Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Self-Talk, Mental Imagery, and Finding Joy | AMA Vol. 11 with Dr. Michael Gervais

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

Welcome to the 11th installment of our Ask Me Anything series.The purpose behind these AMAs – is to hear from YOU and have conversations… to explore the topics and questions that you have been wrestling with on your path to becoming.The goal is to expand on the themes, lessons, and best-practices we’ve discussed on the Finding Mastery podcast in order to make them even more applicable to your own life.We’re back with our favorite co-host—O’Neil Cespedes—and today, we cover some really interesting and insightful territory, including:Where joy comes from (and the art of finding it, every day)Why we must practice self-careThe intricacies of ADD and ADHDBeing a good friend to yourselfThe nuances of narcissistic traitsThe power of imagery and imaginationAnd so much more…This AMA is brought to you by CAROL! CAROL is an AI-powered exercise bike that’s scientifically proven to give you the benefits of a 45-minute run in as little as five minutes. To learn more, head to carolbike.com and enter the code FINDINGMASTERY at checkout for $100 off your purchase._________________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.

Finding Mastery is brought to you by Remarkable. In a world that's full of distractions, focused thinking is becoming a rare skill and a massive competitive advantage. That's why I've been using the Remarkable Paper Pro, a digital notebook designed to help you think clearly and work deliberately. It's not another device filled with notifications or apps.

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to help you be more effective. It is sleek, minimal. It's incredibly lightweight. It feels really good. I take it with me anywhere from meetings to travel without missing a beat. What I love most is that it doesn't try to do everything. It just helps me do one very important thing really well,

stay present and engaged with my thinking and writing. If you wanna slow down, if you wanna work smarter, I highly encourage you to check them out. Visit remarkable.com to learn more and grab your paper pro today. When something matters to you, you'll do whatever it takes. Welcome back or welcome to another Ask Me Anything on Finding Mastery. I am your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training a high-performance psychologist. And the whole purpose behind these conversations, behind these AMAs, is to hear from you, to explore the topics and questions that you've been wrestling with on your path to becoming. So the goal is to expand on the themes and lessons and best practices that we've discussed on the Finding Mastery podcast

in order to make them even more applicable to your own life. We're back with our favorite co-host O'Neill Cespedes and today we're covering some really interesting and insightful territory. So we're talking about where joy comes from, why it's imperative to practice self-care, the nuances between ADD and ADHD, how to be a good friend to yourself, the power of imagery and imagination, and of course, so much more. And before we dive in, I want to give a quick shout out to our title sponsor for today's AMA, Carol Bike. I love their product and I'm so stoked on what they're doing. But stay tuned for more on that later in this episode.

So with that, let's jump right into volume 11 of Finding Masteries Ask Me Anything. Okay. My favorite day of the week. My favorite day of the week. Oh, that's good good you just say that no no no no here we are i'm looking you in the eyes i mean this is true yeah this is happening all right so let's get into it we've got um i love the questions that come in there is um a response that is noted and so i appreciate our community that has got some questions for us and so let's

see we can wrestle down today all right amazing and this question is from dara it's a nice one maybe before we get in i i kind of rushed us a little bit okay okay right into it okay like how have you been thank you thank you for asking yeah i've been well yeah i've been well i think the last time um spoke, I had an issue with the duvet thing. You remember that? How's that going? I got some good news. So from that last time,

I am now the spokesperson for Denver's duvets. Denver duvets. Come on. No, no, it's Denver duvets, yeah. I fly out to Denver, Colorado once a month, and I shoot an ad about, you know. You would be perfect for this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They knew it. They knew it, yeah. I fly out to Denver, Colorado once a month and I shoot an ad about, you know. You would be perfect for this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They knew it. They knew, absolutely. So I wanna thank you for that. So it's the peanut butter? Is that how we did that? Yeah, well, I have the peanut butter in my hand, right? And then I have Denver duvets. And I'm like, you having trouble with your duvet?

Well, I'm not going by the whole thing. You just gotta watch the commercial. I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. That's good, yeah. How have you been? Yeah. I think that I've got a really fun opportunity coming up. And I grew up surfing.

It was my first sport that I fell in love with. And it's the thing I really enjoy the most. And I got an opportunity for the second time now to go out to what's called Kelly Slater's The Ranch. And it's a – And so I'm really excited to go out there and um it's giving me a little bit of a pump in my you know get my fitness on to be able to you know my flexibility my mobility back in place and so it's been fun it's a small little treat that i'm looking forward to and it's um it's coming together here in a couple months wow okay good luck with that that's dope yeah that's yeah I've always wanted to surf.

I've just never had the nerve to do it. We'll get you out there one day. Yeah, yeah. I look forward to it. It is one of the sports that is really tricky to learn post-puberty. Yeah. I don't know. Something happens where the way that it works,

the human works on a wave is tricky, but that'd be fun. We should go do that. Why don't we host AMA whatever number on the wave is tricky, but that'd be fun. We should go do that. We should host, why don't we host AMA whatever number on the water? I'm sure the technology is there. Let's do it. Yeah. God, let's do it. Listen, you can go shirtless.

I'll probably wear a wetsuit. No, no, I don't want to go shirtless because I'm more than my body. Oh, I see what you just did there. Yeah, good. Okay, good. Yeah, that'd be fun though we could just get a couple long boards and um if you don't catch any waves which would be fun i would

look forward to it that'd be great i'd probably embarrass myself but i'm okay with it i thought we were past that i thought i thought in the last time we spoke we talked about like not perfectionism we talked about going forward and just kind of yeah all right so we still got some work to do we got some work to do me too got some work to do. Me too. I'm shooting for the stars. Are you a work in progress or a work in process? I am a work in, to be honest, O'Neal, don't lie, be honest.

Process or progress? Progress. There you go. I'm a work in progress. And you chose that word because? It was the first word that just hit me. Yeah, yeah. Don't be honest, go with the first thing you popped up. Progress, progress. Yeah hit me. Yeah, yeah. Don't be honest.

Go with the first thing. Progress, progress. Yeah. You just have a way of getting the truth out of me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, good. I can't lie to you, man. Let's keep going.

Let's keep going. Yeah. All right. This question is from Dara. Dr. Mike, first of all, thank you for all the great content over the years. Your podcast has been an invaluable source of quality information to me, and I constantly learn something new from your shows. Thank you for being you. The issue I'd love your advice on is the following. I'm in my early 40s, and on the outside,

it could look like I have everything I need. House, wife, kids, live in a great city, have a mid to senior level management position. But I'm empty. I don't enjoy my work. I've never enjoyed it yet fell into it out of the university and now just feel so stuck. I don't know what it is I want to do for a career. I'm socially isolated too. I moved to this city over a decade ago and between having kids, focusing on other aspects of life, etc.

I never built a social group here for myself. How do I find the things that bring me alive? How do I know what to work on? How do I go about making friends again? All my social interaction revolves around my family. I rarely talk to anyone outside of my house or something that is just work-related. I want to stop dying a bit every day and start to feel alive again thanks in advance i mean you feel that too

i've felt aspects of it parts of it definitely and i know a ton of people that are going through the same thing yeah it's heavy yeah what i feel depression. And what I hear is a wanting to get better. And so I recognize that. That's kind of the starting place of it. And there's an emptiness in life when we're not clear what our purpose is and we don't feel connected. So, I mean, I'm not exactly sure where to take this question because I think that most of us can feel some aspect of it. And I want to address Dara. I wish he or she was here. And the thing that I would suggest is that follow the intuition that you're on right now and say, because the key question is what are the things that I can do and so can you recall the exact wording that um Dara said about how yeah okay how do I find the things that bring me alive how do I know what to work on how do I go about making friends again okay let's stop right there how do I find the things that bring me life? That type of idea. So nothing outside of you can do that.

And so joy and happiness comes from the way that you experience and interpret experiences. And so it comes from within. So pleasure can happen from enjoying something externally, like buying something, like laughing from a joke from somebody, like whatever, you know, flipping through social media, there's a pleasure stimulation, good meal, whatever it might be, but joy and happiness comes from within. And so that's kind of the first thing to bifurcate to make sure that we're clear that the work is to work from the inside out and not think that the solution is going to come from something outside.

And I'm not sure that Dara is hinting towards that insight or not, but just to be clear and make that super obvious. The second thing is that the relationships, there's an ordering in relationships as well. And so the misnomer is that I just wish that somebody would see me. I just wish that somebody would see me. I just wish that somebody would love me. Or I just wish that somebody would help me out. And so the direction of that is problematic. So to flip that on its head is who can I help?

Who can I send love to? Who can I see? And if you orientate yourself in that direction, not only are you getting to experience what it feels like to have power in your life because you're setting the direction of your actions, but you're also getting, slipperily so, you're getting the benefit of love. So when love comes towards you, it's an obvious benefit. And when you share love, it's the same thing. And so I would go directionally in those two things is that what is the internal work?

Well, the internal work is to know how to interpret experiences in a way that brings me joy and happiness, that connects me to a purpose in my life. And I know in our last conversation we had, we talked a lot about purpose. And for just a quick reminder is that for Dara here is that find something that matters and is bigger have to be. But it's been institutions that have done a nice job there for a lot of people. The majority of people find themselves fitting well in that structure. And then the second orientation is to give love, be in service to other people, and figure out how you can help them. I would start there. And if, if Dara says I'm exhausted, I, I just can't, then I would figure out, I would start with some best practices for care. So

when I am ripped around by the rapids of life and, you know, I feel like a, a wet dog trying to get to the shoreline. I know that i'm been in it just a little too long and i haven't been taken care of drying off and appreciating kind of high ground if you will and so finding best practices for high ground and that can come from um lots of different things that come from meditation it can come from massage it can come from enjoying sunsets which i know is one of your favorite things to do. It can come from a lot of different directions. And so invest in self-care. There's lots of literature on what some of those best practices are. And that can be something as small as five minutes, you know, upwards to an hour if you, if we're being pretty aggressive a day. And so those

are the places I'd start. And I'd say, I see you and I understand and I feel the depression and depression is a real thing um one in three people are struggling with depression right now in the United States and so um take action reach out and put yourself in the position of power by taking uh giving love to other people and finding a way to be in service of something bigger than you yeah I love what you're what you're saying because my mom when I used to get depressed or go through things you know my mom, when I used to get depressed or go through things, my mom used to always tell me, go help somebody else.

Go, no lie. She gives money to homeless people, take them to dinner, just do something. And then through doing that, through being of service, you'll find your way. You'll eventually find your way because you're not thinking about yourself.

You're being selfless, right? And through that, you'll find the magic and you'll find your way. So I think I agree wholeheartedly, wholeheartedly with that. What I find interesting, though, is when reading the first part of what Dara said, you know, mentioning the family, the wife, work, all these things that it seems like, you know, they're committing themselves to and putting before themselves, right? Before themselves and putting themselves last. The first thing I thought about was, well, it seems like you should be a little selfish and kind of like go do what you love to do, whether it's go to the comic book store,

read some comics, go surf, go to the movies by yourself. Just what do you like to do? What do you like to do for you? Because in my mind, being that selfish and bringing that joy into your life will then allow you to be of better service to your wife, to your kids and your job. But it seems like Dara has just been a bit too self selfless i like where you're going and i bet there's a reason why dara has not practiced putting the life vest on first i bet there's a reason there's some sort of psychology of why this is taking place and so i like where you're going so this is the fun part of psychology is you could, there's so many different paths and direction you can go. So let's use best science and volunteering and being in service is a best practice. Medication, talk therapy, and you know, there's a handful of mindfulness. We're seeing some exciting things about psychedelics as well. And so the, the re let me just pause on the psychedelics for a minute is

that what's happening with the psychedelics. It's not that the drug itself changes the person in a way it's in so that the person can feel safe enough to be connected to the therapist. So it's psychedelics in service of connection and safety to be vulnerable enough with your therapist over X number of sessions. So that, so I just want to hit that note, but so there's really interesting research there, but to me, the most interesting part of that is the connection with another person. And so I like where you're going and we can go, we could go two different directions, self-care or in service, like that's awesome. And so it'd be a bit of a style that we would choose or have the person, in this case, Dara, tuned to one of them. And then I think what would happen is depression

in and of itself is easily defined by, I think the world sucks. I think you suck. I think it's always going to suck. And I think I suck. Right. And so it's this pervasive other self and future that it's just doesn't work out. So it's the triad as, as the theory would suggest. So there'd be, there'd be some pushback either direction we go because the framing of it is that things don't work out quite the right way. But I hear in the question, what can I do? And so self-care and or service would be the directions that the two of us would go. And then I just want to add one more thing. I'm thinking about my wife here is that her closest relationships, her most important and meaningful relationships are her family. She is a Latina and like there's a cultural piece to their family, which is like they're in it together. And I love every aspect of it. And so she doesn't have friends outside the family, but the relationships are intact and they're honest and they're pure and they laugh and they cry and they get pissed off with each other. And like that, you can have those

meaningful relationships with family members. You don't have to have a social group other than now that doesn't mean that you can't have one, but I just share that as a perspective that it sounds like for Dara, the family matters. And so you can pour into them in a different way as well. So anyways, complicated, beautiful. Um, got all the hope for you, Dara, and wishing the best for you. Yeah. Shout out to you, Dara. Go get it.

Go get it. All right, O'Neal. I want to take a quick minute to talk about our title sponsor for this AMA. It's Carol. Have you heard of Carol? No, I've never heard of Carol. Oh, this is a treat.

I wasn't exposed to Carol until relatively recently. It is a stationary AI-powered exercise bike. This is like nothing I've ever experienced. And I've been in elite athletics and fitness for a long time that this is different now. You've heard of HIIT training before? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I incorporate that in my workouts. Okay.

So this is based on ReHIT. Have you heard of ReHIT? ReHIT, no. I mean, I incorporate that in my workout. Okay. So this is based on re-hit. Have you heard of re-hit? Re-hit? No. Okay. So it's reduced exertion, high intensity interval training. So you've got that interval training just like in HIIT training. To oversimplify it, HIIT training is like you get your heart rate up for an intense low, bring it down, back up, down, back up. So it's like 20 on, 10 off, or 20 seconds on, 20 seconds off. How long is your HIIT training? 25 minutes.

Yeah. So they've taken those benefits and reduced them down to somewhere between five and nine minutes. Five and nine minutes. Yeah. More importantly, it's two 20-second bouts of high intensity

over that five minutes. And that's it. Just two 20-second bouts of high intensity over that five minutes. And that's it. Just two 20 second bouts. That's it. So that it sounds so easy. And I was really skeptical when I first came across the science and then I gave her a go. It's real now. The way that this works is you're doing a walking pace for about a minute, a red light comes on. And when that red light comes on, there's this countdown three, two, one to get you ready. And during that countdown, you start spinning as fast as you can go, but you're not like blowing out of the gears. Like you're, you're spinning and it's giving you some tension. And then as soon as the countdown

starts for one to get to the 20 seconds, it's found the right tension for you to work at your capacity. I get to about 10 seconds in. I want to stop. It's that type of difficultness. By the 15th second in, I'm making a real decision whether I'm going to push in those last five seconds. And then when you're done, there's this, you know what that on feels like, right? Of course. And then they give you some guided breathing to back it down, and then it's another 20 seconds on. I hope I gave it justice.

Like, does that create an image for you? Yeah, it does. I just have a question. So obviously with different individuals, it responds differently according to the AI. Yeah, so your speed and resistance So obviously with different individuals, it responds differently according to the AI. Yeah. So your speed and resistance would be different than mine. Gotcha.

There's no knobs or dials or anything. The machine is doing it for you. It's rad. And so you know what I love about it is that there's some research around it that it's equivalent. These two 20 second bouts, it's equivalent to a 45 minute jog or run in just five to seven minutes. Okay, I gotta try this for myself

because you were talking about five to nine minutes and I'm doing like 10 rounds of 30 second sprints and you're telling me two 20 second rounds is good enough? I gotta try it. I am, I've got an eye when it comes to the research around these things because there's all these false claims and hopes and whatever. And so I dug into my best abilities and I experienced

it in a way that's like, there's two things that happened for me. By the end of this two 20 second bouts over the five minutes, I'm shaking. I haven't broke a sweat yet though. And I know that I've got some real deep cardio in place. And so I love it. I love what they've done. And they've got some research around it. And it's an eight-week study from the American Council of Exercise. And what they found is that an improved VO2 max by 12% reduces blood pressure by 5%, lower risk for type 2 diabetes by 62%, and overall improvement in metabolism.

And we had their CEO on, Ulrich Dempley, on the pod. And we kind of beat up the research and went after exactly what it is. He's great. He's all in. I love founders that are fundamentally committed to their mission. This is a company that I love as a title sponsor. They're using science. They're all in.

They understand the practicality for health. I don't have 45 minutes like I wish I did. Yeah. I got five. And if I can't square up five minutes for cardio health, so I'm around longer for my son. So I'm a better husband for my wife. Like I got to really examine how I'm doing my life. So I love what they've done.

Okay. If I can get that workout in five, nine minutes, sign me up. Let's go. Okay, good. Are you sure? Yeah. Are you sure? I'm O'Neal, of course.

Yeah, come on now. We're going to get you one to try out now. And I want to highly encourage everyone listening to go check it out. Carol is hooking up our community with a great offer. If you're interested in checking it out, just head over to carolbike.com and enter the code FindingMastery at checkout for $100 off. So you spell it carol, C-A-R-O-L, bike.com. And that discount will apply in addition to any other discounts or sales they're running

on their website. They want to make sure that you're getting the best deal with us. And I know they've got some good ones coming up for the holidays. So pay attention there. That's carolbike.com and enter the code finding mastery at checkout. And you can find the link below in the episode description as well. All right, O'Neill, let's get into the AMA. What's the next question? This question is from Melissa. Hey, Mike, love your show. And I'm

especially fond of episodes with O'Neal Sanchez. Thank you. Thank you, Melissa. Did you just? No, no, no. I'm telling you, Melissa wrote this. Melissa wrote this. Come on. I love that. Shout out to you, Melissa. I'm not sure if this is a question per se but i was recently diagnosed with adhd as a 29 as a 29 year old female and i'm struggling i take medication which has helped significantly but i still feel lost and like it keeps getting in the way of the goals i set or things i want to try i resigned from my job as a high school counselor after the school year, and I was feeling incredibly burnt out and undervalued. I see a therapist who also has ADHD, and she has been incredible. I was just wondering if you have any advice from any other female

athletes or females in general that have ADHD and how they stay motivated and keep their harmful self-talk to a minimum, especially when faced with obstacles. I'm not sure if you'll end up reading this, but we are. But I just want to say thank you for the work that you do and put out into this world. Very cool. And I love that we're doing this together. And so it's so fun that, you know, she called us both out as, you know it's part of the same experience so first of all ADHD and ADD are really interesting topics there's been a questioning about the over diagnosis over maybe the last 15 or 20 years when when somebody is diagnosed and it's an actual fit it's a game changer because there are best practices to work with ADD and ADHD.

And so that being said, I'd like to reframe what it is. Most people think it's distractibility alone. And that's not necessarily true. The way that I best understand ADD and ADHD, and H stands for hyperactivity, right? So attention deficit. And sometimes with hyperactivity is that we have this funnel in our, in our brain. And this funnel basically is responsible for attuning to information. And if you think about the funnel being wide open and sometimes closing to narrow in, like if a gorilla ran in here right now, or somebody ran in with a gun, we ought to have that funnel narrow down and pick up vital cues for survival. Right. And so, and then it maybe needs to go wide again to figure out a

solution. So it's, it's going back and forth on a regular basis for most people. People that have ADD or ADHD, the funnel stays wide open. Let's apply this to maybe learning or conversations in business or school even. For 29-year-olds, we'll talk about business, is that let's say a supervisor says, hey, make sure that thing is done on Friday. At the same time, the door's opening, somebody is crinkling up a piece of paper and throwing it in the trash can and your phone is dinging. All of those have equal valiance. They all have equal power in the attentional circuitry. Whereas that's for somebody that has ADD. Whereas I would, so I would tune to, cause I don't have ADD. I would

tune to the supervisor saying, make sure that thing is done, and then kind of gate out all the other noise. But when folks struggle to have that funnel work properly, all of the information has equal value. And so it's like, how do I discern? And how do I properly organize my internal life to say, right, that's the one to attend to. And so this is why it looks like people don't care because they don't turn the thing in, but they didn't actually properly organize the importance of it. Or it was like confused where the squeaking of the chair, the crumpling of the paper took over. And so that's one way to think about it, right? And then so another way to think about ADD and ADHD is that the numbers are pretty remarkable.

And so let me just pull up some numbers here. Okay. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, is that 9.4% of children in the United States between the ages of two and 17 have been diagnosed with ADHD at some point. Okay. So that's a pretty big number for, you know, thinking about a statistical analysis here. And then the other is that this includes 13.6% of boys and 5.4% of girls in that age group. So it, it's tend to skews towards males. And so, so Melissa is in a minority. If you know, if we look at the, uh, the childhood numbers and then for adults, it changes a little bit. And the idea is that for in adults, it's often underdiagnosed and maybe for children as well, but I got a point I want to make about that, is that 2.5 and upwards to 5% of adults

have ADD or ADHD. And many adults do not seek treatment because they're not sure what to do with it. Medication can work. And so this is a time where it's important to attune to the value of some of these medications. And the point I want to make though, is that one of the reasons this is such a high number across the United States, we don't do anything. And I mean anything to proactively teach attention, deep focus, concentration, shifting of attention. We don't teach the primary skill.

And we expect kids in the system of education to sit down, be quiet, and listen well. But we don't teach them how to focus or deeply focus for an extended period of time, how to take a break from focus and return right back to whatever the task is at hand. We don't teach that. And so of course we're going to have upwards to 10% of the population struggling with this thing because we haven't taught it. And that doesn't mean that some people organically are not born with a predisposition, a likelihood, if you will, of struggling with attention. Yes. Check the box. Some sort of genetic wiring and coding.

Check that box. However, it is incredibly sloppy for us to not prior to any type of expectation for our children is to give them the substrate of deep focus as a skill. So I say that as a footnote because you can train attention. Whether you have ADD or not, you can train it to get better at that skill. And I think that's really important. So medication and training would be the two ways

that I would go through this conversation. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true. Meaningful relationships are at the center of sustained success.

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and the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods. And when I'm traveling or in between meals, on a demanding day, certainly, I need something quick that will support the way that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David Protein Bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put him on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them. One a day, one a day. What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that

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for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E- E I N.com slash finding mastery. So in Melissa's case, right. Is she saying Dr. Mike, that because of her ADHD, that it causes her to question herself and have some negative, harmful self-talk to herself. And is she at, I mean,

is she saying attributing it to that? Yeah, I think so. I I'm yeah. Thank you for bringing that back around. Is that, it to that yeah i think so i i'm yeah thank you for bringing that back around is that so there's a real stress and tension when you're not mapping the importance of particular information or you're distracted by something else and you quickly move to some to another task and you haven't quite saved the document you're working on and then it goes away like there's a stress level when that funnel that I was talking about doesn't work in a optimized way. And so the experience for many people that are, have a diagnosis or have this type of symptoms is like, what is wrong with me? How come everyone else gets their stuff done on

time? Why is it that I'm always half a step behind? I feel disheveled. And like, do they notice? Are they critiquing me? And so there is a, there's an awareness that it's not quite working the way that they would hope. And the tension between I see myself and I want to be a certain way, but I have a limitation in how I'm delivering against it is typically reserved for what's called a learning disability. So there's a high potential, but there's something choking off that potential.

And we call that a learning disability. We can also, in sport, we think about high potential and there's something that's not allowing me to reach that potential as a skill gap. So one of the skill gaps, like I talked about, would be training deep focus. Another skill gap might be medication. And a Another skill gap might be medication. And a third skill gap would be definitely working with the way that you speak to yourself. And so if nothing else from the last handful of years has been more apparent is the relationship you have with yourself is really important. And so in simple little framing is like, are you a good friend to yourself? And how do you know that? How do you treat yourself?

How do you speak to yourself? How do you take care of yourself when it's hard? How do you take care of yourself when you make a mistake? Do you have your back or you're critiquing and judging like those cold, timid souls, you know, judging the strong person in the arena? Like, so I would say that, um, I love this. I love this because it is so true for anyone that has a gap between the person they want to be and then the way they show up on a regular basis, skills, medication, meditation might be one of the skills to develop, um, as well as being aware

of the self-talk that you have with yourself. And Melissa, I want to speak right to you right now is give yourself grace, like give yourself a bit of a pass, you know, be kind to yourself in the way that you speak to yourself. And we're all just trying to figure it out. And that's both of us. So I, if I could kind of whisper that on a regular basis into your, it would be, you know, I love that word grace. It just, there's a poise and a presence. And literally it means with God. And so give yourself that connection with God that we're all just trying to figure it out. There's no perfect.

And, you know, keep being kind to yourself as you're working on getting better. Yeah, wow. You saying, telling Melissa to give herself grace just brought me back to what you said earlier when you were like giving the example and your boss telling you what to do, the potato chip bag being opened. I don't know if you said that. Something that said,

three different things happening at the same time. Maybe I just want potato chips, Melissa, I don't know. But I love that you said that all three have equal value. That was amazing to me because my brother was diagnosed with ADD and at 12 years old, watching him being diagnosed and them giving him medication and him being told that he just doesn't know how to sit down and listen. It was an aggressive approach.

No one said to him, hey, all these things that you're giving your attention to all have equal value and i think the wording alone was magical oh that's never awarded like that to him it was like boy you don't know how to sit down and pay attention and stuff so we're going to give you the medication for this and just sit still we'll talk about kids that have um a big motor yeah we call them highly spirited. And so that high spirit is special, can be very special. But it can also be disruptive in two ways to the structure of the learning environment. And maybe more importantly, there is a very sensitive window where you need to make sure you're getting the right information in. So if a math teacher is explaining math and you're not focused well enough to learn the

information that you need, math is a scaffolding process. So if you miss kind of blocks B and C and D, it's almost impossible to get to F, G. You can't keep going because of the scaffolding nature. So there is a very sensitive window that you want to give your kids the best chance to learn the information. And so there is a reason to medicate. And I'm not, I'm not a huge, I'm not aggressive with medication just in general, but there is some, um, it's worth attending to like in discerning if that's a good choice. I'll just add one more note and then we'll move on is that the label, the diagnosis label ADD or ADHD is actually wrong. It's not a deficit of attention. It's too much. You're attending to too much all the time. It's an exhaustion or a

surplus of information to our earlier part, to your point earlier. So it's not a deficit, it's a surplus of attention. And that's exhausting. Yeah. Amazing, amazing. All right, so next question is from Alejandra. Thank you for this amazing opportunity to participate in your podcast more actively.

I'd be grateful if you could answer my question. Why does society often tolerate and enable narcissistic behavior? I've experienced it firsthand with my father who has hurt me, and I decided to break my relationship with him. And by doing so, I got back to my mother, siblings, and extended family. Despite others' wishes, I'm sorry, despite others witnessing his actions, my whole family supports him due to his wealth and power. My father excels at bullying, playing the victim, and facing no consequences for his mean-spirited actions. It makes me wonder why society fails to address and denounce abuse, unfairness, and disrespect, even when it's clear that someone prioritizes their own ego over others' well-being. We must reflect upon these issues and consider how we can collectively

promote healthier relationships, foster empathy and challenge the acceptance of abusive and unfair conduct. Let's frame it first is that there is a difference between, as a psychologist when I hear that, there's a difference between NPD, narcissistic personality disorder, and narcissistic qualities or traits. And so NPD, true narcissistic personality, is relatively rare. And it's about 1%. And I'm going to check the data and I'll put it in the show notes, but it's about 1% of the US population, which is, that's, you know, one in a hundred is not a huge number. However, when we, and I want to give you some specific criteria, I'm looking

that up right now to make sure I get the exact diagnostic and statistical manual criteria for diagnosis, but as you move into the ranks of certain populations like sport or unicorn type entrepreneurship or multinational businesses and senior leaders, we might see it just a little bit more than the general population because there is a rewarding that takes place with these types of characteristics. And they're pro-social in some environments and deeply destructive in others. But to be a narcissistic, to be diagnosed as an NPD, narcissistic personality disorder, their life is a bit of a mess. And the initial insult that they've experienced in their life is so traumatic,

and there's such a fragility inside that they compensate in a way with enormous grandiosity, a huge presence that is suffocating to anybody else around them, and that's the destructive nature. But it's so difficult for them to live that they've compensated in a way of being huge. And so here's, let me just kind of read some of the characteristics so we know that it's a pervasive pattern, which is really important, of grandiosity, as we mentioned. And you need five of the following nine characteristics to meet the criteria. A grandiose sense of self-importance, check. A preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love. Isn't that interesting? And a preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited

success, power, brilliance, beauty, and ideal ideal love that sounds closely to what we ask people to think about when they think about their best yeah vision big shoot for the stars remember that part of our conversation from earlier and from our last conversation and you know so this fantasy of unlimited success is the problem. It's unlimited. A belief that he or she is special and unique and can only be understood by or should be associated with other special high status people or institutions. So if you don't have status, you can't possibly be around me. And so that's where it becomes a badgering or a belittling of somebody who doesn't present with power or status. They will make you feel as if you don't matter because the deepest

part of the narcissistic personality trait is that it's hard for them to tell the difference between you and themselves. So you are an extension of them. So like right now you're wearing a black shirt with a singer on it. And if I don't like that singer or I don't like black t-shirts, I would make you feel so bad about yourself that you would want to change it or you get pissed off and never want to be around. But if you wanted to be around, you would contort to that vitriol or that aggressiveness that I have to you and you would change it. That sounds like what Alejandra maybe has experienced. So let me just give a few more just to be clear. A need for excessive excessive admiration a sense of entitlement and interpersonally explosive behavior a lack of empathy envy of others or a belief that others are envious of him or her a demonstration of arrogant or haughty behaviors or attitudes and so

like you can see yourself in all of these right you i can see me in all of these, right? I can see me in some of these, but it's the pervasiveness of a handful of them that makes the criteria. And just to be clear, it's five of the following nine criteria. So that's just me taking a quick detour to talk about the difference between NPD and just narcissistic traits.

And how do you deal with those types of people? You got to have clear boundaries and they will not like it. So clear boundaries is how you take care of yourself. So you got to square up with an NPD and be like, I like this shirt. Sorry, you don't like it. It's not your shirt. If that's not okay with you, I don't know. Maybe we have a problem with it, you know, and you just, it's eye contact and you square up and they will not like it. They will not want to be around you anymore. So it, that type of clear boundaries and self-respect will change the relationship and the house of cards might fall apart.

So it is hard to break away from an NPD or somebody that has, let's call it four of those traits, not, you know, not the full not the full Monty, if you will. So once you're embedded with a narcissist, it's really hard to break out because it's kind of built around them. Their whole life is built around them. But that is the way through. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentus. From the moment I sat

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great science. And if you're ready to feel the difference for yourself, Felix Gray is offering all Finding Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code FINDINGMASTERY20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. Would you say, and correct me if I'm wrong here, would you say that a person with this disorder has a need and a longing to dominate

and to control the environment and to, for lack of a better word, win in every way? Okay. Now, is it, obviously it's the person's fault because I guess we're adults, we have to take accountability for our actions and whatnot. But is it completely that person's fault? Whose person? The person that suffers from that disorder that's doing that.

Or is it their fault and society's fault for creating this world where competition and being competitive is a huge thing? Like, it's almost like people get upset when kids are now getting participation awards. They're like, well, you didn't give them a participation award. In life, you compete. The minute you're born, you got to compete. You know, you're born, you gotta compete. You're always competing. We get hit over the head with competing so much that I would imagine that it can get twisted, right? And used for the wrong thing.

Like, okay, if I'm competing, I'm competing in everything. And if I'm competing in everything, that means family, that means friends, that means you're wearing a denim shirt. I don't wear denim shirts. So if I don't wear denim shirts, you shouldn't wear denim shirts either, and so forth and so on. Is it partly society's

fault? Yeah, we, there is a value for that strong human that risks at all, you know, and so that type of tonality to narcissism does get rewarded, but true NPD is different, especially if you take NPD and pair it with sociopathology and Machiavellianism. So Machiavellianism, sociopathology, and narcissism is considered the dark triad. Those are very scary individuals. A narcissist alone will just bully their way through. You do not matter.

Matter of fact, if you don't reach their standards of excellence, you will feel terrible your entire life and so there's just a um they just suck the life out of every room that they're in because their needs to be met need to be met first and so we do flame it you know but at the same time like um we choose who we get in relationships with we choose who we hire we don't always choose who we get in relationships with. We choose who we hire. We don't always choose who we work for. But at the deepest level, of course, we choose who we work for as well. All right.

So next question is from Braun. Dear Dr. Mike and O'Neal. Yeah. Shout out to you, Braun. Shout out to you. That's so fun. These AMAs have been awesome. My girlfriend and I share ideas about them back and

forth and it's very fulfilling to me and i am a 26 year old mental health counselor who got into the field due to my interest in sports performance psych i've since realized it can be tough to make the transition excuse me over to uh doing something more sport-related things that I thought. I'm trying to work potentially with a local high school, but they sort of left me hanging. I noticed when it comes to pushing myself more in my work to do what I really want, I get afraid. Afraid of burnout, afraid of finances, and maybe most of all, afraid that I'll find out

my dream of doing sports psych work is behind a wall of time, thousands of dollars of additional school and pushing myself to live a life I don't want. The fear keeps me from taking more action towards any of it. Thoughts or input on any part of this would be a true honor. What do you think the heart of that question is? Is that like how to move forward in sports psych? I think Bron's saying that, you know, there's, he wants to move forward in sports psych,

but there's so many fears that are in front of it, price wise, that it might not be the thing that he wants to do, that, yeah. I mean, it sounds like he's just saying that I want to pursue this, but I'm afraid that there's five or six things in front of it that say I shouldn't do it. Yeah. Okay. That's, that's what I thought I was hearing too. So the, the first thing is like, I really love that he and his partner hear something that we're talking about or hear a question that comes in.

And I'm hoping what people do is they try to answer it before we answer it, or they answer it afterwards in their own way. And they wrestle it down with their, with themselves or their, you know, their friends or partner that I love that aspect of this. And that's how growth happens. You got to make it real and make it your own. Now, the second part of the question is what to do about sports psych. I don't know. I had a Pete Nashak, a dear friend of mine. He's a commander for SEALS Team 5. He's retired.

And he said something that has stuck with me in a meaningful way. And he says, when, when something matters to you, you'll do whatever it takes. And so the questioning of it brings up for me, like, does it really matter? And if, if you love working with people, athletes, or people that are dedicated to a craft and you love that, um, you just, you just start and you keep going. And I don't know another way to answer that other than, yes, there's money involved, there's time involved, but the race to nowhere, that phrase is really a cool thought. Like, what are we racing towards? Like the race to nowhere.

So, and that's the condition that many kids are finding themselves in. And so I didn't have a, I didn't have a goal. I didn't have a vision of what my life would be when I started, but I did know that I fell in love with the science because I could see myself in those struggles. And, um, I wanted to practice the same skills that people that were as hungry to understand something as I was, whether that was basketball for them or something for me, it was psychology. So just keep chipping, keep chipping away. And so, I don't know, it feels like a little bit of encouragement, but also like, I'm not sure what the blockers are really. Yeah. Yeah. How would you, how would you answer that question? Oh, I would just say, go pursue your dream. Why would you, that's like saying I should wake up. If I wake up, I might stub my toe in the bed.

And if I stub my toe in the bed, it might break. And if it breaks, I mean, you're just putting a whole bunch of mights and ifs and, you know, before you even start the process, start the process and go and do it. Which I agree with you, it does lead me, it makes me question, like, do you really wanna do it? Cause you just gave 10 reasons why you think you might not wanna do it. Yeah. Before you do it which i agree with you it does lead me it makes me question like do you really want to do it because you just gave 10 reasons why you think you might not want to do it yeah before you do it when i get emails about like how to start in the profession or how to get going right um most of

the emails are asking the wrong question and they're not asking what i would consider to be the right question um most are asking like for tactics or strategy and they're asking like, how do you work? What is the best path to be able to work with the best? And I never wanted to work with the best. I wanted to work with people that were nearly or obsessed with something like they were fundamentally committed to getting better. And I, I uniquely, I don't know if this is true for other sport or performance psychologists, but I struggle with the patients of long therapy. And, um, like I want to work with people that want to roll up their sleeves and go. And so I found a unique population of people that want to go they want to go deep

they want to be honest they want to apply the insights that happen in the conversation you know at practice the next day or that afternoon and then they want to you know have a feedback loop about how it's going and i love that part of it so that's again like there's lots of excuses so you know you know, this makes me think about, you know, the last episode's thing about purpose again. And, you know, and then we talked about, you know, expressing yourself truly and being in touch with your emotions and whatnot. And it makes me think about this question Bron's asking because saying it sounds so simple. Like, okay, what's your purpose, Bron? You want to be, you know, on the sports side?

Just go do it, bro. Why would you question all these things? But again, we put all these roadblocks in our way. Like he's put in this question, he's put four before he's even started, right? It takes me back to the last episode. I mean, how do you get in touch with your feelings and express yourself truly just so you can go do the thing that you want to do and not listen to the outside sources and not listen to the inside sources that say, hey, this might not be what I want to do.

This might cost a lot of money. You know what I mean? How does one simply just go do and then stumble along the way and find out if that's what they want to do or not want to do? My wife took a real run at acting. And she reached a place where she's like,

I'm not sure if this is the right path anymore. And a super agent at the time said, do you really like to act? And she's like, yeah, I love it. Like, I love the art and the craft of it. And he said, how come you're not pursuing like local theater stuff? And she's like, yeah, that's a cool question. Right. And so like, it was fun to wrestle that down with her and like you know explore like how do you answer that question and i answer that at that time i answer the question for me as well you know which is like no it's it's a difference when you want to do it at the highest level versus like wherever you could do it and so painting on the curb you know or the sidewalk as opposed to like only painting in four galleries i don't know what that metaphor might be but so it's a cool

question and i i respect i respect that process to answer that question as well can i just say one more thing about this of course i i used to work for a really famous singer- songwriter very famous and i was having lunch with him one day and and i was at crossroad right wasn't getting much work and i was like you know i said hey um how did you know this was the right thing for you what made you stick with it and he explained it to me a couple different ways he was like i didn't start making money until my like my late 30s he was like but i'm gonna make it real simple for you it was either i was going to do this or i was going to die uh he burned the bridge burnt the boats yeah yeah burned the boats he was like there was no there was nothing else i was going to do this or i was going to die you get it there is no b plan he was like you do it you commit to it i

don't care if it takes a thousand billion years and he went back to eating his burger and it was very simple to me i was like okay this is what separates the people that just go ahead and do it from the people who don't do it but that's just so cut and dry at the same time too right i always had like the way that i did it was i didn't i didn't like that it felt like i I was going to find myself in positions of desperation as opposed to positions of inspiration. And so what I did was I like, it's a bit of a native image in my mind, a native American image, which is lots of horses. And so I'm riding one horse and I've got three or four other horses that are riding with me, but they're empty, that there's no riders on them. And I'm working to keep all of them moving in the same direction. Now, one of them I'm pretty sure is going to be a thoroughbred or a Mustang that's going to really go. I'm losing the pulse on the three, four, five different horses, the three or four or five different things that I'm doing. But they're all kind of moving in that same direction of working from the inside out, psychology based.

And so that's how it worked for me. So I don't understand burn the bridges because for me, I knew that that would create a sense of desperation. And I'm not good in that. I'm not good enough coming from a sense of desperation. And I'm not, I'm not good in that. I'm not good enough coming from a sense of desperation. And the last thing for, um, to answer this question is that I made, uh, maybe I can pass on this fundamental mistake I made is I was giving it away a lot early. And so a local high school coach would be like, Hey, can you come in and talk to our kids? And, um, mind you, this is 25 years ago. And I was like, yes, like this is great. And sports psychology was relatively new.

And I felt like, you know, this coach has taken a shot on the science and on me and like prepare, I show up and there's all the kids and they're kind of looking and they're kind of like, that's good. You know, like, well, that's good, you know? And then I was needing to eat. I was needing to build a client base. None of those kids had the money or the wherewithal or the leverage with their

family members to say, I think that we should go book sessions with Mike. It didn't work that way. And so I quickly learned that if I'm going to do more of these, and it took me too long because I was giving it away, you know, many times before I actually learned this lesson, invite the parents. That simple. Because they're like, oh, I see something for my kid. And afterwards they tug on my shirt like, hey, you know, do you have any availability? And I'm like, do I have availability? Like, it's wide open, wide open. So invite parents. Give it away. Invite parents. And there'll be a handful of people.

And then I hear my wife in my ear right now saying, you just do good work. And the whole thing kind of builds from there. I work best like that, too. I honestly, I got to burn the boats. I got to know there's nothing left. I got to fight these demons. I got to go. Because if you give me an option, I think more than likely I'll be like,

okay, I'll do this instead. Isn't it good to know yourself? It's amazing. It's amazing. Oh, God. Listen, all you out there, Braun, find yourself. Know yourself. It is true, yeah.

All right. So the next question is from Alan. Amazing podcast. Every single podcast carries a nugget that I embrace and bring into my life. Question. As a high-performing individual, resilience is something that sports soundtrack that has developed since the onset of COVID that has impacted my sleep, performance, and relationships. I can shake it when I think about pushing the thoughts out of my head, but somehow these thoughts always creep back in, and if they're not handled, they tend to take center stage. I love to push these thoughts out for good good but don't have a good strategy to do

it cool so we're talking about negative self-talk we're talking about the inner dialogue that is unproductive maybe even critical and judgmental and like kind of pulls us down i think that's what we're talking do you hear the same thing in that? Yeah. Okay. So cool. All right. The, the first, my antenna perked when I heard the word, I have pride. And now that I think this is going to be a controversial statement, but it's one of the words that I think is actually quite dangerous. And so when you say, when an adult says to a son or a daughter, I'm so proud of you. It's not about them. It's about your experience of them. And so flip it on its head, which is like to the son or daughter, like, I'm so happy

for you. I love watching you figure it out. This must be really exciting for you. How is it? Or that looks really scary. And it looks like you work through it. How did you do that? So those types of questions are more about the person, the child. So pride as a deadly

sin, pride as about me, pride as about a bit of an exterior presenting and not a deep feeling about appreciation or whatever. So I hear that word and I go, I wonder how that is. I wonder how Alan is experiencing pride of being optimistic. It's an interesting framing, those two words. I'm proud that I'm optimistic as opposed to something different than that. So that's the first one I would just explore. What does that mean for you? And I would have that question with him. The second thing is we all have talk tracks that at one point helped us and now no longer serve us. So if that talk track is quote unquote negative or unproductive or critical or judgmental

or destructive in some kind of way is once you recognize that it's not working, that is in and of itself an important part of the puzzle to solve. Like, I caught it. I got it. I'm aware. Nice job. And so once you're aware and you can appreciate how hard it is to be aware, which it sounds

like he is, appreciate how hard it is to be aware, now you've got an entree into doing something with it. So if you're not aware, you're kind of stuck in the mud, now you've got an entree into doing something with it. So if you're not aware, kind of stuck in the mud, if you will, once you become aware, you have at least two choices. One is to go, why do I keep saying this to myself? Why am I so hard on myself? So now it's like I'm pulling myself back down into a spiral. Or once I'm aware, I say, nice job. I'm so glad I caught it. Let me choose something a bit more productive. Now that productive is if you're familiar with or like the productive type of thinking is at the surface of your memory or your available recall, it's easier

to say or find those types of languages or those types of words to choose. So that's why we talk about in sports psych, you know how you want to speak to yourself and practice that. How do you practice it? Write it down and then think about those types of thoughts when you cross a threshold before there's stress on board. And then that sounds almost like academic or silly or like practicing the way you speak to

yourself but all you're doing is becoming more familiar with the ways that you would like to speak to yourself and so let me let me just recap celebrate when you catch that you're speaking to yourself in a way that's not serving you and see if you can flip the script see if you can work with it and one way to work with it is find a new narrative, a new way of speaking to yourself. Another option in the positive or productive direction is to go, okay, that's cool. Let me just drive all of my attention to the task. So I'm not going to prop myself up or do any kind of self-narrative self-talk stuff, but I'm going to give myself completely

to the task at hand because we can only attend to one thing at a time. Whatever that one thing is, it occupies the attentional abilities that we have. So if you're pouring all of your attention into the task that you're trying to solve or do, that's awesome. That's essentially where we want to go. If you need a little bit of a pump me up or a self-talk narrative that, that can help me get to full absorption of the task. That's cool too. But product unproductive, destructive, critical,

all those types of thinking just kind of tighten us up. They pull us away from really going for it. And I'm stoked that he's, he's recognizing it. And you just, it's practice.'s recognizing it. And it's practice. It's practice. And it's also like those thoughts work for me at some point. They're part of me. I adopted them.

I learned them from somebody else. I figured them out on my own. That's okay. They're just not working for me anymore. So I love that you said that because before I shared the same issue Alan had I talked negative to myself and what I did was I wrote down every great thing that I wanted to do and who I wanted to become I put it in my note section in my phone and every morning when I wake up every morning when I wake up I would look at it so much to the point now that I can recite it off the top

of my head. And I say it every morning when I get up, but I used to say it mindlessly because I thought, let me just say it and it'll happen because, you know, you speak things into existence. And at one point I realized that I can't only just say this but i have to visually see it i have to see it happening you know and i would go through the list like i part of my list i would say i want a frank lloyd wright home overlooking silver lake reservoir so then i would ride past the reservoir and look at frank lloyd wright homes right um i want a loft in new york city i'm looking at lofts in new york city and i'm staring at them i'm visualizing lofts in New York City and I'm staring at them. I'm visualizing lofts in New York City and me sitting in the loft. And I started to understand that,

yo, I need to, I need to, I need to really see these things. And slowly and surely, not the loft ring load right home yet, but other things on the list started happening. So much so I didn't realize that I was asking for them anymore they just started happening and one day I was driving in my car and I looked at the list and I was like oh my god I asked I asked for this car on my list cross that off you know oh my god I asked for this on my list cross that off and I found those things just happening because I I made it a part of who I am. That really works. At first, I thought it was crazy, but that really works. Right. Yeah. Is that a question? No, no, no. I'm just saying, I don't even know why I said, right. I just said, right. Yeah. Right. So yeah, I, I hear

that and I go, if it's working, cool. I don't know the science that I could point to, to say how that works, that I would, I would stretch to say that when you're more familiar with something, it's less scary. It's part of the way that you think about things. There's some stuff in there. Maybe the science is legit and I'm just not familiar with it. And this is what I love about our community. I'm hoping somebody can point to what you just said and point to the science. I do know the science around imagery and visualization is really important. And where I go with it is not for goal attainment. Where I go with it is for self-talk. And so when you see something and you can embody and feel it now, now, now you've just

added a layer to it. That's really cool. So let's do the Frank Lloyd Wright home. I don't think because you see it and you've looked it up that now you're going to figure out how to earn whatever or be in like, I don't, I don't know. I don't know how that works and I'm open to it. That's not how I use imagery and or self-talk. I use self-talk as a narrator for being closer to the person I want to be in alignment with the values that, that matter to me. Cause I need to speak to myself in alignment with the values that support me to go for it, whatever that it is. And that's kind of like the, the, the, the Holy grail for the, the way that it works for me, right. Values back in myself and going for it. And so that I want to be great at myself talk for that reason.

And also like, if I speak to myself in a certain way, then I know I can also line that up to like joy and happiness in the straining and striving as opposed to like a quiet suffering. So imagery though, let me just go back to imagery. Imagery in sports psychology is a very powerful tool and it's one that's under practice and maybe not well understood. But when we see ourselves doing something in the future, when we see ourselves doing something well, there is research that would suggest that not only does that help lay neurological paths and tracks to be expert at something, if you're seeing yourself being an expert, meaning like when you

take a jump shot, tuck your elbow, snap your wrist, you know, see the ball go in, right. And do that over and over and over again in your mind, you're not spending physical energy. You're also doing it quote unquote, ideally. And so your elbow is not drifting out. It's staying grooved in a pattern. And Gino Smith, he's the starting quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks, talks a lot about that, about mental imagery in our episode of being able to see it beforehand. Felix Baumgartner, who I helped on the Red Bull Stratus program, he jumped from 130,000 feet. The brightest minds in aerospace weren't sure if his arms and legs were going to rip off as he passed through the sonic boom.

And I'm making light of something very serious, that he spent so much time seeing himself be on that platform at 130,000 feet and taking his first leap from the stratosphere down into Earth because he had to get it right. And Luke Akins who jumped from a, this is a project I worked on where he jumped from 30,000 feet. That's what, like we're jetliners travel at, um, into a 16 story net that he and his friends built without a parachute. And so the amount of time that we spent on seeing excellence and not leaving it up to chance was like, of course we're going to do it. So you can do that in any facet of your life about how to be a great lover, how to be a great partner, how to be a you harness it for something that matters to you in a meaningful way in the future, we start to lay neurological pathways so our body becomes more familiar with it.

So we're likely to do that action well in the future. And the second thing we found is that it also supports myelinization. So myelinization is, it's like the fat that surrounds the bundle of nerves. And it's a little bit like the rubber coating or tubing on an electrical wire. So your nervous system is like an electrical wire. And the more fat and tubing you have around that, the faster that impulse travels through the nerve.

So imagine if you had a wire in your home and it had like a bunch of holes in the rubber protective sheath, that that electrical impulse would spray out. And it's not going to shock you, but it's not efficient. And so imagery has been associated with increasing the myelinization process around the bundle of nerves that are associated with excellent movement. Think about that. That is incredible.

So when you see it, you're laying neurological pathway and you're also increasing the bundling and the fat tissue around the nerve called myelinization. This is also why, as I'm on a little tirade here, this is also why making sure your diet supports the substrate of myelinization, which is omegas, omega oils, fish oils, if you omega-3 in particular, that that is one of the main makings of myelinization.

So if you're doing physical work to have the pathway be ideal, the neurological pathway and the muscle, there's no muscle memory. It's just neurological pathway. Muscles don't have memory. Nerves do. But you do all this physical training and you don't have the right nutrition to lay that pathway. It's like screaming into the wind. It's a good exercise, but it's not going to carry in the right way. Did that metaphor work in any way? No, no, no.

It made so much sense. Because I was going to say like spitting in the wind, but I want to be like, okay. So if you do physical work with precision and you do mental work with precision and you've got the right nutrition to support the myelization, you got a winner. It's just amazing how all those things are tied in together. Yeah, it isn't it in the past it didn't seem like it was like that but yeah it's extremely cool so okay so like what i said before about laying out the imagery to get the frank lloyd right home or whatnot um you're just saying that it's more well served when i i take it off getting that for lack of a better word, materialistic thing and put it on being a better person.

And then those things are just avenues. Okay. Yeah. Good point. Because I, too, like to muse with my wife or myself about ideas and images that are stimulating. And I become more familiar with it. I do like that. And I think that that has value to me. I don't know the science. If you see it, it'll happen. Yeah. And I don't

think that that's how, that's not what I'm suggesting. What I'm suggesting is cool. You've got some inspiration. You're more familiar with it. It doesn't seem foreign. You've got clarity around what it could look like. And you're seeing yourself in that home or whatever. Okay. That's cool. That's, that's all good. What I'm saying is spend more time on like, okay, for me to do that, when I go to an audition and you're in, if I was in your profession, I would spend more time using my mind to see myself be fluid and present and expansive and, and grounded and, you know, whatever the dimensionality. So I would spend my time there because that has a material impact. I would imagine if you landed, I don't know,

a 10% more auditions or 2% more auditions or 50% more auditions that you would have different choices that you could make over time to buy a house. And that house, obviously, it's important. It would be great if it was inspired, frankly. Right. So I just take it down to the behaviors that you want to groove. Gotcha. As opposed to familiarity with a dream later, but no pathway forward. See.

Thank you for the clarity. No, that's a great example. Because, yeah, I do see myself just booking a job and make a lot of money. Come on. I appreciate that. We have folks here in the community that, you know, I hope they heard that. Let's go. Well, Dr. Mike, man, you know, listen, thank you for having me again.

This is amazing. I feel the same. And so I appreciate you. I appreciate our community. These are not easy questions. And so I love our honesty and I love theirs as well. I love it as well. I look forward to this again.

Thank you. Thank you. All right. That's a wrap for another AMA on Finding Mastery. I want to thank you for tuning in. And one more thank you to our title sponsor for this episode. It would not be possible without them, Carol Bike. And again, I really love their

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