Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Ask Me Anything: Finding Purpose, Raising Resilient Kids & Navigating Workplace Politics | Vol. 27
Episode Date: July 2, 2025How do you stay true to your values when others are playing political games? What if your purpose feels too small compared to others? And how do we raise kids who can handle life's inevitable... hard blows?We're back for Part 2 of our special Finding Mastery Ask Me Anything with Dr. Michael Gervais and our good friend—author, documentarian, podcaster, football analyst, and renaissance man, Yogi Roth. Through thoughtful questions from our community, we dive deep into the messy realities of modern life: workplace politics, purpose discovery, and parenting with intention.Drawing from years of experience with elite performers and leaders, we explore practical strategies for maintaining integrity in competitive environments while building the inner foundation that sustains long-term success and fulfillment.Key insights we explored:When workplace politics get messy - How to protect your team's expertise while staying true to your valuesPurpose doesn't need to be grand - Why "being a great parent" is just as meaningful as "wells in Africa"The three pillars of authentic purpose - It must matter to you, be bigger than you, and have future orientationBuilding self-efficacy in children - Let them figure things out, celebrate effort over outcomes, and create safety in their strugglesThe discovery model vs. formal instruction - Why guided discovery creates deeper, more resilient learningManaging the "hungry ghost" - How connection to something bigger than yourself dissolves achievement addictionSignal vs. noise in feedback - Treating both praise and criticism as noise while trusting your inner circleThis conversation reminds us that the most meaningful work often happens in the quiet moments—how we handle daily challenges, raise our children, and stay connected to what truly matters. Whether you're navigating office politics, questioning your purpose, or trying to raise resilient kids, these insights offer practical wisdom for living with greater intention and authenticity.__________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine!Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and XSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Do you have any tips to change mindset and maximize the little free time I get to recharge?
Isn't this the question of all questions?
What questions are tugging at you right now?
And how might exploring the answers to those questions help you unlock your potential?
Welcome back or welcome to a special edition of the Finding Mastery podcast.
I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training a high-performance psychologist.
And this week, we're turning the microphone around again,
and instead of diving into the mastery
through the minds of our remarkable guests,
we're going straight to you
for another Ask Me Anything episode.
What is my ultimate purpose in life?
Is it truly possible to detach ourselves
from the fear of what others think?
You've submitted deep and thoughtful, vulnerable questions about life, performance, relationships,
and navigating the complexities of the human experience. And in this episode, I am joined
once again by author, documentarian, podcaster, football analyst, and all around Renaissance man and my friend,
a friend to the Finding Mastery community, Yogi Roth.
I'll be offering insights and perspectives that are designed to help us all think a little differently.
I'm trying to figure out what is my ultimate purpose in life.
That is a cool question.
Know your value. Keep doing the work that feeds you, that you're fueled by.
I know that after this, we're going to be better human beings
because these questions, Mike, today are absolute fire.
So let's jump right into your questions, my reflections,
and an exploration of what matters most,
right here on Finding the Mystery.
on finding the mystery.
What a treat. We get to do this again.
Settling in, settling in.
In some kind of odd world here, you know,
is that one of the great treats of the AMAs
is to learn from our community
and then to sit with my friends.
So, Yogi, thank you for doing this again.
Yes, back again. This is great.
This time, I'm going to hold you to it because you did say we were going to paddle out when we're done.
So, I'm counting on that when we're done with these AMAs because I know that after this,
we're going to be better human beings because these questions, Mike, today are absolute fire.
Your community, again, shows up. So, let's dive into Emma, okay?
Because this one,
this one landed on me. I think it's going to land on you pretty hard. Okay, as a leader overseeing
a department that drives the most strategic initiatives and holds the majority of the
company's know-how, how do you navigate the balance between collaboration and protecting
your team's expertise? So sit in this, this is a land grab type question. Follow up, specifically, how do you engage
with other department leaders who may attempt
to expand their scope or take credit
for your department's ideas,
while also ensuring effective cross-departmental
collaboration for the company?
So how do I kill it, while I know some people
might be trying to take credit for what I am doing.
Yeah, I mean, working with folks like that that are a bit Machiavellian or backhanded
or untrustworthy, it's tricky.
It's really tricky.
I think the first principle here is to not play that game.
You know, to, I don't know, was it Michelle Obama when they go low, you stay high? I think the first principle here is to not play that game.
You know, to, I don't know,
was it Michelle Obama when they go low,
you stay high, something along those lines?
So that's my first impulse is like,
there are, there's wolves,
there's wolves that are dressed like sheeps,
there's sheep dogs that are trying to bully your way through.
Like there's a lot of different behind the scenes slippery.
How do we do it?
Operate from your core values.
And I'm gonna say that so often.
There's a reason that some of the greatest thinkers
of our times have pointed to first principles and values.
Keep coming back to anchoring your decisions,
your thoughts and your words from those values.
If fear and protection, let's do fear.
If fear is a first principle, wow, you're in good hands.
Most people, their first principle is not fear.
If, um,
And define first principles for us.
First principle is when you reduce all of the ideas that you could work from,
what are the ones that are the kingpins that help everything else move?
You know, it's an engineering term. First principle is also a philosophical term.
What are the foundational principles that your psychology,
your life perspective is running from,
or is working from, to be more precise.
The first principle is a love of good work.
A first principle is, it all kind of sifts out
in the end anyway.
If a first principle is the cream rises to the top,
like you won't get bullied, if you will, by other people's land grabs.
When it does happen, you have a choice.
Do you call it out or do you backdoor it?
And there's a risk to both.
So if somebody is in a public place and they're calling out work that you clearly were a significant
part of and they're taking the credit for it. If you stand up in that moment and they have, let's call it,
more seniority or they have more political capital than you do in the organization,
I'd be careful. I'd be really careful about that.
However, if you're ready to kind of put a flag in the ground and be like, hold on,
if say it's you and me, and you're kind of taking a land grab
of something I contributed to in a meaningful way
and I felt slighted by it.
The risk of me not saying anything
is that I just got stepped on and a lot of people know it.
The risk of me saying something is now I've just challenged,
you know, the, whoever kind of has the seniority.
And that could be really dangerous.
So either way, I think there's a cost.
Knowing which one feels well ahead of time,
which one feels like a greater risk would be important.
So I would say,
know your value.
Keep doing the work that is, that feeds you,
that you're fueled by.
And I would be the one pointing to other people.
And so now I'm doing great work,
I feel really good about who I am,
and I'm helping other people shine.
And if I am uncommonly consistent with those three,
I just became inherently more valuable
than anybody that's trying to slipperily take a grab a land.
So I would work
from those principles first and foremost. Yeah, I like that. That is,
that's real because I think politics are everywhere, right? They're part of so
many different environments. So I love the idea of like, get back to who you are and just
pour that part of you out and then you have to make a decision.
You've gotta make some decisions.
Because if you get stepped on,
it's not cool for you and for your teammates.
If you do say something publicly,
get ready for a bit of a dog fight there as well.
This, there's a lot of cool questions that come through.
This one is beautiful.
This comes from Sandra.
I'm trying to figure out
what is my ultimate
purpose in life.
How do I find it?
Or how do I see it?
That is a cool
question.
I think that this is one of the
biggest rocks to get in the container
for a good life.
And there's one, I'm in the midst of building a course
to try to get all of my ideas out around this.
And I think it'll be available in the public soon.
So here's kind of the beginnings of the thinking.
Your purpose does not need to be this grand thing,
this unifying singular purpose that's gonna change the world
or, you know, like wells in Africa
or trees in the rainforest.
It does not need to be this grand singular thing
that other people would be like,
oh, that's amazing.
It can be super, like, subtle, but matter uniquely to you.
My purpose is very clear.
It's to help unlock the potential
that lies dormant in people.
And that gives me a place and a reason
to show up everywhere I'm at.
I know when I'm with you or when I'm anywhere,
that's my purpose here.
It doesn't mean that I'm trying all the time
to be a coach, like that would be silly.
According to research, there's three tenants to purpose.
The first is that it matters to you.
Nobody can give you your purpose.
It has to uniquely resonate with you.
The second is it needs to be bigger than you.
So it's not just about your needs getting met in some way.
So it's bigger than you.
It means it involves other people or other nature
in some kind of way.
And the third is that there's a future orientation.
Okay, so those are the elements that purpose rests on.
When you're trying to figure out your purpose,
according to science, it's got all three of those variables.
I wanna come back and make sure
that I'm saying this one more time.
It does not need to be this grand thing
that is approved by others,
that it's magnificent in your life purpose.
It can be really small, like being a great parent.
My wife's purpose is to be a great contributor
to her family.
It's amazing.
That's what her life right now, for her purpose in life, is to be a great contributor to her family. And it's amazing. That's what her life right now, for her purpose in life,
is to be a great contributor to her family,
to make a difference in my life, in my son's life,
her parents' life, her sister's life, our extended family.
That's what she wants to do.
Amazing.
Some people is like, yeah, mine is.
Well's in Africa.
Great.
Whatever it might be, your job is to get so clear that you
can begin to articulate why you are here. What are you doing here? Now that rests
on your values, your first principles, your vision of a compelling future, and
then making a fundamental commitment to make it true.
And that's what I'm helping people do right now.
So if you want to know what your purpose is, we'll give you a methodology, but you need
a couple other pieces to go with it to make it exponentially more powerful.
Purpose, vision, first principles that rest on your values, and then making a fundamental
commitment to make it so.
And when you get those in place, it's pretty special.
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Last bit here, how do you do that?
You gotta get quiet.
I think you need to write it down.
Not everybody wants to write.
It can feel kind of overly academic.
Getting quiet, writing it down,
and talking it out with other people.
But I would caution folks to talk out your purpose
before you've got some semblance of what you think it is.
Because once you bring it forward and out, then there's another variable at play, which
is another person's approval or disapproval of it.
And if you can go into a conversation with 80% of it worked out, and you're very clear
about why you're sharing it with another person
before you've got it locked in, you're going to have this wonderful moment for calibration.
But let the calibration be your signal, not what they do with their eyes or if they agree
or disagree, but as you say the words, which ones are resonating.
And when you do this right, one or two or three of the words
as you say your purpose out loud
will have a unique resonance to them.
Your heart will jump just a little bit,
you'll feel it in your throat,
there'll be some sort of emotionality around it.
That's when you know you're on it.
And the first time I did this work,
I said it out loud, it was, my dad was nowhere around me,
but I knew as I said it, it was for his approval.
He wasn't even in the room.
He was hundreds of miles away.
And so I want to caution against the approval or disapproval from other people as you're
working out your purpose, even when you're doing it.
I did it by myself with a piece of paper.
I was challenged by a mentor of mine
to write my purpose down, no real instructions.
And then when asked what it was and I said it,
I knew it wasn't honest.
So here's the cool thing about this.
Is that amazing?
Yeah.
Like you know.
You know.
Is the version, my understanding in psychology
is the reason that you say it out loud
is to be held accountable by the people that you trust
That accurate there's a version of that, you know if you're
There's a version of that I like that science as well kind of backs you into a little bit of a credibility corner
When you say it out loud
It also there's some research around publicly stating goals that it can it can diffuse its intensity
So it's actually a mistake to do that
I don't I don't personally vibe with that bit of research the other thing
But what I'm pointing to is when you say it out loud is for you to be the calibrator of truth
Is this real and honest for me or do I need to take some more turns at it?
Am I cultivating this thing so other people say, Mike, that's so amazing, oh wow.
That's a problem, it'll never be big enough.
The question is really cool, and again,
I reiterate it from Sandra.
I'm trying to figure out what is my ultimate purpose in life.
How do I find it, how do I see it?
Is there something to putting a mirror up to Sandra
or any of our lives already to be like,
this is what your actions are showing
you.
Because I think, oh, purpose versus like,
what do you do every day?
What do you do in your free time?
What are you reading?
Is there a world like that that can help somebody at least
go down the road of like, these are your habits right now?
Maybe, maybe not.
I like where you're going, because how are you naturally
spending or gravitating your free time? Like what are you gravitating toward?
And I'm not sure that's the great the great beacon for if you're on it or not.
It could be for somebody that's already kind of intentional.
But if somebody is getting feels ragged in the world that they're living in and then, you know, because the pace pace and speed of business or they're just trying to keep their head above water,
they might just be trying to get sleep
or they're doing things to kind of numb their anxiety.
So that might be a little messy to consider,
but I do like where you're going.
I don't have, I don't know another way
other than to say, you gotta get quiet.
I hold a pen or a pencil with paper,
and I start being honest with myself.
That eventually gets me to a place.
And then when I do bring it forward,
I'm using that as an external calibration.
I'm sorry, an internal.
I think the judgment thing is real.
Like, I think about in, at least in entertainment, right?
And maybe you've dealt with this too.
Okay, Mike is the high performance psychologist.
You have a lot of disciplines within your background, right?
Whether it's family, relationships, you have a ton of skills in your regard.
But you can be put in a bucket by other people, right?
Go read the book, right?
First rule of mastery right there.
Fear of other people's opinions right behind me.
I can remember being in early on in Hollywood, it would be like, well, he's this guy.
And I'm like, well, I like to write, I like to talk,
I like to perform, I like to act, I like to improv,
I love sport, like, don't put me in a bucket.
And it probably took 15 years, Mike,
to get to the place of, what do I wanna do in life?
I wanna live a full life.
That's it.
And then when you say that, I say,
well, what shape does that take?
And whatever that shape is, is likely going to get down into your purpose.
100%.
You know, like, again, it could be, it could be wells in Africa, it could be trees in the
Amazon, or it could be, you know, something, something.
You know, let me not put any thoughts in your mind, like, what is your purpose? Do you know your purpose? And I'm not asking you about your
philosophy of life. That's something separate, which I know you've done a bunch of work around.
But do you know your purpose?
To me right now in my life is really clear. It's to show up and crush it as a husband
and a father.
Yeah, that's purpose.
Like, that's it. Like, but it...
You and Lisa, my wife, it's the same tonality of purpose. And I think that in the world
of that question, I think there's a tension that exists for all of us that none of us create,
that we just feel like, well, that's it. You know, like what else do you want to do?
Because we see worlds that I think have purpose
that inspires us, maybe is aspirational.
Like there's a lot of cool things going on on the planet.
It's like, I'd love to do a little of that,
try a little of that, try a little of this.
And I feel like when asked that question at times,
you can feel like, is my answer good enough?
You know, I'm whispering that, you know? Like, you don't want feel like, is my answer good enough? I'm whispering that, you know,
like, you don't wanna say,
is my answer good enough, too loud.
Yeah.
But that's why I'm saying that the internal calibration,
only you can know if it's hitting the note of truth or not.
And if that is it, great.
And it's more powerful to have the knowing,
even if the words aren't quite exactly the way,
or if no one else sees it, no problems at all.
There's some rite of passage for adulthood
that you down-regulate what people are thinking about you.
When did it happen for you?
It's been probably a slow burn.
I wish it would have happened in this kind
of lightning bolt moment.
It's why I wrote the first world mastery is because I need to get down on paper how it worked for me and what were the core principles.
It's not like I'm completely immune to it.
But I do think that when you get in touch with your own suffering and you invest in understanding the sufferings of others, all the other bullshit fades away.
And so I've spent the last 25 years
needing to create the container for other people
to be radically honest with who they are,
the struggles they have, and the aspirations
of who they want to be, and to create that container,
you get down into the truth,
and you stop talking about goals.
Goals are fine.
I'm not gonna butcher them, they're fine.
But you go far deeper than that
and you start realizing like,
mm, you know, these other things
that I once thought were important,
those were kind of childish.
I just put those down.
Yeah.
We could talk about this one all day long.
We'll move on though to David.
Wait, wait, before we go further,
I do wanna ask you,
with your purpose, when you walk into a room,
and let's say it's a business engagement,
how does your purpose mindset,
how does your purpose influence how you show up?
Are you skilled at bringing that purpose forward,
or are you sucked into the narrative of having
to perform or to be great for other reasons?
What I feel is that I've done a ton of work on a pre-performance routine.
I have a very specific pre-performance routine in terms of I go in a room by myself and I
say a version of the following of
Yogi the goal right now is to go do it better than everyone ever for
Make sure you be where your feet are
Earn the right to compete freely so focus and trust all of your preparation I look myself in the mirror. I said I'm in you've earned to go compete freely. Let it friggin rip
Boom high five and I'm out. And it's on.
So I think there's something,
like if you looked at my call sheet as a broadcaster,
it's a big piece of paper that has a bunch of names on it
and stats on it, whatever.
The bottom, it says, celebrate the game, coach the viewer.
So I think in the world of performance,
the performers of the world, in TV at least,
we can easily make it about us. I'm sure I have. You're called
upon stages many times Dr. Mike, all the time you're asked to go. And at times
early on in performative careers I think you can make it about you because you're
either anxious, you're nervous, maybe you're arrogant, like whatever you're
feeling. Then at some point you make the turn and I was lucky early in my
broadcasting career of like what am I about? I point you make the turn and I was lucky early in my broadcast group like what am I about?
I'm gonna celebrate the game and I'm gonna coach my mom watching it when I coach the viewer
So that is my lens when I'm giving a corporate talk. Okay, I'm not celebrating the game of football
But I'm celebrating an ideology which you know, whatever
I I always talk about chasing what matters clarity confidence and, and discipline within business, within sport, within your family, within your craft
and I'll go to town on that and and I like something you said in our last AMA and on my recent podcast of
how are you serving others?
And you know I used to think that servant leadership
was like a religious term because I think it'd be coined sometimes in that regard
We talked about the quarterbacks all the time, but I don't think it is like I
anymore. I think it's more of like, how can I just serve my offensive line by
standing in the pocket properly?
How can I serve the audience by bringing something in a listed conversation?
How can I serve my family by killing it so I can get paid?
Like that element is really resonated over the last couple of years.
That's cool. Well done.
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Appreciate the back and forth here. Okay, let's go to David though.
This one's amazing. As a father of a seven-year-old,
okay, so think about Grayson, seven years old. I would like to ask,
how do I help my son develop a strong sense of self-efficacy that can
withstand the hard blows of life? Cool question.
So it's begging the philosophy that there's hardship and hard blows that come in life,
which first, I do agree.
How so?
Yeah, I mean, life is this wild, wild terrain.
And there's some real tough things to navigate.
So getting ahead of it is cool.
The kind of the big piece, so let's define efficacy.
It means that I feel powerful within myself.
And it's not the type of power like,
I stand over you and dominate.
It's not that, it's like, it's more subtle,
and it's a knowing that I can figure things out,
that I can influence how I show up in this world.
And that influence has power.
I think it's really important that we let our kids
figure things out.
So we had helicopter parenting,
then it moved to
zamboning parenting, which is kind of smoothing the ice out
in front of people.
I think the divots in the ice is really important.
And so mistake making, failure experiencing, hardships,
adversity, if you can allow them appropriately to be
experienced and not be overwhelming for the kid. if you can allow them appropriately to be experienced
and not be overwhelming for the kid.
And I'll tell you the experience I had with Grayson,
but your job is to help them explore, make mistakes,
get a little skin on the asphalt, to go for it,
to feel what it's like to sort it out,
because that is what gets called on later.
I know that I can figure things out.
I know that I can do hard things.
Because I've been afforded that as a parenting model
my parents gave me.
They were laissez faire,
like they gave me lots of space. That's basically
what that means. I'm not suggesting that's the ideal model. According to research, it's
more authoritative versus laissez faire or authoritarian. So they hedged on that laissez
faire, which gave me the upside of it is that I had to sort things out. So I know I can figure things out. They gave
me that and that has served me so well. So let them figure it out. Let them feel some
struggle. Let them feel the suffering. Support them to experience the hardships and challenge
them to be honest with navigating through it with your help. Early on with my son, I grew up surfing, I love surfing.
I really wanted Grayson to go surfing with me.
I took him out, it was too big.
The waves were too big.
I did that two or three times, I didn't get the lesson.
And so he doesn't love surfing.
So I kind of missed a moment with him.
Thank goodness he loves skiing.
You know, I'm really happy about that. We get to do that together. So I kind of missed a moment with him. Thank goodness he loves skiing.
I'm really happy about that we get to do that together.
But so I created too much adversity for his frame.
It was too big.
It was scary out there.
And so that's why I'm saying appropriately matched.
And if adversity does happen,
your job is to get down to their level,
see them, create as much safety in them struggling as possible.
Does that make sense?
Right?
Not kind of fixing the thing, but being at their level with them.
And then the other thing I would say is,
like you want to point to the things that are in their control.
So you want to celebrate like a wild person,
their effort, their attitude,
when they're figuring things out,
when they don't know and how they stay in it.
Like celebrate the parts that are 100% under their control
because that gives them the framework
to stand up with self-efficacy later.
That's all the framing of it.
Like early in my life when my parents were like,
yeah, nice job getting an A,
as opposed to nice job studying.
Totally different.
And they did the effort way more
than they did outcome in my life.
So I'm thankful for that.
And then if you can really understand them.
So what we do, and you know this as well as anybody,
what we try to do with athletes and executives and teammates,
my responsibility in many parts is closing my eyes
and imagining what's possible for you.
And that is the greatest gift I think I can give you.
So when I close my eyes and think about yogi,
like what would be an amazing future for you?
And then whatever I can see, I'd share it with you. So when I close my eyes and think about yogi, like, what would be an amazing future for you?
And then whatever I can see, I'd share it with you. And then you would say,
no, no, no, it's not that. I go, oh man, I gotta go back to the drawing board a little bit.
But I'm trying to see a future for you. And then so I can help navigate and guide and support and
challenge you along that way. So that part is really cool for kids is not in an overwhelmingly ambitious
way but staying at horizon one, two, and three. Spend as much as your time on
horizon one as you can with them. Setting that horizon three is magical and
amazing we'll get there later but horizon one visions of what amazing
there looks like
gives them something that they can get their arms around
and sense, if you will.
So, H1, Horizon One kind of thinking with them is cool.
And then the last thing, the fourth thing I'll say is,
acknowledge all of their feeling.
Just put a name to it.
Looks like you're sad.
Oh wow, you're really pissed off.
Okay, this is scary to you.
And I sound like I'm being almost like, I don't know,
a parrot to their emotion.
Just acknowledge the emotion they're feeling
because relationships are running the damn show
and emotions are what are fueling the relationships.
The relationship you have with yourself
and others and mother nature and experience,
it's emotions that are the thing
that is right underneath the surface.
So help them be great with their emotions.
Okay, let's stay on this.
So there's a book that is just crushing it,
The Angstous Generation, you know what I'm talking about?
Yeah, John Hutt.
Yep.
There's a world where parents, the crux of the the books take the social media away from it, right?
but it's really like we have lost the
as a parent giving ourselves the green light to be like hey son or daughter
Go walk to school come back when the streetlights pop on like and And I feel that as a parent in Los Angeles.
Maybe there's other parents in metropolitan communities
where you're like, ooh, you read about everything all the time.
And there's like a van driver, like whatever it might be.
That's a real thought.
And two things can be true.
Your child, our children, need to explore.
They need to have that sense of self-discovery,
your point of figuring outness, like you did as a child
in Virginia in the backwoods there like you did as a child in Virginia
in the backwoods there, as you did, man.
So what would you say to that?
Because I struggle with that, I think, even as a parent.
And I imagine others do.
You don't want to snowplow.
You don't want to do all the things that you referenced.
And you know that there's some danger lurking out there.
And you know they need to have these experiences
to go find freedom and find themselves and figure it out.
It's a good question and the idea that
We feel like we're living in a more dangerous environment that we did 20 or 30 years ago is a real feeling
I feel that too. So I recognize what John is talking about
Yeah, that it feels less safe to me now than it did then I
Am gonna support my son to take risks socially,
emotionally, physically, in relatively safe environments.
Action sports is a great way to do it.
So when you don't have parents and adults that are coaching you, it's a great way to do it. So when you don't have parents and adults that are coaching
you, it's a great way because you've
got to figure out your relationship with swift
consequences, mother nature.
But outside of that, in a more sterile environments,
we are coaches and we need to stand up and make sure
that we are not saving our kids from every little thing.
And it sounds easier said than done.
I'm not having Grayson, you know, kind
of run the streets, even though that's what I did. So it's a little bit different. We
live in a world where e-bikes are all over the place. I think paramedics are just not
picking up the bodies anymore. These e-bikes in the in the cities that we live in, you
know, these 16 year old kids, 14 year old kids that have helmets on that are ripping around.
It's wild how radically dangerous that is.
Not every city across the planet has this E-bike phenomena, but oddly enough, Grayson
is an interest in it.
So I'm kind of cool with that.
That's fine.
One more follow up on this.
You really nudged me in the concept of positive psychology.
And my interpretation of doing it with our oldest son Zane and even our little guy is
I take them to a climbing wall.
And it's this example where they climb, fall, climb, fall.
And ideally, it's working on their self-talk, their self-efficacy, if you will, of, I got
it.
And then they get it.
And they're just building that.
I think I took that interpretation correctly from you.
If so, can you expound on that, of what,
like a model in positive psychology could do for David
and potentially his son and other kids?
Well, what I hear you using, so positive psychology
is like a, it's a sub-discipline in the science of psychology,
which is the
study of flourishing as opposed to the study of dysfunction.
Sport and performance psychology is also the study of flourishing, but it's really about
performing well and doing well in high speed or where you have to be accurate with your
decisions and or your behaviors.
And so there's a bridge between those two worlds, which is the study of excellence is
really what sport and performance psychology is about, and then the study of flourishing
and positive psychology.
But that's not what you asked.
What you framed it is that, okay, so if we're thinking about creating and pointing to aspirational
goals of what could be and what's amazing for the kids, that sports where they have
to figure it out on their own, like climbing, they get some instruction.
There's so much value in that.
I'll give you one small example that I think parenting, we can model.
It's called the discovery model of teaching
and the formal instruction.
So if you're gonna teach your kid how to shoot a basketball,
you could stand next to him and you could say,
right, I want you to cock your elbow in,
have about a 90 degree rest of the ball on your fingertips
and snap your wrist and extend and point to one o'clock
and do that a thousand times
and you'll get better as a shooter.
Formal instruction.
Guided discovery is toss the ball to your kid and say, go ahead and put it in.
Where?
Up there?
In the bucket?
Yeah.
Figure it out.
And they mess and toss it again.
Great.
Toss it again.
And when they do it well and it goes in, they're getting natural feedback.
A better example is if you're teaching your kid
how to do a forward roll, you can say,
tuck your chin and put your head down,
and then put your hands here,
and then flip your feet over your head
and roll down the hill, okay.
Or you can say, hey, let's roll down the hill together
and let them go.
So they discover what a side roll is,
what a forward roll, what a back roll is, what a log roll is,
and they might not get the forward tuck roll down. It might take them a long time to do it,
but now they've got this wild range of figuring out their body in space.
It takes longer to get good, but then you've got a big frame underneath of it.
I am such a fan of guided discovery when it
comes to learning as opposed to formal instruction. So your climbing
metaphor is a little bit more about guided discovery than it is about formal
instruction. All right, let's move on to Jennifer. If acceptance and connection
are fundamental human needs, is it truly possible to detach ourselves from the fear of what others think
without becoming emotionally unstable or indifferent?"
Yeah, I mean, it's a cool question.
What chapter? What chapter of the book?
Yeah, yeah, I know. That's a cool question.
It is.
I'm wondering who's the question?
Jennifer. Jennifer, I'm wondering, Jennifer, if you're asking that question
because I did not answer this in the book properly,
or that maybe it's a new idea for you.
So I do think it sounds cheeky,
but I did take a good run at this in the book.
And the way I answered it,
which was a little bit invisible,
I wasn't concrete about this,
but if you read it and you appreciate a first principle of interconnectedness, that all
things and we are all connected, like there's a unity that we're working from, which happens
to be a first principle in Zen Buddhism, is that it's embedded in there.
So we are connected.
And the idea of trying to separate ourselves
from another person feels like
there's a little bit of a contorting
to that first principle that
I do want to hear the question one more time,
but my first response is like, wait, hold on.
We're fully connected in this thing.
A healthy separation, if there's such a thing,
is more of an appreciation for your experience
and another person's experience,
and your experience is uniquely yours,
and theirs is uniquely theirs.
And when you engage in any activity,
to make sure that you are not over-indexing or tuning
to what they are determining is success or failure
or acceptable or unacceptable or truth or not.
So it's, again, I'm gonna use this idea
of being a tuning fork for your experience
in life rather than outsourcing it to other people. Yeah. It's interesting.
Acceptance and connection. We would agree. Fundamental needs. Yeah. Right. Is it
possible to detach ourselves from the fear of what others think without
becoming emotionally unstable or indifferent? Without being coming indifferent?
Yeah. Yeah. When you have love in your heart,
and you embrace the interconnectivity of all things on the planet,
it's not an indifference.
It's a rich and deep appreciation for it.
Maybe it feels like there's a disconnect happening to,
you know, there's two words in psychology for parenting,
individuation and separation.
And that's kind of what kids are supposed to do.
They're supposed to separate and individuate.
And the more that a parent or parenting system hovers or has
too many rigid structures, rules in place.
It's like the leash is really tight.
The tighter it feels, the bigger snap
that they need to get away.
So they end up breaking big rules
to feel a sense of individuation and separation.
So when I hear that question, I'm
wondering how constrained maybe you might have felt at one point in your life that you feel that you really need to have that disconnect to get to a healthy place.
So there's a lot that I've said in here and I'm not sure that my answer is completely satisfying. No, I think the first thing, if I'm hearing you right, for Jennifer to do, or anybody who
can relate to this question, is to explore a little bit
around what happened with you and other people's opinions
and why you believe that you need to either be accepted
or connected if you disagree with what
that individual said.
Yeah, that's right
Yeah, it and when you can see that you are individual you're an individual you are separate
But we are all tied together. So this is the the equal opposites confusing piece of the yin and yang here is that
They can have their experience. They have their experience
you have your experience your job is to bring your very best into it and not be overburdened by what other people
think and look, it is foundational to our brains wiring to want to be connected to other
people.
That is safety.
Belonging is not a nice to have, it's a requirement for safety.
And so that feeling like, I just want to make sure I'm good in your eyes, it's universal.
Unless you're a psychopath, a narcissist, or a true, you have a true disorder that you
cannot understand what another person's experience is, either you don't care, you're wired that
way, whatever.
That's not... That's like 2% of the population.
So most of us have that wiring.
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Okay, Alexis, how important is it to identify the source of a problem you have versus building
the capacity to move through it?
Let me give you an example.
I'll repeat the question first.
How important is it to identify the source of a problem you have versus building the
capacity to move through it?
For example, if an athlete or professional gets overwhelmed before their big moment,
should they try to dive into their past and start unpacking why that is occurring?
Or just start working on what's happening
in their mind and body, start the breath work,
whatever other exercises are needed to relax,
focus and move through it?
That's a good question.
Time and place.
You know, there's a time and place
to do self-discovery work, to go back to unpack it.
I have a real appreciation for that work.
I mean, it is radical to do that work with another person.
Because you get seen and understood in a different way. There's a rich healing that takes place in that work.
You can also do that work with yourself through a self-discovery kind of solo process,
which helps you get to the truth so that you understand really where you're working from
as opposed to some other kind of more surfacey
or transient psychological experience.
So it's good, it's really good, but it's a time and place.
I'm much more interested in, okay,
so you're having this experience instead of like,
tell me about your uncle when you were whatever
or your first coach when you were whatever. Instead of that, I would go into like, tell me about your uncle when you were whatever, or your first coach when you were whatever.
Instead of that, I would go into like,
all right, so how do you want to adjust with that?
That's great. That is a true experience.
That's coming up great.
Feels like that's a little too noisy for you.
It's not working for you anymore.
Okay, we can go back at some point,
but right now, how do you want to use that?
And what does great feel like for you?
And so then get them to call forward
when they're at their best, when they're at their worst,
what's the difference between the two,
and what is the pre-performance routine,
what are the practices, and what are the deeper capabilities
that are required to be that way,
that ideal way more often.
So that's kind of a deconstruction
of how I hear the question.
This is a cool one, man.
So here's a follow-up for me.
And I'm a football guy, as you know.
Football season starts training camp,
let's say in the NFL, mid to late July.
Colleges, early August.
If I've got something I need to navigate through, do I have to navigate that before the season,
or can I like work through that in real time
once you kick the party off
and you're on this regimented schedule?
Yeah, you can do both.
It's a little harder.
You know, flying the plane
and building the plane at the same time
is a tougher challenge.
And so when an athlete is injured
or an athlete has off-season, I see it as this really great opportunity to go more horizontal and pick something to go deep with.
So let's say that for the injury, let's say it's an ankle or knee or something.
Instead of like, oh man, like I've got this knee injury, the ones that are pretty exceptional, they're like, yeah, okay, I'm gonna work through this.
I'm gonna do my rehab.
Rehab is not my favorite thing.
But you know, I've always wanted to read these books.
I've always wanted to do this visual eye training.
Hey doc, can I get with some of the mental imagery stuff
that we've been talking about?
Now's a great time.
So they find opportunities to keep investing.
And if one of those ways to keep investing
is to sorting out the things that,
you know, the cobwebs and the dark corners and the scary monsters under the bed and the dragons,
whatever, like, yes, what you here's the thing, whether and let me finish the thought preseason.
I'm much more a fan of like when you've got the timing in the window to be able to do the
self discovery work that's not encumbered
by real-time performance standards, like to take advantage of that.
And it is a constant work in progress.
You don't really ever escape the self-discovery process once you've drank from that cup.
You never really leaves.
Okay, and here's the big takeaway for me, is that when you do this deep internal work,
it is so powerful because nobody can ever take it away
from you, so you end up experiencing your past
in a different way, your future in a different way,
and your present moment in a different way,
because you're seeing and holding
what actually took place and the healing required from it or the aspirational way to move forward.
Once you do the internal work, and there's no roadmap
for this, it's not like I have the roadmap
for self-discovery or you do or somebody does.
There are a set of practices that many of us
will say the same things, but going inward
to do that deep internal work, and if you
can do it with someone that's skilled,
you'll speed up the, you'll accelerate the growth arc.
And so I would point to do it with somebody
that's highly skilled.
And for me, that means somebody that's been trained in it.
Okay, let's keep it moving.
Andy, every time I achieve something
that I've been working on achieving,
I have a moment of satisfaction.
Sometimes that lasts an hour, sometimes it lasts a day, but rarely longer than that.
And then I move back into the state where I'm not satisfied again.
Like something is missing, even though the thing I achieved satisfied this completely.
The feeling of dissatisfaction continues usually and can move into other forms where it gets
worse where my inner voice is saying things to me like, you're not enough, you're not
worthy, you were just lucky before and your luck won't continue, etc.
And it can get much worse, you know, much harsher than that.
It's like this hungry ghost that makes me feel generally unsettled,
uncomfortable, and wanting more. How do you deal with this? I'm sure plenty of Olympians and high
performers feel this. Your suggestions, what are they, and what have you seen work? One is, I'm
encouraged that Andy knows what a hungry ghost is.
And so that's actually what I was going to go to.
I was going to point to the hungry ghost as an analogy.
And so, okay, so Andy, you're there.
And that idea that there's this unsatisfied meal, there's this empty meal that, you know,
there's a hungry ghost that never gets fed, if you will. And that's really kind of the downside of the self-critique
nature and like, it's not good enough.
There's not an easy answer here to point to like a solution.
But I would remind us that when we are more connected
to something bigger than us, it gives us something to be
enveloped with.
And so for some people it's a spiritual framework, for other people it's the bold thing that
they want to do in their life, like why they're here, or in your example, yogi, to be a great
parent and husband.
And it's not about achieving then, it's about being part of something bigger.
And then you have a role to play in that.
And your job is to be a great custodian or a teammate or a leader in whatever fashion.
So I don't know. I recognize it for me.
It's less now than it's ever been. And so I'm not riding the highs and
lows of achievement like I once did when I was in my early 20s. And so it's more about like,
do you think we made a difference today? And that is not a self-serving mechanism. It's me
trying to pull my weight. And my wife and I, when we, you know, we did a bunch of counseling work
together on a relationship.
And our therapist said something brilliant.
She said, OK, look, relationships are a little bit
like carrying water.
So Mike, you've got two jugs.
Lisa, you've got two jugs.
And jugs are heavy.
Relationships are not this easy thing.
So you've got to carry these jugs.
And Mike, if Lisa puts a jug down
because she's tired, she's overwhelmed,
she's had it with you, will you pick one of those jugs up?
Yeah, she was right.
And if she put the second one down, would you pick one?
Yeah, no problem, I got it.
That's a great teammate.
But over time, if I'm carrying the wall,
I'm gonna break down, I'm gonna get tired.
And we need to know how to share
and swap back and forth.
In my relationship, I think Lisa carries the jugs
more than I do, just to be clear.
That being said, is when you're a great teammate
and you're part of something, and you're doing the work
for something greater than you,
you end up doing things that are not serving
just the sense of accomplishment or the notch on the belt.
And so that's how I hear the question.
I just want to point to be more connected to your purpose.
Go to something that's far bigger than you.
And I think it dilutes some of these concerns.
So, you know, your book is amazing.
Thank you.
It won a bunch of awards.
You've won a bunch of awards.
You've got accolades all the time.
How do you process through them now?
Even if it's, hey, you just finished your new course,
it's available, findingmastery.com,
or you wrote another book and people gave you
a bunch of pets in the back.
What's your way?
When early in my life, I was looking outside of myself to see if I was okay, if it was
okay.
When I was writing the book, each story, each insight, each chapter was built from a working
laboratory with my writing partner and I, Kevin Lake.
So each time that we were trying to articulate something,
we ran it through our Tumblr first.
How does it show up for us?
How does it show up for us at Finding Mastery?
How does it show up for us with our family?
And so that mechanism was really important
to not be clouded with like, man, I hope that
this thing really sells a lot.
I did.
I wanted it to move because I wanted to share what was meaningful and valuable to me in
the writing process.
And that writing process rested on us being subject number one in this experiment on how to be free of
FOPO and that rested on 25 plus years of working with the world's best to
understand that so many of them were gripped by expectations from other
people and the approval from other people as opposed to what they really
wanted. What they said they wanted and what they really wanted was this freedom to contribute, to
explore their potential and to be part of something special.
So for me, what I do now is I have to treat it like noise.
And so signal to noise ratio is a very important principle to me.
I have to treat praise and critique like noise.
I've got an inner circle of people. So I live in the city of Redondo,
and it's a, Redondo means round,
and so this round table of people that I go to
when I need to sort some stuff out.
And so it's that round table of people I trust.
And it's not even, I don't even have to call those people
with the exact question,
but I can call up what they stand for and what they would say to me.
Yeah, what I'm also hearing in Sigmund noise is sometimes and
Andy may be navigating this like
Can you do you label sometimes what you say to yourself as noise? Mm-hmm
I wonder that cuz that's what it feels like his it's his inner inner voice he keeps referencing. You're not worthy, you're not good enough, you just got lucky.
And it's like, no, dude, stop.
I didn't.
Like, is that what you're?
That part of the below the line self-talk,
where you're chipping away and chipping away,
it will get you to drive a little bit harder,
work a little bit faster, like read a little bit more, work a little bit faster, read a little bit more, study a little bit more, invest a little bit more,
but it wears thin quickly.
And so I just have such a low tolerance for that,
and it just doesn't work.
So all of that stuff where you are,
and we know this from research,
when part of where you attribute attribute success and or failures,
there's this really wild self-esteem saving mechanism
according to researches like, let's say,
a baseball hitter, and they're on a really bad streak.
So it's not working out well.
And then that person goes,
this bat, I'm telling you, this bat is great.
This bat is the worst bat, da da da da.
This bat is, and they're blaming something
outside of themselves, because it can't be themselves.
And it's a self-esteem saving mechanism.
It might just free up enough to say, give me that new bat,
and then maybe for whatever reasons,
that helps me focus better and I start getting on a run.
But it's not the long-term bet that you want to go on.
But it's a self-esteem saving mechanism.
The other mechanism is when you attribute, when you do get something that's gone well
that you say, you know what?
I really poured into it.
And you're pointing to the things that are in your control and you're also pointing to
the teammates that helped you get there.
So if you can, and those are kind of the first ring
of the pebble in the pond, if you can be clear
about what those first rings, as you drop a pebble
in the pond, those impacts, I think it's way more powerful.
That's great.
Okay, last question.
Yes.
Let's have one more.
Rajat, he says, I've been reflecting on your book, okay?
First Rule Mastery, right?
Particularly the idea that we can overcome,
FOPO as you coined, fear of other people's opinions.
Fear of people's opinions.
Excuse me, fear of people's opinions, you're right.
Okay, by living according to our values, changing our beliefs,
and learning from others' perspectives, okay?
However, you also state that no one, not even world-class athletes,
are completely immune to FOPO.
This seems like a contradiction to him. If even the best athletes still to FOPO. This seems like a contradiction to
him. If even the best athletes still experience FOPO, does that mean we can
never fully be free from it? Is the goal to eliminate FOPO entirely or is it more
about learning to manage and cope with it effectively? Since acceptance and
connection are natural human needs, does this mean that no matter
how much mental training I do, I will always experience some level of concern about others'
opinions?
It gives an example.
Cristiano Ronaldo is playing in a stadium where 50,000 people are booing him and criticizing
him.
How is he still able to perform at the highest level?
If he, like all humans, has a need for connection and acceptance, how does he
mentally handle that type of external pressure? And if no one is immune to FOPO, how is it
possible for an athlete to stay composed and deliver in the most high pressure situations?
It's a lot. Okay, I'm going to do my best to ask it in one question. Yeah, good. Yeah again We're talking about FOPO fear of people's opinions. Okay, you said in your book
No one not even world-class athletes are completely immune to FOPO accurate. Yes. Okay. Yes
So if the best athletes can still experience FOPO dr. Gervais
Does that mean that we can never truly be free from it?
Cool question.
I want to make sure we're clear that fear of people's
opinions is an excessive worry about what they might
think of me.
Caring about people's opinions is different.
We do need people to care,
but we don't want an excessive worry.
And so it's not about eradicating FOPO in a way
that you are no longer connected to other people.
That's not what the ambition here is.
But this excessive worry is the mechanism
that keeps us from showing up and maybe being our very best because
that we've got this other track that's running in the background.
How will this go? I don't know.
Well, all of the narrative around it. It's this shadow game that's being played that is below the surface that...
It's like it chews away at the RAM in a hard drive.
It's like this energy suck from us doing what Ronaldo, in this example, does exceptionally well,
is that he is able to focus deeply on the task at hand.
And when he can focus with all of his might
on the unfolding present moment, whatever that task is,
and he's not even guiding his mind at the highest level,
he's just completely absorbed,
and he is responding eloquently to whatever is happening,
that he's in the highest performative state,
the highest creative state that we know for humans.
Just underneath of that, when he is focusing with all of his might and he's working with his mind,
if he's working with his mind to be task-focused, that means quickly he's recognizing if his mind is tuned to like,
man, don't look stupid, don't blow the... wait, hold on, come on back, pick up the laces, get my footing right, trust myself, let's go, let it rip,
self-talk from a motivational,
self-talk from a skill standpoint.
It's like the way that you're working with your own mind
is paramount to find the freedom that we're looking for.
In this particular case, the freedom from worrying
about other people's opinions,
which happens to be one of the great fears for us, that requires an awareness of what's the narration
or the narrative of your mind and how you're working with it.
I'm not interested in freedom completely from it.
Like again, narcissists, sociopaths, those folks are free from it.
And that's not aspiration, what we're trying to do.
It's being able to downgrade it just a little bit, I think,
is where I would want to start.
And we only can focus on one novel thing at a time.
Okay, so it doesn't mean you can't focus on a couple things
kind of well at the same time,
but one novel thing at a time
is what our attention is designed to do.
And so if our attention is on this excessive worry, it's not on the task at hand.
And the present moment task at hand type of focus is the unlock to flow state, to the zone, to high performance.
So I think I answered that first part of the question. I don't know if you want to take any further.
I like that the it's the excessive worry and I think that's a noteworthy element to the question and to life in general.
Right.
Yeah, don't be excessive necessarily in anything.
This is abundance of joy.
I would imagine.
Yeah, right.
This has been a blast man.
Not too excessive for me.
I love hearing your opinions. I know many of the people who ask questions as well.
Yogi, again, it's like a treat to sit down with you.
You know what?
One, I didn't realize how good you are at asking questions.
You brought me right into them.
And so thank you for that.
Before we wrap, is there anything that was said or unsaid here that you would want to
bring forward,
even if it's not really about one of the questions
or something that we didn't say in one of the questions
that you wanted to bring forward.
I think one of the questions resonated with me a lot
because you hear it from athletes
where you accomplish something
and then you kind of beat yourself up a little bit.
I've seen this in my career so many times
and I have struggled other than really Tom Brady
he's the one athlete that I can point to who in his eyes he built this ship so
large that he went out and became the greatest of all time I think most people
and you know that you know me well enough because we say it to a lead 11
quarterbacks every summer when they'll put on their social media like proving
the haters wrong or when I ask you what's your purpose here what's's your why here? What are you trying to, why are you enjoying
the craft? I want to prove everybody wrong man. And I just simply respond and
you've done it too where it's just go prove yourself right. And once an
athlete and a quarterback or an elite performer accepts that sentence, they
just drop their shoulders differently. So I'd say that to like when you're
talking to yourself of God I just got lucky or then
you're not that good.
According to who?
You accomplished the task.
And I'd love to see other high achievers, whether that's in sales, in business, in education,
of course in sport, when you achieve something.
It's not like beat myself up and go right back to work.
It's not like beat myself up and go right back to work. It's celebrate it as you always say connect to the moment
Navigate it stare at it honor it cool. Let's go do it again
Or let's do something in the next moment that shows up. So I just haven't seen anybody Mike
Really thrive consistently who's constantly building a chip
Yeah, that chip on the shoulder works for a while, but then it gets pretty heavy even if it feels like a small chip
It just gets pretty heavy. So I agree with you. I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah. Yeah, I
Thousand percent agree and I think that early in my life. I did have a chip and
I'm glad I don't have it now. I
Do like being competitive not trying to be better competitive. Not trying to be better than you,
but trying to be better than I was yesterday.
And that gives me a drive, a bit of a prickly edge to it
because I know there's more for me to go,
more for me to give and to step into.
So I need to have, for me personally,
I'm not a reclining dragon.
I need to have like some fire breathing on my front foot,
if you will, just a little bit.
So yeah, the chip no longer works for me.
I'm glad you're bringing that up.
Cool, man.
Thank you.
This has been a blast.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thanks for inviting me into the space.
Yes.
Love what you're all doing at Finding Mastery.
Go check it out, findingmastery.com.
Thanks for coming to this AMA.
It has been a blast.
Keep the questions coming.
It looks like I'm coming back again
a little more time. Yes, let's do it some more.
Yeah. Okay.
Next time on Finding Mastery,
we're joined by Soren Gordhammer,
founder of Wisdom 2.0,
for a grounded conversation on presence, identity,
and the inner skills needed to navigate a noisy world.
This one is a brilliant meeting of minds, Mike and Sauron take a thoughtful look at
how to stay connected to what matters without getting lost in the pace of modern life.
It's a quieter conversation, but one that really stays with you.
Join us on Wednesday, July 9th for this awesome conversation.
All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. for this awesome conversation.
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