trained athlete in life it's yeah it as simple as you make it sound and as simple as we want it to be it is that simple it is it but it and it's terrifying yeah and i look at it as like a sport you know as long as i have someone who can like give me a little coaching or just say go try this and here's the game plan then i can be the athlete student and say okay i'm just going to put in the six hours of practice today and i'll report back and give me feedback i just how i apply everything from my sports training into life yeah it's really good yeah you know sport gives us so much so much and at the same time every craft can offer the same exact opportunities right sport is just so tangible it is physically observable yeah but every craft offers us even parenting you know like where do we go to get better at parenting where are those people that help us you know there's a couple manuals you know and ideally those people are supposed to be psychologists but unfortunately yeah psychology was born out of studying what was broken at the human mind and it's just it hasn't been to last 30 years that we're really advancing the science of the optimal ways to use your mind sure and so it's like i you know before the mics turned on you asked like what are you excited about i'm so excited about this point in time right now that people are really finding value and interest in how to condition their mind and it's this incredible swell that's taking over the industry is exploding yeah the the value of being present is talked about all the time mindfulness and strategies and we're seeing the swell even in the most rugged sports like like the nfl six years ago there was two one and a half sports psychologists and now over half a team half of the teams of the 32 teams have a sports psychologist you know so that's like saying yeah we've always known that the mind is important and that now there's this group of people that are highly skilled at it to be able to condition it so it's like god it's so it's really an exciting time the greatest coaches from the past like the woodens and the lombardies were almost like modern day psychologists at the time they're phenomenal they were the ones who were able to like connect on relationship level and the mental level with their players it sounds like otherwise there's in the phil jacksons of the world otherwise there's no way they would have been champions that many years without having the mental game like mastered or trying to master it and building that relationship with their athletes so that's how the field the entire industry and the science of sport psychology started is okay there's a question like how do the best work yeah well let's go study them and so you're right on the money and if you just look at like great coaches let's call it 60 years ago they did everything they nutrition physical training technical training mindset you know they did reading whatever they did everything recovery everything yeah right and then some progressive coaches said hey you know if we got these strength coach guys in here you know maybe we go bigger faster stronger have a fourth quarter advantage so to speak and then that started to work okay everyone has a strength and conditioning code right so now bigger faster stronger and then what do you need you need medical because they're bigger faster stronger work right so you need better medical atc's and medical and and all of that that comes with it pts and atc's and then what happens is nutrition so we saw that wave 10 years ago right like it's obvious nutrition is part of the game right it's part of the fuel yeah and then so now we're in this current wave where it's mine training yeah so it's a competitive advantage uh where do we go next next let me finish on the mind thing it is a competitive advantage to know your mind to condition your mind we call it front loading so you want to do your mental skills front loading so you get there ahead of time of the test right before the lights are on you're visualizing you train your mind before you train optimism calm confidence where's confidence come from what you say to yourself that's it it's not your past success it's not if you you do well in warm-ups that's a totally broken model yeah so you know you can train all of these things in a very structured way and then because it's really hard to show up on what's called an ultra marathon and physically bunk you put in a lot of physical training but then you over train maybe you get to that ultra you get to the marathon even and then you bunk that sucks but you know what happens a lot for most people they do all the physical technical training they show up and they tighten up and constrict that's a mental error that's a right so constriction and expansion those are the two kind of um threads that we're working on what are the thoughts that create expansion space what are the thoughts that create constriction or smallness and you know we're responsible for that in our mind so it's a really exciting time where do we go next probably spirit probably spirituality is like yeah a reconnecting to a higher purpose yeah that's probably where human evolution is going to go next like a real investment there along with technology like there's going to be some genomic um you know micro splicing that's taking place as we're following right now that you know blue eyes blonde hair like that scary type of thing you know is like it's it's real but then have you have you following some of this stuff not much okay so right now we think about you know competitive advantage train your mind your body your craft you know great great great but what if you want to become the fastest human what if we want to create the fastest human but we take ostrich legs and put it with a human upper frame it's real according to result according to um lab research they are um they are surviving in petri dishes so how far away away from that i don't know like what what happens what is surviving that what i just described a human top and uh yeah posture of the legs yeah what yeah what do you mean how yeah i mean this is i'll i'll show you all this stuff like it yeah take a look at crispr it is is it they're creating a human from scratch or is it it's genomic splicing from nothing or is it a human with no legs they're putting lasers no no yeah so take the dna of an of an embryo right the dna of a human and dna putting it together put it together already sequencing those those i know they're testing that specifically yeah check out crispr how big is this grown or what well it's scaring us it's scaring a lot of people right now you know like a lot of people yeah a lot of people are talking about ai and how that's going to influence human performance that's ten years out you know five years ten five to ten years that's really going to take hold i think that's my predictions i'm not bullish on it yet it is coming right like some of the companies that i've been exposed to like that stuff is really cool some of those cool like dog robot things are pretty yeah there's some stuff there it's just not there yet the most powerful thing that we can do is train our mind artificial intelligence is the closest cousin we can get to it that's going to take a while watching tape and and watching film is a reduction of down from that but playing the tape in your mind ahead of time it's the most powerful tool we have but it requires discipline it requires focus and but we can train those right okay but ai is going to help get people um that are bit no it's going to help people with the undisciplined mind to get better at it wow but it's still it's still clunky there's lots of friction around it yeah but micro genomic splicing is coming it's crazy when i was a decathlete in college i would we were i was just training all day for every sport but at night my weakest sport was the pole vault because i had very very little training on it and i had six months where i decided i'm gonna try the decathlon and i'm gonna try to be an all-american in six months when i made the decision and i hadn't done a lot of the events so i had a six-month window and pole vault was the hardest that was maybe like a 10 foot pole vault pool vaulter and was horrible form and everything i would watch this pole vaulting hour-long video highlight tape every single night over and over again for that whole time i would plug it in with my uh vhs tape and tv at the time in my dorm room and just watch it until i fell asleep and then i would go in the next morning and try to just mimic the greatest pole vaulters in the world and throughout the whole day i was just visualizing my form and proving a little by little and seeing myself go over the bar and it was one of the most powerful thing i mean that's when really i saw the power visualization was kind of during the decathlon training because everything was so technical you know every movement of the shot put the pole vault and the javelin kinetic sequencing that is so cool on that sport and having to see like the lineup and the hips of just everything and the discus or whatever i was just trying to watch the perfect way to do it and try to replicate it every single day but i'm you know one of the biggest believers in visualization for everything you know i i i don't use the word visualization i use imagery you know same thing right and but imagery gives me the space to to also talk about not just seeing it but feeling it and smelling it using experiencing experience so this is an ability imagery is an ability visualization is an ability which anything that's inability you can get better at and how do you get better at it well no know what science would suggest know what grades do how they do it and the the easiest way i can describe it is that you and i both know this is that when you close your eyes and you imagine something sensual you imagine a woman or whatever you imagine that thing your body will change ostrich austria's literally your physiology will change and that's when you think of something sensual yeah sexual or sensual like you know that everybody that's listening knows that you just close your eyes and you get and you have this amazing experience in your mind your body your body turns on yes yes it does okay so that's why um okay so we you don't need any more research to know that and every 14 year old little boy understands that sentimentally they can't control it okay so take that principle and layer it on the thing that you care most about okay so what does that mean that means when you close your eyes because the more visual creatures and you close your eyes you know there's so many visual distractions close your eyes you've got to warm up your brain and your mind so your brain from a central standpoint uh senses standpoint not sensual but senses um wake up the senses of touch sound smell wake up all of your senses and the way that we do that with athletes is i keep saying we you know it's like but um see a fruit see a fruit in your mind's eye become familiar with the way it tastes the way can you control it and move it what's the color and the texture and the feel wake your mind up that way because the fruit is so tangible right and then if you're really good you can taste it your my yeah yeah yep yep and then and then see but see if you can control it can you manipulate it move it around because that's what you have to do in imagery and then go straight into the thing you care about you've got all of your senses lit up your mind is committed to focusing on the thing that is important to you and slow it down right and then when you're better speed it up when you get even more skilled speed it up again and so if you can go full time uh real time with all of your senses in play and you can really feel it you're onto it a couple more questions for you you talked about pillars of recovery what are those pillars and how can we incorporate that in our lives yeah so the great question so again you know in the world stage we we definitely talk more about the science and the art of recovery everybody works hard and so there's four pillars the first is sleep well and that's a given right just saying it though is important because science is very clear most human 68 to 70 you know one standard deviation from the norm for people is uh requires seven to eight hours of sleep independent of job function independent of geographic region it's a human experience most of us need seven to eight hours when i ask people how much they're getting most aren't getting seven to eight so what's going on there's a lot going on there and we can go on and on about like the tactics for that but most people do know the tactics it's a disciplined thing they put down tv to put down instagram to put down whatever yeah um and you know get your room as dark as you possibly can cold yeah cold you know 68 70 degrees somewhere in that range and then um so sleep well and to really value that those and our brain to something funny if we study some research here people that for five days have five hours of sleep when they do a pre post and a post test on reaction time so if you go to sleep for five hours for five days at the end of that period and they measure you your reaction time people humans reaction time is no different than a drunk person they would not be able to pass wow uh you know a 0.08 0.08 um driving test so sleep well the the next is move well so get oxygenation throughout your system you know like get your heart rate up yeah sweat like really have a you know general guidelines are about four and a half hours a week um of movement yeah two hours of physical movement moderate to intensity two hours of you know non-cardio so somewhere in that range and then um actually let me do these in order to sleep well eat and hydrate well move well and then think well those are the four pillars there is a social aspect that's important for recovery but i want to just focus on the ones that you can fully control okay sleep you got it eat and hydrate eat colorful foods you know plenty of hydration is really important we make it really simple like 40 ounces before 2 o'clock 40 ounces before four like make it super simple and and like exact nutrition is a science there's a science of that but of course um and then the the other two you know uh get your heart rate up move well and then think well be optimistic that's great yeah what's the question that people should be asking you more or that they're not asking themselves enough yeah that that is a super thoughtful question and i think that um what most people do ask is how can i be better i don't think that's the right question i think the right question and like listen like if you knew what i knew and you might know what it the path and what it takes to become an olympian let's say for your child to do to go that path you probably would not encourage them you know but we are littered with crazy you know anxious parenting trying to help their kids you know do do well in life but it is a dark dark path so i think the real question is how can you help me know who i am um and what can i do to become myself i think that that's like you know that's important but also at the core is you know what is the human experience about and my answer is i can't tell you but that's the right question go and figure it out go discover who you are and what this journey is about and it's not about being the best in the world i've i can't tell you how many times people that i know have been on a podium and they get off the podium crying or whatever and the world thinks that they are celebrating this moment of achievement and they get off and they say jesus i thought i was going to be different i'm still i'm still that same it's crazy yeah so know who you are and and um and figure out the what the human experience means to you i like that um this is called the three truths uh if if this was the last day for you and you had no podcast or content or anything out there anymore it was all erased so all the information you had was gone but you had a piece of paper and a pen to write down three things you know to be true about your experience about life that you would pass on to the world and this is all people would have these three lessons or three truths what would be yours for sure it begins with love uh the second would be courage and the third would be a path of self-discovery yeah is it cool um i want to acknowledge you for a moment for your gift of helping people open up about who they are and for helping people learn the tools and the strategies to overcome so much pain and suffering and anxiety and stress that a lot of the world is facing that in my mind is pointless for people to have it's holding them back from their potential or from their living who they truly authentically are and i'm just really grateful that you are in the world doing this work in an authentic loving way and pushing the boundaries of what's capable for all human beings so thank you for all you do ah dude that's really cool thank you for that yeah i appreciate it and congratulations on everything you've done thank you um you're definitely making a dent in the space and increa increasing people's awareness about what is possible and some ways to go about it so congratulations thank you thank you yeah thank you for having me yeah but i got one more question before i ask it where can we connect with you and learn more about your work where can we get your information oh cool yeah i appreciate that uh two two ways one is uh coach carol and i created a business called compete to create dot it's on.net compete2grade.net and that's where we help organizations and ceos and companies um understand how to train them their minds to become their very best and so that's been a really fun process and who's got four like teams of organizations yeah so if you're inside an organization and you're interested in that we've got a digital training experience so it's an online course we've got some in-person stuff where our staff are olympians and sports psychologists that go right in and they understand our methodology to help people transform and become their very best by training their mind so it's been we we have had so much fun yeah you know working with influential people in the business world to do that so that's one that's cool the second is finding mastery.net and so i'm sorry finding mastery podcast and the website is findingmastery.net and that's just been uh i think you and i talked about this earlier just a wonderful journey about uh understanding what goes into people that are on the path of mastery and what they're doing so that's a fun podcast i'm i'm grateful to be part of that and curate that and then social media is at michael gervais that's twitter g-e-r-v-a-i and instagram is at finding mastery sweet awesome final question for you what's your definition of greatness uh that's yeah thank you um being able to authentically express yourself in any conditions michael thank you so much man appreciate it thank you you

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 122,031

Keywords: lewis howes, dr michael gervais, the school of greatness, high performance mindet training, interview, 2017, arena football league, finding mastery, fortune 100 ceos, episode 533, summit, legacy, mask of masculinity, ny times best selling author, podcast, manage anxiety, hold us back, philosophy, mindfulness, loneliness, pushing the edges, major sports, red bull, world training, inspiration, success, motivation, as seen on ellen

Id: BjRl-vSJY2A

Length: 83min 40sec (5020 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 06 2017