The Liz Moody Podcast - 5 Science-Backed Habits Of The World’s Most Successful People

Episode Date: March 20, 2024

World-famous performance psychologist Dr. Michael Gervais discusses the habits that make his clients, including world record holders, Olympians, musicians, and CEOs, so successful. We talk about real, tangible steps you can take today to start to build each one of these habits, and exactly how some of his famous clients (like Felix Baumgartner) put them into practice. Dr. Gervais also COMPLETELY changes my mind on some very popular confidence building tactics that I’m sure you’ve been told before–this is totally perspective shifting. For more from Dr. Gervais, you can find him on Instagram @michaelgervais or www.findingmastery.com, where you can access the courses mentioned in this episode. You can listen to his podcast Finding Mastery on your platform of choice; he recommends starting with his episode with Amy Hood. His book The First Rule of Mastery: Stop Worrying about What People Think of You is available where books are sold. To join The Liz Moody Podcast Club Facebook group, go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/thelizmoodypodcast. Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Order my new book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  This episode is sponsored by: AG1: visit drinkag1.com/lizmoody and get your FREE year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs today.  Osea: get 10% off your first order at oseamalibu.com with code LIZMOODY10. ARMRA: go to tryarmra.com/LIZMOODY or enter LIZMOODY to get 15% off your first order Cymbiotika: use code LIZMOODY on cymbiotika.com to get 15% off plus free shipping on subscription orders. Puori: go to puori.com/LIZMOODY and use promo code LIZMOODY for 20% sitewide. YNAB: go to www.YNAB.com/LizMoody to get one month free. Previous episodes referred to in this episode: How To Identify & Deal With Narcissistic Parents, Romantic Partners, Coworkers/Bosses & More with Dr. Ramani Durvasula Secrets To Optimal Health: An Md’s Exact Plan For Inflammation, Supplements, Exercise, & Knowing What Actually Works Reverse Cancer, Avoid Alzheimer’s, Decrease Your Biological Age: The Future Of Healthcare & How To Take Full Advantage with Dr. Leroy Hood & Dr. Nathan Price The Liz Moody Podcast cover art by Zack. The Liz Moody Podcast music by Alex Ruimy. Formerly the Healthier Together Podcast.  This podcast and website represents the opinions of Liz Moody and her guests to the show. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for information purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Liz Moody podcast. I'm your host, Liz Moody, and I'm a best-selling author and longtime journalist. This podcast is all about helping you live your healthiest, happiest life, whether we're learning to identify and deal with narcissists, dispelling wellness myths from social media, or getting science-back secrets for living longer. And yes, those are all real episodes, and they are linked in the show notes if you want to listen. I am so excited about this episode.

I got to sit down with the Dr. Michael Jervais, one of the world's top performance psychologists. He is the host of the Finding Mastery podcast, the co-creator of the Performance Science Institute at USC, and the author of the amazing best-selling book, The First Rule of Mastery, Stop Worrying about what people think of you. Basically, he is called in to help the best in the world,

whether in business, sport, the arts, science, when they need to achieve the extraordinary. He's been the consulting psychologist for Team USA at five different Olympic games. He has trained leadership teams at the world's largest companies. He helped the Seattle Seahawks win two Super Bowls by building a mindset-based culture. And now he's going to help us unlock the secrets we need to achieve the success we want in our lives, no matter what our dreams are. As you will hear in the episode, I took a little bit of a different approach here. Essentially, I dove into all of Dr. Jervais's work and I connected some through lines

and I outlined what I thought he would say were five habits that you need to unlock success. And then I presented them to him and we really drilled down on each one. We got into any questions, concerns, we refined, refined, refined, and by the end, we came to a very satisfying list, which I hope will be helpful to you. This conversation has so many incredible takeaways. And as always, we would love to hear your thoughts as you're listening. So definitely screenshot and tag us on Instagram. I am at Liz Moody and Dr. Jervais is at Michael Jervais. You're also definitely going to want to share this one because they are tools that are universally applicable. If I'm going to let you in on something, these are the secrets to

unlocking not only incredible success in your relationships, your work, your dreams, but also, way more importantly, these are the secrets to an incredibly satisfying life. So please send a link if you are inspired to your coworkers, your friends, your parents, anyone that you think would love it. It is the best way to support the podcast and there's also so much to discuss in here. you're going to want somebody to bounce ideas with to continue exploring these topics with. Are you excited? I am so excited to share this with you. So let's jump right into it. Dr. Jervais, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I am excited to be here with you. Thank you for having me. I'm such a fan of your work. I was just telling you, I have a little bit of an

interesting frame for the episode today where I've selected five things that I think are the secrets of the world's top performers based on your work, but you can tell me whether or not they're true, whether you disagree, we'll get into questions about them. But I want to start off by just addressing people who maybe want to be successful, but they have no idea in what way they would like to be successful. If somebody's like, I want to achieve a lot, I want to achieve more, but I have no idea what direction that's in. What would you tell them? Well, I love the question. And for years, the best in the world have helped us swallow this pill, which is we need to do more. You need to do more.

And there's a hustle-hard mentality that is prevalent right now, which I have a reaction to, and I'll tell you why. Because what's happening right now is that the best in the world are flipping that model. And they're saying, no, no, no, it's not about achieving more and doing more. It's about being more. So the old model was I need to do more to be special in some kind of way. And the flip is happening right now. I need to be more, be more creative, be more present, be more tuned, be more something in the present moment.

Basically is what it reverts down to. And then let the doing flow from that place. And when you get the ordering right, the entire experience that you have in life also changes. So it's not chasing something out there. It's being more tuned and grounded in here. And when that happens, the way that you express the things that you're interested in, whatever that arc of success might look like for the person, whether that craft is painting or business or fill in the blanks. When you get the being right, the doing naturally makes sense. What if you want the outside reward of success and you don't feel like the being is going to get you there?

Yeah, it's a long way to go through life. It's cool. You know, there's lots of ways to do life. That's a long way to do it, though. When I say long, I'm not saying wrong. I'm saying a long way to go through life where you're chasing something that's constantly external and fleeting. It is a dangerous proposition to the good life. Harvard did an 80-year study. And that 80-year study, which I'm sure you're intimately familiar with, it really points to two things for the good life. Connections with other people, relationships, if you will, and then a sense of purpose. And so I'm happy to deconstruct more of that. but they're not pointing to wealth and riches and attention and fame for the quote unquote good life. So the good life, the reason I'm saying long is because when your days are hard, they seem long. When your days are amazing, they seem like they go by quickly.

And so if you string a bunch of days together that are really hard and difficult and long, life feels that way as well. The research on high performance is also very clear. So in parallel to the study I just mentioned from Harvard, we used to think that people that were internally driven for intrinsic rewards were the ones to bet on. Like, yeah, those are the ones on the path of mastery. And those silly ones that wanted the external rewards and were externally motivated, oh, that's too bad. And I know it sounds like I'm maybe contradicting what I just said two minutes ago.

But the new model is to have both intranial. and extrinsic rewards equally high. It's okay to have them. But when they're out of balance and the external far outweighs the internal, it becomes very difficult to navigate life. That makes sense to me because I think about I have friends who have wanted to write a novel for years and they've written so much and they've tried to get it published. And while it's rewarding on its own merit for a really long time after a number of years of that, it's hard to like, okay, this is so rewarding if nobody wants to read this, nobody wants to publish this. So I do think there needs to be both.

Yeah. And if you love the unlocking of graph one to graph two or idea A to B, like if you love that that trying to stitch it together, because writing is hard. It's a really difficult thing to do. And if you love the way it feels when you get the, ah, I know, I got it. That's it. That's exactly how I want is. Awesome.

So that's the internal part. But in our modern life, though, only living by the internal is very difficult because we have to pay bills. We have all of these other external requirements for living well. But I'm just pointing to the ratio of the two. Yeah. And if you can have both, there's no reason why the best in the world ought not be compensated accordingly. Well, and I would argue that our society has tipped more towards looking for external validation and external rewards. 100%.

Do you have any advice for stuff we could do on a daily or regular basis to begin to write that balance? When you're not sure if you're okay, if you don't feel okay in your own sense of self, of course you would look outside to see if you're okay. And that's really what's happened is we've lost our way to know how the tuning fork is meant to be, where you have a sense of who you want to be, the values you want to live by, and the purpose that you're driving towards. and when you know that clearly and you become your own tuning fork, you don't have to look outside. So what happens for most of us, because that's hard work. I was going to say that. It's not easy. Yeah. And it's hard, but it's simple to talk about. The practices are simple, but it's hard to be consistent with them as you keep going deeper within yourself. But when you have that dialed in,

you don't have to outsource your sense of self or wellness to another person. And that's what happens for many of us is that we look outside of ourselves to see if we're doing okay. And the easiest way to cheat that code is if you drive a nice car, if you wear a nice watch, if you've got the right haircut. And those are all fine. They're good. Those are really nice things I have. But when it's a primary, it becomes complicated. Okay. So what are the practices that can make us feel like okay with the people that we are? Well, that's, we could say lonely work, but it's a loan-based work. So nobody can really do it for you. There are three best practices that would support what I'm about to say. Mindfulness, which is going inside and paying attention and being coming more aware

of how your thoughts, your feelings, your internal sensations work, being more aware of your external world around you as well. So mindfulness is one. The second is conversations with people of wisdom where they hold up mirrors, they ask hard questions, they look at you and say, is that all you have, you know, like conversations of wisdom. And then the third is journaling. So those are three foundational practices. And to answer the question more concretely is you want to know what your first principles are in life. What is your guiding philosophy? What is the thing that helps be the bellwether for your thoughts, words, and actions? And when you're very clear about your first principles in life, you can go to the most rugged, hostile, stress-induced, complicated environments in the world

and be you because you're very clear about those first principles, those values. And then once you're clear, so once you have clarity, that the second piece is to have the mental skills so that you can be about it when you're in a stressful environment. And from clarity to conviction is what I'm talking about. Those people, these are my heroes, the ones that. that are very clear about their first principles, they go into the den of pressure and they can authentically and powerfully be

about those first principles, even when the world around them says, what are you doing? That's wrong. You're completely off your rocker. And I've got a vision of what I think the world could look like, this compelling future, this purpose that I'm working toward. These are the principles that are guiding me.

And they've got the mental skills tuned to be about it when it's hard. Those are the people that I go right on. Okay, so just to ground that a little bit, I've heard you say that your guiding principle is to help the most people as possible live in the present moment. Is that still true? There you go. Yeah. Wow. Nice job. Thank you. Yeah. Very cool. So have you been faced with challenges where coming back to that guiding principle has been helpful? You're talking about my vision of a better world is a place where people are flourishing. And so I want to contribute to that. Okay. So my, purpose in alignment with that vision where people are flourishing, my purpose is to help people live in the present moment more often. Okay. So why is that? Living in the present moment is where

everything amazing takes place. All the hard things to work through, all the celebrations and love and it's where high performance is expressed. That's my world, helping people do the thing that they want to do at the highest level as often as they possibly can. I do have to help them live in the present moment more often. But that also will potentially move to a world where people are flourishing. What you're asking, though, is about my values, my personal philosophy. My personal philosophy is every day as an opportunity to create a living masterpiece. So that gets challenged every day for me. If that's a first principle in my life, that every day is an opportunity to create a living masterpiece, there are so many things that pull me from living substandard to that.

What's an example? Oh, I mean, social media. Yeah. I am not sure that a living masterpiece has much to do with the doom scrolling that I can find myself into on social. So that would be one, being irritated with my loved ones because I've got things I need to get done and the milk spills, so to speak, and then I'm quick to temper. That's not a living masterpiece for me. So right underneath that first principle, every day is an opportunity to create a living masterpiece, are all the values that are in place for me to have a living masterpiece. And intolerance, in attention to the things that don't really matter, fill in the blanks are not part of that.

And I'm a human too. I struggle with them too. How can we find our own first principle? So personal philosophy, here's the exercise that I would suggest if you wanted to do it. The first thing is, who are the folks that really light you up? Who are those people that you say, that person's special? Do you have one in mind? The first thing that came to mind was the people that I guess.

get to interview on my podcast because getting to have these types of deep conversations with people who are absolute masters of their field feels just like the most magical thing in the world. Isn't the most fun to sit with folks? This is why I love podcasting as well. We've got the Finding Mastery podcast that it's just so much fun to sit with folks and like, how do you do it? It also feels like the antidote to social media to quick bite culture because you're having this in-depth, nuanced, focused, present conversation. It's the most I live in the present moment in my life is during podcasting. Yeah, that's really good. Okay, so one person that comes in mind, the world doesn't need to know him, or to make it easy, have it be somebody maybe that people

do recognize. You could go either way. Dr. Robert Waldinger, who is the author of the Harvard study. Yeah, he's amazing. Yeah, he has the most wonderful vibe of any person I've ever spoken to in my life. He's so clear. He's so clear. He's so content. I was like, I want to turn you into my uncle. I don't think that's possible, but I would like to do that. He's so generative.

Yeah. Okay. So let's say Dr. Waldinger, if we've got that as an emblem, then this is the exercise that we're getting to. And I would want you to list like six, seven, eight, if you could. Right next to their names, just like what we did, you write the virtues or the values or the qualities that really make them special. And if you had Michelle Obama there, you would say fill in the blank or whomever it might be, right? Okay. So now you've got a whole set of values from the people that have animated those.

That's really important. Then I would say the next thing to do is think about the poems, think about the lyrics of songs, think about the little pithy aphorisms that you say to yourself over and over again that are interesting to you. And then write some of those down. And you might need to go back to some of your favorite albums. just get some lines down that are really cool and inspiring to. And then from that, you've got people, you've got values that are expressed by them,

and then you've got these philosophical gems that have been important to. Then I say, go find five words that really stand out amongst them. Maybe it's the words that are repeated the most. Maybe it's love or kindness or excellence or whatever it might be. Circle those words, and now you're starting to distill it down. And then from those five words and everything else that, we just described, see if you can get something into a paragraph. And so what we're doing is creating a personal philosophy. And then from that paragraph, see if you can get it to 25 words.

It's like two sentences. And then from that, could you get it down to just a handful of words that really capture the essence of what it is that matters to? And then if it was just two words or one word, you would have all of this body of work underneath of it that if someone says, wait, your philosophy is create a living masterpiece. What do you mean? Oh, well, let me tell you. And then it's underneath there. That took me two years to get to my philosophy. You could do it in two months. You could do it in two days if you were really, you know, on it. It just took me two years probably too long to do it. Yeah. Okay, this is maybe not a problem other people might have. But I would wonder if I sat down if some of the people on my list would be people who are getting

external rewards, who are getting lauded by society at this moment, who were rich or successful or lived in a really nice house, et cetera, et cetera. Are we just supposed to remove those people from our list? Are there things we can learn about our values from external rewards? Let's make it concrete. Okay, let's say Beyonce. Okay. So all of the wealth and fame that you would imagine. And then no problems. That's great. If somebody has been recognized by the world for their talent, I think it's awesome. We don't celebrate, I think, what are some of the true geniuses and the most creative people and the grittiest of them all, single parents. They are some of the most creative people on the planet, but we don't celebrate them. So the ones that have been celebrated, it is not

that they're off the list. It's just a double click underneath of it and say, what are the values that they stand for. The most dangerous people are the ones that present one way, and then when the earth shakes underneath of them, they reveal who they actually are, and it's totally different. That's not cool. So do the honest work up front. This is what I'm about. These are the people that are incredibly inspiring for me because they've stood for it. And whether they're recognized or not is not material, whether they're rich or not, does that matter? This is what they stand for. Those are the virtues and values that I want to be able to help guide my thoughts, words, and actions. Whether it's a nice sunny day or it's a cold, windy day, I'm going to be about those values.

Can wealth and status ever be values, or are those always subsets of values? Subsets. Yeah, those are results. You could value money, but what happens, there's something underneath of it that's going to create that wealth. And so I would go right underneath of it, as opposed to that being the thing. Okay. Understand. Yeah. Let's talk about goal setting for a second. Do you have any advice for goal setting in a way that is inspirational but not so far off in the future that we're never going to achieve it and we're setting ourselves up for disappointment? Yeah, I actually don't set goals. Yeah, I don't use goals. And maybe more precise. Two things. The science of goal setting is actually pretty clear. And I've always found it to be a bit taxing for me. And so I don't. I don't love it. I do, though, have clarity about the goals that are 100% under my control, let's say,

for this conversation. So prior to me doing anything, I do snap to a goal that is under my control. It's more connected to who I want to be rather than the external outcome of something. So let's be very clear. There's process goals, there's performance goals, and then there's outcome goals. you take those three types of goals and you can put duration on it. You can put immediate, short term, long term. And that long term could be, you know, Horizon 3 type goals, which is like 10 years. It could be Horizon 2, which is like three to five, or Horizon 1, one year, right?

And you can come even further back to the immediacy of like a goal for today for you. So that's kind of the science of goals. And there's an art to it as well. You want your goals to be inspirational, aspirational, stretch you just enough. Only you really know what those goals are, unless you've got an expert coach that really knows you at a deep level to know what is challenging and what's not. And that's cool to do. And when I say coach, I'm talking about sport coaches. In my mind, I was.

All right. I don't use them because they feel mechanical. And I feel like I get a little boxed in. The science is that it becomes a bit of a North Star. It can help support motivation and direction. That's what the science would suggest. This was six years ago. It was the first three years into the podcast, the Finding Mastery podcast.

I took all the interviews and did a factor analysis to understand what were the main themes that these best in the world talked about. Oh, my God, that's so interesting. One of the findings was they don't set goals. Super interesting. So I always felt weird that I'm the one that's not doing what I'm supposed to do to be successful according to research. What do they do instead?

They're open. They have an image of a better future of something that they're working towards. So they've got this imagery that they're working from. And then they're just committed to that. And it's not that they don't value goals, but they themselves are not setting and checking goals. That's so interesting. It validated me, but also I want to point to me, meaning my approach, but I also don't want to abandon the science here. The science is quite clear. There's a rich value in goals. And then we not confuse this, but add one more dimension to it. Just about if there's an athlete listening right now, they'd say, what? Before every practice, before every game, you hold up three fingers, Mike, and I know exactly what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to say out loud or remind myself

of the three goals that I've set for myself for that practice. I say, yeah, yeah, because that's a way to hone in on the immediacy of goals that you can control right now. So those goals are process-based that are 100% under your control, and it's only up to you whether you're successful or not, and they're very immediate. Can you give an example of what an outcome-based goal would look like, and then what the process-based equivalent goal would be? Let's do it in sport because it's so concrete. An outcome-based goal is to score a touchdown. A performance-based goal is to aggressively run my route. A performance-based goal is 12 touches, you know, to be able to catch 12 footballs if I'm a receiver.

And a process-based goal would be to get in and out of my breaks aggressively, to follow the ball all the way into my nose, to tuck it into my rib cage and run hard. Those would be more process-based goals. Performance-based goals, you can measure, you can see, but they're not. always in your control. You might not get targeted 12 times. You might only get targeted four. So that's why it doesn't hold power for me. And whether you score or not, there are legitimately highly skilled people that are trying to stop you from doing that. So I personally want, and the people I spend time with, I want them to be in the most powerful state they can be in. And when I'm trying to do something that is out of my control, I've de-leveraged myself.

So if you're clear in your mindset, if you're clear on how you're going to go about your performance and it's completely controllable, you've just put yourself in a very powerful position or powerful position. Did anything else come up in your audit? That was the big takeaway. That was the one I presented at a conference was that contrary to what we would suggest would be kind of the base is that that's not how the best in the world are organizing their inner life. Interesting. When you think about strength and resilience, like your ability to feel energized, to recover well, to stay strong as you get older, what do you think that actually comes from? Most people say working out or good nutrition, and yes, of course that matters. But there is a biological foundation underneath all of that that most people are completely overlooking. I have been diving deep into this lately with the team at timeline and what I've learned has genuinely shifted how I think about my own health.

Every single movement that your body makes, every step, every workout, every muscle contraction depends on energy produced at the cellular level. And at the center of that is your mitochondria. Here is the thing that nobody tells you, certainly nobody told me, starting around age 30, our mitochondria naturally become less efficient. More get damaged, more become sluggish, and over time that impacts your energy, your strength, your recovery, and your resilience. Most of us respond by pushing more.

we're like noticing these things and we're adding in more protein. We're trying to fix it with more supplements. We're trying to do harder workouts. And those things do help. But timelines research suggests that we also need to be supporting the cellular machinery underneath. And that is exactly what their supplement mitopure does. It contains urolithin A, which helps your body clear out damage mitochondria and support

healthier ones so that your cells can produce energy more efficiently. Because this is happening to your cells, it's going to impact. your entire body, your immune system, your muscles. One study found that taking mitochondria increased muscle strength by 12% in four months with no change in exercise routine, it's going to impact your energy, your sleep, your skin, your cell health impacts all of this, and urolithine A keeps your cells healthy. Timeline has done over 15 years of research and testing on this one product, urolithin A, which, by the way, most of us lack the gut bacteria to synthesize naturally. That's why many of us need to supplement it to get the benefits.

This has become a staple supplement for me. It is my top way to support how I want to look and feel as I age. Support yourselves and how you age with mitopure gummies from Timeline. Visit Timeline.com slash Liz and save up to 39% on your mitopier gummies. That is timeline.com slash Liz. When it comes to wellness, you're going to get the best results by focusing on the big needle movers. A lot of us spend a lot of time trying to optimize that last 1%, which creates a ton of stress

and it actually doesn't help our health that much. At the top of the needle mover list, sleep. And one of the best ways to optimize your sleep is to optimize your mattress, which is why I love avocado green mattress so much. First of all, this mattress is so comfortable. I have the one with the pillow top, which is medium firm, and it's just a dream. I miss it when I travel.

It's better than even the fanciest hotel beds. Having a mattress that supports your joints and your body and feels good is going to help you get more sleep and better quality sleep. But then, on top of that, avocado mattresses are made with certified organic cotton, wool, and latex, and they are made safe and green guard gold certified. They're also Okotech certified, which is the gold standard. I look for it in any mattresses, sheets, or towels that I buy, which means the materials have been rigorously tested for harmful substances. You can actually look for the Okotech standard 100 label right on the product, and I love this part. It includes a traceable certificate number and the name of the testing lab so you know exactly what you're getting. There are no toxic chemicals, there's no harmful off-gassing, it does not smell like it's going to kill you when you unbox it.

This is what I mean. I'm not going to swap out all of my clothing, which is that top 1% of optimization. But by making sure that my mattress and my bedding are as good for me as possible, I literally reduce my exposure during a third of my life, which is a huge needle mover for a one-time swap. I will also note, and this is a me thing, but I sleep super hot and avocado's materials, are really breathable, and it makes me sweat the least of any mattress that I have slept on. And avocado is a certified B Corp and a 1% for the planet member because caring for yourself and caring for the planet do not have to be separate things. You can get up to 20% off organic mattresses and more by shopping Avocados Presidents Day Sale right now at avocadogreenmatress.com. That is avocadogreenmatress.com. No code needed.

Okay. Let's get into my numbers. Number one, I have overcoming fear. Do we agree or not agree? What does that mean to you? So to me, you work with people who do these things that feel outside the bounds of what my capacity for performances, things that I would self-limit myself not to do. I would say that's too scary. I don't want to do that. You seem to work with people who are pushing past the bounds of what many of the rest of us would hold ourselves back from. I like that definition.

That's not how I would think about the definition of overcoming fear. I'm fortunate to work with some of the most extraordinary performers and doers on the planet. They operate with fear. They're scared too. Felix Baumgartner jumped from 120,000 feet where the brightest minds in aerospace said, yeah, we're not sure if your arms and legs are going to rip off when you pass through the sonic experience. Every time I hear you talk about this story, I have a visceral reaction no matter what you're It makes me want to die hearing that somebody did this.

Think about that. First of all, it's a five and a half hour a cent in a balloon that you and your teammates built, that no one's really built before, this capsule in balloon. And then when you pull yourself out to the edge where you're in an inflated NASA-based spacesuit and your feet are hanging over the ledge as you're just on the edges of the atmosphere, not knowing the brightest minds in the world are saying we don't know if you're going to land because gravity is going to pull you down we don't know one if you go into a flat spin you would land all the blood would run to your head and your feet and we don't know if your brain would survive

that two if you pass through a sonic experience your head and torso might be doing the speed of sound but the drag on your arms and legs could be transonic and we don't know if you would stay intact. Those are just two of the five dangerous experiences. He had fear. They're not insane, but because they've trained their mind to be critical, to be clear, and I don't mean critical of self, meaning to think critically, to be clear and creative when there's all of that pressure in the environment. So they have fear. They understand that if they live inside of the boundaries, the safe boundaries of fear, they'll never know. if they could live the good life according to what their imagination holds.

So they push up against their fears. And this is true for all of us, is that when we move up against a fear, it challenges us to say, do you have the mental skills to operate in this scary environment? And if you don't have the mental skills, the fear will win because the brain is designed to say, hey, listen, we need to survive. Stay away. I want to talk about what those mental skills are specifically. But first I want to talk about how do we know if we should even be trying to overcome a fear?

How do we know when our fear is genuinely trying to protect us versus when it's something we should push up against to live the life we want? That's a really good question. I don't know if anyone has ever asked it that clearly. How do we know? I think it's a tension between when you use your imagination to think about how you want to live and the life that you would want to co-create. and the goals maybe to go back to that earlier idea, like when you use your imagination about what you really, really, really, really are working toward. And if they're wildly ambitious, awesome.

If you can see a pathway through it, great. There's going to be incredible challenges toward that because it's probably hard. It's probably pretty difficult if it's stimulating to you. And so we do need to understand that our brain is trying to be. keep us alive and threading through challenging environments, the brain says, just leave. I think you could find another way. Turn them back around. This is not worth it.

So that's what our brain is designed to do. If we don't train our minds, our brain will win. So the more familiar you become on pushing up against the edge, you become more clear about, wait, this is just my brain's response, as opposed to, is this something I shouldn't be following? So the more you push up against it, the more intimate you know the answer to your question that you just asked. And so we could make it even more concrete would be sometimes we've got these maladaptive fears like... I have a fear of flying. Oh, you do?

Yeah. Yeah. Maladaptive in some respects, right? Yeah. If you want to see Europe or do anything that you want to do. So that would be rationally, you know that most people don't die when they get on a plane. Yes. Okay.

And there's 44,000 flights a day. Oh, so you've done the matter. Interesting enough, like knowledge alone does not solve this. Yeah. This fear, right? So it is all of the other coping skills and mental skills training that would allow you to struggle through at one level or potentially at another level, dissolve all of the stressors that you feel from it and be completely content and happy. That is possible. So in the briefest way, if I wanted to be completely content and happy with that maladaptive fear, what should I do? You got to do some work now. This is actually the same exact work that Felix and I did for the Red Bull Stratus program.

Because he was afraid of the suit, right? That's right. And that was a maladaptive fear. He felt claustrophobic in the suit he had to wear. That's exactly right. I don't want to say like afraid of the suit because it's like he's jumping out of it. Like he's clearly a very strong guy. Afraid of the suit seems like it's diminutive for what he was dealing with.

That's a good word. That was the big thing is that he's like, look, I'm the strongest, the best at what I do facing fears. and I'm embarrassed to he was sitting in the airport. This is all public, so I'm not saying anything I shouldn't say out of code. He called the team and said, I'm embarrassed. I'm crying like a, like I'm surprised that I am and I can't do it. I'm afraid. That type of courage, though, is what allowed the breakthrough to happen.

So you say, how do I do it? One, saying it out loud, like, I'm afraid for this. Okay, great. Do you want to travel on airplanes? And you say, yeah, I do. Okay, great. So now we got some tension, all right? Good science would suggest, and you've probably heard this, systematic desensitization,

have you heard that methodology? Go do that work. It will change your life. Sit with somebody, go through a systematic desensitization to the fear response that you have. You just might extinguish the fear that you have. It would take you about two days of deep work. But I fly all the time, and I'm often scared. So aren't I systematic desensitizing myself by flying all the time?

That's a good question. No, it will be a good example. Let's do a mouse in the kitchen. You know, that idea that you see a mouse and all of a sudden you jump on the stool and you've got that tension. And then the next time you see a mouse, what do you do? Jump on the stool and feel that tension. Third time you see a mouse, maybe you don't jump on the stool, but you just have all that tension. So now you see something kind of like a mouse and you feel tense. So each time that you have a tense response to either the thing that's actually there or something that looks like the thing, thing that was once there, that tense response is training. So you're training the stimulus, the mouse, with tension. So each time you fly and it's hard, you're actually strengthening the thing that you don't

want. You're getting better at flying with tension. You're getting better at flying with fear. You're getting better at flying with like ripping your nails into the seat. So we have to decouple that and get better at flying with freedom and happiness and what. whatever, whatever, whatever. The intervention there is what's called the systematic desensitization. Any good psychologist can walk you through it. And in a couple hours to a couple of days, you could have the freedom that you want. Okay. I mean, I will say the thing that's been most helpful in my fear of flying is I haven't framed it as my values sent it. I haven't framed as my first principles, but it is something like I want to live a big, rich, satisfying life.

There you go. And that's been the thing that's gotten me on planes so far. Okay. So it's cognitive for you. that you've got two competing ideas and you muster all the strength to say that one's more important than my fear response. Awesome. I mean, that's probably what makes you great is that you can grind it out. That's how I face most of my fears, I would say. That's awesome. That's not the fullness of it, though. Because we are, that's like from, if you think about cognitive and emotion, and that whole loop has physiology and physical and thinking. Okay. So there's the physical response, the physiology response, there's the emotional piece and there's a thinking piece.

You're investing in a strong mind, the thinking piece, and then we want to wrap around the other two. And then that would be a more complete approach. The complete package. And also, I want to leave plenty of room open for systematic desensitization. Maybe it doesn't work, but there's other good science as well. This one holds up really well for most people. But, you know, each one of us are, you and I are neither subjects in those researchers that found the findings, and we are not, quote, unquote, the average person, meaning that I'm not even sure

what an average person is. We're all unique. We need these snowflakes that kind of travel around the world in these bodies. I don't know how you got your body and how I got my body, and we're using this made-up language right now. It's quite remarkable, this experience of life. But there is, the science would suggest that that's a good one, and there's a handful of other approaches that could be good as well. You mentioned developing skills for pushing up against fear. Are there other skills for doing that or is that systematic desensitization largely? That's an important one. Okay.

You know, now let's take what you're doing is that you say I've got this bold future that I'm working towards and this ambitious purpose that I've got in my life. And then you're using your mental horsepower to get you closer. Awesome. Another way to help you is to have teammates, is to have your environment and your community to see you, to challenge you, to support you, and to, to. to be part of it with you. Nobody does it alone. Whatever the extraordinary thing is, it's too multifactored, multi-dimensional, too complicated by definition, like we need each other. And so,

who are your teammates? And make sure that they really understand your traumas, micro and massive traumas, all of your hurt and your dreams and your hopes and your ambitions so that when they're part of the process with you, they understand you completely. I love that. You also talk about the difference between having consequential and non-consequential environment. So essentially, environments where in if we make mistakes, they have real consequences, and then environments where if we make mistakes, there may be not as big of a deal. And I think one of the things that causes a lot of fear in people is not being able to differentiate between those two things. Great insight. Yeah. We think that non-consequential environments are consequential environments.

Great insight. Yeah. Can you speak to? the difference between those two things and maybe how we can begin to see non-consequential environments as non-consequential environments? Yeah, I mean, it creates such a bigger playing field when you're clear about the things that are consequential versus non-consequential. So let's talk about what we're actually working up against. Most people can figure this out exactly what we're talking about, like, wait, me going on, let's say a podcast, your podcast, is it consequential? Well, if my sense of identity is commingled or mired with or collapsed on my image if my identity is collapsed

on the thing that I do this has great consequence because your community is strong and they're listening and they're paying attention and then it's large so this could be very dangerous for me but if my identity and my sense of self is not collapsed on how well I articulate my thoughts, then there's an incredible freedom to play, to explore. So it's decoupling who you are from what you do might be one of the greatest things that you can do to understand the difference between consequence and non-consequence. Intellectually, you and I know that if I make a mistake, there's not a hand grenade under the, under the seat. Oh, there is. I just didn't tell you. Yeah, there's not a sniper in the corner. There's not, you know, there's no physical consequence. We

could maybe manufacture a scenario where if, you know, I say something that's really offensive to your environment or to your community that there's some sort of boycott or cancel, like, that's always a real threat. But it's not something that is going to serve me well to try to manage that. And we could also create a scenario that if I'm offensive in any ways that people have a, your community would strike against my earning power in the future. Okay. So, we have to extrapolate just a little bit too far for that to materially show up in this moment for me. So what's consequential is only limited by my sense of self. And if I can find freedom in me being me, then this is not a consequence.

It's an opportunity. And so going from it's seeing something. So every micro moment we have, there's a filter that is your belief system. it's call it a filter, and it influences whether you see this moment as an opportunity or a threat. And that's kind of what we're talking about. So if you build up a healthy filter and you can see more moments as an opportunity versus a threat, you're going to be on the winning side of this equation. And how do you do that is decouple who you are from what you do? Because the most threatenings are not physical for most of us. It is risk to identity. And that's where the concept of fear of people's

opinions, just for fun. We called it FOPO. Is the greatest constrictor of one's potential? Is this chronic management? Am I okay in the eyes of you and others? And when I'm managing that, I'm not tuning to the actual task at hand. And so in sport, as another easy analogy, is that it's really hard to hit a baseball, let alone if I'm thinking about the last ball and trying to focus on the current ball, it's not that different than the pitcher throwing two balls at the same time and me trying to figure out which one to focus on the hit. It's very hard to do. So our mind can only focus on one thing at a time. And if you can decouple the management of your self-identity from the task at hand, it is so much easier to live freely. And most of us,

the writer passage to be an adult in modern times is not clear, but I think this is one of them. Okay. Well, I have to ask, how do we do that? one just become aware that the first is the awareness bit is that your brain, let's go back to another kind of first principle we talked about, your brain is designed to survive. The greatest threat in modern times is not the physical piece. It's the inclusion piece. It's not being kicked out of the tribe, essentially. You've totally nailed it. And most people understand that. Like, that was important 250,000 years ago. For literally survival. I think that's something that we kind of gloss over. Sometimes, like, you would die if you were kicked out of the tribe. That's right.

If you and I screw up in some kind of way, maybe two or three times, we screw up. We were responsible for something for the tribe's security or health. And we screw up too many times. The elders are like, hey, listen, Liz, Mike, you got to go. You're out. Now, we had to try to fend and forge and protect and hunt and gather. Maybe a couple cousins say, no, you can't. We're coming with you.

So now we got five. It's still too much. The wild and the tribes, it's too much. So being kicked out, being criticized was a near death sentence. our brain hasn't changed that much and modern times have changed a lot since 200,000 years ago. Like we're barely dealing with fire. Now we've got white lights everywhere. So like it's changed a lot.

But our brain hasn't changed much. So we've got this old operating system trying to manage modern times. And that old operating system, our brain is constantly checking, am I okay, am I okay, am I okay, am I okay, in the eyes of others? And when we're doing that, it's not only exhausting from an energy and fuel standpoint. It pulls us away from the good life because we're just trying to fit in as opposed to express artistically something, whatever that thing is. So how in the moment, in a day, in a week, can we begin to rewrite that neurological wiring? I love it. Okay, so I didn't answer the question.

So one, awareness. Be aware that that's happening. The second is go from a performance-based identity, which we hinted on 10 minutes ago, to a purpose-based identity. So a performance-based identity is, I am what I do relative to other people. So I'm okay as long as I'm better than you. I'm okay as long as I'm as good as you. But as soon as I start sliding a little bit, I'm not okay. And I mean I, meaning my entire identity is not okay.

that's why the number one fear for humans is walking up four steps. It's the number one fear because those four steps lead to the presentation platform, public speaking. Yeah, it's more than death, which is wild to me. Isn't it? It's so crazy to me that public speaking is scarier to people than death because I'm so afraid of death. That's my number one. Oh, there's far worse things that die. Like, what?

There's living the life that. No, yeah, that's true. you don't really know what you're capable of, that you are loveless because your fear is taken over. There's way worse things. I like, I'm like, that's my number one fear. And you're like, oh, I got other fears for you. I got way worse fears than that. Try these.

But imagine your fear is so strong, not you, Liz, but like imagine one person's fear is so strong that they never feel seen because they spend so little time being vulnerable with other people. So they'd go through life disconnected, numb, isolated. This is where depression and anxiety and suicidality and drug use, the severe garden variety, maladaptive, real experiences that over 36% of us are struggling with. I'm going to say it's more like 50% of us are really struggling. And so in high school, in grade school, in college, I was never given the basic psychological tools to live the good life. I was told how to think.

I was told how to execute pressure-packed tests. I was told how to sit down and listen. I was told how to write pretty well. But I was not told how to use my mind other than to think. But there's a whole bunch of other things like confidence is a trainable skill. So you say, how do we do it? First is go from performance-based identity to purpose-based. So purpose, and I'm going to go to the mental bit in a minute, purpose is like, be part of something bigger than you.

So when you go on stage, you're like, look, thank you for being here. I'm going to start by sharing something that's really important to me, and I hope you can see yourself in it because I need help. And that thing is, fill in the blank, whatever that thing is. And so when you're purpose-based, you're a contributor. You need the connection with other people. Maybe you can see yourself in this. And I hope you do. And I got a place for you in some kind of way.

So that purpose-based diminishes this protection. of self and amplifies something that's far bigger than you. So the grates, they are purpose-based. Dr. King Jr., Malcolm X, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Buddha, Jesus, like the greats of all greats, they were on to something really important. If you have headaches, allergies, brain fog, skin irritation, or you've been dealing with hormone issues, you are especially going to want to listen to this ad. Every single thing that I just listed has been linked to chemicals and household cleaners.

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And you are learning. There are over 200 classes from the world's best, all for just $10 a month when billed annually. And you get unlimited access to every class on the platform so you can learn at your own pace whenever you want on your phone, your computer, mode like a podcast. If you're looking to stop scrolling and start consuming entertaining content that makes you feel excited and helps you learn, Masterclass is it. And the best part, every membership

comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee so you can start learning risk-free. Right now, our listeners get an additional 15% off any annual membership at Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. That's 15% off at Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody, masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. That's so interesting. Okay, well, FOPO was going to be my next one. But for fear, can we call it operate with fear? Can we say that's the secret?

That's the habit? It's not overcome fear, but learn to operate with fear. I'm completely down with that. Okay. We're into that. One more layer to this is that because I kind of intimated, I want to get to the clarity, is that I say confidence is a trainable skill.

So you said, how do we deal with FOPO, fear people's opinions, decoupling and going from performance base to purpose base, but also when you train your mind, when you know how to be confident in any environment, there's incredible freedom. You are no longer putting yourself in a vulnerable position to have other people, the external world around you be just right so that you can be confident. And that's how most people go through life, is that, Well, I'm confident because this environment is helping me be confident. I'm confident when a couple things go my way.

So imagine a basketball player that says, I feel good after a couple shots go in. What if they never go in? Now you're not confident? If you're not confident, how are they ever going to go in? The ordering is wrong. The ordering needs to come from yourself first. So confidence comes from what you say to yourself, period.

That's completely in your control. And I can go down the list being calm. is a trainable skill. I can go down the list of other trainable skills that would help you be more powerful within your own self so you're not abdicating to the environment or other people, am I okay? That's the work. Well, what's the work?

Sneak preview, confidence is number four. Oh, it is. There you go. Yeah, very cool. But can you give us one tip to be calm? Because you said that's a trainable skill. So before we leave that, I want a tip for there. So anything that we can train, we can get better at.

Let's first introduce a model. and then I'll show you how to apply that model. So think about a scale from 1 to 10. 10 is the most activated you could imagine. A 9 is like, I think I just threw open my mouth. Like I'm way too nervous for this. Okay. A 5 would be optimal.

So 4, 5 and 6 are pretty good, right? But a 5 is a sweet spot, let's say. So what's 1? Like I'm yawning. I'm so bored. Yeah. So there's not enough internal activation for me to be challenged in the right way.

But a five is like, I love it. Like, I've got the right vibe for this moment. Okay, so a technical term is called activation. And again, a nine and a ten, it's like way too switched on. My hands are shaking, my breathings, whatever. All of that's happening. And I feel out of control. On that model, it's called the Yerxes Dodson model.

People want to be nerds and look it up. So the first order of business is to recognize where you are on that scale. And then from that scale, let's say you're like, this is a nine. your job is to get to an eight. And then once you're at an eight, work to get it to a seven and then to get to a six. And now you're in that pocket. It's kind of like the porridge is too hot, just right and too cold. So four, five, and six, the porridge is just right.

So how do you go? You're going to know the answer. How do you go from a nine to an eight? I'm going to say breath work. That's it. Yeah, breathing. It's the greatest tool that we have to downregulate our intensity. If you don't practice breathing and you're walking up those five, four steps to the,

public speaking stage and you're not practicing breathing, that breath is not going to work for you right there because you're not skilled at it. So it might give you a little bit of a downregulation, but it's not going to be the potency that you want. So if somebody were to train for years on breathing and they're at the bottom of those stairs and they go, wow, I'm like an eight or nine, I need some breathing. That breathing is going to show up in a pretty cool way for them. Do you have a favorite breathwork practice? There's three. And I'll use principles first and then the tactics would be something that would fall on.

And then specific techniques would be way downstream. But the three principles would be a breathing practice to downregulate, a breathing practice to build capacity, and a breathing practice to help with focus. So box breathing, there's four parts to every breath. And so if you did four seconds inhale, four seconds pause, four second exhale, four second pause, that helps mostly with focus. Down regulation is, let's use that cadence of four seconds in, slight pause at the top, and then eight seconds out. So when your exhale is double your inhale, that helps to downregulate.

And somewhere around 12 breaths for people, we start to trigger the rest and digest system in our body. The, hey, you're okay, shut her down. there's no Wilder Bees chasing you. It's okay. Somewhere around 12 breaths with that type of cadence. And the cadence, again, it could be five seconds in, depending on your lung and rib cage capacity and 10 seconds out. Or six seconds in and 12 seconds out.

Okay. And then building capacity has a different cadence. And it would be, let's go five seconds in, let's just say, five second pause or hold at the top, and then 10 seconds out, five second hold. So 5-5-10-5 would be that type of breathing. In doing, let's say 10 of those in a row, you start to build some capacity because you meet yourself when you feel like you're running out of oxygen.

And that's what that breathing will do. Not only you building the capacity between the oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange, which is really good for efficiency, but at that point, let's say it's four breaths in, you're like, oh my God, I feel like I can't do that. Like, I'm running out of breath. And this is you meet yourself. Are you trying to escape? Are you relaxing and settling in?

Are you gripping and fighting? You meet yourself. And I meet myself at the edge of capacity. And so we want to design our life every day, just like elite athletes do physically, is we design ourselves to go right up to our edges. And you and I can do that. We don't have to do it physically. You can do it emotionally every day.

And if you don't do it, either you're training or getting or decompose. And so if you're not training, you're getting a little bit worse. I'm not pointing to a hustle hard. I'm pointing to being very intentional about the things that you want to get better at. I think most of us could get better at emotions. I think most of us could get better at speaking to ourselves and backing ourselves, our self-talk. And most of us could use a little breathing training. You know, be more calm later. I love that. Okay. So we're going to say number one is operating with fear. We've talked about number two, which was overcoming FOPO. Fear of other people's opinions. Do you have anything else that you want to touch on with overcoming Fopo? I know you wrote literally an entire book about it. I did. Yeah. It was really fun to write that. It was hard. It's a great book. Thank you. Yeah. The way that happened. So I'm 25 years in my career and I never wrote a book, really. And I wrote an article, three-page article for Harvard Business Review. And they came back 12 months later. And they said, okay, you touched the nerve. You were the most downloaded article for the last 12 months. Let's write a book. I was like, really? I thought I was alone in this. I really thought I was the weird one that had this as an early young person, this reflexive need to want to fit in. And I was conforming and contorting in weird ways to just fit in. And I'm like, no, apparently our whole community said me too. And so it was cool. I loved writing it. There's a bit of research in there around what's called the spotlight effect, which I think is really cool to just understand that experiment. Which is essentially that we think people are noticing us far more than they're actually noticing us. That's this most simple version of it. And when you recognize that and you go, oh, man, my grandmother was right. You know, my grandfather had it. Like, yeah, people are not really paying attention to me. Like, stop. Were your grandparents telling you that? Totally. Yeah. Like, nobody cares about you, Mike. Basically, yeah. Like, get over it. Like, you're fine, kid, you know. They're worrying about themselves, not you. You know.

Yeah, my grandparents were awesome. The greatest generation, they had it right. You know, World II folks, they had it right in so many ways. Interesting. Okay, so understand the last kind of takeaway with FOPO is understand that you think other people are noticing you far more than they actually are, plus everything we've already talked about. I think that that's pretty cool. Okay, let's dive back into confidence, which is number four, and then we'll come back to number three. You are not a fan of power poses, right? I'm not. Okay. And you're also not a fan of faking it until you make it. I'm not. Can you talk to me about why?

Sounds like you are. I'm a big, not of power poses. This feels like silly to me. Faking it till you make it, I am. And I'm curious why you're not. If I were to say, hey, I know you're going out to a big gala and I've got a fake Birkin for you. How would that feel?

I think I would be like nobody will be able to tell. That's right. I think that designer bags are silly kind of. Okay. I got to like, I would not. spend that much money. Designer shoes? No, I don't.

No, sorry. But I think I would be like the fake version for what I'm trying to do, which is ostensibly impress other people, probably will do the job. So then I'm like, why not fake it till I can afford the real version? Yeah. So where I was pointing to is I would know it's fake and I would know that I'm trying to impress other people. And I'm saying, fuck that.

Like, sorry for the. So if you're faking it until you're making it, you're looking for that external validation, not the internal validation. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. Points right at the core source for FOPO. Oh, that's so interesting.

I know. Maybe you're going to reorganize the thought. If I was your acting as a performance psychologist, you wouldn't want me faking it. If I was your tattoo artist, you wouldn't want me faking it. You'd want to know that I actually am artistic and I can do it. You wouldn't want your surgeon or your lawyer. What about stuff that's not skills-based? So faking it until you make it comes out.

a lot in body confidence. I don't necessarily like how I look, but I'm going to go out in the world and pretend that I like how I look. I actually have to a place where I'm very at peace, but let's say I have the narrative that I don't like how I look. I'm going to go out in the world, pretend I like how I look, and that will train into my brain acting that way, which will make me more comfortable with how I look. Yeah, I would go out at a different way. I'm more interested in an authentic relationship with oneself and with others. So I would go out of it. I would go out of a different way. I'm more interested in an authentic relationship with oneself and with others. So I would go out a different way. Let's say that I didn't like the way I feel in my body. I think it's very similar to how you just did. If I'm working with

somebody, I would say, let's just work on that. And when you're out in public, I wouldn't say fake it. I'd say be you in that and feel that pain. So when you're out in the environment, whatever that social setting is, recognize that that pain is a lot. Or it's just naggingly consistent. Maybe it's not a lot, but it's just like this small hum. Feel that pain and do the work. So I'm not trying to mask the pain. I'm not trying to fake any of that. I'm not a fan of psychological principles that are masking or faking, nor am I a fan of knockoff whatever that's that's trying to present a certain way. One of the worst things the psychologist can do is have somebody sit down across with them and go, oh, it's going to be okay. You don't know that. The best thing a psychologist can do is say,

that looks like that you're hurting. Validating. And they go, yeah, I don't know if you really understand. We'll help me understand. Let's go deeper into the pain. Because once we feel all of that pain, then that is the impetus for real change. And when we're constantly trying to just minimize and we're constantly trying to drug over or fake over or drink over or whatever over it, fake over it, that maybe it's an okay tactic. I don't know.

Maybe I'm being too principle based here. but I tried to fake it for a long time. That was my early life. And I knew that I felt like a chocolate Easter egg bunny. If somebody would poke it just a little bit, there was nothing on the inside, and I'd fall into a thousand pieces. And so I was walking around for so much of my life, scared. So that's why I have a reaction to the fake thing, because I know it. And I've had to work really hard to not continue.

life down that path. My parents were great models for it. Dad was an alcoholic, you know, drug user, mom was codependent. So I never really knew what I was getting. And so the fake it thing was really easy, but the cost is too much. That's my personal experience. What are some real ways that we can build confidence? Well, one, let me stay on that piece. Feel the emotional discomfort and pain. Like, face your dragon, whatever that thing is. And, Do it with somebody that is highly skilled. Do it with a psychologist. That's all they've studied or a minister or a priest or somebody that is trained and skilled

at it and like feel all of that. The answer will be clear that you hold the power on how you live your life. I can give you an answer about confidence. But once you feel the pain that I'm talking about, the discomfort of feeling like you're not okay based on anything other than who you actually are until you do that and you put your foot in the ground or you put your tall tent pole, you know, in the ground, you say, no, no, look, I am a work in progress. And I actually do want to have this level of fitness or this type of body structure or whatever.

You got to feel all that pain. Oh, wait. It's so interesting. I want to linger on that for a second because it is like by faking it until we make it. We're saying, I'm not okay until I find peace with my body. I'm not okay until I exhibit this thing that I'm trying to fake it. And by feeling that thing, you're saying, I'm okay regardless. Amen.

And I'm also saying, I'm a work in progress. So fake it to you make it. What does make it mean? Yeah. So I'm going to show you now that I've made it. I'm faking it. So I'm completely hollow. None of this is real.

and I'm going to show you that I've made it. What do you mean you've made it? Yeah. I still feel like I'm selling my demo tape out of my trunk. Like, I never did that, but like that idea, like I'm still a work in progress. I'm still trying to figure out how to be me in this complicated world. And you're going to show me that you made it? Come on.

I'm not speaking to you. I'm speaking to all my friends that are like, I got it together. I don't believe any of it. So show me that you're work in progress and I'm going to be like, yeah, me too. you know and what I'm going to do for my loved ones is I'm going to say I'm a work in progress I'm still trying to figure it out and they go yeah me too now we're working from the same tall temple so sorry to go down that narrative it's real like I don't just say it out of um whimsically like that's bad science or that's a whack philosophy I when I say I am not down

with fake it teemaking it not I personally am not down with power poses I'll explain that in a minute I've metabolized those words, and that's why I say them. Can you give us maybe some type of practice, though, that we could do to begin to fill that confidence after we feel it, after we accept where we are? Yeah, that's cool. You can parallel path, all of these as well. You could start with this more simple, less difficult path, which is when you understand the mechanics of confidence, confidence only comes from one place and one place only, which is what you say

to yourself. Now, if you're going to say to yourself things that are not believable to you, we're back to the fake it thing. It's not real. So what you say to yourself must be grounded. It has to be true. So this is why doing that internal, alone-based work is really important to become more aware of the words that you speak to yourself. That's mindfulness, conversation with people of wisdom, where we started, and journaling. And so we want to increase the awareness of the psychology's environment.

invisible. We can't see thoughts, but we want to increase to our best ability, the awareness of how we're speaking to ourselves, about ourselves, about our future, about our past. When you become more aware of it, you can navigate and guide your thoughts. And to make it super simple, step one is becoming more aware of your thoughts, how you're speaking. Step two is back yourself, coach yourself. Be the greatest colleague, supporter, champion, whatever, about yourself. And how do we do that? is that self-talk comes down to, here's the training of it. I know I'm talking fast and you and I are going pretty quickly about things. I built a 15-hour course that has all this in here, and it's really good work so that there's at least a home for this type of training. And we can put a link to that

in the show notes. Yeah, yeah, it's good. I think it's wonderful. So the thing about that is that what I ask people to do, and I'm going to share this in a story first, is be very clear about the hard things you've done in your life. And then what do those hard things in your life give you the right to say to yourself about yourself? So I did some early work with a MMA fighter. And I mean, he was all but 225 pounds, 6% body fat, you know, he was about 6 foot one traps up to his ears, you know, tattoos crawling up his neck, cauliflowered ears, bald head. He looked the part. He looked the And we were in this small little space in this kind of corner office and we're doing some work. And I said, I said, what's it like when you're at your best?

He says, oh, I'm not saying anything to myself. I go, right, right, right. Like, I knew that, but I was like, what are you saying to yourself when you're at your best? I'm going to give you a quote. I don't want to be the cursing jerva here. So he looks at me, squares up in my eyes. He says, oh, I'm a tough motherfucker. I said, oh, I said, can you back it up? And he says, yeah, my last cage fight, I was in an end game

position. I was being choked out. I broke the chokehold. I put him on my shoulder, dragged him across the cage, dumped him on his back, finished the fight. And he looked at me, said, Mike, I'm a tough MFer. I said, you got anything else? And he looked at me like I was absolutely off my rocker. And he leans in and he says, yeah, what my dad's ass when I was 15. I'm a tough MFer. And I don't know what was wrong with me. And I leaned in again and I said, you got anything else? And he says, if someone were to ask me one more question, I just might choke him out.

So he grinned and he looked at me like, you got another question. So the point of that fun story where I was scared for my life is that he could back it up. So he knew the language to speak to himself. So if you want to be confident, it comes from how you speak to yourself. So he says when he's scared, when he's not scared, when he's walking in the cage, when he's walking into a training environment, when he's walking into any environment that he's challenged, he can say I'm a tough MFer. And he's got at least three experiences to back that up.

So I would ask you or anybody to write down three things that have been really hard for you. And then what are those three things give you the right to say? And then practice saying that to yourself. That is so powerful. Yeah. bring that to the surface. And then find three other things that have been wonderfully abundant or whatever. And then what are those three?

Honest experiences that you've been through give you the right to say. And then bring that to the surface more often. So that when you find yourself in a stressful pressure-packed situation, you can bring those to the forefront much easier. So that's how we train confidence. The number one rule of habits is to make the things that you want easier and the things that you don't want harder. Yet so many of us want to eat healthier, but so few of us actually take the steps to make eating healthier easier. That's where Marley Spoon comes in. What I love about this

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Number three is optimism. You say that you don't know one world leader or hyper successful person who doesn't know the future is going to be great. I say that they don't fundamentally believe that the future is going to work out. How do we do that? I feel like so many people feel like the future is going to be awful these days. Oh, I think that's right. So optimism and pessimism are psychological terms. And what we know about those two principles is that we are not necessarily, we can always leave some room in here for genetics that we don't understand yet. But for the best way that we understand optimism, pessimism, it's a lens through which we view the future.

And we're not born with that lens. We learn and develop that lens. So there's a problem with pessimism and there's a problem with optimism. The problem with optimism is what's called naive optimism. Hey, let's just hold hands and run through the minefield. Everything's going to be good. I don't know what's going to blow up around us, but it's going to work out, don't you think? Naive optimism is very, very dangerous.

Naive optimism keeps people in abusive relationships. Oh, she's going to change. I know she embarrasses me every time we go out. She's going to change. She said she's going to change when that other person hasn't done any work to be able to back up their words. Super dangerous. Passimism is dangerous for obvious reasons. reasons too because we're only finding the things that are dangerous in our world and saying,

see, see, it's not going to see, and we're putting things together that hang together with some logic to support that your future is not going to work out. And pessimism is learned as a response to some sort of traumas. And it's cool. I totally get it. I respect the traumas that we all go through and how we carry ourselves from that. I'm in awe of what but so many of us have to carry. And we minimize a shit at it, I think, when we look at social media, like, we're not carrying things. No, people are carrying some real stuff.

And so I totally get pessimism as a response to a family narrative of trauma or a personal set of experiences with it that we go, hold on. Now, if you want to be safe, that is a great strategy. If you want to be a little sick, it's also a great strategy. So pessimism keeps us safe, but also keeps us in some respects sick because we're constantly finding all the things that are wrong with ourselves and others.

The research on these two are quite remarkable. Grounded optimistic people outperform, outsell, live longer, better health and happiness. Like people that know how to do stress well and can see. see a way for a good life in the future, those two components, they stress well. They know how to work well with stress. They're not trying to minimize it or avoid it, but they're great with stress. And they can see a bright future. Those are two sub-capabilities that are really important to invest in. Could you give us one thing we could do to become more optimistic, especially in the face of, I think a lot of us feel like the world is just getting worse and scarier and harder.

My parents thought that too. My grandparents thought that too. I remember my grandparents saying, man, I'm glad I'm not 16 now. It's so much harder. And we're going to say that to our kids. So there's that idea that because it was different than what we had, that it's worse. There are some things that are not good. Let's be very clear. There's 300 million people that don't have running gas, electricity, and water. on the planet of the eight to nine billion. Like, that's a problem. We're eating our planet and killing our planet as we go.

That's a problem. There's some really complex things that we don't know how to solve. Okay. So how can we practice optimism in the environment in the face of these very difficult scenarios? Is the very simple science that came out

of University of Pennsylvania, which is called Three Good Things, you're probably very familiar with it, is at the beginning of the day, make a commitment to be the research, of beauty, the researcher of amazing, the researcher of all things that are really good. And at the end of the day, just write those three things down. That's it. One sentence for each and the emotion that was part of that amazing thing. It could be as simple as when we met earlier today and the way

that you shook my hand was warm and kind, and that'll be one of mine. So all I'll put down was a kind handshake, and then in parentheses it'll say warmth. And so doing that over time helps to to wake up the parts of our brain that say there's good out there because the brain is designed to find the danger out there. So we just want to elicit and bring forward the other capabilities of our amazing internal ecosystem. I like that so much more than a gratitude practice because I find when I just try to do a gratitude practice at the end of the day, I say the same stuff.

I'm like, my husband, my cat, my job, et cetera, et cetera. And it's nice to start the day with the detective mindset, with the researcher mindset. So you're looking for those things. You're scanning for positivity. Yeah, that's good. Now, to upgrade, like to go to the graduate level for gratitude is you can have the same ones, but it's not a box to check. It's an embodied felt experience.

Do you do gratitude at the end or at the beginning of your day? At the end. At the end. So let's just say you're in bed, right? And you're going through a gratitude moment or practice. Just pick one. And try this for like three weeks. See how it goes.

Just pick one as an experiment. and just completely feel the gratitude you have for the health of your husband or something. And embody the whole thing. That's a whole different way of going through it. Oh, I love that. Okay. Number five I have is living in the present moment. Do you agree with that?

It's the whole thing. The present moment is where high performance is expressed. Wisdom is revealed. Relationships are experienced. You know, the present moment is where all experience. experience takes place. And if we can live in the present moment more often, we end up living the rich, amazing life. It doesn't mean it's easy life. I'm not talking about the easy life, but the present moment is where it's at. And our minds are so busy and so enthralled with the

future dangers and the past traumas that it's very difficult to tune right here, right now. And so all of the internal psychological practices are to help you be here now and to adjust to the unpredictable, which is a scary thing, unfolding unknown. Unpredictable, unfolding unknown is the qualities of the present moment. And so if you can be on time with that unfolding present moment and you can navigate your inner experience with that unfolding present moment, like you're totally on it. And that's how the greats do it. They're here more often. Do you have a favorite practice to be in the present moment more often? And if folks want to send an email, I'll send this full version of this, is there's four things I do every morning.

The first thing, and this all happens when my sheets are still on. So there's one breath. That's it. So I'm sending a signal to my brain that we're going to start calm and I'm in control. A deep breath? Just one. Okay. Five in, five seconds in, ten seconds out.

The second thing is one thought of gratitude, the embedded gratitude that I just shared with you. The third is I use my imagination and I see parts of my day that I know that I'm going to be doing and I use my imagination to see myself being my very best in those moments. Okay. So, and that takes like 10, 15, 20 seconds. All of this happens within 90 seconds. Then to be present, the fourth thing is I take my sheets off and I just spend one moment being where my body is.

That's it. And it feels kind of weird at first. You're like, so I'm standing next to my bed and I'm just standing there. That's practicing being present. So that's a very simple little 90-second practice, those four things. And I'm waking up specific circuitry in my brain to do that. The second more powerful way is to practice meditation. What's your meditation practice?

There's two types, single point and contemplative. And I spend more time on single-point meditation than contemplative. Is a mantra meditation single point? It is. Yeah, so it's repeating over and over. That's what I do. Yeah. Most often.

So when your mind wanders, you're returning back to the single point, to the one thing. And you become more intimately aware with when you're distracted and how to speak to yourself to bring it back. And so that's one of the great values of single point meditation. And how long do you meditate for? Sometimes it's a minute. I've been practicing about 25 years. So sometimes it's like one minute.

Sometimes it's... Do you have a minimum you try to hit every day? Oh, yeah. One minute. Okay. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. I mean, I ebb and flow. Like, when I'm on it, it's like that minute is amazing. And sometimes it's 20 minutes. Sometimes it's seven, you know. And so I ebb and flow with it.

And so more days than not, it's about 15. I love that. Okay. So my final list for your approval is. Thank you for the conversation. Like, I loved how you've created space for me to just explore with you. And so thank you for your smile, the kindness in your eyes and the way that you've created this space. Thank you. This has been so wonderful for me. Yeah. Ditto.

Okay. So we have operate with fear. We have overcome FOPO. We have be optimistic. We have build your confidence. And we have live in the present moment. Are you satisfied? I co-sign all of those.

Yeah. Are we missing anything that's critical to be our most successful? successful selves. Yeah, I think that part that we talked about earlier, which is know your first principles, like that's foundational. Be clear about a compelling future you're working toward. So maybe you could collapse those under work well with fear. Maybe you could.

But I think that those are foundational to all humans. That is not easy work. So I would just maybe asterisk those. Okay. I love that. Well, thank you so much for this conversation. You mentioned a few things, resources for people. Do you have anything else that you want to draw attention to?

I think if someone in your community is viving, then check out our podcast, Finding Mastery. It's a way to stay connected. Of course, there's the course that I mentioned. If you're interested in the morning mindset routine, if you send something at, let's do info at finding mastery.com, we could get that from you. And no, the podcast is a great way. Do you have a favorite episode for people to start with? Oh, geez.

That's cool. Amy Hood, the CFO of Microsoft, and she talks about the real challenges of being, I mean, the CFO for the most significant company in the planet right now. And she's talking about, no, I leave at 5 o'clock. Ooh. Yeah, like everyone knows. Oh, I love that. Yeah, she's rad. She is rad.

Amazing. Period. Thank you so much for taking the time today. I love this conversation. Ditto. Thank you so much. I have made so many life changes since having this conversation with Dr. Jervais. and I cannot wait to hear what you think.

So definitely tag me on Instagram. I am at Liz Moody and let me know what surprised you, what you loved, and definitely what you were going to be implementing in your life. And if you loved this episode, share it with a friend, send it to your mom or your dad or your sister, add it to the work slack. Sharing the podcast is 100% the best way to support it. It's how we can continue to get these amazing guests,

share this amazing content with you, and it is so, so appreciated. If someone shared a link with you and you are new to the podcast, welcome. I am so glad that you're here. If you are not following the podcast, I want you to do this one thing for me. I want you to go to the main podcast page on whatever platform you like to listen on. That is the page that lists all of the Liz Moody podcast episodes. And then you will see the word follow under the logo on Spotify. And then there's a little follow with a plus sign button on the top right of that same page on Apple Podcasts.

There was also a recent Apple update that has changed things a little bit. So if you follow the podcast there, even if you have been following it for a really, really, really long time, go to that little button in the top right and click turn on automatic downloads so the pod keep showing up in your feed. This way you'll not miss out on any new episodes. They'll appear right in your feed every single Wednesday and every other Monday. And you are going to want to be following along because next week, week we have a deep dive into how to actually know what to eat in the confusing world of nutrition. And we've got a Monday episode where a very public figure opens up about finding resilience during her divorce. So definitely make sure that you're following so you do not miss out on any of that. Okay, I love you and I'll see you next week for the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast.