Modern Wisdom - #452 - Dr Michael Gervais - The Art Of High Performance Psychology

Episode Date: March 26, 2022

Michael Gervais is one of the world's leading high performance psychologists. The Seattle Seahawks, Gold Medalist Kerry Jennings, Microsoft, AT&T, Amazon and Felix Baumgartner the guy who jumped from the edge of space all have one thing in common - they need a high performance mindset. Michael's job for over 20 years has been coaching the world's top musicians, athletes and executives to squeeze every last drop out of their potential. Expect to learn how to cope with intense emotions during a Super Bowl Final, why your limits are so much further than you know, how Michael saved the RedBull Stratos mission from failure, how to deal with the pressure of others' opinions, the importance of having a personal philosophy and much more... Sponsors: Join the Modern Wisdom Community to connect with me & other listeners - https://modernwisdom.locals.com/ Get 10% discount on everything from BioOptimizers at https://magbreakthrough.com/modernwisdom (use code MW10) Get 83% discount & 3 months free from Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/MODERNWISDOM (use code MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Check out Michael's website - https://findingmastery.net/  Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello everybody, welcome back to this show. My guest today is Michael Jivey, he's one of the world's leading high performance psychologists. The Seattle Seahawks, Gold Medalist Kerry Jennings, Microsoft, AT&T, Amazon, and Felix Baumgartner, the guy who jumped from the edge of space, all have one thing in common. They need a high performance mindset. Michael's job for over 20 years has been to coach the world's top musicians, athletes and executives to squeeze every last drop out of their potential. Today, expect to learn how to cope with intense emotions during a Super Bowl final, why your limits are so much further than you know, how Michael saved the Red Bull's stratus mission from failure,

how to deal with the pressure of other's opinions, the importance of having a personal philosophy, and much more. Don't forget that you can join the Modern Wisdom Locals community with over 3,000 other people who listen to the show, and they have discussions about episodes and stuff that they've seen or watched or heard online, and you can join now for free. And if you want to support the show, you can also do it through there as well. That's modernwisdom.locals.com's modernwisdom.locals.com. Modernwisdom.locals.com. But now, please welcome Michael Jivey, welcome to the show.

Stoke to be here with you Chris, thank you. Am I right in saying that you worked with Felix Baumgartner? You are right. That Red Bull Stratos thing was one of the most inspiring periods that I think I've ever seen. Can you tell people the story how you got working with them and and what happened throughout that process? It was it's one of the most meaningful projects I've ever been on so we can start by just level setting that I think for everybody that was involved in this project it was life setting that I think for everybody that was involved in this project, it was life impacting. And so the origin story was I was part of the Red Bull High Performance program that was being built out at that time.

And we're probably about three, four years into it. And I got tapped by the head of High Performance Andy Walsh. And so he tapped me on the shoulders like, hey, you know, the Red Bull status program, let's come to a halt. So what do you mean? And he says, yeah, you know, like we've been at this thing like three and a half years,

and Felix can't continue. What do you mean? Well, he cried. And I'm not sharing anything, Chris, that's not public. Okay. So that's very clear about that. But Felix is in the airport airport and he's like totally broken down that he can't handle moving forward because he's he's just terrified. Well, it makes sense. You know, he was none of the none of the teammates were investing in his internal capabilities. And so this is a project that's never been done before.

Hard and crusty old dogs that really have been around as test pilots and aerospace engineers and like just a hardened crew. And they built the capsules, the technology, they had the strategy dialed in, they had everything like to nails. And then when it came to the internal capabilities, what had taken place is that he raised his arms like two years and like, hey, my chest feels tight,

I'm breathing kind of funny when I'm in the suit. And so the suit is a special customized suit from NASA that actually I don't know if it was from NASA, but it was a specialized suit. There was two of them. They're about $2 million each. And I just felt tight. So they said, oh, okay, well, see if we can make some modifications in the suit. So right, we go to Tech and Kit first. He waves his arms again about two and a half years in and goes, still, I'm breathing funny when I'm in the suit and they go, right, let's get your fitness up. And so he was doing all the right fitness stuff

and he's like, this isn't it, like I'm fit. And then so it comes back and it's like, right, I can't do this anymore. Like, I'm terrified. And so that's when they brought me in. And so, you know, he had developed, quote unquote, claustrophobia. And as adults, developed, quote unquote, claustrophobia. And as adults, we don't just develop claustrophobia,

but he had developed that. And they bring me in because this XX millions of dollars project, brightest minds in aerospace, team, four years in of these minds and this money were now at a screeching hope because we lacked the internal skills of the person, the only person that was going to go to 130,000 feet and jump from the edge of space. When the brightest minds in aerospace were not sure if he passed through a double sonic boom because he was definitely, well, most likely going to do the speed of sound that his arms and legs would rip off.

And so,'m kind of... I'm gonna... I'm gonna... I'm gonna... I'm gonna... I'm gonna... I'm gonna... I'm gonna...

I'm gonna... I'm gonna... I'm gonna... I'm gonna... I'm gonna... I'm gonna... I'm gonna... I'm gonna...

I'm gonna... I'm gonna... I'm gonna... I'm gonna... I'm gonna... I'm gonna... I'm gonna... I'm gonna... I'm gonna... and he's terrified, yes, and there's a lot of pressure, a lot of money on the line. Correct? Yeah, I'm in. This sounds perfect. And I say that glibly, but you know, it's as simple as applying good science is where my craft begins and ends. And so the craft of high performance psychology has really anchored in the story traditions

of science and laboratories that require some noodling to make that laboratory science come to life in real world and certainly in high-stakes environments. So that's where I entered the picture and we just worked from the inside out and invested in that part of his capabilities and made some significant investments. And the rest is history, is it so? Can you go through any of the techniques that you used with him? Yeah, there's a documentary. It was a recreation documentary that ESPN plus did where we did.

It was basically he and I going through the work that we did. It was really cool. It was one of the first things on ESPN plus. I can't remember the name of the show, but it was really good, and a lot of this stuff is in there. But the essence of it is systematic desensitization. Flooding is also a more common term in psychology. And so it's taking systematically the acute stressor, the thing that you have some sort of fear panic over, and then working backwards to be able to bite size, digest or metabolize in the smallest amount of fear relative to that panic and then latering up latering up latering up. And the way we do that is first you figure out what the thing is that somebody is afraid

of. And in this case, we couldn't work from a managing fear. We had to work from extinguishing fear, which is a totally different ballgame, right? Well managing fear. Well managing fear is like I'm working with it, but in that level of hostility, we need to extinguish it so that he knows that he has completely worked. Okay, I'll take it in other terms,

like managing the fear of holding a snake if a snake is the thing versus like, no, no, listen, I'm good with the snake. So that's what extinguishing the fear looks like in more pedestrian language or example. And so we had to work from that place. And so first you work in your imagination, and then you work in low stress environments, and then you work in rugged, and then you work up into hostile. And so the way that we did that was imagination,

then the suit alone on the ground, then the suit in the capsule on the ground, having to manage the oxygen gas exchange, because if you get that exchange wrong while you're in the suit in a capsule on ground, that's one thing, you open the door. But if you're up above a couple thousand feet, we got problems, and he was 130,000 feet.

And then we did it in a pressurized capsule where it's not the real thing. It's still rubber bullets, but stakes are higher. Stakes are higher, you know, for a lot of reasons. And so we just gated that. And the best part of the story, Chris, was like, the crusty old dogs, you know, like God love them.

We're sitting around the table when I first got introduced to the team and they're looking at me and their size and every part of the up. And then one of the old dogs kind of kind of pushes his chair back and he goes, okay, Dr. Jure, no disrespect. And I'm going, okay, here comes the disrespect, right? And he looks and he goes, I haven't do it for a long time. I've never seen anybody come back from this. No disrespect, but we are not going to have blood on our hands.

And so I don't know what you're going to do, what you think you're going to be able to do to convince him. I also go, okay. But the stakes are way too high and I'm not into it. And then so you look around the table and there's like six other, again, legends in the field of pilot testing and aerospace like not in their head. Like, yep, that's right. And so I go, yeah, me too. head like, yep, that's right. And so I go, yeah, me too. And then like, well, what are you going to do? I said, well, what do you need to see for you to know that he has the capabilities? And they said he needs to be he can't he can't be in the suit for more than 30 minutes without like hitting the panic button. He needs to be in it in it up in space, near space for six and a half hours, up to six and a half hours. So we got to see that.

Great, no problem. All right, sounds like a reasonable goal. Let's go to work. And so if we couldn't do it, on land for six and a half hours, why would anyone want to send them up into the hostile environment of the edges of space? So that was the mission. And this is not a stunt. This was something that actually had the reason bright minds in aerospace were invested is because if we are going to get off this planet, if we need to, that we need to also understand

what happens to the human body if we need to press the eject button at around 120, 130, 140,000 feet. Can the human body withstand that type of free fall? And so the answer is yes and no, but we needed to understand that for the future of space travel. Rory Sutherland, vice chairman of Ogilvy advertising, he says, Silicon Valley sees everything as an optimization problem. What he means is that when you're looking at reducing the number of passenger complaints during security at London Heathrow, they were talking about how can we narrow the aisles and speed up the number of security checkers.

And Rory came in and just added 30 minutes from here, 45 minutes from here, 60 minutes from here, wait, things, and 90% of the complaints went away. What I'm seeing, similarly in your situation, was that a lot of the engineering problems were focused on first, and the inner workings, the human psychology side of Felix was kind of left to be spit and soar dusted into operation, right? Like, grit your teeth and we'll get through it, type tank. And I think that it's a really, the reason that I wanted to hear about this story is it does feel like the meshing of two worlds. At around about the time that this is happening as well, right? You know, a sport like rugby, which now is a full on professional sport only 20 years ago when England won the World Cup the first time, that the guys would have jobs on the side. These dudes wouldn't be full time in rugby and

if they were full time, they'd be drinking, they'd be going out partying. So yeah, to see old world clashing with new, I think we're seeing this in marketing and advertising, in consumer behavior and behavioral economics in sports psychology, performance, music, all this stuff. And you're right on the money, is that the idea is that that I was nodding to earlier that you picked up on is that for whatever reason, when we're thinking about high performance, the people who set that table, it was set 40 years ago. And the avant-garde coaches and principals were like,

yes, psychology is important, but put that at the end of the table for right now. We'll keep a chair there, and those are the progressives. And they're curious to have good conversations about the psychology of the performers, but never implemented in a systemic way. And now what we're seeing is that chair is sitting right next to the head coach or GM or President Vice President CEO in meaningful ways about, okay, the thing that makes us special is the way that we work. It's not necessarily the widget when we're talking about human capabilities and human potential,

whether it's big business or big sport, it's the humanness of it and the ingenuity that comes from that. So that doesn't lab. Yes, the environment's really important. There's two ways we work inside out and outside in. And if we're over indexing on outside in technology, you know, environmental conditions, which are all really important, but not watering or hydrating from the inside out, those companies that do that massive. But that's got the competitive advantage, right?

This is a beautiful thing about looking at a sport or having a chart in music. You can see the outcomes are there. The people that have the best performance based on their preparation are the ones that are going to perform the best when it comes to game day. It's exactly it. Yeah. And whether it's sport or business, and right now it's really fun to take a look at what's happening as from this lenses is that the great resignation is basically people saying, I'm not working like this anymore.

Are you kidding me? Like I don't know my kids, you know, because I'm working eight to ten every day and I'm trying to cram in a few hours or a few minutes for dinner and wake up and drop off and tucking in and like, no, I'm not doing this anymore. And that resignation is basically hand waving to say there's a better way to do life. And the leaders of company and the leaders of sport that are able to say, wait a minute, the extraction model is busted. Let's get into the unlocking business.

And that's where I'm placing my efforts is to, you know, people are saying, no, no, no, I can't give anymore. I'm tired. I'm fatigued. My stress level is beyond. And I'm working my ass off for this thing, but I need some kind of reprieve. And then what happens next year is like in sport teams, it's like younger athletes, more interesting contracts happening in business.

It's, you know, we've got a 20% growth arc, you know, year after year. It's like, wait a minute. And so, which is all good. I mean, those things are really part of the competitive landscape. And if you don't invest, we call it front-logging. If you don't front-load the psychological skills, those stressors happen, the demands of the moment take place, and people go, I actually don't have the goods

to stay the long game here. I find it very interesting. someone asked me a question you today about about front loading discomfort and working out what your tolerances are. And Jordan Peterson had the same insight that working out how hard you can work in your 20s is a great way to be able to determine your capacity later through life. Because it's almost like you've pushed your limits so hard that you know where the sweet spot is, but it's still sometimes difficult for people to work out whether they are slowing down because they're leaving something on the table and they're selling themselves short or whether they're slowing down because they're genuinely

close to burnout. How do you advise the people that you work with to distinguish between the two, leaving it on the table and selling themselves short or, you're nearly about to have a breakdown. You need to back off the gas. I think it's yes, Anne. I think it's both of those Anne one more that I'll add, which is most, there's like 15 things I want to say to you, but most, most people do not have an accurate understanding of what the edges and staying at the edges feel like, so that deep, nauseatedly focused

effort and attention at the edge and being able to stay there for longer than you thought possible is how we build capacity, psychological, physiological, spiritual, and so most people don't have that understanding because one, it's overwhelming and two, it is exhausting. And so in this conservation of energy, we know that the edge is where we want to get to, but we're not sure how much other expenditure we're gonna have on ourselves throughout the day or the years. So we play it safe and small. And so to the earlier inside about the 20s is where you go to the edge, I would say, yeah, I like that idea. However, it's when you get this right, which is run to the edge, stay there longer than you thought possible that you could. And by the way, people can do a lot more.

Like honestly, people can do a lot more than they think. And then you recover intelligently. And in that running to the edge and recovering intelligently, there's a physics to that that we can talk about. Every unit of stress for unit of recovery. But where the physics breaks down, and this is why I love psychology, the beautiful science of psychology is that it's invisible. And when we run to the edge and we're returning to high ground for recovery, the amount

of energy that is spent on maladaptive or thinking patterns that don't create vibrancy is a problem. So it's like we're running, we're running to and recovering from with a leaky bucket. But when we invest in our psychology, not only just to dance at the edge of stress, but the climb there and the retreat back, we need that bucket to be rock solid. So, what am I saying? The way that you think matters. And unless you do a deep investigation in how you think and how you feel and how thoughts and emotions work together, it just gets really tiring.

And because it's the Leaky Bucket experience. And so that's where I get really excited about this beautiful science of psychology for sure. What does that look like in practice? Someone coming back to the recovery appropriately? Well, the physics of it, like what are the activities of recovery or the returning back? That's the thinking. They're thinking patterns.

Yeah, yeah. So it's as simple as, God, that was great. You know, like, holy shit, I did some stuff today now. I can't wait, you know, like I'm one step closer to being the human I want to be. And this is flat out. This is what I'm doing. You know, it's so it's like mapping your thinking patterns. And those are just squibby little examples, but it's matching your thinking pattern with your purpose and the vision that you hold for yourself. And then if you can have clarity of your guiding principles, your first principles in life, you are a philosophy, if you will,

and I'm not throwing around words, slappily, purpose, philosophy, and vision, or materially important and separate ideas. And if you can have those three held close to the heartbeat of who you are, and you're nurturing those with every micro decision you have, oh man, I mean, that's the type of alignment that creates the fly.

We all know most people are looking for. Why do you think it's important to have a personal philosophy? It's the guiding principles. So personal philosophy is that simple. It's like, what are your first principles in life? And it is the way that when you're clear about it, and I can give you a couple examples in a minute, when you're clear about it, choices and microchoises become clear. And so here's a, here's, let's do Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Okay, we could do Gandhi, we could do Mother Teresa, we could do Helen Keller, we could go on and on with examples. Let's do Dr. King though, is that we know his philosophy, because every room he went into his thoughts, his words that he would use to express those first principles, his thoughts, and his actions were lined up towards equality, justice for all. And it would be a surprise if that wasn't what he was going to talk about at dinner. And so that mechanism is that he had clarity.

And that's why there's no rival. There's no competitor for introspection. There's no competition when it comes to the investigation and sometimes the interrogation to look deeply within and become clear about first principles. And once you know those first principles, and you can hold them close to the heart beat, close to the sun, you know, your essence,

then the choices that you make become so much easier. And it's not like you don't wander off, make some wild choices and mistakes or whatever, and like lose your way from time to time, but there's something to bounce up against. And for a long time, that's what religion held for many people. It's what the AA community holds for people.

And it's also something that we can each do as a family, we can each do as an organization, and we can each do as an individual. What are your first principles? And if you don't know, I'm, and I'm competing against you. I love it. That's great. Let me take out the deep water. You just don't know you're about to get drowned, right? Because you don't know your first principles. You're going to be flailing your arms with the stressors that come from the deep water. People that know like a deep waters where I find

myself, like deep waters where I go, like that's what we're trying to do here, but I'm going to do it in this way. I'm not going to grab your ankles and hold you under water. That's not how I'm going to do the deep waters, but I'm just going to swim next to you faster and then maybe you think, you know, like I'm being silly here, but like that's the idea of knowing the first principles. Practically, how would people develop their first principles and their philosophy? Go to work. No one can do it for you, right? Like this might be a meditation process, it might be a

written down process, but you got to get it out of your head for the most part. So nobody can do this work for you. When you know it, you know it. And so my challenge to folks that I work with is like start with pages, then get it down to 25 words, then we'll let it down to maybe just a handful of words or sense. I mean, Jesus got it down to a word, right? Love. Buddha got it down to loving kindness. Okay, those are pretty cool.

Dr. King got it down pretty simply, right? Justice. You know, I mean, equality. Like what, it's not that complicated. Like what do you stand for? And then your purpose bounces off of that. And we know the science of purpose, right? I'm sure you and your community are really clear

on the science of purpose, just how powerful that is. But you can't make this stuff up. You can't borrow somebody else's purpose. You can't borrow somebody else's philosophy. You can't borrow somebody else's philosophy. You might be inspired by it and go, oh my God, I love that. And then it's got to become metabolized for it to be yours. And then you become the animation of that. And when you are the animation of that, everywhere you go, you become one of the most powerful

people on the planet because most people don't do it. Most people are not true. The tuning fork is not accurate. It's off-pitch because what most people are doing, Chris, is that they are looking to the outside world for confirmation of their internal experience in life. So they're outsourcing. Am I okay? What do you think? Is that okay? Does this look okay? Are we okay? It's this constant mechanic, not mechanic,

but mechanistic way of seeing if you're okay is checking into the micro expressions and the body language of others. Speaking of that, you work with some very high profile performers, a musician who's show makes millions of dollars a night, or top flight athletes going for world championships and medals and stuff. How do you advise them to deal with the pressure of other people's expectations and opinions? Because we all feel this, but we're now talking about the people that feel this

as much as it's probably possible to feel this. Well, we're working to dissolve it. We're working to dissolve pressure and kind of change that game. And so pressure, for most people, is the experience of, I need to think or do faster than I think I can do, you know, and it's kind of that simple. It's like this walls closing in around me, whether it's mental, emotional, or physical. And so there are ways that when you

invest in your psychology, you can dissolve pressure. It doesn't mean you're going to dissolve it and extinguish it like we were talking about that particular fear earlier, but it is possible to do that work. So how do you do that? You become very familiar with how your thoughts and emotions work together. And I have asked this question thousands of times, the NFL draft picks, just about every guest on the Finding Mastery podcast is where does pressure come from. And world's best hands down over and over again say the same thing from within. Okay. You know, so then how do we, how do we create an internal structure that you're working to master that? And most people say, I like intensity, I like the way it feels to be on the edge,

but sometimes it gets the best in me. Oh, okay, so we're not actually trying to like remove stress from your life. We're actually trying to amplify it purposefully and have all the internal skills to map up against it so that you can get free. You can play, you know, you have the space, the internal space to be able to eloquently adjust

on the razor's edge of something that is consequential or rugged or, you know, pressures is a bit of a luxury as we've come to learn. So being able to eloquently adjust in those environments is really cool. That's the mark of mastery. One of the things that I see a lot patterns that people tell me about is that as they're growing, as they're developing, they start to feel more lonely. So a lot of self-work and personal development is done in solitude. It takes you further away from the thought patterns which help you to connect with the people that you used to know as well.

What's your insight there? What's your advice to people that are struggling with that loneliness as they start to level themselves up as they start to go further? You got it. You're on it. There's a dark side to high performance. There's a dark side to exploring your potential. There's a dark side to mastery. I feel like we're not quite ready as a community to completely talk about that, but loneliness is one of those tenants. And it doesn't mean it's bad. It doesn't necessarily mean that it can be as the dark side, but there's a yin and yang to all experiences in life if you can pull way up and see the perspective. But how do you expect people to relate if you're the only person that is submitted ever? Like how do you?

How, I mean, there's a lack of words to describe those colors that you saw and the smells that you experience and that level of feared fatigue. And so here's the loneliness is a problem but what happens to most people is that they come from their summit, you know? And they return back to the average, because they want to be part of something. And so it's that inner struggle. It's a civil war. Do I go back to the summit and be alone and have that sense of isolation?

Or do I stay here in the comfort of my loved ones? And yes, physically there's the metaphor that will hold up, but more importantly, it's emotionally and mentally. And so, I love this struggle. I think that this is materially important for people to examine their life and say, what am I doing? Am I living in alignment with my capabilities? Am I truly front-loading and investing in the skills for this small 80 to 100 years that I have here on this planet? Am I

maximizing the way that I would love to live? And we haven't touched a surface yet. We haven't really scratched it. There's so much more to go. It's so... Would you have to be willing to touch a dark side and know how to stay in it longer than you thought possible? What are some of the other prices that people pay

that we might not know about? Yeah, there's an agitation and a scratchiness. There's a loneliness like we talked about. There is a there's an expensive part of it because not everyone reaps financial rewards to be able to be an explorer of themselves or the edges of the human experience. There is an agitation that comes with it because it's hard to solve it. It's like weaving a tapestry. And I don't think it's a puzzle because a puzzle suggests that there's borders and edges.

But it's more like a tapestry that's being sometimes scrapped together and sometimes thoughtfully put together that is materially important. And so that's hard to do. There's a resourcefulness required that other people may have not been able to see how to pull ideas and people and structures together. So there's a lonely work and an aloneness. Those are two separate things.

And nobody does the extraordinary alone. So there is an aloneness. There is aloneness. But it's too complicated. We need each other. And I'm talking about human flourishing in whatever capacity that you might use your imagination could be sport, business whatever is that to align people in the unique way to create that two plus two is 22 not four that that to be able to do that is hard because you've got to

Open up literally open up the Mechanisms that most people work from which is safety. You got to open that up and when you do that, it's amazing but those are some of the difficult. And then you've got time constraints, money constraints, you've got other constraints that are normal for all of us. You got risk and rules and so on. One of the main tensions that I keep on seeing at the moment is between a fear of insufficiency being used as a driver and a desire for more being used as a driver, filling the whole devoid with accomplishments.

And that can, it's really, it's nefarious, right? Because it still can be an intrinsic reward. It can still be an intrinsic driver. It's not necessarily something that you're getting from other people, but it's driven by a fear of insufficiency as opposed to a desire to maximize yourself. And this is a conversation that I keep on having with people that I know that are high performers, that if you dig down deep enough, there is a kernel of running away from something that they fear as well as running towards something that they want.

And the relative ratio of those two, at oftentimes, is a huge indicator of their quality of life, and how much they enjoy their pursuits. Very cool, because there's two things when you say that that resonate. One is in 1980, 1990, or early 2000s, it was about, you know, being your best, but that, you know, self-help industry. But the thought wasn't completed. It's for what reason? What reason are you investing in you so that you can help others do the same? And so it's your best so that you can be a, you can create a rising tide for others. And so that's where we start to get into the, the, the more ancient ends forward thinking at the same time, parts of humanity. It's, it's to create the rising tide. And

then the other piece that when you mention that is that I think it's going to sound really simple, but it's the relationship you have with experience. That's at the center of this whole thing of life. It's the relationship that you have with experience. And so it's nothing outside of you changes you. It's only the way that you work with experience. And so it's nothing outside of you changes you. It's only the way that you work with that experience, your relationship with it, and your relationship with it is met by the quality of your philosophy,

your unique philosophy by the quality of your internal psychological skills. And we haven't invested here yet, as a nation, as a humanity, really, we have not invested properly here. So the relationship with experience is materially important when we wanna oversimplify what we're trying to do here. What did you learn from working with the Seattle Seahawks

about coping with intense emotions? It's a very intense sport. They've been to the absolute top of it. That's something I think as well that people wish that they had more capacity with. Something very intense happens and they want to be able to deal with it. Yeah.

Like being there, I was with the team for nine years and we got to win a Super Bowl and lose a Super Bowl, both dramatic, both amazing. And emotions are, let's start at the top, like emotions are one of the very special parts of being human. There's a difference between emotions and feelings, right? So emotions are the physiological structure of the way that you interpret something. And feelings is the way that those physiological experiences are take place. So the feeling of something and the emotions are related but separate. And it's a unique quality that we have as humans to have this part of our experience be

absolutely germane and we're not very good at it. Especially like the sandbox I grew up in was like, a suck it up kid. You know, like, are you crying? You're not crying, are you? What do you do? What? Come on, get it together, dude. You know, like it was like a different sandbox than the way that I want to play now, which is like, yeah, I'm fucking feeling it. What's the problem? You know, like, I want to feel everything with my wife, with my son, with my co-workers, with my partners. I want to feel everything.

I don't want to just be happy. I mean, do you want anything, like, just to be muted? Because we got a range of emotions, and happy is just one. And so, when you ask about that, the idea was to, that the Seattle Seahawks is to invest in their inner life so that we have range. And when you know you have range, you can go freely into all environments. And so if you don't have range, well, like I don't have range in basketball, played, you know, a little bit here and there and whatever, but if I'm going to go, UCLA

is known for one of the universities in the States, they're known for great pickup basketball games in the summer. The greats, and you know you know, like, stuff and curry, and show up in this gym. And I don't know if Stefan is still playing there, but like, greats would show up and play. I don't have that range. I can't just say, hey, give me the rock. But I might be able to go to a local place and play some pickup, but I don't have the range to go freely. What's wonderful about psychology is that when you invest, you can go freely anywhere. And most people don't have

that range. So much so that we show up to a dinner party and we're nervous. We show up to give us speech. God help us. It's the number one fear for humans. Why would giving a speech be so dangerous? What do you think Chris? Well, I think Ancestral it's because if you were to perform in front of the tribe and you were to mess up That would lower your standing status is one of the key Indicators of your success for reproduction and survival if you do something stupid in front of the chieftain and 50 people around the campfire, then you look dumb.

I think that's why it's wide into us. Hey, man. And if you get kicked out of that tribe, we got problems, right? And so that it's the modern day saber to tiger, if you will, is what other people will think of us. Fear of people's opinions. Fopo, as we call it. And so Foupeau is like the number one constrictor

of one's potential. It's easy to work with. You think that it's fear of other people's opinions is opposed to fears of insufficiency that come from internals? Yeah, I think we externalize it. I think that internal game that we're playing, that we're enough is built on it not enough based on what for who? Yeah, right and so

This moment right now is all what we get you and me. Is it pretty good? It's fun. You create space to play, you know, like this is good And so if I'm performing for you, then I've got problems. Like, and there's a chance that you run the risk of not being good enough by your judgment, or I run a chance of that. But I think that's the game most people are playing most of the time. And so, because it's hardwired, our ancient brain is trying to survive. And modern day stressors are different than the ancient stressors when the brain was forming, and it hasn't changed much the brain. But modern day environmental

conditions have changed dramatically. So that we're playing an old game. We still have the same stress response to the Sabertooth Tiger or to the Chieftain that might kick us out of the tribe and will end up being homeless to giving a presentation at work that almost everybody in the room doesn't want to be there for in any case. Exactly, that's the problem. It's the ancient brain's response to a modern stressor. Unfit for purpose, as it's called.

Yeah, there you go. Unfit for purpose. What does that mean? I've never heard it. So it's just a misalignment right between, it's Adam Hart's book on Fit for Purpose, which was about how we're maladapted for the modern world. Anything that type a normal stimuli, right?

So, you know, dopamine system, great, really good. Tells us that we need to go and get things. Dopamine system plus the world's best algorithms and a phone in our pocket, perhaps not so good. You know, hunger pangs, great, means that we don't run out of fuel. Hunger pangs, great means that we don't run out of fuel. Hunger pangs plus oramorfically designed perfect fries from McDonald's, not so good because these are basically epidemics and stuff like that. So you do have these misalignments between what we're built for

and what's happening. One of the things that I think that I really appreciate about your work is the bifurcation between experiencing something, emotion, and what that means to us and how we interpret it and how it impacts our story about ourselves, thought patterns, performance, all of that sort of stuff. Can you explain your philosophy around this, around separating out what it is that our emotions tell us from how it impacts us and the way that we actually show up. Yeah, I think they, thank you. The sensitivity is not necessarily separating them out, but we can try to decouple them for clarity right now.

But let me slightly pivot it to this idea, which is it's going to hopefully relate to ideas. Is this idea that we need to do more, to be more, we need to do the extraordinary, to be extraordinary. And that's a model that many of us have swallowed. And best in the world are waving their arms saying, I need to be more. Be more present, be more authentic, be more grounded, be more creative, be more, and let the doing flow from that place. And if I have that alignment, then then it fundamentally flips the whole thing. And so you're, so that's a framework that introduced to answer your question, which

is the way that we experience anything is fundamentally related to the way that we think about ourselves, our future and the experience. Now, who's responsible for that? I am, you are, you know, for your own experience. And if you can get clear on how you want to experience anything, the whole game gets easy. Like, honestly, it gets, you know, like so often we are unclear and then unskilled. So somebody cuts us off and we respond. Okay, well, that response that you have for me, that response that I have, if it's like a fighter flight, is a great moment to go, oh, look, I'm down in the animal part of my brain like, what is happening? Well, I'm pissed off about this that are the, okay, so this is my thinking pattern, as well as the alertness required to have to potentially swerve.

Okay, so just because I've got this alertness on that I need to swerve, does that mean I should now automatically go into anger? Let me flip somebody off, because we don't know if they're late for grammarless funeral, we don't know what's up. So it's like using your internal cues to be able to better understand how to be more present, how to be less A, B, and C, and more A, B, and D, E, and F, I guess. And then if we can be more and let the doing flow from that orientation, I'm going to say this again, that too is part of mastery. That too is part of mastery.

I had a weird run in. I anger is an emotion that I very, very rarely feel, right? For whatever reason that might be. That a really weird run in about a month ago. And I got angry and it's such a bizarre emotion. It's kind of like to me, it felt a lot like eating a food that I've maybe only tasted a few times in my life. So I've got this emotion that arise inside of me and I was like, holy shit. Like this is what anger feels like.

This is what, whatever tastes like, it's a rarature or some shit. This is like what, this is what it feels like. And this is a rarature. And that was, the point that I'm making is curiosity to me seems to be such a solution to a lot of this. And this may be me retrofitting something that I find is a solution to a lot of problems. Curiosity, just getting interested in what the outcome might be. But a lot of my friends that I know who are curious and who are genuinely interested in what might be on the other side of something. They have an impending breakup. It sucks. I don't want to, this is going to be an awkward situation,

whatever for me and whoever I'm with for a while. But I'm genuinely interested to see what it's like to experience these emotions. And I think that this is what you were saying, which is if you restrict yourself to just happiness or whatever, that's like restricting yourself to just one food type. You know, not every food type might be good. Like people eat hot food, that's not necessarily great. Now, I don't know how far I can take the food analogy. But my point is that the range of experience that you have, the opportunity that you have to experience all of these things in retrospect is going to be beautiful, the more broad that it is, and the more three-dimensional that it is.

And I think getting genuinely interesting and curious about how it is to experience all that stuff is a pretty good fix for a lot of things. Hmm, I'm nodding my head, like grinning, like, yeah, about 100%. So wherever you are mentorship of that idea to place, you know, maybe go back and thank them because that is um the unlock that's the key hole to be able to

In a healthy way detach but not be a loop but to be curious and watch and there is there's There's an art to this though which is if you're constantly just being curious of the experience and not actually experiencing it, then it's a mechanism to save yourself and provide distance from the intensity of that heat or that emotion. And so people around you won't really know you because you're not in it in a way, you're observing like the researcher,

you're not actually part of the experiment. And so it's materially important to not be the mountain top observer, but to be down in the city as well. So there's times when we want to observe and be curious and there's times where like, hey fuck, let's go. And so it's having both of those things as a, what's

the word I'm looking for? I want to say it as a recipe, but it's not quite it. It's being able to do both of those that's material important. And it sounds like you're history, you've got a history of mindfulness. Yeah, I spent a lot of time doing it, which is great. And I've said, my friend Corial and 12th ever episode that I did on the show, he used a term called the, he calls the mindfulness gap, which is the best way that I've described it, a brief beat in between stimulus and response. Call it whatever it is that you want to call it. If all that I ever get out of mindfulness training is

the fact that I've got a mindfulness gap, the thousand sessions plus that I've done have been completely worth it. The fact that something happens, and I'm not at the mercy of my programming around how I respond to it. Now, I might be after a beat, but I get to glimpse the brief, interlude, right, between the two. What you just said is very, very interesting. The fact that...

Is it as good as the mindfulness gap? No, nothing's as good as that. Corey, Corey, you won. What you said was that people who get curious about the process, people who are introspective, who do self-work, who are interested in their own internal experience, right? That can become its own crux a little bit. That can become its own problem because it takes you out of experiencing the moment.

And this flows forward into people who can't get out of their own heads when they perform. But I think there is attention between cognition and intuition, right? I'm thinking about the thing, I'm feeling doing a thing. How can people pull themselves out of cognition and more into intuition or presence or whatever you would say? I think you're, I think we're talking, I think the answer is exactly what you would imagine it to be is it's an issue of courage to feel the thing and the courage is because you might unravel. And that takes that vulnerability of unraveling is back to the ancient brain. Like those are costs to that.

And there's also a gift, which is like, oh, there's a limit. Okay. And so it's the courage to go in and kind of shove the oars, if you will, into inside the boat and be like, I've got to ride this. And the fact that you like, turn it for just a moment that you didn't know anger and I was like, wow, how does that happen?

That you wouldn't know anger. Like I wanted to go back to that. Like, how do you not know anger or not know it well? Like, I think you would have an unlock here that I'd love to learn from. So I say vulnerability, like, you got to go for it, that courage. And then how would you, how would you answer it?

So the reason that I think anger doesn't seem to come up for me is that it gets split off into other types of emotions. So self blame would probably be one of those that would come in. So you know, anger might, it's something that might make somebody else angry. I would probably end up maybe feeling self resentment for. I would be like, like, you could have done what you've done should have done better than that at whatever this thing is. That's why it's your fault. I'm working with my current coach, Vinny, on where that voice comes from, right? Like what is it? So that would be actually a cousin to external anger.

Internal anger would kind of have the same velocity, but it's a slight cousin to it,, you know, internal anger would kind of have the same velocity, but you're, it's a slight cousin to it, which is like, wow, you should have, you know, what is wrong with you? Like, Jesus, is that, is that really all you got? You know, so it's not like an aggressiveness in anger, but it is still going to hang. Yes, yes. So that would be, that's one way, and I mean, there's probably, you know, it's one mechanism that I've maybe managed to identify and There's probably like a million a million more that I'm totally unaware of But it is interesting to think that and I was talking to a friend. I was playing disc golf the other day It turns out dude. Have you ever seen how seriously people take disc golf?

It is in Sane they've got caddies They've got one of those roll-along things with a million different discs, and it's I'm playing disc golf in Austin with my friend. And we were talking about this, and he said that anger is an emotion that he feels fairly rarely as well. And it just blows my mind that we could go through life having kind of like a set of blinkers on one side of the human experience. And that there's this bit over there that we don't really tend to see or that we we transmute it into something else self-blame

right you know or self-doubt or happiness or whatever. It's fascinating. Yeah I think it's a great place to explore because we, anger's a secondary emotion. So one of the things I work on, I only have a couple of clients I work with a month. And then the rest is like the beautiful science of psychology at scale, right, to try to move as many people that want to be moved. And so when I'm working with the individual, one of the things that we must spend time on is how do emotions work

for you. And if we're going to limit one of the core primary ones, we've got problems, but anger is secondary. It's not a primary emotion. So it comes in response to either something around fear or something around sadness. So when you're hurt, that's like on a sadness scale somewhere, and if you're scared or afraid, something there, those are so difficult to deal with and anger so much easier. So at some level, you might be working at the primary level, but if you've got that funny little offshoot around the subtleness of turning that anger inward, then I would recommend that you go into the fearness of it or the sadness of it, and explore those at tilt.

And you might find that you want to do it. Get this better outlet here. Are you writing, am I right in saying, is it fear, sadness, disgust, something else, something else? Is that the primary ones or is this a different model that you're looking at? Yeah, no, there's early research was, you know, it was seven or eight, and then we're starting to find this like 256 emotions. And so I make it really simple. I say four. So I go, okay, and this is part of the work, right? Like,

let me ask you, what would be the four primary emotions? If you had four scales and each scale, you could go up five and down five. So a scale of 10 and the up five would be like the most of that thing. And then the down five would be the least, but it still hangs on that same scale. Well, if you've said, uh, sadness on one end, I have to presume that there's got to be an opposite to that. So something like happiness on the other. So sadness is a scale and put that at a five and then a 10 would be like grief depression, you know, way up there. Yes. Yes. And then happiness. Good. That's a second scale. Third is

anger. No, sorry, not angry. You just said, um, I feel yeah, fear and anger. Those are the four. Okay. Yes. What do we do with discuss? What do we do with, um, shame? We do with guilt. Yeah. And what do we do? A surprise. So, but I just make it super simple. The thing is as well. Sorry, those ones, that was based on, wasn't it based on facial expressions? That as well. And you think, well, okay, like, maybe the way that my face can be broken down is useful.

But from a performance perspective, my feelings around disgust, I don't imagine that disgust plays a huge role in performance. No, yeah, that's why I spend most of my time on the basic four. And then let's be really good there. That's be great at being able to toggle up and down, having levers and dials for those four. And let's even be better at knowing the thoughts that precede those emotions. Or if you come late to the game

and you're just aware of that emotion, how would you wanna work with the second beat, which is the thought? So it's this game between thoughts and emotions and environment, and let's just be great at being able to have great awareness and incredible skills around those three. What's a future of performance psychology for you if you could predict the next 10 to 20 years?

There's going to be a swing to, it's happening now, there's a swing to it, which is awesome. I mean, there's an incredible investment. And it's going to get confusing at scale because there's all types of range of skill around from scientists and practitioners around how to invest from a psychological perspective for humans. And then we're going to try to technologicalize it, technicalize.

That's the word. Whatever that is. We're going to probably put technologyize it, technicalize. That's the word, whatever it is. We're gonna probably put technology around it, which will be good in an advancement. We're gonna see as a third string to this, we're gonna see VR come online in an important way around emotions. And it's gonna return also back to some ancient roots.

So we're gonna have modern science, we're going to have modern science. We're going to have, and there's going to be some interesting outsheets of that. There's going to be range of investment of what psychology really looks like, and then we're going to have some ancient traditions come back online. So what the future looks like, bright and big, and a seed at the table for human potential. And I think that it's going to be an exciting time for people to invest in this part of their life. And so relationships are going to get better with self, with others, with the planet. And if we don't get those three right, we're going to have a shitty experience here on the earth.

And then the last is relationships with machines. So that's at the center of the purpose of the company that I'm working to build is building those relationships with all four of those. We're going to have the smartest machine smarter than the smartest human in nine years. And so if we treat that thing like like another, if we treat it like it's going to take over and we're afraid of it and we don't properly nurture the relationships, EQ is going to be solvable at some point for machines. If we don't have the right relationship with that and they are that much smarter. They understand intelligence from both emotional and cognition. We've got problems. And so we'll see how this goes. Michael Jivey, ladies and gentlemen, if people want to keep up

to date with the stuff that you do, where should they go? First, thank you. For creating space, Chris, very cool. I haven't kind of blabbed about this much of, you know, my stuff for logged out. So thank you. Findingastory.net. That would be the place to go check out like what we're trying to, what we're trying to do for psychology at scale. You can also, all of the social handles are at Michael Jervé, G-E-R-V-A-I-S. Dave, I appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you, Chris.