The School of Greatness - The Danger Line: Why 84% Never Reach Their Potential | Dr. Michael Gervais

Episode Date: February 16, 2026

Dr. Michael Gervais opens up about surviving a head-on car collision at 70 miles per hour and how decades of psychological training shaped his response in that split second.The high performance psychologist, who has spent 14 years inside NFL locker rooms and coached athletes through four Olympic Games, shares why he believes humans don't rise to moments but fall to the level of their training.He breaks down what he calls "the danger line," that messy emotional edge where growth actually happens, and explains why most people never practice getting there in their careers, relationships, or conversations with loved ones. Gervais also delivers a pointed warning about youth sports in America, revealing how untrained coaches are shaping the psychological development of children in a system where 99.95% won't achieve their athletic dreams.Whether you're navigating a career setback, building mental resilience, or raising kids who can thrive without tying their worth to performance, this conversation offers a framework for training your psychology the same way elite athletes train their bodies.The Greatness Playbook: The Psychological Strength EditionGet your copy of The First Rule of MasteryFinding Mastery PodcastIn this episode you will:Recognize why performance-based identity fuels achievement but never delivers freedom, and what to build insteadDiscover why negative self-talk is actually a protective mechanism borrowed from childhood and how to replace it with what Dr. Gervais calls "the epic thought list"Learn the difference between optimism, agency, and efficacy and why every world-class performer Dr. Gervais has met shares one of these traitsUnderstand how "fight, flight, freeze, and submit" plays out in boardrooms and relationships, not just physical dangerApply the "support then challenge" framework that the best coaches and parents use to unlock potential without causing psychological harmFor more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1890For more Greatness text PODCAST to [phone]More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Jim CurtisMel RobbinsDr. Caroline Leaf Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy!Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Do you feel like there's too much pressure going on in your life right now, like the responsibilities are piling up and you feel like you might be just at the point of burning out? Well, today's guest is a sports psychologist who's worked with some of the top Olympic athletes and he's giving us science-back tools on how to deal with pressure at the highest level. I'm so excited for you to check this out. So let's go ahead and dive in. I was working with a UFC fighter. He was aware that he would tighten up before he goes into the cage.

I said, okay, when you're working to be at your best, like, what's happening inside of you? He looked at me. He's like, oh, I'm a tough. I said, well, I don't know, can you back that up? And he says, yeah, when I was 14, I woke my dad's ass. What we can all learn from that is, like, for every epic thought that you want to say to yourself, what are three experiences in your life that give you the right to say that? One of the world's top high performance psychologist and leading experts on the relationship

between the mind and human performance is also the co-creator of the Performance Science Institute. Dr. Mike Jervaiz. Do you believe that you have power over how you navigate life? Not what life is going to give you, but do you believe you have the power to do it? And that is squarely pointing to psychological skills. What would you say if you could only give three psychological tools for everyday human beings, elite performers, underperformers, on how to have better performance in their own life? What would those three tools be?

Okay, so... Not even a moment. month ago, you were in a full-on car crash head-on collision with someone going 70-plus miles an hour, you're going around 40 miles an hour, and talk about having to try to perform under pressure, you know, a life or death situation. I'm just curious, since this just happened, was there anything within a second, a split second that you've learned over the last 20, 30 plus years from your mental performance training, that you felt? supported you in that moment at all.

Yeah, that's cool. In the moment, any moment that has required speed and accuracy and as fast as that as a head-on collision just forces you to be all present. It's a forcing function to be completely in tuned in that moment. So I'm when that happens, completely engaged in the present moment. But that's interesting in and of itself. But the takeaway was right. afterwards. Yes. How do you respond? Yeah. How do you respond to situations that are not good in life when

things don't code your way, when it's scary, when it's... Yeah, I think the overwhelming sentiment is that I'm really grateful for a couple things. One is I'm not training to be an athlete anymore, but I invest in my physical health. And my body's stood up in the right way to that collision. So I'm grateful that I had the right kind of prerequisites physically to be able to withstand a pretty radical collision. The second is I've been training my psychology and emotional fitness, if you will, for a long time. And I'm really grateful. I can understand at a different level how a post-traumatic stress experience takes place for people. So I'm really grateful that I was able to work with the experience and navigated and move to a growth approach as opposed to a stress

syndrome. Yeah, because some people, when they have, let's call it, a failure or a breakdown or an injury, whatever it might be, whether they're an athlete or an executive or an everyday human being, they get fired from their job or they have something that is a breakdown, let's call it. They retreat back into fear. They limit themselves. They start thinking smaller as opposed to expanding their thinking capacity. They try to retrieve back to what they know is comfortable rather than taking certain risks to try to break through into a higher performance level. What strategy or technique did you use to continue to expand yourself forward, recover from the experience and go through the reflection of it all,

but then say, okay, I'm not going to not go out and drive again. I'm going to keep pushing forward. I'm going to keep expanding or I'm going to do things in a way that allows me to live life fully rather than retreat. It's a good framing. Think about just the science of post-traumatic stress disorder for just a moment. there's we could lift off or list off the symptoms and kind of the the requirements for that syndrome but what is less talked about or even research is post-traumatic growth so what you're asking

about is like if you had an option which we all have options based on our experiences and our psychology we determine the experience not the experience in and of itself yes so for much of my life i have been framing things in a way like okay how do we I grow from this? How do I benefit from this? How do I frame this in a way that helps me and others, you know, grow? So this was another moment that fit well with the model that I've already invested in for the last, call it 30 years. Yeah, but now you're the brain scientist who's doing open brain surgery and saying, okay, do these theories actually work, you know, after this? Well, I think that's the point, Lewis, is that take any smaller setback or challenge or adversity or whatever,

or any kind of mundane life experience, like, how do I take one more rep at the gym? Yes. Right? How do I stay in a hard conversation just a little bit longer? So it's these small little moments that just add up where you respond based on your training.

Humans, this is a first principle for me. And this is, I don't know, somewhat controversial, I think, is that humans fall to the level of their training. We don't rise to moments. And I know you might think differently about that. Because I think I've heard you say we rise to the occasion, but I can't remember. I think I agree with you. You rise to the level of our training.

Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. And so when it comes to psychological training, your entire community right now has a training module, has a training way. And it's like the way that they're framing this conversation, the way they framed the cold eggs that they ate. So we're always training something. Yes.

And being aware of how we are framing and now. navigating our psychology is really important. So the whole thing begins with awareness. And without awareness of how you're working with your thoughts and emotions and feelings, without awareness, I don't think you have a chance to be anywhere close to what you're capable of. And so it does begin with awareness. We're always training ourselves, you know, one direction or not. And so it showed up right.

And so I'm super grateful. That's good. What would you say? I'm just curious, you work a lot with elite athletes, peak performance. of the world's population, what would you say is the percentage of people that are living a peak performance life? You know, it falls under a normal bell distribution, a normal curve. There's the half percenters that are wildly known, world recognized. And then there's the 5 percent and the 10 percent and the 15 percent, kind of that upper quadrile, if you will.

And it's no different than in any population. any endeavor, like there's a half percenters in basketball, there's a half percenters in handball, there's a half percenters in music, most people fall within one or two standard deviations of the mean. 84 percent, to be exact, right in that number, of people are kind of similar in the way they approach life. And that's what the average looks like, 84%.

84%. Yeah, or I would say are what we would call right humming around the average. So people that fundamentally commit their lives, towards any aim. And the word is fundamentally commit. Have a chance of knowing how good or extraordinary they can be in any endeavor. And if your endeavor is handball, you have to fundamentally commit. If your endeavor is joy and happiness, purpose-driven, you know, community-minded, whatever it might be.

So the word, though, the phrase is fundamentally commit. Most people don't even come close to fundamentally organizing their life. around what matters most. Wow. They don't make a decision of what matters most. That's right. And they don't go all the way in on that. Yeah.

And that fundamental decision is dangerous. There's a danger line to sort out. And I want to enter this conversation two ways, because I think if you knew what I knew about youth sport, you would not challenge your kids in the way most people do. And I think that that sounds like, what did you just? say well what is it that you know about youth sports that all parents should know is really dangerous how so in youth sport in the US we are equipping amateur untrained well-intended

for the most part amateur coaches with the psychology and emotional development of our children through a social force ranked stacked statted observed critiqued and judged sport. Right. Fill in the blank of whatever sport it is. Force ranked, statted. Now, I love that ecosystem. I love subjective and objective measures of growth.

I love that you get to see how you compare to other people. I love that there is like rules to engage in. And I love that there is a process and a performance-based approach to invest in to be your very best. I love that part of it. But when you put the psychological, and emotional well-being of young developmental minds. And parents that are a little stressed, a little overwhelmed,

they want the best for their kids, and you've got these amateur coaches in the US with the most tender part of the growth arc of psychology, the young youth. Who, like, it's a dangerous proposition. Yeah. What should parents be thinking about then? If they want to put their kids into youth sports,

or they want them to have activities, to support their growth, how can they combat against the youth sport system the way it's built now? Parents need to be the greatest buffer. You know, I do not suggest that my son is in youth sport. I love youth sport. I'm just saying it's dangerous. Okay.

Okay. You're not saying take your kids out of soccer. Yeah, yeah. Sport has taught me so much. Sport is my working laboratory, both personally as a kid, as a young adult, even now. And it's been my working laboratory as a sports psychologist, you know, for working with the world's best for a long time. So I don't have anything about it, but it is dangerous.

So what are parents need to do? They need to be the greatest buffer. They need to install all of the protective factors that will help their children frame, that will help their children work with all of the heartbreak that comes from the majority of kids who don't get what they want. Yeah. And I'm talking about, like, if you. If you knew what I knew, that statement about the dangers of sport, you wouldn't push your kids because there's 0.01% of kids that make it in the pros.

0.05%. Somewhere in that range of kids that make it to the pros. A lot of them will be failures. They will not achieve the hopes and dreams in sport that they might have. But if you take it as a working laboratory to sort out how to work with mistakes, how to understand relationships, how to be the greatest teammate to yourself and the greatest teammate, to other people that you possibly can make, that ecosystem is rich, but you've got kind of knucklehead coaches. And I had a conversation with one of my son's coaches,

and he's like, so I had the season go for you guys? And I said, for my son, it was really hard. For us, I'm really grateful that my wife and I were able to, you know, be buffers and be kind of resilient shepherds, if you will, for him. And he looked at me with like, well, that was a little too honest. I said, yeah, it was, you made some questions. calls and but gave us plenty of fodder to work against yeah I mean at the same time it's like these coaches probably aren't well equipped or well trained to lead seven eight 12 15 year old

psychologically emotionally with the standards they have of like trying to win every game the pressures they have of like their jobs on the line or some of them don't even get paid so it's it's also figuring out how do we figure out how to support coaches that don't have the tools and training That's exactly the right question. To be parents as well as great coaches who aren't getting paid. Yeah, we don't have the right investment. In the U.S., if we believe sport is a great ecosystem for growth, which we do. Look at the numbers, you know.

If you're in the bottom one-third of sport as a boy in high school, it's even more dangerous. Yes. Being on the playground, not getting picked, being the one that everyone rolls their eyes. If you stumble fall, you're trying your best, but you're like you're causing a slowdown. That was me. I was picked the last in elementary school. It's like it was a formal moment that drove me to win at all costs. Yeah. So you figured out how to work with that pain, that rejection, that thing. Yes. In a destructive way that got results. But it didn't make me feel fulfilled or happier, like at peace. It made me feel like I always had to prove myself that they

were wrong about me. Yeah. So you built what's classically called a performance. based identity. Yeah. That I am what I do relative to how well you do what you do. Sure. And so that performance-based identity is really tricky. It can fuel you to be great at something. Yes. But it will never allow freedom. And I didn't have peace until I hit 30. When everything started to fall apart in my life, that's when I started to reflect and start doing healing work that gave me a sense of a different mission of life in the last 13 years. And it's allowed me to have a lot more peace and freedom and be driven to accomplish and serve at the same time. And you know when people hear you say that, there's this fine line between like, well, he did

it. He drove himself to be, you know, one of the best in the world that da-da-da, fill in the blanks. And like, okay, I'll sacrifice that for me too. And it's kind of like saying the person who has all the toys, big boats, big cars, big house, big whatever. And like, like, And they say, well, I had to grind and it was an unhealthy grind. I don't want that for you. Like, there's a better way. And they're like, on the other section. Yeah, yeah.

So how? The question is how. Yeah. And you were asking the question, like, what do we do with parents? You know, what do we do with coaches? We have to invest. You have either you have to invest in your psychology to understand how you work. So you have a chance to invest in another person's ability to grow.

It starts with self-discovery. Yeah. And just talk about coach. for a minute here. We don't invest in youth sport coaches the way that other countries do. There's a certification, a training model, minimum thresholds. And here it's kind of who do you know? You're free. Do you want to help out? Oh, you played pro or oh, like, oh, wow, you're willing to. Okay, come on in. And it's not right. It's one of the greatest ecosystems to understand who you are and how you can grow. Yeah, and at the same time, I guess American sports

develop some of the greatest athletes in the world. Because we have so many. That and maybe because the stakes are so high at a young age, not saying it's good, but maybe it's because there's such high expectations at such young ages, not saying it's healthy, but maybe that also develops people to succeed under pressure at a high level. Yeah, you're right for two reasons. One, it's a pathway out for some. It's an inspired way through for some, but we're so sloppy because we have next human approach.

So the washout in the U.S. is uncanny. And so you've got to be extraordinary to make an NFL team. You've got to. You have got to be extraordinary. And we don't really have a youth development program. We got a college program. It's good. Yeah.

But we don't really have. So these are the most fit, most extraordinary, most powerful humans that have endured public humiliation, a lot to get to that place. And, you know, I've been in the NFL, I think, for like 14 or 15 years now. And as a sports psychologist, not as an athlete. Yeah, a punter. Be clear. And, like, just to be on the roster, you have to be an extraordinary athlete.

And there is, there's no two ways about it is that the heartbreaks that they've gone through to get to where they are. But they have made, and I do want to talk about this, a fundamental commitment. And this is, I think, a really interesting takeaway for your community, maybe even for you, Lewis, is that when you pull back the curtain on what happens in an NFL franchise, the vulnerability and courage expressed at the danger line, you know, I'll hold my place for a danger line for a minute. Every day is remarkable. Not just Sunday. No, every day. Every day. On Monday, when you're potentially.

being called out for mistakes that you've made and or celebrations, you know, because it's in front of your peers. In front of your peers and your coaches. Remember, your peers are trying to take your job. Yes. Your coaches are deciding if you play or not. And to grow, you have to move to the danger line. You have to move to that messy edge, that place where-

Risk. Everything could fall apart or it could be a breakthrough. And you have to be practiced at going to that danger line. And most of us, I mean, when's the last time I'll take you out of it? because I think you're practiced at it. But for most people, we don't get to the danger line at work, in the living room at home, with our friends and, you know, like our loved ones, we don't practice getting to that emotional or inner physical messy edge.

And so we're unpracticed at getting to the required state to unlock what you're capable of. They are not. And they do it physically, mentally, emotionally, all these different things. And when you add the physical element on a daily basis, it's even more risky. because so many guys get injured playing that sport, where you have to endure years of potential injuries that you did not get or you overcame and you were able to come back from

and continue on the danger line of potential injury and see guys go down that could have been you and it's like, I'm going to keep fighting. That's right. And then I'm going to face humiliation the next day from my coaches or from my peer or from the media and I'm going to get called out and I have to keep going. That's why the best leaders and the best coaches

understand what it takes and they do not add to it. They support then challenge. So that in that order, those two ingredients are incredibly important for anyone to become who they're capable of support then challenge. How do you support somebody? You get to know them. You care about them. You really invest in understanding them so that you know how you can properly challenge them. support, then challenge. The best coaches really do understand that. Because you're trying to challenge them as often as possible to get to the danger line. I'm trying to help them rise to the occasion.

But you have to understand and support them first, before you challenge is what I'm hearing you say. Well, the rise to the occasion, no, I think it's rise. It's not rising. It's readying yourself psychologically to go to a place that is super unsettling. because by definition, you're not good at doing the thing on the messy edge. So you've got to get comfortable at doing it. Yeah. Yeah.

And it sounds so tight. Get uncomfortable or get comfortable being uncomfortable. It's really foundational. Yeah. But I don't think it ever gets comfortable. You just get more familiar that you're going to be okay after you do it. Like, it gets a little bit easier. But it's still, the easier it gets, it's like you have to find new levels of danger.

That's right. Emotionally, psychologically, Relationally, spiritually, physically, to get to the next level. And that danger word is super provocative, but it does feel dangerous when you're at the edge. It feels like your life is going to be over sometimes when you're having a vulnerable conversation with your partner and you feel like, I can't say these words. Because we know, you know, that our brain doesn't have redundancies built in. Like, oh, this segment is for an emotional conversation and this segment is for a saber-tooth tiger. Like, it's the same fight-flight mechanisms.

And I think we under-celebrate, fight, flight, we know those two, freeze, and submit. That fourth one, we under-celebrate. What does that mean to submit? As soon as it gets really intense and the emotional centers of your brain are louder than the reasoning parts of your brain. And the emotions are running the show. That we fight, we flee, we freeze, and we submit. And what's submitting is, is like we kind of roll over. to power or authority and say, oh, I get it.

Oh, yeah, now I see. You're right. You're right. But we have a big idea that we want to present or we're complaining about something in the hallways. And somebody says, well, you're going to talk to Lewis about it? And you're going to tell them how you feel and say you're the supervisor. Yeah, yeah.

And then I set the meeting with you, takes a little courage. And then I said it with you. And then I say, hey, Lewis, there's this thing I was, you know, thinking about. And I'm not sure it's a good idea or not. I'm already hedging. And then I say, but, you know, I need to tell you because some other people are kind of thinking about it. And then I actually tell you and then you go, well, hold on. And now you challenge me. Do I fight? No, I'm not going to fight you. Do I freeze? No, I'm not going to freeze.

I can't leave. Who, body just heated up a little bit. I'm starting to shake a little bit. My heart pounding a little bit. What's about to happen? And then I submit, you're right. You're right. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I didn't think about it that way. But I'm not being honest. I'm just reflexively doing whatever it takes to be okay in that moment. To survive. Literally, that's the survival mechanism. Fight, flight, freeze, submit. And in the hallways of enterprise and corporate and, you know,

intense environments is that submitting is a real choice. And it's unfortunate because we never feel really good about any of those responses. So what's the response we should have that's not fight? Flight, freeze, or submit. So first is understanding how those mechanisms work. As soon as you interpret something to be dangerous or you're in an environment that is physically actually dangerous, your brain lights up. And all the ways that I don't need to recount. But that's important the way either you perceive it or it actually is dangerous, you light up.

So you can extend the danger line by the way you perceive. Okay. So if I perceive like, boy, you hold my future in my, you hold my future in your hands. Yeah. That's really dangerous. That's very dangerous. It's very dangerous. It's very dangerous.

It's very dangerous. I've given a lot of risk to your opinion of me. And we name that for fun, Fopo, fear of people's opinions, right? And so we'll get into that in a minute. But that's one way. You change the way that you're framing. So if there's like, wait, hold on. What I hold to be more important is working from.

from first principles. So a first principle for me is something that matters to me. I've thought deeply about how I want to operate on this planet. And if it's honesty, let's say, or it's having somebody else's back, or it is fill in the blanks, whatever first principle could be, that I need to operate from that even in dangerous situations,

even in emotionally risky situations. So that rearranges the danger line because of the perception. Then you need to practice being in those intense environments as often as you possibly can. And that's what elite sport does. Youth sports meant to be that way. But that's what elite sport does,

is it fundamentally creates an environment for people to get up on the edge. Because that's where growth happens. And then the third is having a whole set of psychological skills while you're in that emotionally charged environment to regulate, breathing, self-talk, you know, knowing how to work with yourself. if you will. And that's really what psychology is, knowing yourself and how to work well with

yourself. What would you say if you could only give three psychological tools for everyday human beings, elite performers, underperformers on how to have better performance in their own life, under stressful conditions or under any condition? What would be, if you can only share three tools that they could use, three psychological, emotional tools to improve. improve your life, no matter how complicated or simple they are, what would those three tools be? A life commitment to self-discovery. Okay. So let's call that bucket one.

The second, what do I mean? Hold on. What I mean by a self-discovery, like to really know yourself, to really know how you work. So understand you first and why you react and why you respond and why you feel, think. That's right. Really understand yourself. And that's a self-discovery. processes are ubiquitous like what is your purpose what's your vision for a

better life like what your personal philosophy like like know how you work the second is practices for awareness so that you can become aware of how your internal environment is working so that you can adjust okay so awareness is kind of the main theme how do you invest in awareness there's three meditation journaling or conversations with people of wisdom. It's really one of the great kind of benefits, if you will, of meditation. It's like, yes, it's a practice for deep concentration. Yes, it's a practice for insight and wisdom, which are not to be understated in any way.

But it's the practice of becoming aware of what's happening inside and what's happening outside of me. And without awareness, we're kind of stuck. And then the third are psychological skills. and I think the big one probably that most of us need right now, I'll do 3A and 3B, self-talk and breathing would be the two simple ones there. Knowing how to speak to yourself,

to back yourself, and knowing how to breathe to downregulate in this high-speed, high-stress world that we're all in. Why do so many people have a limiting self-talk, a negative self-talk, a limiting self-talk, instead of a positive or encouraging self-talk? Oh, we borrowed that. We built it from an early age. That's a protective mechanism. I know it. I lived it. How does that protect you when you talk negatively versus you got this and versus like being a positive coach to yourself?

It's maladaptive, first of all, but it's a self-esteem saving mechanism. How does it save your self-esteem to talk negatively about self? Because if you say you got this, you can do it. Oh, man, you're amazing. And then you go for it and it doesn't work out. Then what? It's really, it stings. It hurts. It's like, man, maybe I can't. Maybe I've been lying to myself.

Maybe, maybe that's all BS. And maybe I am a loser, failure, whatever. So it pulls you into safety when you say, yeah, you're not built for that kind of stuff. That's for other people. Big money, big happy, big joy. That's for other people. You know, so you're pulling yourself back into like a regression to safety. And it's maladaptive.

And if somebody had said to you at some point, like, you're kind of stupid now. You know, or like, did you really decide to wear a black shirt? Like, really? So there's a negative critical kind of lens. Then you adopt a negative critical lens. And because you've learned it. That's just how people work.

And they don't really realize that there's a whole set of people that are free that are like, wow, this is a, black is amazing on you. Like, yeah, that's a cool choice, man. I should try that. out too. Like there's a whole other universe of people that see potential and see buoyancy and open up the aperture for what could be as opposed to judge, critique, niche down, you know, like try to have you be something less, have you be something different by seeing less. How does someone listening or watching overcome a self-critical identity that they've had their

entire lives, whether they, whether, you know, maybe it wasn't their fault at all and they just adopted it from, parents or peers or coaches and they just adopted this self-critical identity. How do they start to say, you know what? Actually, the last 20, 30 years, I'm not those things, even though I said I was those things and I'm not going to beat myself up for doing that to myself. And now I'm going to think positively about what is possible. But I have no evidence of that because I've never believed it. So am I going to lie to myself?

Am I an imposter? Like, how do they actually start to build that? I think that question is... Maybe it's a whole workshop we need to do. That's a lot. But like the spirit of it is very cool. It begins with awareness first. Like what are you actually saying to yourself about yourself?

Are you an above the line coach or below the line? Are you backing yourself and seeing what's possible above the line? Below the line, are you critiquing, judging? If you're like, yeah, I'm a below the line coach to myself. Damn, I would never want somebody to hear the way I speak to myself. And I would never speak to somebody else I care about the way that I speak to myself. Like, if you're in that category, there's a lot of work to do, but you can do it. One, it begins with awareness.

And then it begins with, again, a fundamental commitment. Like fundamentally commit to know how to work with yourself. I'm going to oversimplify the mind-brain connection for a minute. The brain is the hardware. The mind is a software. That idea. It's way too. Yeah, yeah.

It's not this simple. But the software runs the hardware. The mind runs the brain. And you can train the software. You can rewrite the code. You can say and do whatever you want. You can say whatever you want to yourself. The trick is it must be grounded in something that is real.

So fake it to you make it. I don't buy it. I don't want my medical provider to fake it till he makes it. I don't have tattoos, but I wouldn't want my tattoo artist to fake it. I don't want anything fake. I want to know that what I'm investing in is real. So if you're going to speak to yourself in a way that is positive, let's just say, I don't do the positive negative thing very well.

But if you're going to speak to yourself in a way that is productive, I call it the epic thought list. For every epic thought that you want to say to yourself, what are three experiences in your life that give you the right to say that? For example, I know one statement that really helps me. When I say to myself, oh, I can do hard things. I can face the dragon.

I can really bite down and be about it when it's hard. Those are three sentences I just said. What gives me the right to say that? And if I'm very clear about the three things in my life that have given me the right to say that, then I can say it. Why not say it? Because it gives me a certain vibe. I'll tell you where this came from. I was working with a UFC fighter and it was a championship fight.

And he was aware that he would tighten up before he goes into the cage. 17,000 screaming fans, millions of people watching, equally talented person across the cage. Some have the bad intentions. You know, like there's a lot of violence in this sport. And he was very, very skilled. I said, what's it like when you're at your best? and he looked at me like I had four heads or something and he was like nothing it's just super clean like I'm not saying anything he was talking about flow state the zone if you will

I said okay when you're working to be at your best like what's happening inside you and he goes let me let me give you the locker room okay there's a little you can bleep it out if you need to yeah um I'm a tough motherfucker yeah and I go oh he's saying that to himself that's right and but I asked him what do like what are you saying to yourself when like it's really good to be inside of you. You're working to be your best. And he goes, he looked at me. He's like, oh, I'm a tough mother. That's what he's saying. And kind of unimpressed. I said, well, I don't know. Can you back that up? And he says, yeah. And he looked at me like, are you questioning me? And so I was, when I was 14, I woke my dad's ass.

That's pretty sweet. I mean, yeah, you're a tough mother effort. Yeah. And then so I pause again and see how far I could take it. And I said, when you got anything else? Yeah, yeah. And he looked at me again, kind of like. All right. Yeah, yeah. And he goes, yeah, my last fight in the cage, I'm getting choked out. I broke the chokehold, put him on my back, dragged him the other dude across the cage,

dumped him, finished the fight. And he looked at me. He says, I'm a tough mother-fif. So I go, all right. I mean, do you got anything else? Yeah. And then he kind of leans up in his, you know, he's got the bald head, tattooing up his neck, like lumpy as a human can be.

And he leans at the edge of the table and he goes, if someone were to ask me one more question, I might choke him out. You know, okay, okay, we're done. But the idea is he had three things in his back pocket that gave him the right to say I'm a tough MFer. Yeah. And what we can all learn from that is like,

how do you back yourself and speak to yourself? And that takes time to practice. Yeah. And what gives you the right to say those things to yourself? We've all been through hard times. We've all been through real challenges. I think the best in the world, they have those things right at the surface. And they're using it to help them meet the challenges.

They're using that awareness and self-talk to back themselves as they go into a challenging moment. Yeah. So, again, they know themselves. They have practices for awareness. If they're feeling chaotic or not in the moment, they have practices to get back in the moment. And then they have self-talk, breathing, and other. psychological tools that they have practiced and trained to be able to not rise to the occasion, but rise to their standards of training, which just happens to be the moment.

You got that. That's how you meet the moment. Yes. Whatever the moment is demanding, can you step into the, to your best capabilities and meet that moment? Because you've trained it and practiced it over and over again. That's right. When I was in that car accident, I met that moment to my best ability.

The moment was really more after the moment. It was like, I just. got hit 70 miles an hour, thank God I'm okay, you know, a little banged up and shaking and a little scared. But am I going to freaking scream and beat this guy up? Or am I going to like somehow compose myself a little bit to not, you know, have the flag beyond me? You know, it's always the second response in football. It's not the guy who punches the guy in the face. It's the guy who then spits in the guy after he gets punched in the face who gets flagged and ejected. That's great. That's a great framing. You know, that's, you work in football.

that long you've seen it. Yeah. Guys, it's a heated moment and you guys went a little long after the whistle's done and you punched and then just you had to react. You had to get the last punch in, didn't you? Yeah, that's it. Yeah, well done. You know, it's not easy.

No one likes having a cheap shot or something that's like risking their life. That's not fair. That's not within the boundaries of the rules of life or sport or relationship. We don't like that feeling. It's interesting you bring up fairness. of all the virtues, like I really value working from values. So go back to that idea about first principles, is that how do you develop your first principles?

You just kind of get your values in line. Like what are the handful of values that matter most to you? That's a good exercise in and of itself. And then how do you express that value? Say honesty. Somebody might, that's a value. And then somebody might say their first principle is brutal honesty. That's not mine.

Okay. Somebody else might say radical honesty. So first principle is the way you're expressing that value. And I think fairness, I don't like it. It's one of the few values I have a real hard time with because I don't know one system, really, that's fair. Yeah, it's not a value for me. I'm just putting that out there as like within the rules of whatever the context of the moment is, I guess. Yeah, it's super interesting because my.

A Sun's school is, it's one of their core values. Fairness. Yeah. Life isn't fair. Yeah. And so. So how you're going to create fairness within something? No, it's like, it's complex.

It's complicated. Life is complicated. And fairness, I don't think, is the virtue to work from. Maybe you've got to take them out of that school. Yeah. It's not your value. Get them out of there. But I want to go back to this thing about 84%.

I think this is what you said or maybe what's true is that 84% of the world. of the world population kind of lives on an, I want to call them average, but deviates that, I guess, an average standard of living in terms of, is that we said, quality of life. Quality of life,

or just like, they're not, what did you say? 84% is the average, right? Yeah, that's plus or one minus standard deviation from the norm. Gotcha.

So in terms of like peak performers, there's like the elite elite is 0.5% I think is what you said or a half a percent. I call it the half percenters. Just to kind of conjure up the Michael Jordans of the world. So then there's like 12 or 13% of the rest of the people that are peak performers or above-average performers. There's a range of that peakedness down to the 1% obviously versus 10% of a range. But then the 84% would be, you know, in the average of everyone else in terms of income,

in terms of like their skill sets and capabilities, right? I think even joy and happiness too. Enjoying happiness too. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. what would you say is a difference between the 16% of people that are living above average in their sport, business, career, inner emotional state relationships versus the 84% who are not living at that standard? One, we need to adjust for genetic coding.

Two, we need to adjust for environmental conditions. And three, we need to adjust for psychological skills. So the skills, by definition, are something that you can build. and train. And there is, you know, depending on what research you're looking at, there's a combination of all three that are important to consider. While we cannot change our genetic coding, what are we going to do about it? Like what it is what it is. You can maximize it. Yeah, my height and your height are different. And I need to figure out what's good for my height. You need to figure out what's good for your height, right, as a genetic coding, if you will. So there's a genetic influence.

on happiness and joy. We don't know exactly what it is, but there's some coding that we think, just like there's some coding that leads people to be a little bit more depressed. Okay, so one, there's a genetic influence, too, there's environmental, but what can we really invest in that has an outsized impact

is your psychological skills? Yes. So what are the skills that we know that are best practices to lead a good life? Come to find out. Harvard did an 85-year study. I know you're aware of the study.

The Good Life Study. And the two main findings out of that study are purpose and connection. Okay. What does that mean? That means folks that have somebody to love, folks that are part of a community that are of interest to them. People have more connections that matter to them. They tend to report having a better life.

Okay, so what do you need to do yourself to have somebody to love. Well, you give what you have. If you have love, you can give it. So it's not having people love you. That's not in your control. So the inflection here, the hinge is that you have people to love. But if you're anxious, if you're tired, if you're overwhelmed, if you're irritated,

if you're agitated, then that's what you give people. Yeah. And then they, now you don't have a community that is like amazingly, fruitful. Wow. So you have to, it's what you're able to give. All right. So that's the connection piece. And if you're relying on someone else to fix your state of anxiety or stress or not enoughness feelings, then you're attracting people maybe that are like, yeah, that you're just kind of like codependent, I guess, right? It's like, hey, I need you to make me feel safe in this moment.

That's probably not going to help you have more joy and happiness if they don't give you exactly what you need. Or if they, like, hey, this doesn't work for me anymore, then you're depressed for years. Let's go, stay here one more turn. Is that Victor Frankel, Edith Edgar, like survival, survivalist of concentration camps and the most deplorable conditions on earth, they say the same thing. It's not, it is actually not the environment, but it's the way that you're framing, the way that you are interpreting the experiences around you. And that can be enhanced and developed as well. And so you could look at the head-on collision.

as like the worst thing that's ever happened to you. This isn't fair. Yeah. And this kid did this wrong and he was on his phone and I almost died and what would you just ruin my light? You could do all these things and you could give that meeting and interpretation of that. But you seem like yeah, maybe there was still some stuff you're dealing with but you're, you're seeing fine a month later like you've interpreted it in a way that you've interpreted it. Maybe it's given you a greater sense of purpose even and more connection of love but it doesn't seem like it stopped you from living your purpose.

But it's not just that moment, that grand thing that happened. It's how I practice every day is like, but think about what I'm practicing is like, I have, I don't know, however minutes a day experiences that correspond, you know, and I literally want to live just a great life. And I think you want the same for yourself. So I take the responsibility to say, independent of my genetic coding, independent of where I live. And I have, I've got some really nice, I was born on second base and I know it.

You know, I've got some really nice things. I live in a great area. My parents were great. Yeah. They're complicated, but they're great, you know. And like, so I'm not lost on where I started the, you know, the sport of life, if you will. But it is my job, I feel like, to figure out how to make it as good as I possibly can. And I am constantly working to rise to acute stressors.

to like I want great acute stress and then radical recovery. Yeah. So for every unit of stress I spend in a day, I want radical units of recovery to match it. So I'm not talking about rising to occasion. I'm talking about rising to that fevered pitch of intensity so I can unlock some new capabilities because I really, that's where I learn what I'm truly capable of. And then I need equal needs of recovery. And so that's like an everyday activity.

And I did the same in the car crash. I did the same with you. and I'll do the same when I go home. Sure. It might sound exhausting, but it's actually quite fluid, I think. You know, like, it's not, I'm not some maniacal person, you know, in that way. What would you say someone can do to train their nervous system to feel calm and ready during stressful moments? And to feel safe under pressure.

Oh, I don't think you feel safe under pressure. Not really. Yeah, I don't think you feel, like the idea that pressure is a privilege. Yes. It doesn't mean it's comfortable. Yeah. It's not comfortable. There's nothing.

It's not, man. It could be fun in moments, but it doesn't mean it's comfortable. It's really agitating. Yeah. You know. The whole world is watching you when everything is on the line, when it's like, this is make or break. And the whole world can be like the board of directors that you're pitching an IT to or like or, you know, family members. Your world.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So how do we train the nervous system to feel safe under pressure then? No, I don't think we feel safe. We don't. No, I think by definition, it's not safe. I think you're on the danger line. Okay. And then, but you need to frame like, yes, I'm in it. Great. This is where the unlocks happen. This kind of stress makes me. Let's go. I'm built for this. This is what I want. That type of framing will open the aperture to give you better access to your skills. What I just said is very, very, very technical. Okay. That's when you need the positive self-talk training. That's when you need the breath work. You need to know yourself. That's what you need all of it to be like, we're in that moment.

Now it's put these things into practice. Yeah, and I would say, I'm going to go back and, I know I said positive, but I really don't use that language. It's productive. Yes. Like I'm backing myself. I'm framing. Encouraging. Yeah.

Yeah. It's not like, hey, it's all going to work out. Optimism is awesome. No. It is a fundamental skill that I have not yet met a world's best that has changed in industry, maybe even the global rhythm, that is not fundamentally optimistic. So if you want to take that page. I think that that's a signal that it's good to train optimism. That's a good thing to invest in.

I have not yet met a world's best that's not fundamentally optimistic. Why not invest in it then? Okay. I have not yet met the most happy and joyous people on the planet that I've got to work with that are not fundamentally optimistic. There's a place for pessimism and skepticism and cynicism. There's a place for that. But those are saving mechanisms. Not baseline mechanisms.

No. Yeah. Optimism is this, I'm not talking about toxic optimism. Yeah, yeah. Like this, it's a orientation about how you see the future. Do I believe that the best is yet to come? Do I believe that good is yet to come? Yeah, do I believe I can overcome any challenges coming my way?

Yeah, that's more efficacy. Just to be kind of parsed the applied science here. Yeah. So what you just said is you're anchoring in self-efficacy. What does that mean versus? Optimism is like a fundamental belief that things work out as long as I work it. Yes. Okay.

That the best is yet to come. That there's something good that's going to come out of this, but that you know that you have to work it. And you picked up on that second hit, which is the efficacy piece. So this will be just for fun. Optimism is the fundamental belief it's going to work out. Agency is that I get to choose in my life how I go about it. That's a powerful position in this wild world. Or my interpretation and actually what I do.

The action steps I take. Yeah, that is what Victor Frankel and Edith Eager pointed to is that I choose. The response. That's right. Okay. I am going to choose. Even though you have taken away all of the human dignity rights that, you know, I'm talking about the Nazi concentration camps, I'm still in charge of choosing. What did Victor Frankl say between?

Stimulus and response. There's a choice. He's attributed to that. but we can't actually find it. Gotcha. And if somebody can find it in your community, please send it to me. Yeah.

Like, I want to, I love, he, I never got to meet him, but I love that man. Yeah. Like, he has taught me so much. Same with Edith. I don't know she's great. I've interviewed her twice. Yeah, me too.

She's amazing. Powerful. Okay, so agency is like I get to choose. And then efficacy is when I choose and how I choose, I got some power to flex on it. So efficacy means power. Do you believe that you have power over how you navigate life? Not what life is going to give you, but do you believe you have the power to do it?

And that is squarely pointing to psychological skills. Yes. Okay? And if you cannot regulate your emotional system, if you cannot regulate your arousal system, your heart rate and all, if you can't regulate, you can't be powerful. Gosh, I'm so glad you're saying this, and I want you to say it again in a moment, because I had a brain surgeon who had done over a thousand brain surgeries, who's also a PhD in neuroscience. So he studied the mind, but also the brain, right? Both these things we're talking about.

Yeah, cool. And I said, what's the number one skill that if you can only recommend one skill to all human beings to live a better life? What would it be? And he said emotional regulation. Yeah. And that's just what I'm hearing you say. It's a big part of it for sure. You don't have the ability to regulate your nervous system, your thoughts, your emotions. your interpretations even, you're not going to perform well when pressure is on the line or perform well at all in life. You're going to have a harder, more challenging life. Oh, well, I mean, super clear. I'm nodding my head to it.

And if you think about the model thoughts, emotions, behavior, and those three, the swirl of those three is really the output is how you're, what performance is. And if you have high-performing thoughts, high-performing emotions, high-performing behaviors, you'll get to a high-performance output. You will. Yeah. You may not get the exact results you're looking for, but you're going to get better results than most. I'm not interested in thinking about outcomes. I want, I want, and everyone that I work with, like, we all want the same.

We all want the gold medals. Yeah. I want the world championships. We all want like... Million-dollar contracts. Yeah, all that stuff. But I want a lot of. all those when I was in fourth grade. But what I didn't understand as a young mind is the

relationship between inputs and outputs. So what you and I were just talking about were the outputs. What I didn't understand is how to maximize the inputs, how to focus on the things that I have control over, maximize those. It puts me in a position of power, a position of high leverage, so that it's more likely that those outcomes could happen. But then I need to also double back on this is love the unfolding nature of the process. Now I'm winning. Yes, because you're loving life every day. Okay, it sounds so like trite when you and I in your cushy, you know, studio and like, but like,

it's true, man. But, but I'm, I'm a thousand percent backed by this idea that if, if you do not love the way that you live your life and then you go get an extraordinary outcome, this is not the right way. And the outcome isn't satisfying. No. I was working with another world champion wrestling. And I was in the stadium when he won his championship. And the referee or umpire, I can't remember the name, put his hand up in the moment of celebration, world championship, boom.

And he was crying. And he came off and he said, Mike, did you see those tears? I was like, yeah. I didn't know what they were about. And I didn't know if there were tears of joy, tears of joy, tears of. of relief. I didn't know what it was. And he said,

he was, yeah, you know what? I realized in that moment, I thought I was going to feel different. I hate wrestling. Wow. But I know I've got to keep going to make my dad happy. Oh, my gosh. It's crazy, isn't it?

Yeah, man. Much of your psychology is related to your parents. I know that we, oh, blame it on your mom, blame on your dad. No, it's not that. like, most parents try their best, but they're like dealing with their own stuff.

And then they had us. And they didn't know how to have a great kind of approach to life, unless yours were amazing. They might have been, I don't know. But like, they're trying to figure out their stuff. We're all trying to figure it out.

And I'm not convinced that people are investing properly in that investment. You know, so. As a lead performance psychologist, coach, I'm a new parent. You know, I've got twin daughters that are two and a half months old. If you could give me or any parent advice on how to create the best environment possible,

you know, no matter how good we try to be, people are going to, kids are going to interpret things how they want to still. But if you're like, hey, do these three things and you're at least going to set up the best structure, environment thinking process for your kids to, have a good life and potentially be in the top 14% of performers and whatever they do. What would that be without them feeling this pressure to get love from me or my wife if they perform or not perform like any of that stuff to eliminate that where they say, I'm going to feel love no matter what and I still want to thrive.

Well, you've got it. I keep asking that question. Okay. That's, that's the, if there's three things you do, keep asking that question, how do I get better at it? You know, because I haven't observed and I haven't seen. and I don't know, I can't really start for you to answer that in a satisfying way. But in general, I would say, keep asking how to be your best. Cool.

Number two is support, then challenge and build your relationship on unconditional positive regard for the uniqueness of that child. And that's the support mechanism. And then challenge them, whatever that they're doing, to apply themselves in their very best way. And it's not about the output. It's not about the outcome. It's about challenging to just be your very best in what you're doing. And look, there's time sensitive things because when kids are eight years old and they're washing the dishes or like it.

You know, like this is not like wash that dish better. You can do better. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just support then challenge. And then the third, build a community of people that really value the human experience. in a way that is like joyful and fun and like because they're watching. Yes. And so keep growing yourself, support and challenge, and then build your community of intentional people.

I love those. And I think, you know, a lot of people put their self-worth based on how they perform. That's performance-based identity. Yes. That is a massive problem done. Yes. Yes. So why do so many people confuse performance with self-worth and how do they separate the

too that they know they're worthy no matter how well they perform or if they fail or succeed. Well, it's a very Western frame, you know, which is your value is coupled with what you do and how well you do it. That's a very Western frame. And your kids are going to grow up in the Western world probably. And by the time they go to third grade in our state of California, that they're going to kind of be force ranked. They're going to be given grades at some point. And then they're going to ask their friends, how'd you do? Okay, so we're starting to learn performance identity early here. And so decoupling what they do from who they are is part of your job.

How do you do that? Well, do you shine the spotlight on like, they matter because they breathe, they matter because the way that they show up in the world and da-da-da. They're generous, they're kind, they're compassionate, yeah, yeah. And so as a general exercise, my wife and I, when our son was born, And we said, hey, listen, let's be clear on the values that we want to build. And so we wrote down a bunch of values. She had two pages.

I had two pages. And then we said, okay, let's circle five. You know, they're most interesting. At Circle Five, she for Circle Five, we came back around and we agreed on two that we were going to invest that first handful of years on. And it was very clear. It's still the same two now, is kindness and strength. So we want our son to be kind and strong. And so that's what we're doing.

trying to build more than anything else. And performance flows from there. So what, what, what can you do? Um, know the values that matter to you, orientate that with your partner. And then go to work on those things. And so you got to be those values first though. You can't, you can't teach what you don't have. Of course. Because I'm going to model who you are, not what you say, I'm assuming. Yeah. I mean, they're going to watch you and say, all right, dad's time me to do this, but he's not doing it. That's right. They're going to judge it internally. 100%.

So performance-based identity, the other thing is like if you are leading a performance-based life, and I think you might fall into this trap. I think that you're on the performance clip, high performance and da-da-da-da. I would offer another hinge, okay, to explore, purpose-based. And I think you have that too. Yes. Right? Both bad, yeah.

Yeah. And I'm not sure that you can totally do both. Okay. Okay. Yeah. All right. But if your performance is in service of purpose. That's what it is.

Okay. So if it's stacked correctly, you have a chance. But the greatest movers of industry, of the world rhythm that I talked about, whether it's Gandhi or Buddha or whatever, like, they were purpose driven. Yeah. So what is your purpose? I'm not asking you outright, but. No, I know my purpose. My purpose is a serve and impact 100 million lives weekly to help them improve the quality of their life.

Okay, to me that sounds like a mission. Okay. So do you want to play it out a little bit? Sure. Yeah. And I'm not saying it's right or wrong. But when I hear a number attached to it, I hear like that's the mission. That's the hill I want to climb.

That's just the clarity. That's just the aim. You know, that's like, all right, as opposed to, I just want to help people. What does that mean? Yeah. So you're niching it down a little bit more. It's like being clear on so I know how I can start to implement and execute that. Yeah.

So you're collapsing purpose. mission. So, but purpose is really the fancy way for saying like, why. Yeah. And so can you say it again, like so I can hear why this matters to you? I mean, I want to call mission, but my purpose to serve and impact 100 million lives weekly to help them improve the quality of their life. So why is that important to you? Because I dealt with a lot of pain and suffering internally most of my life. And I don't want people to suffer the way I did. I want them to have the psychological tools, the emotional skills to understand why they suffer so they can get out of suffering and then hopefully improve the quality of their relationships around them and have a loving,

beautiful, rich life. Yeah. So you just, well, I knew that there's nothing new in there for you. You have thought deeply and written about it and shared that with many people. That second part, you shared your purpose with your methodology, like the how, right? And the purpose is clear because you suffered, you want to help relieve suffering. Yes. Okay, that's a purpose now.

That's a purpose. So I can say, you're going to help end suffering, but it's like, okay, it's kind of broad. Yeah, and I think you would fine tune that a little bit more than that. But that's, but why do the mission? Yes. You've got a clear mission. How many people? 100 million lives weekly.

And I've never hit that. But the goal is to reach and serve a hundred million lives weekly and help them improve the quality of their life. Okay. So I'm even more clear that that's a great mission. That's a, that ambition is awesome. Yeah. Why? Because I know what it's like to suffer. Yeah.

And I want to do everything I possibly can during this lifetime to help people live their best, whatever fill in the blanks. Yeah. So I totally get you now in that respect. It's awesome. And it's bold. It is bold. Yeah. It gives me something exciting. It demands me, it requires me to live a standard for my life every single day to wake up and do. things that allow me to generate those types of, I don't know what I call it, results or impact or influence or value into the world so that people can either learn in a certain way so that I can get guests like yourself to reveal these, this research and this information so they have the tools so they can start applying it. It requires me to, you know, continue to make better, whatever, systems around here, hire more people, make more, all these things.

So what you're saying there is like your mission, your purpose that's underneath the surface and your method to go about it provide bumpers to make decisions. Of course. Yeah. So your decisions are kind of lined up through that. And when you're outside of those bumpers, you're off mission, off purpose, off method. Yeah. When I make decisions that are out of alignment, something's off.

That's right. You're asking me about how's the business growing? It's like, I don't say yes to certain money also. I could be making a lot more, but I don't bring on alcohol brands. I don't bring on gambling brands because I don't feel like that serves people. Sure, they can do it if they want to, but me promoting something that isn't serving, or at least serving to the best of its abilities. You know, it's like, you know, not everything is perfect and, you know, maybe something

has a little sugar in it. It's like, okay, but it's like, if you're promoting something that is poison or addicted or something like that, it's like, that's an alignment with what I'm teaching. So I don't want to take a million dollars for it. It's not going to feel right. It's good. For someone else, it might feel perfect. Yeah, no problems.

No critique, no judgment, whatever you're going to do. It's just not in alignment to my mission. And we all have like, whether clearly articulated or not, we do have first principles we're working from. We do have a reason why. And for most people, it is like unexamined. It's like, I just, I want to be okay. So I need to make some money.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I want to be okay. So I need some attention from a lot of, other people. I want to be okay. So I need to know I'm partisan. And I've been in that place back in my 20s when you're like, you just got to make money and get out of the situation. I get it. Yeah. You've changed since we first met. How so? Um, it was a lot more performance driven. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you've changed. When was that? 20, I don't know. It was like 15 or something. 10 years ago. Yeah. You've changed. I'm going to throw a lot of healing. This is good. Yeah, I can feel

Yeah, well done. So you, I mean, you, I think you're asking the questions more for your community. I think you are a good learner. You are generally interested. But I also think you've done a lot of work. I can just feel it. Oh, man, I've gone deep. I mean, I'm talking years. I was doing six to eight hour Saturday or Sunday sessions with therapists all day sessions for years because I said, how do I continue to get better? So I can serve my mission. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't, want to do that. I want to go to the beach and hang out and watch football all day on weekends in sunny California. This was years of me saying, what's it going to take for me to improve? How can I overcome this suffering? Why do I keep making these mistakes? How do I improve? How do I get

better? How do I serve people in my life better? And I'm still not perfect. It's like, it's an improvement path. Yeah. That I've had to have so much courage for me that was an emotional courage to face people, create boundaries, face myself, all these things to heal wounds of the past and get to the danger zone that you talk about emotionally, psychologically, with people I care about. And people you've hurt. Of course, people have hurt me and all these things. Yeah, and it's like, it's been years of intense six to eight hour sessions on weekends

every single week. Not right now, but in the past, you know, five years. I was doing that. And it's given me such an emotional freedom that I've never had in my life because I was willing to go there, not just once or not just for a week, but like weekly for years. And it doesn't feel good and it's not enjoyable, but I wanted what was possible for me to feel incredible amounts of peace and love because I'd never felt it. And I was like, I'll do whatever it takes to get it. That's amazing, dude. I can tell.

I can feel it. And I had pain in my chest for years. Yeah. Just a ball of pain and a clinchness in my throat from different things that I wasn't able to address emotionally or psychologically. It was just like stacking inside of me and just clinging to my nervous system. And I could train hard with the best of them and work hard and make money and succeed and grow, but I wasn't feeling peace and love.

Momentarily, maybe, but not like a continual feeling of it. I didn't feel emotionally safe in my body. and it feels incredible to feel emotionally safe. It's the greatest gift I've ever given myself is emotional freedom. And I want it for everyone. Because I know how painful life is when you don't have it.

No amount of money or success or fame will give you peace if you don't have it already. You know this from working with the top. There's an amazing documentary, which I'm sure you've either heard of or seen called the weight of gold. I don't know if you've seen this. Of course, yeah. And it is so powerful.

It's about all these Olympic gold medalists or medalists who've won the gold after 25 years of searching for this goal. And then either committed suicided, gone through depression, ruined their life within a year after the Olympics being over. The pressure of success, thinking this is going to solve my problems, it's not. It's not. And if people knew this, I just think it would give them a sense of, again, like you, you said, they wouldn't be needing to perform. They'd be more focused on purpose and living a life, doing challenging things daily, acute challenges like you said, daily because they love the process, not because they need the result to make them feel happy. Yeah, you've got the mechanics of it. And

I'm doing my best to try to shout this from the rooftops and bring people like you who are the best in the world teaching it. Yeah, that's cool. To validate these things. I'm trying to learn these myself and then implement it and integrated into my life towards my dreams. And my dreams are no longer just for me. You know, when I was a kid, it was I want to be a pro athlete because it was like a selfish goal. And now, as I was telling you before, like the last time I saw you, we were in Paris at the Olympics. And I was telling me beforehand that I went there because I knew there was still a dream inside of me that I haven't fulfilled. But it wasn't just about me. It was about what would it be like to, you know, the times that I felt the most goosebumps, you know, the times that I felt the most

goosebumps and the most inspiration and the most charge in my life is not when I see the most talented person in the world accomplish what they're supposed to accomplish. It's the underdogs. It's the old person. It's the guy who was too young who wasn't supposed to make it. It's this person who had a dream that they still went for. I get chosen to think about it. And they fulfilled a dream and it inspired a generation. It inspired a world, a community, a family of people. to say, wow, what they had to overcome to get there, what they endured, or how they committed to it, that what do you call it, that fundamental commitment

that they had to have for the last decade, for 10 seconds, I don't care if they won a loss. You're like, that story I'll remember. You know, who's the guy, gosh, Derek Redmond, Derek, who's the guy who got hurt in the Olympics in the Barcelona Olympics? He was running the 400 and he pulled his hamstring. and his dream was to win a medal,

but he lost the moment he had to pull up in his handstring. And his dad came out from the frickin, you remember this story, this dad comes out onto the track and carries him across the finish line. Sure, he lost in Olympics, but people still talk about that 40 years later. Through relationships, we become.

Yes. Through our relationship with ourselves, through our relationship with others, through relationship with experience, through relationship with setbacks and successes, through relationships we become. So part of our job is to build the right psychological broth to be great with relationships, self and others. That's it.

And that is something that is available to all of us. Yeah. And I hear your passion. My passion is taking these best practices that the best in the world have shown me, the laboratory of science of psychology has shown me. and to take those and share them with people that would not have access. And that's in the enterprise business world. So the folks that I am most jazz about is taking those best practices from world's best.

And then, you know, the kind of everyday worker in a corporate environment, you know, our biggest clients are like Microsoft and Salesforce and, and they're running the same playbook in their organization to set the intentional psychological skills training, the same way we set that in pro sport. Yeah. And if I can democratize what I've learned behind the velvet rope of high performance for folks like me, for folks like you, which you're well on the path. But for folks that would never have access, I feel really good about the investment that these people have made.

Yeah. And that's where I'm at with the passion. Yeah. I'm curious. I want to wrap it up here soon. But speaking of the last time I saw you, I saw you because I was in the lobby in Paris. Yeah, how about it? Meeting the handball coach for Barcelona.

Yeah. And you were in the lobby there, and we bumped into each other. You were coaching, you know, some Olympic team. Yeah. And I went there because I was still want to see if this dream was alive. And so it's kind of synchronistic that we're meeting now. And the last time I saw you was in Paris. Yeah, that's great.

I was meeting with one of the top coaches in the world to see if you would have me on his team in Spain. And I remember, it's crazy. I feel like I'm time traveling. And in that moment, there was like a time travel moment for me because I was like, oh, I'm meeting the top sports psychologist in the world as I'm pursuing my dream. And it was like a synchronicistic sign. Oh, really? Keep going.

Yes. And I had to tell you that. No, we had a quick, like, 10 seconds. Yeah, like, Lewis, how are you doing my? Yeah, yeah, yeah. For me, there were so many things that were telling me, keep going. Oh, that's cool. Because I was like, ah, should I go to Paris or not?

And I go, I just need to buy a ticket and I need to watch a handball game and see if it's inside of me. And I got there and the whole game, I just have chills rushing down my whole body. And it's just like, you have to continue. It doesn't mean the goal is going to happen, but I just knew I had to continue. And then I meet you. And I'm like, keep going. It's like this whisper. My neck is like whispering, keep going. It doesn't mean it's like guaranteed. Yeah. But you got to keep going. And it's been a year and a half since then. This was August 24, we're in 2026, January 2026 recording this, and I'm two and a half years out from the Olympics. Come on.

There's no guarantee, but I'm doing all the steps I need to, training, recovery, coaching, you know, acquiring the L.A. handball team. I'm doing all the things, building relationships with the European teams, doing everything I can to support USA handball, investing in the sport, all this stuff, marketing, promotion. I'm doing everything I can. but if you could give me three pieces of coaching for the next two and a half years to try to accomplish the dream in service of inspiring the world and giving myself the best chance possible with all the training you have from four Olympics teaching the best athletes in the world

knowing that this is not me being the freak athlete that I could be at 25 but the best that I can be at 45 what three pieces of advice would you give me as a sports? psychologist on my journey. It's past the ball back to me. First, keep going. Yeah. You know, like, you've got an idea. You see a compelling future.

Check that box. Awesome. Like, really see it now. Really see what a compelling future could be. Visualizing it. Yeah, but like, I think you've done that first bit. I do it all the time. Yeah.

Yeah. And then underneath of it is where mental imagery would sit, but I'm not there yet. I'm like, check the box. You're organizing. your life around it. Yes. Are you fundamentally organizing your life around it? Oh, yeah.

That's my wife. That's my wife. It's a fundamental commitment. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I'm just checking the box and keep going, right? And you have the right ecosystem, internal ecosystem, which is, look, I love trying to figure this thing out. And it's hard.

And I'm up for it. And the way you approach your life that way, you're already in the win category, if you will. Now, if you get the outcome, it's like amazing. Okay. Like, I want that for you. But just keep going. The second is, I'll ask you a question.

At the elite level of your sport, what percentage of people, when you're on the court, what percentage of success is related to physical skills and mental skills? Just oversimplify it really quickly. There's physical, technical, and mental. Okay? Let's do all three. You can manage it. What percentage of success is related to physical, technical, and mental?

I would say, well, correct me if I'm saying it right, but 80%, well, you need to have the physical capabilities, right? So you need to be able to play the game. You need to be able to the right size, the right speed, the right athletic and technical skills to play the game. So I would say that's a lot of it. It's probably like 60, 70%, like if you can't physically be there, you can't be on the court. Okay.

So I don't know if that's 60%, 70, 80%, but then the emotional, how you respond. the mental, the leadership skills, that's at least 20 to 30%. Okay, let's go 70-30. Yeah, 70-30. We'll do like physical, physical and technical kind of in one bucket. If you can't run up and down the court, you can't play. Okay, good. It's like you need to play.

And then say 30 on the other side, on the mental side. Yeah. Okay, easy. And we're starting to build your performance model as I'm just peppering and asking some questions. Then I would say, right, great. Okay. If we're to oversimplify, maybe we go 30, 30, 30, just for a minute,

which we're being pretty sloppy. with it. Like, I'd want to scrub this with you. But just on the lane that I sit in in high-performance psychology, if 30% of the successes is psychological, what percentage of your time will you invest in psychological skill building? Okay. And if you've got an eight-hour day, call it 10 hours for you. I don't know, maybe you're at 12. I don't know where you're at with your kind of full life efforts. Most elite athletes don't move more than four hours a day at like can't no it's like you need recovery you need down yeah so like that's the upper limit so call it two hours of physical training a day that would be a lot for you actually a lot yeah I would not a hour and then I do recovery

time which I add into it which would maybe be another hour so sauna ice recovery you know it's just time doing recovery stuff but I would fold in if your model 70 30 I would say 30% of your time should be allocated to 30% of the success I would actually say that that psychological skill building is an outsized leverage. More time I should put it to that. Yeah. So what does that mean? That means...

I can only do so much physical training. Right. You've got a limitation that we all do. You've got your unique and I've got my unique. So what would be the main psychological skills that I should invest the most time into? Okay. There's no reason you should not be world leading world class with the way you speak to yourself, your self-talk.

Okay? So know your epic thoughts. know exactly what those are and what gives you the right to say those kind of things to yourself. Do that work. Maybe you've already done it. I don't know.

I would have all three breathing training protocols to be kind of in my back pocket. There's down-regulation breathing protocols. There's capacity building training calls, training protocols, and there is focus building. So I do all three of those. I would meditate every day.

Follow good science. 20 minutes a day would be kind of in the sweet spot. minimum threshold is between six and eight, but you're going to get minimum results out of that. And I would use mental imagery as one of the greatest assets, which is playing the most beautiful movie you can imagine with you performing towards your upper capabilities, both in compromise situations and in kind of full flow.

So I would play that movie in a disciplined way from multiple angles with all the senses I could as if I was actually in it. I put myself in flow state as, you know, in my mind. And I would also be in compromised situations where I'm trying to work out how to solve something that's hard to do. In mental imagery. During my mental imagery.

And so, you know, I worked with Felix Baumgartner, who jumped from 120,000 feet. It was the first person ever to go to that high to jump to want a free fall and potentially break the speed. Sound barrier? Sound barrier. Yeah, thank you. First person to ever break the sound barrier. And the brightest minds in aerospace were not sure what would happen when his body actually

traveled Mach 1. Would he, what does body remain intact? Would his arms and legs rip off? Would, like, and if he went into a flat spin prior to that, all the blood would rush to his head and his feet and he would land because of gravity, but land with like a hemorrhage and like, you know, like serious consequences. You only get one shot at that. So Felix did that whole sequence thousands of times in his mind so that when the moment

arrived, he was very familiar, he was very equipped, he worked things out. So there'd be no reason. And Felix was a dear friend. We lost him recently. And so I just want to honor his life and how much he taught me. He went to the stratosphere, but he brought so many with us, so many with us. him. So I would do mental imagery on a everyday basis. So fundamental commitment was the first thing. Keep going as the first thing. You keep going. Take the next step every day. Yeah, you got it. Yeah. Fundamental

commitment. World-class self-talk. The psychological skills was the world-class self-talk, breathing, training, meditation, 20 minutes, mental imagery over and over again. Yeah. And was there one other thing? That's good. And then be world class of recovery. Recovery. Yeah. And so, And then I would, I think you already have this, but I would like secondarily support it is optimism. And so like everything that comes in like working to reinforce and build an optimistic framework. What happens when self-doubt comes in? It's fine. Work with it.

Yeah. That's normal. Yeah. You know what? I want to examine that and we're going to do that right now. Or I see you and be like, not now. Right. It's not like you need to replace that thought or be able to be able to.

afraid of that thought. Just like, oh, not now. Come back to the task again. Yeah, just focus on the now. Yeah. Come back to the task again. You've got an amazing podcast called Finding Mastery, and you've got, which I think is powerful for everyone to have a great morning routine. And if they don't know how to structure their morning routine, you've got a morning mindset routine, which is a free PDF, an audio file that people can get as well at FindingMastry.com. You've got a newsletter there. You've got a lot of great resources and content that they can get. So if you want psychological skills and tools, your site's got some of the best stuff that people can get. Thanks, man.

You've got free content. You've got other stuff as well. You've got book. You've got all these different things that people can get information from. But from the podcast, for sure, finding mastery. And on social media, finding mastery and Michael Jervais as well. But where else can we send people to? Is that the main places?

Listen, I appreciate the conversation. And the most meaningful, like, opportunity that I could try to capture from me. your community is like if you're a business leader and you want this for your organization or for your team um we've got to know how we've got a way and we would love to do that you guys coach executives and teams and setting these standards and processes for organizations yeah as large as Microsoft sati nadella and his senior leadership team and all 220 000 people and as small as like you know hundreds of folks in the organization to run the same playbook that we want run with um world class sport organizations. Yeah, and you work with the Seahawks and other sports teams. You've worked with many

Olympic teams over the last four Olympics. So world-class leaders, athletes, artists, you've trained them, you've worked with them, you've studied from them on how to apply this into everyday life for people. So if people are looking to get in the top 16% of performers in life or top 1%, use these strategies and tools to support your daily process. Thank you, Lewis. Of course, man. I've got two final questions. This is called the Three Truths. I don't remember what you shared last time, but I wonder if it's different this time. Imagine get to live your life for the rest of your life as long as you want to live,

but eventually it's the last day. And you get to accomplish an experienced life the way you want to, accomplish all your dreams. But for whatever reason on the last day, you've got to take everything with you. Your work, your content, your message, your philosophies, your training. This conversation, it's all gone. Your podcast, gone. Hypothetical.

But in the last day, you get to leave behind three truths from everything you've learned about life or anything you want to share. What would those three truths be for you? Everything you need is already inside you. I am so clear on that. The second would be what you develop is what you can give. And so invest in your inner life so that you can be great for others. Love kind of runs the whole show. Yeah.

And so that's my code for saying, like, know how to love. Yeah, yeah. And then I think the third would be, I'm imagining somebody opening a capsule, you know, and they're like, these are the three truths that Mike wanted to leave behind. The third would be, you are capable of more than you can imagine right now. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool.

Yeah. So I go, those are definitely not what I thought for the, you know, 10 years ago. Those are what is available to me right now. Yeah. And when I'm working on, like, to be able to say maybe in the next 10 years with you is like, I'm really working on being unbothered. By at all, by at all? Yeah.

Anything that comes your way or? Yeah. Like, I know what is foundational to me. I know what I'm working toward. And like, just be unbothered. Like, I don't know how this thing works. You know, the Chinese farmer is an unbothered approach. You're familiar with that Zen Coen.

Unbothered. I just really love. That's your next season. Yeah, and I'm really working on playing more. I'm a really intense person. Yeah. And I love that. It's good for me, but I get really intense quickly.

And so like, I have more fun in your life. I do want to play more. And so those are the, maybe next time it's like, be unbothered, play more. Yeah, that's good. That's good. Yeah. There's a lot of science behind play and how it helps you get and flow more. Right?

It's like being more. Instead of like, so focused and intense all the time, it's like being a little lighter, you know, it's like having a little fun. That's right. That's right. I want to acknowledge you, Mike, for the constant service you have to everyone. Thank you. You know, you're constantly trying to help people be better through your skills, through your science, through your research.

And again, emotional regulation, I think, is the key to living a fulfilling life. And you give people skills and tools on how to mentally and emotionally regulate, which is the thing is the most powerful thing to love deeper, to live better and to be your best self. So I want to acknowledge you for constantly serving in the ways that you do. Awesome. Thank you. And my final question, what's your definition of greatness? Yeah, I don't remember what I said last time, but I think it is not externally measured. I think greatness is exploring the edges of what you're capable of. And I'm more about the process of the whole thing than the outcome of it.

So greatness is an honest commitment to what you're capable of, who you're capable of being. There you go. And I put an asterisk, being and doing are two different things in my mind. You know, so an honest commitment, a fundamental commitment to who you're capable of being. Thanks, Mike. Appreciate you. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's

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I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.