Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Day 11 – The Agony of Almost: Learning to Let Go and Move On | The Game Inside the Games

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

You work your whole life towards one goal… and you come up short by a fraction of a second. How do you bounce back from that? How do you move forward?On Day 11 of The Game Inside The Games, gold medalist Nastia Liukin and high-performance psychologist Dr. Michael Gervais explore the psychological and emotional complexities that athletes face when they fall just short of a gold medal or podium. They discuss the flood of emotions that can overwhelm an athlete in pivotal moments, the importance of processing those emotions, and how to use past experiences to fuel future success. With personal stories and expert insights, this conversation pulls back the curtain on what an athlete experiences when they come up just short – and how they can turn the agony of "almost" into a driving force for excellence.This episode is brought to you by KPMG and Microsoft. KPMG is unlocking the value of Copilot for Microsoft 365. Learn more at https://kpmg.com/microsoftcopilot_________________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! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Day 11 from Paris, a 10th, a 100th, a thousandth of a point or second, less than a blink of an eye can make or break an athlete's dream. How do athletes respond to these moments? Let's take a look. Welcome back or welcome to the game inside the games on Finding Mastery. I'm Dr. Michael Gervais by trade and training, a high-performance psychologist. And I'm Nastia Lukin, Olympic gold medalist. And we are here in Paris. And in this special series, we unlock the psychology of pivotal, often unseen moments that can make or break an athlete's dream. What's it like to focus a lifetime of experience into one performance, a single moment? What goes on inside the minds of the brightest stars while the whole world is watching?

Welcome back to Paris, and let's dive into The Game Inside the Games. Welcome back to Paris and The Game Inside the Games, presented by Microsoft Co-Pilot. So listen to this. In a nail-biting race, lasting over six and a half minutes, the Netherlands women four-person skulls boat nearly missed the gold, finishing just 0.15 seconds behind Great Britain. According to Copilot, that's roughly the time it takes for an eye to blink, a truly heartbreaking finish. So how do you bounce back from that kind of defeat? It actually brings up our recent conversation with Katie Hoff. How do you not replay that over and over and over in your mind? So let's talk about that.

When that happens, we are flooded with lots of emotions. Okay, so quick little science here. Go back a couple hundred thousand years ago. Our brain was designed to figure out how to scan the world to find safety. And when there was something dangerous that happened, it was meant the mechanism in our body is to flood ourselves with emotion. So we pay attention, but we're paying attention to the danger and the risk, to the threat, to the thing that is not leading to safety. All right. There's no kind of separate little section in the brain for an Olympic moment. So it's the same mechanism. So what happens in these moments is that when we're

flooded with emotions, what we need to be able to do is understand how to work with those emotions. And if you're waiting for the games to be able to figure that out, you're very, very late. So the best of the best of the best have done this work maybe 16 years ago for 16 years. And say that it's just a couple years old because they got to the psychology piece of it late in their illustrious career. That's fine too. So what ends up happening is you get the flood of emotion. What you need to do is know how to work with that emotion and then be able to point your attention to where you want to go, not be, let's call it stuck in the emotional swirl. And that's really tough to do. Like you have to train how to process emotions. This whole experience at the Olympics right now, it's an emotional experience.

Regardless of the outcome. Yes. You know, from start to finish. I mean, every single part of that process, the time you step foot onto the competition floor or mat or arena, whatever it is, until the end. And it doesn't matter if you get a gold or no medal at all. It is, it's filled with so much emotion. And we've talked about this a handful of times now, but silver medals and fourth have a lot

in common. I would say they're the worst. They're the worst. Yeah. And then I would say with time, you'd probably want the silver over the fourth. Probably. And the reason they are so difficult is. Well, when you win a silver medal at the Olympics, let's start off by saying it's incredible,

right? It's absolutely incredible to win any Olympic medal, but. And it's really, really, really hard to do. Absolutely. These are the best in the world competing for the same prizes, and it's very hard to do. It really is. But when you're that close to winning a gold medal, regardless of how close, regardless

of how much you miss that gold medal podium by, it's like you just want to go back in time and redo it all over again, because you know, not only are you capable, but you were so close. And then that fourth place position, you know, you were just so close to being on the podium, to getting an Olympic medal and just so many. And again, I don't discredit as a bronze medal at the Olympics, but for so many, like that is the most that they can do. You know, that is their gold medal. Well, you win bronze, you win bronze. Absolutely. And you win gold and you win gold. But, and I have to say you do win silver, but as a silver, you still miss out.

I don't want to say you lose the gold because I don't believe in that. I remember when we won silver as a team at the Olympics, the first question that we had in the press conference was, what does it feel like to lose the gold? It's a brutal framing, but it's accurate because just, I don't know, 45 seconds earlier or three minutes earlier, you experienced a loss. And we were expected to win. Even though it's a silver yeah so it's really tricky and this is so there's two parts of this conversation all right we're talking about the emotions we're talking about what happens moments before they walk onto a podium the framing of that and the emotional flooding of it but we're also talking about what happens let's

say six days or 12 days before when you've gone through some sort of trial or pool play or qualifying event. Yeah. Thank you. And, and you came up short there, but you still get a next, another shot, a next try that you've got to orient yourself to be able to point your nose in the right direction. Yeah. And I think with the specifically in gymnastics with the qualifying round of competition, I always say you can't win an Olympic medal, but you can certainly lose one. And what I mean by that is that first day of competition, I don't think people realize how important it is because it's one competition that qualifies you into the rest of the Olympic games, the team finals, the all around finals. that one event. So while not many people pay attention

to it, it could be your first and last competition of the Olympics. And especially if you're not part of, you know, a team that is almost automatically, you know, not automatically, but more or less qualifying into that team final. But there's also another rule that is only two athletes per country. And who are those, who are those two athletes in this game? And so it depends. Each event final has been different. So for the team, obviously the U S made it into the team final.

They won the gold, the all around final Simone and Sunni made it into, they won the, they won the gold and the bronze, but Jordan childs just missed out. She was in the top six, that first qualifying group, right?

She was in the top six in the world and didn't make it to the all-around final because of the two-per-country rule. Now that happened to her again in the vault final. So it is not only are you trying to make it and be the best in the world, like the top 24, the top eight on each event, you're now also trying to beat out your teammate. So you've had both. You've always made it through.

Is that correct? I have, I believe, I believe I have, I do remember in the qualifying round at the Olympics bars was our last event. And that was like my best event. I was expected to win gold on that event. And I fell in the qualifying round on my dismount. And I remember it was, it was the most agonizing process, like, because it's also not just one session. It is a whole day of qualifying. So all the teams have to go. So you then have to wait and wait and wait. So then you look up and say, look, did I beat my other teammates first of all and am i still in the top eight right so for the next few hours i just kept looking and looking at the results i ended up making it so that was good but still it is so so challenging not only just to make it and then

you're beating out your teammates okay i don't believe in the rule i think the rule should change you think if you're top eight, you should go. Yeah. Even if it was for, for us. Sure. Why not? Because you're the, that means you're the best in the world. Okay. Well, let me just take point counterpoint.

This is, this is to celebrate the global. I can't even make a point here. Yeah, you can't. Yeah. Like it's sure. I agree with you. It should be quote unquote fair to include other countries. But if you are the best, if you're third best in the world and you're not in that final

that means the person that wins the bronze medal really is not the third best in the world yeah i i don't think that um roles are roles play by the rules but yeah well let's agree to play by the rules for sure but the idea of fairness in the world of sport there's only a few things like fairness like is an in or out fairness are the world of sport, there's only a few things like fairness, like is an in or out fairness. Are you using drugs or not? There's some things there, but for the most part, it's a, what we celebrate is the ultimate meritocracy. If you have merit, if you have the goods, then you have a chance. And so I I'm, I'm with you on that for sure. Okay. So when you, when you experience that, let's call it mistake

and you had all day to process that there's two things that are taking place uniquely for you. And I'm sure there are athletes right now that are working through this. The first is the rest of the day or the event is completely out of your control. And that's a very, very difficult place to be. There's nothing you can do except for hope and wait. Okay. So that in of itself is incredibly anxiety provoking. And it's also, there's some despair that can, that can happen like, oh no, uh-oh. And you're kind of working below the line, if you will. The second thing that's really important to note is that there is really rich information. So the first thing, deal with the emotions, work with them, understand them, listen to them because the information behind them is really important. So the idea is to work

with the emotions to get to the rich information. What happened? Did you have a lapse of concentration? Did you overestimate? Did you whatever, whatever it might be. You're thinking all those things over and over again. So use all of this intense emotional experience to get to the real true information so that you can adjust if you get another chance. If. And then with that information, the third step here is to make a real promise to yourself. I promise if I get another shot here

that I am going to fill in the blank. And that, this is not a goal. It's far deeper than that. It's like a contract or a promise. I love the word promise because if I promise something to you, I'm going to hold it up. So I want to be able to promise something to myself. And that's like this the word commitment doesn't even hold the weight that I feel when I say promise and so those are the three steps to work through this very challenging experience prior to let's call it like a podium experience yeah and so when you think about what's happening in gymnastics right now, and there's this incredible moment that we all witnessed with Simone and fill in the blanks, the rest of the incredible performers,

what was harder, that final go or the qualifying round? For her specifically? yes you know it I do believe it's maybe different for everybody I think for her specifically it was that final all-around final she for the first time in her whole career had somebody that could have beat her and I mean she said it she said I didn't, she said, I didn't like that. You know, I didn't like somebody being that close to me. It may, it made me way too stressed out. And so you, you can tell you saw the face. If you're watching her face in that all around final, it was a different face than we've ever seen. Now she did have a mistake. I saw like a little bit of fear a little. I sent you a note, um, about, is this real? Cause there was like,

she had some language she was saying, like verbally you could auditorily, maybe you could hear it, but it was a self-talk narrative. Is that, was that something that. Yes, I think it's something, and maybe it's picked up on more now because the conversations are had. I don't think it's necessarily new, whether for her, Sunni, myself, like something I always did, but I think we're paying more attention to it now. To the way that athletes are speaking to themselves, the way they back themselves rather than cut themselves. And I don't mean that physically, I mean, emotionally. Yes. And the way that they prepare, right? The moments leading up to the green flag or the green light being turned on. It is those final few moments, the final breath.

That's it. Before they step onto the floor. And you can see it pretty much amongst the top athletes. They all do the same exact thing of one final breath. And they say, you got this, you can do this, like some kind of positive affirmation. And you can literally like read their lips and that's what they do. And they walk onto the floor. So let me just share a practice that I use with many of the athletes. Maybe you naturally did this because your dad was an exceptional coach in a lot of ways.

Is one thought, one breath. So that what's underneath of that is that there's a lot going on internally. And so one of the ways to be able to quiet that down is to direct your attention towards something. One thought, I got this, let it rip, whatever that thing might be. And then the breath is this, it's this in-between mechanism from going from the internal world. So then I use a breath to relax my system and then drive my attention externally because the game happens outside. So we want to go from internal to external. We want to go from this, this, all of this information that's happening internally, and then get our attention to finding the spot or whatever it

might be for you. Does that make sense to you? Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, maybe even whether it's taking a step further or something else that I've always kind of told myself or believed was to focus on as cliche as it might sound, the positive, the good, because the second your mind starts, you know, it's, we all know it's scary. It's nerve wracking. It's all of those things, but except that, but don't focus on that. So instead of wracking. It's all of those things, but except that, but don't focus on that. So instead of focusing on, I don't want to fall. I don't want to mess up. I don't want to bend my knees. I, why don't you focus on telling yourself what you want to do in order to make this the best possible routine of your life, right? So the mental choreography essentially, right. But also just positive thoughts. Positive thoughts can truly lead you in a direction that one negative thought could

completely derail you. Yeah. So what we're talking about for folks that are not at the games competing is relevant for everyday life. Absolutely. How do you work with emotions? And I'm happy to give you a couple nuggets that I think are useful. How do you work with emotions? And I'm happy to give you a couple nuggets that I think are useful. How do you drive your attention? What you just did is you're talking about self-talk

both to back yourself. There's two basic types, how you speak to yourself about yourself and how you speak about where you want to go. When I think there's also, it's an interesting thought, and I know these are things that I'm aware of, but I don't, you know, know necessarily how to explain them like you can. But a lot of times, whether it's somebody else or even yourself, you look maybe to somebody else or, and think, why are, why is it always going right for her or for him? Like everything they do, it's always like the next, you know, another deal, another promotion, another medal, another, like why? And for me, it just doesn't.

That's what a lot of people probably thought about you. So let's just be honest. Okay. Well, it wasn't always, you know, sure at the Olympics at all, it definitely came together, but throughout the course of my career, it was an injury. It was this, it was that, but you know, it's, I think it's a lot easier to kind of fall in that trap with social media, with following people and thinking, you know, whether or not it's true, you know, people can portray whatever they want to portray on social. So I think it's, how do I get in that mentality and that mindset of things are happening for me? This is, you bring up a really important point because this is another thing that athletes, successful athletes tend to do well is they look

internally to see what their responsibility is, what they can learn, what they can get better at. Yes, it is. There's always going to be athletes that look outside for reasons like, oh, it's my bat. It's my mitt. It's the beam was a little off that, you know, she had an advantage with this and that and dah, dah, dah. So it, and that, those are actually considered self-esteem saving mechanisms. When you externally blame something, it can help save your self-esteem the most. I'm not advocating for that, but that's, that can be the case, but it also is not the radical accelerant to getting better. So ideally what we want to do is to go inward, to be kind, to get to clarity about what can

I do to get better and then use your self-talk and your narrative both to back yourself and to point to where you want to go. And correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like also it's the thing we've talked about a lot is the controllables, right? Controlling your controllables. So you can't control the balance beams with it's like whether or not you think it's four inches or three and a half inches, it's there. You can't fix it right now, right? You can't control somebody else's performance.

The only thing that you can focus on is your own mental state and your physical state and your physical performance. And this is for the listener and the viewer who just lost their job or didn't get into the school they want or has gone through a heartbreak in their relationship is, again, if you're going to point to the external circumstances, fine. You know, that might help you in some narrative or in some way. But if you can look, use the emotional experience, just like we talked about at the top. You work with the emotions get to the true honest information and what you what you just talked about is the controllable not

controllable and i'm going to go just one level above that which is it is in your control whether you point and blame or you look internal for clarity and honesty So control the controllables is right when you say, look, you can't control the beam, but you can go to which direction are you going to point your gaze. And so this is another thing that world-class athletes do. Now, there's probably nobody better to teach something about handling just the fractions of a point or fractions of a second in not getting the thing that you want. So you were literally one of the best in the world. And can you talk about how, how close you missed gold by? Yeah. So, and you won gold. Yeah. So let's be, but I think that winning the gold at the Olympics in what year? 2008 was, you know, I think it's, it all is like hard work.

It's so many different things that kind of come together for that. But I think had I not experienced what I did three years prior, I don't know if that outcome would have been the exact same. So I'm going to go through it. Yeah. so going back to my first world championships i was 15 years old expected to win um we were in australia walk into this huge arena for the first time in melbourne and i was expected to win the all-around and i got second in the all-around by one one thousandth of a point it was the most almost like heartbreaking like i i can't even tell you the emotion that i felt in that moment of wait but what does that mean what what could i have done differently and you know you replay

every but it's less than a tenth a tenth a 10th of a point is one step, right? So then you like think, so what is one, 1000th of, was my, was my one little hair not in my phone? You know, it's like you think about all the things and it's, there's truly nothing that to me was hard to grasp. But at the same time, looking back, it was, you have to believe that that was supposed to be part of your path. Is that how you framed it in that moment? No, no, no. Absolutely. I was like

devastated. Did you blame, did you look outside or go internal? No, I internal. I think I didn't blame anybody or anything as a 15 year old. Sure. Maybe I had a moment of this isn't fair, but I also knew, yeah, like, you know, of course, like, you know, life's not fair. But at the same time, I remember I had three days of competition left after that. And the next two days I won the gold both in bars and beam. And I became a world champion for the first time on bars and on beam and I remember the first time I won that gold medal the next morning I had breakfast with my parents and I remember thinking I looked up and I said now our whole family is a world champion

and that was I think a moment that I like getting secondly all around I think maybe I was like more upset about that. You know, like I remember wanting to say that to them and like make them proud. And they were so proud regardless of the outcome. But I remember thinking that specifically. I mean, that is really incredibly, like there's so much pressure

in your family dynamic in that way. But not from them, you know? And I feel like I never felt that from them. I wanted to just, I thought it was so cool. I thought it was cool because we could all say individually that we were world champions. Your mom? My mom as well.

And your dad. And my dad and me and I'm the only child. And so I think that was like a cool, like, and I say cool because I was 15. That was a cool moment for me. But what happened next for the next three years, was a like a cool like and I say cool because I was 15 that was a cool moment for me but what happened next for the next three years was like I was trying to have this redemption over that all-around title and the next year I got injured I went to the world championships in a wheelchair

I only competed bars I couldn't walk i was in a boot the following year in the all-around i fell off the beam got fourth and then the following year was 2008 it was the olympic year uh yeah so it was it was a long long cycle of you know from the start of the Olympic cycle till the end, one one thousandth of a point. So if you were to give one or two pieces of guidance to the viewer here about how to work through a heartbreak, a loss, something that you were so close and it didn't break the way that you had dreamed of or hoped for, how would you coach them? I think acceptance is important. You know, knowing you can't go back in time and change anything, knowing you can't even, you know, it's easy to say, I wish I would have known, or I wish I knew then what I know now I wish, you know,

that to me is the worst kind of thing to say and feel. Accepting what is happening or has happened. And not necessarily like accepting moving on, but accepting and maybe learning, accepting and growing. But I think when you're not able to accept that, you can't move forward. You can't necessarily move on to the next year and try to be better. Because if you still have that hanging over you, how do you focus on the present? And so I think that was big for me. And I think whether or not I did it right away, I did do it to some extent to be able to go on to the next day

and, you know, perform well enough to then become a world champion. But I think it's still a little bit still hung over me for three years, you know? And I think, but I think if you're able to do it in a positive way where I used it as motivation, as opposed to using it as poor me to put myself in that position again, where it comes down to one one-thousandth of a point. Sure, it happened at the world championships. That will never happen at the Olympics. And I won the Olympic all-around gold medal by six tenths of a, sorry, six tenths. You are speaking at a richness and a depth of wisdom that I just want to celebrate. Awareness and acceptance is kind of where the whole thing starts. And that is the commitment to the path of mastery. And we're not suggesting by any means accepting things that just being like surrendering and

being okay. It is like accepting the truth of the matter so that you're not haunted by your past. You can live more in the present moment. And so that you can so that you're not haunted by your past you can live more in the present moment and so and come full circle in this games you were asked to be the presider over the opening ceremony for the finals for gymnastics yeah it was so special you know walking out onto the floor basically um well not the floor but to open up the team finals was it was actually very very full circle because as i was walking out into the arena my dad was kind of behind like and he i didn't tell him that i was doing it for no reason then

he was focused on you know he had an athlete competing and so and this is an incredible honor be clear oh it's it's such a huge honor yeah that the local the organizing committee basically asks one olympian to do it and um yeah i my dad was walking back and he saw me walking home to the floor and i was in a dress and i think he was so confused like is she okay like where is my daughter why is she so dressed up does she think she's competing yes and because the athletes this was moments before the athletes march out onto the floor and there's this photo of of me you know doing this on her and he's peeking around the corner and he's just like looking like what is happening but basically it's it's a french tradition that in the theater um when the show

is about to start somebody comes out and basically requests or demands like the attention of everybody with like this stick and you um kind of like hit the floor like three times and the show begins so it was it was quite the honor the wisdom that you're working from the commitment to mastery is evident and we are talking about working from the inside out. The game inside the games is real for all of us. And I want to thank you for being able to have the conversation and guiding us through what it's like to be your very best on the world stage. Again, thank you.

Today's AI insights are brought to you by KPMG and Microsoft. KPMG is unlocking the value of Copilot for Microsoft 365. Today, we asked Copilot to find a few of the closest, most dramatic finishes in the history of the games. Okay, let's see what we've got here. In Paris this year, Christophe Milak from Hungary beat Caleb Dressel in the 100 meter butterfly by just one one-hundredth of a second. Another example, in the 2008 games, Michael Phelps won by a mere.01 seconds, narrowly out-touching Serbia's Milorad Kavic to earn his seventh gold medal of the games. Okay, I have a follow-up question here. Hey, Copilot, we all know Caleb Dressel won eight gold medals,

but did Milorad Kavic ever win another medal? Although he competed in four games, Milorad Kavic never won another medal. Yeah, it's really hard. To your point earlier, it's really hard to do. And so I guess that points back to just how tricky it is to navigate the internal experience. And again, we can back to, you know, just how tricky it is to navigate the internal experience, just how, and again, we can celebrate exactly what you did, you know, a number of years ago. Congratulations again. Thanks, Mike. And it's been so great to be in Paris and we'll see

y'all tomorrow on the game inside the games.