The First Rule of Mastery: Dr. Michael Gervais On How To Stop Worrying About What People Think of You

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28:47In order to foster a culture or an environment that is not only permissive for people to walk up to that edge, but actually encourages it is a special thing, right? And that's almost like a hat trick in the corporate world, right? How do you create a culture where there isn't a fear of reprisal if you extend yourself, perhaps beyond your remit, to do something special or to express your purpose and feel safe in doing that, like there's a safety net and that this is something that's encouraged rather than discouraged? When you said hat trick, do you mean like you scored three goals? I just mean like a very difficult thing to accomplish or achieve.

29:32Oh, I think you're spot on. and we say in the corporate world we you know people say fail fast fail forward fail often failure is where you learn but that's not reality no yeah if they do that they'll be you know taken to task for it that's right and in sport that's what practice is really about getting to that edge two stories here asked an olympian looks like she's going to be uh competing in 2024 in paris So she was an Olympian last year. She remade the team. And I said, what is a great practice for you? And she says, oh, very clearly. Top of the tongue, she says, knowing what I need to get better at.

30:10So every practice she goes into her day, getting to the edge to see where things break down, to know what she needs to get better at. So if I were to ask you, I don't want to put you on the spot, but if I were to ask somebody like you, what do you need to get better at? and again it's not necessarily how athletes do what they do because that is pretty special how they move but the intentionality to be very clear about what they're working on getting better at and if i were to say physically let's play the game i can use me in this as well and i say where's the pain in your body and you'd say um i don't know my left hip where's the pain in your body i have no idea my lower back low back right and i say how are you working on your low back You'd say, I have a couple of practitioners that I see and a whole series of exercises that I do and all kinds of proactive sort of little things that I do throughout the day to ameliorate the pain.

31:07And, you know. Yeah. And you've got a plan. Yeah. And you're working it. And then I say, great. Emotionally or mentally, what are you working on? Hmm. Oh, so many things. Okay. So pause. Yeah. It just feels different to talk about it. we're still in that kind of place where it's a little bit more, it's definitely more invisible. The world of psychology is invisible. But didn't it feel just a little different to say, oh, I'm working on less depression, less anxiety, more joy, whatever it might be. Did it feel that way for you? Yeah, there's definitely a little bit more constriction. And I say that as somebody who's pretty open about this stuff, like most people aren't.

31:45I have no problem telling you like, oh, I need to work on being a better friend or I need to let go of my perfectionism And like, I succumb to, you know, all manner of the things that you talk about in this book to this day. You know, like, like this was written for me in so many ways. Like, how do I divorce myself from so many of the lures that I know are leading me astray? And at times I feel powerless to combat. Like, I'm comfortable even publicly talking about this kind of stuff. But I'm also very aware that that is not the usual case with most people. Yeah. So just getting heroes like you in the world that are the cool kids waving their arms saying, hey I'm working physically and I'm working on the emotional side and both matter to me and I can talk about both and I have a plan to work both.

32:28That's what great athletes do is they're clear about what they want to unlock and get better at and they have a plan to back it up. Whether it's technical, physical or mental. And then the failing thing to your earlier point, you know I was with Formula One for a handful of years and new leader comes in, new managing director comes into the team, has 500 of the brightest engineers, you know, as part of the team, and he's addressing the full team. And these are engineers and computer scientists and from MIT and Harvard and like brilliant minds behind the scenes of the driver. And so he addresses his vision.

33:07He addresses how he wants to go about creating a culture and what he thinks the reasonable goals are and the lofty goals and has this beautiful kind of moment because it's called 30 minutes on the factory floor sharing it all and people nod you know and then one engineer stands and he claps a little bit longer than everyone else and people are starting to walk away and he's got a little slow clap and he's looking at the new boss and the boss makes eye contact with him and the boss says what's going on like a slow clap like a mocking slow clap yeah He says, yeah. And the engineer says, those are good words.

33:52And so the leader says to me, he goes, I knew right then I had to be about it because I was going to be called out. I was going to be held to a standard. I needed to lead from authenticity. So he goes into the post first race. And after the first race, fail fast, fail forward, fail often, he says, okay, everybody, it was a tough race. I want to talk about the two mistakes I know I made and I need to get better. I don't know if anyone else saw him, but I made this mistake here and this mistake here. I know how to solve the first one. I need your help on how to solve the second one. It's a blind spot for me.

34:24I don't know how to do it. That's my report. Who's up? Set the standard right there. Didn't prep anyone for it, but held the standard that we all make mistakes. And if we're going to the messy edge, that's going to happen. That's how the unlocks take place. And you and I don't have to do it physically or in a race car. We can do it emotionally every day. It can happen in conversations with friends or loved ones about what's really happening, about what really is going on inside. And when you do that, that messy razor's edge is so alive and so scary, you could fall into a thousand pieces or unlock the relationship that you wanted to have with that person.

35:04Beautifully put. I think most people's, and I would include myself in this default setting, is to double down on the things that we're good at and blind ourselves to our weak spots. And the elite athlete has that reflex to move towards the weaknesses because they understand that their performance is going to be dictated by developing those weaknesses into strengths. but in our day-to-day lives, we're not necessarily compelled or challenged in a way that kind of pushes us towards our weaknesses. And it's very easy to just keep doing the thing that we know we're good at and kind of hold those weaknesses over here and pretend they don't exist or that they're not really undermining, you know, who we want to be.

35:50There's lots of ways to go after what you're talking about. As a tactic, the way I like to work with folks, Remember, my training is in sports psychology, the psychology of excellence. And if you think about all the skills that go into you being your very best, maybe even great at something, say we have a list of nine. There's usually more, but this is just for the sake of conversation. There's three you're really good at, three that are, you know, pretty good, and then three that relatively you struggle with. Now, those bottom three might be better than 99 % of the world, but those are a relative stack.

36:25Just as a thought experiment, if you were working with an athlete on whether it's physical, technical, or mental stack that we're talking about of skills, where would you start? Would you help them be better? Like Shaquille O 'Neal, let's help you be a better force underneath the basket. Or obviously when he played, he was terrible at free throw shooting, right? He really struggled there. Would you help him on his free throw or would you help him on something in the middle? In order to answer that question, you need a more comprehensive kind of roadmap or blueprint of how that person operates.

36:57Because if there's some kind of mental tweak, perhaps that needs to be addressed fundamentally first before you even get to the free throw thing. I like that. I like that. So let's assume that this person is a great learner. They want to get after it. They're OK being in the messy edge. You know, let's just assume that they're a good learner. This is just philosophically, you know, for tactics. Would you start with reinforcing what they're great at, what they're okay with, or what they struggle with? With what they struggle with. Yeah, that's what I thought you were going based on the last part of your conversation.

37:29And there's no right or wrong here. Where I go is right in the middle of the stack, and I go towards the top of the middle. So I'll go to number four. And the reason I go to number four is because there's this interesting slipstream that I found for folks, is that they start working on something and they become better at it because they're close to being good at it. They become better at that. And they're like, oh, oh, like I can get better at some other stuff too. And so then you start moving down the stack. That's how I go about it. That's interesting. But I would have thought, and part of the reason why I said the weak thing, let's use free throws as the example, is because they're so bad at that, there's much more room for improvement.

38:12And the velocity of that improvement seems like an easier lift that would create that encouragement and that level of engagement with their own ability to change and evolve. I think that that is super reasonable. And I've seen that show up plenty of times. What happens privately is they're like, oh man, I'm not very good at free things. That's the thing they hate. So they're dreading it. Now we've got a spotlight on the thing that they don't like. Fine. That's totally fine to do. But then there's this hyper fixation on things I'm not good at. and that's not the psychology that got them there. The psychology that got them there was like, I'm a force underneath the basket.

38:51Give me the rock. And if we start to shift that to focus on the things they're not good at solely or majoritively, then the psychology starts to change like, man, maybe I'm never going to be able to unlock this. Like, I'm not good at this. That's interesting. So it's an interesting just potential pivot between where you go. No, that makes a lot of sense. Isn't that kind of fun? Just as a thought stem to think through. But fundamentally, and you referenced this a minute ago, is this preset or our kind of fundamental disposition around how we interface with our own sense of purpose, our own value set, and what motivates us.

39:28Are we extrinsically motivated or are we internally driven? And this provides the foundation for this book, your first book. Congratulations. Thank you. Which is all about like liberating yourself from the opinions of others and turning that spotlight inward to try to understand what your purpose is, what your value set is, and creating a structure where you're driven internally in accordance with those to kind of mute out the extraneous noise of the outside world as a roadmap towards mastery. And I guess the first question that I would ask you is like, of all the things, like mastery is your world.

40:10Your podcast is called Finding Mastery. Like this is what you obsess about and think about and practice and teach. Why is it this kind of subject terrain that's providing the on-ramp to your very first book? Like you could have picked a lot of ways to communicate your ideas around mastery. But you're focused on this very singular concept as kind of an introduction to your world and how you think about high performance. I love the question because I think a lot of people are quietly asking themselves, Gervais, why did you write a book on this? And I appreciate that you're actually asking it. Many people have not asked this question.

40:50It seems like the obvious first question. Yeah, it's cool. Good. So I'll tell you the reason being, because I think it is the greatest constrictor of one's potential. I think this obsessive, private worry about what somebody else is thinking about me is the great, unnamed, unexamined constrictor of potential. And it is like David Foster Wallace shared in his poem. There's three fish. There's an old fish swimming one way and two young fish swimming the other way. and the old fish, as he passes by, says, morning boys, how's the water? And the two young fish swim on and then one brave of the young fish says to the other, the hell is water.

41:32And I think that's what is happening. It's like this navigation of am I being accepted by others? Am I being rejected by others? Is the water that we are swimming in? It is so foundational to safety and survival that we've almost forgot to label it. We've got the fight-flight-freeze mechanism to ready us without even having to think from a warring tribe, from a wildebeest, from a saber-toothed tiger, from whatever is perceived to be dangerous. We don't even have to think and our body readies. And that's because our brain is optimized for survival. Belonging is safety. Belonging is survival. So there's this other general thing that's taking place in our brain, the 3.2 pounds of tissue, that it's scanning the world for things that are dangerous and trying to figure out how to be okay.

42:23And one of the great dangers, the near death sentence, is if you and I are in a tribe, let's go back 200 ,000 years ago, and Rich and Mike are doing their thing. And let's say that, I don't know, you sharpen the arrows and I got the bows just right. And each time we go hunting, we come back and errors are broken and we miss our target and the tribe is hungry. And let's say another time we're out gathering and I'm coming back with rotten whatever and like you're off doing something else in your ADD moment and you don't come back with the right barriers either. Over time, underperformance has led to rejection.

43:01And once we're kicked out of the tribe, that rejection is a near death sentence because you and I can't forge and fend and fight and hunt and gather just the two of us, or maybe our spouses, maybe like three kids and maybe a cousin and an uncle, it's too much. So safety is part of belonging. And so what ends up happening, we've got this general mechanism in our brain to take the temperature of other people, to make sure that we're okay in their eyes. Well, that getting kicked out of the tribe now is no longer a death sentence or near death sentence. It just doesn't feel good. But we still have the mechanism to tune, to see if we're okay in the eyes of other people because we are petrified to be rejected.

43:47And that's what's happening. And I was 16 years old. I saved up enough money to buy my first car. It was a Mazda B2000 pickup truck. I could throw my surfboard in the back and I felt great about it. It was like a$2 ,000 truck. And there was a car driving and they were on my left-hand side. They were going the same direction. They were going to pass me. And I remember sitting up, grabbing the steering wheel like a cool kid would and thinking to myself, they're going to see how cool I am in my new car. Like I'm going to show up right in this moment. So as they're passing me, I look to the left and they didn't care.

44:25They didn't even look. They had no clue that I existed. I did not matter at all to them. And I had this lightning bulb moment what am I doing with my life? I'm a 16-year-old kid and I'm having this existential moment like, this is embarrassing. I just did all of this performance to be looked at by somebody favorably that I didn't even know. What is that? And I was so embarrassed by it. I didn't talk about it. I just kept it private. And I knew that I was doing it throughout my life. and I was so embarrassed that I was playing a secondary game. And socially, I was fine. I could fit in in a lot of places and it helps when dad's an alcoholic and mom's codependent and you got to figure out how to navigate.

45:09There's an interesting brew that creates a psychologist. Right, yeah. And so you figure out how to tune to others, but I was doing it a lot. And then come to sit with Best in the World and they talk about like not letting others down, not wanting to blow it, not wanting to da-da-da-da. And there's all this narrative about how important the opinions of others is to their life and well-being and sense of self. So I wrote an article and the article was on HBR 12 months later. And it was on this, like this number one constrictor, this obsessiveness about how you're perceived by others. And they called me 12 months after and they said, you're the number one downloaded article.

45:53Oh, wow. So you hit a nerve. I read it. It's great. Yeah, thank you. I didn't look at the date on it. I was just assuming that came out after the book as part of like getting the book out. No, that happened like - That was well before. Like three years ago. Oh, wow. So they called and they said, let's write a book. And I was like, man, I'm wrestling alligators right now. Like life is hard. I do not have that bandwidth to do it. And they said, no problem. Let's come back around. And I was like, thank you. They called 12 months later and they said, it was number one downloaded again. Like there's a real nerve here.

46:22so I felt like I wasn't alone I wasn't alone with this obsessive worry that kept me safe but small that kept me playing the second game that didn't have a sense of freedom in it and I had shed a lot of it because I'd worked at it a long time I still have some of it I'm not free from it completely like I'm not the enlightened one here that's you definitely not Yeah. Don't play that game with me. I know what you're doing. I'm still working at it. And come to find out I'm not alone. Just naming it is healthy for people. Well, I think what's brilliant about that, it's not surprising that that hit a nerve.

47:02And by HBR, you mean the Harvard Business Review, because there's two things going on. It does provide this lens into the world of mastery, which is your specialty. But it's also something that almost all of us can relate to. It's a universal experience. So whether you're interested in mastery or not, or perhaps you're just curious about the human condition and the human psyche in general, like this is something that we can all find commonality around because I think it just, it imperils and kind of affects us in various ways throughout our life. Like that story that you told, I have many versions of that and, you know, worrying about other people's opinions.

47:41I've gone through acute stages of my life where that was very paralyzing. Yes, it's a vestige of this evolutionary trait that kept us alive, but it's also very hard to shake. And today, you know, I shouldn't be concerned about these things at all, but it still, you know, kind of commandeers me in certain ways that I wish it didn't. And I think that now because of social media and the way that we kind of interface with each other in our digital lives, it's more acute than ever. and it's also a very, you know, kind of tricky town square that we all inhabit where being ostracized from the village kind of does feel real, like you say the wrong thing and then suddenly there's a, you know, cascading set of consequences that can actually spill out into the real world and affect you in dramatic and negative ways.

48:30And I think it has everybody's sphincters tightened a little bit, you know, and like thinking long and hard about what they're going to say or not say And there's that sense of constriction. Like, how do I do this? How do I interface with this? And I think it's put us in contact with that ingrained impulse that we have around how we participate as a community. And what is the real threat versus the perceived threat? Amen. That sense of community. We are more like a coral reef than a nail banged into a board as an individual sense of self. Like, we are more like a coral reef. We need each other in so many different dimensional ways.

49:13And it's not just like, oh, I don't want to be caught saying something that I'm going to piss off other people. So I'm going to monitor myself. There's a function of that, certainly. Or it's also, what can I say that's going to get the court of opinion clapping in my direction? That's okay. Yes on both of those. And then I do think that the fear of rejection is more important than the desire to be accepted. So I think the fear of rejection is the stronger motivator. However, I think it shows up in our relationships with our parents, even as adults. I think it shows up in our relationships. Oh, 100%.

49:47Yeah. You know, to this day. And this is why we get pissed off because I'm like - How many decisions have you made to impress either your mother or your father over the course of your life that were not necessarily in alignment with your own sense of purpose? It's gross. Why am I doing that? I can answer it as a psychologist, as a self-examined psychologist. The other piece is like I think we do with our spouses. We do with our friends. So these are intimate relationships. It's not just performing for them. It's thinking about, is she going to be okay if I say this? Now, what I need to do is go back to my first principles.

50:24And am I going to be about my first principles or conform or contort them for the approval of the person that has demonstrated Like, I'm in it with you. Like, let's do the long-term thing here. Let's really know each other and go deep. Let's build a life together. And still, am I conforming in some kind of way to not piss off or upset the apple cart or, you know, like it shows up in super slippery ways. Yeah. And those really subtle ways that perhaps are the most nefarious. That's it. Yeah. So there's freedom. There is a better way. And part of that is like, know whose opinions really matter to you.

51:04For me, I need a round table of eight. You could have 12, you could have four, but like, what is your round table? What is the criteria for them to be at your round table? And for me, it's twofold. I'm happy to share them, but I'd love to hear yours. Like what would be the criteria of the people to be at your round table that you say, listen, your opinion matters to me deeply? Well, I have different people for different areas of my life. So I have a roundtable around my sobriety. I have a different roundtable around things like parenting, professional decisions that I have to make, relationship stuff.

51:43There's different people that I call on for different reasons. And I would say it's more than eight, but I don't know that I've defined it and written it down and said, this is my roundtable. But, you know, I go to AA and I have different roundtables of people who are very important to me that help keep me on track and that are a sounding board for many of my decisions. I have a formal men's group every week that I sit down with a group of eight guys. And that's where we share non-sobriety oriented stuff in my case around, you know, parenting dilemmas that I butt up against or relationship stuff.

52:19I've been with my wife 23 years. Like, what does this look like now? How do I keep this alive? And how do we stay, you know, energized in our marriage and, you know, continue to cultivate that level of intimacy? Or I have a big professional decision I need to make. Like, I only share those decisions with a very select group of people that I'm very intentional about, you know, that. Like, I don't, you don't just spew it out and let everybody's opinions roll in. That's right. That creates paralysis and confusion and you're over-indexing on certain people because everybody's got an opinion about everything, right?

52:55So now more than ever, like you go online, God forbid you share like, should I do this online? Like you're going to get a zillion different opinions from who knows who these people are. And on top of that, are we really meant to know everybody's opinion on everything all the time, every second of every single day? Like it doesn't make me feel good. It can be fun to crowdsource. There can be some wisdom in crowdsourcing. Like create a poll or something like that. But I think it's much more effective to identify the people who you really trust, who you know have your best interest at heart and are going to really consider the question at hand and aren't afraid to give you the hard answer.

53:38Okay. So these are the criteria. Whatever table it might be, we're having a similar criteria. The ones when I thought deeply about it is there's two vectors. One is they have built time under tension with me, and I know that they care. I know that they have an understanding of my micro and massive traumas in my life. They have context to the person who I want to become and be more often. It's not an opinion that's out of context. And they've demonstrated with time under tension that they really care about my well-being. And then on this other side, it's they've been in the amphitheater where there's real stress and pressure and they know the defaults that happen in those conditions.

54:21So it's the context of both of those that I go, I'm at home. I can be so vulnerable that you know how to take care of me in my most vulnerable state because you know the person I want to be and you know the traumas I've had. So it's in context. And like my wife is my best friend. We've been married 28 years. And people used to ask me early in my career arc, like what are the commonalities or what are the traits of the greats? Like what are the ones that hang together? It was something that I thought deeply about and I did a lot of investigation around it. And I'm less interested in answering that.

54:55And I'm more interested in pointing to who are your trusted partners? Like forget about what they do. Who has your back? Unconditionally, positive regard, sees you, knows you, and is going to ride with you to help you be your very best, even when it's hard. And there's a reason 50 % of marriages or more fall apart, right? Because the depth is not taken care of. And this is the depth that I'm talking about watering and knowing. So those are the criteria for me. They care and they understand what it feels like to be and high pressured. Yeah. And that understanding demands a level of experience in whatever it is that you're running by them.

55:37And vulnerability. You have to bring you into the conversation. If you and I just, beer and pizza. Should I do this or this? Yeah. And it's like super surface. Right. Yeah. I've never shared like my ache with you. Then it's out of context. You're just staying at the surface with the beer, pizza, chicken wings, whatever kind of conversation. That's just, I know that you don't do beer, pizza, chicken wings. I understand, but just for fun, the surface level conversations. Sure. So if somebody is listening to this and this is a new idea for them, how does one go about corralling their own roundtable?

56:10Okay. Like you could just borrow maybe those two vectors, like who's demonstrated that they really care or the beginnings of that. Maybe you want to give them a seat and that they have a sense of what it's like to be in heavy environments because that's where we fall apart. Okay. So just some sort of semblance of those two. And then what I would say is start with that exercise, then move to one of the three best practices to know yourself better. Mindfulness, journaling, or conversations with people of wisdom. Start with one of those so that you can work increasing awareness of how you work from the inside out.

56:48One of those three are great practices. And then I would examine the performance-based identity that you might be inhabiting. So we live in this performance-obsessed world, certainly in the West. It makes perfect sense that for generations, we have a performance-based identity, which is examined by I am what I do and how well I do what I do, as opposed to I am me. I am who I am rather than what I do. So examine the performance-based identity. We take a deep dive in the book on this. but the crosswalk is from performance-based identity to purpose-based identity. What is your purpose? Get crystal clear with what your purpose in life is.

57:34I would triple down on that.

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59:15So a couple things. So switching to purpose is essentially what you're saying is the path going from somebody who is extrinsically motivated to internally driven. Yeah. That's how you bridge that gap. But when you use the purpose with a capital P, that flummoxes a lot of people. That's paralyzing in its own right. Totally. I don't know what my purpose is. You're telling me, oh, I can't do anything until I know what my purpose is? What is my purpose? And you could spend years, you know, chewing the cut on that and making no progress. So how do you get somebody off the dime on trying to figure out what that is in their own life?

59:56Thin slicing. I agree with you. the magnificent, you know, exploration of my grand purpose in life can feel very overwhelming. Okay. So bring it way down, you know, and thin slicing is like, what is my purpose today? And just practice that a week, two weeks, a month, whatever, but practice thin slicing. What is my purpose today? What is the thing that matters to me that has meaning? And it's a little bit bigger than me and I'm going to need all day to get this thing kind of delivered or done. So those are the three criteria for purpose. It has personal meaning, it's bigger than you, and it's future oriented.

1:00:36So if you thought about in the most time-bound way, the thinnest slice you could, what is my purpose today? Practice that until you're kind of ready. Like, what is my purpose for this week? This is not a goal. There's not goals. It's not a checklist. Purpose has like a soul to it. What is my purpose for this week? And then after you've practiced week purpose for a while, move up to month, move up to quarter, move up to year. And then, you know, as you're doing that, it will happen. Maybe just trust my words for a little bit. Like it will happen if you practice just about anything, but if you practice this, you'll become more familiar with it.

1:01:10You'll feel the fabric of that question and your grand life purpose will become just a bit more clear. One of the challenges in answering that question, I think tracks back to an amazing insight that you share in the book that really struck me, which is that our relationship with this idea of purpose is driven in the West by this rugged individualism kind of notion, as opposed to its true context, which is that purpose is revealed in our relationship with others. And when we think about the context of our own community and the kind of dynamics in which we operate, that is a more fertile soil to kind of imagine purpose and develop it as opposed to I'm here standing alone.

1:01:59It's me in manifest destiny, you know, and I'm gonna stake my claim and this is my purpose. And it's just up to me because that's, you know, back to the evolutionary thing. Like you say in the book, we are not individuals who have learned to be social. We are social animals who have learned to identify as separate selves. And, you know, that is like at the crux of not just the purpose conundrum, but this whole notion that drives fear of other people's opinions. Yeah, we're masquerading like we are individuals in a social world. Like we've kind of got the ordering sideways here. And so if you think about a pebble in a pond and you think about the ripple that takes place from that, at the center is your relationship with yourself.

1:02:47This is how I see it, at least, in my simple way. Some people might say your relationship with God starts at the center. I put your relationship with yourself there. And if it's informed by God, great. But it's the relationship with yourself. Then the next ring, you could decide what you put in the next rings, but it is about relationships with. And I go with experience, with other people, with Mother Nature, with machines. And so there's relationships that are at the foundation of this whole thing of life. And I don't have this exactly dialed in yet, but I'm thinking that one of the ways I want to express mastery of self is a love affair with the unfolding, unpredictable, unknown present moment.

1:03:27If you could have a love affair with the unfolding present moment, there's a sense of real, you'll use a word from earlier, agency and efficacy and a sense of power and a sense of not needing controls, but giving into the unfolding present moment and having a love affair with that unknown. That to me, I think is mastery of self, but that is a relationship with experience. And so it starts with, I think your relationship with yourself. To get there, you need a couple other things that you talk about in the book, which is, a learner's kind of approach to the world. You can call it a growth mindset and curiosity.

1:04:09Yeah. So we all have seeds. We're more like a gardener than we are just about anything else. And what are we tilling? What are we tending to? And if we're tending to learning, we're tending to exploring, we're tending to figuring things out, then those plants grow, those seeds, they grow. So I think that most of us, and I'll talk about myself here for a minute, for much of my life, I was critical, hard on myself. I was judgmental. I was pessimistic. I was tilling those seeds and they were growing. And so before I knew it, I was first year in college and I was waking up to brush my teeth and my hands were shaking.

1:04:50I didn't know what it was. I didn't know that I was living with anxiety. I had no idea what that was. I was wondering, is this a neurological thing? Like what's going on? And I was racing in my day because I was not enough. And if we take on the Gardner analogy and we just take a moment like, what are you tilling? And what are you hydrating? And what are you growing? What seeds are you cultivating inside of yourself? I think there's a rich metaphor to be played forward. And I want to be more curious than a learner because there's so much good stuff that I don't understand. And I'm fascinated by making connections with people, with self, with ideas.

1:05:27So I've just got to show up and be a learner. It's a more joyous, liberated way to live. It's not a new idea though, right? Yeah, I know, but it's so hard to access. Like when I look at, let's just drill down on this idea of the performance-based identity. This gets expressed in three negative ways. A contingent self-worth, meaning like your self-worth is basically dependent upon what other people say it is. A looming fear of failure. Doom is just around the corner. You're one click away from disaster. You better step it up now. You better be great. Yeah. And perfectionism. And I read this and it's like, you know, ding, ding, ding.

1:06:08You know what I mean? Like, I got some work to do, buddy. And like, I'm in a much better place with this. I'm kind of half jesting because I have contended with this and overcome a lot of it, but it comes up all the time. And, you know, you and I are in a business that's oriented around certain kind of metrics that get socially shared and you can't help but fall into comparison, even with the self-awareness that it's not in your best interest to do it or that it doesn't really mean anything. And here you are writing a whole book about why you need to stop worrying about what other people think, but there's nothing that's going to be more provocative or bring that up in a more acute way than to write a book and then share it with the world.

1:06:54Because of course you want the book to be enjoyed by a lot of people and you want it to be received well and be meaningful. And the irony of all of that, like how have you kind of navigated that? Well, the subtitle is not stop caring about what people think. It is not that. The subtitle is stop worrying. So the worry piece is under my control. And so I can do something about it. And so I do care about people that are on the round table. And I do care about some others, you know, because they are influential and they can open doors and close doors. So I do care. And so it's not like I'm callous in any way or removed or aloof or enlightened.

1:07:33I'm not a narcissist. This book is not for enlightened sociopaths or narcissists. Okay. They've got a different model that they're working on. This is for the rest of us. Okay. So if you think about the mechanism of FOPO, fear of people's opinions, is that there's an anticipation like driving up here. I could have spent a lot of time thinking about this conversation and what you're going to think about me and I need to be just right and I want to be perfect and man, I'm not okay if he doesn't think I'm okay and what is this huge audience going to think about? Or I can spend my time in another way.

1:08:05But the anticipation of what another is going to think is the bulk of FOPO. yeah that was really well stated in the book it's not the negative opinion shared per se it's the anticipation that that might occur that creates all of the stress and anxiety and you know toxic brew of neurochemicals that you know fuck us up that's exactly right and then so the second phase is checking so that when i'm actually now in front of you i am reading micro expressions because i I want to be connected to you, but I'm not doing it to see if I'm okay. I'm doing it to be okay with you, right? There's a different tone to that.

1:08:46And so it's like checking in. Did I say the right thing? Did I not say the right thing? What's he thinking? Oh gosh, he didn't like that. Oh, he did like that. Okay, now I'm okay. He reads micro expressions really well. Like I better really be on my game because he's going to see through my bullshit immediately. Oh God, yeah. And he knows the truth. And like, sometimes that's, you know, it feels - X-ray vision over there. But it's just that we all are actually pretty good at it, you know, if we care. But I've spent a lot of time sitting in rooms with people that are highly skilled at presenting themselves in a strong way, if you will.

1:09:17And being able to see through it. Yeah, right. And like, I got this guy's number. They want me to. When you close the door and you're going to go do work with a psychologist or sports psychologist, you want to grow. But you also don't know if it's safe yet. so the classic rookie mistake is like you create a safe environment and then it's kind of bullshit talk for 45 minutes and the last five minutes of a session somebody walks out and they're like hey uh maybe we should be talking about like that time i was fill in the blank and big trauma it's like oh man we wasted a lot of time to get to that but anyways non-sequitur here so there's the the anticipation phase is the checking in am i okay then there's the responding phase and i think there's five parts of the responding.

1:10:02So let's say that I get a slight hint from you that I'm not okay. And this matters to me. I've got to be okay in your eyes. That I'll conform, I'll contort, which is like I'll abandon my first principles. I'll laugh at a joke that is not fucking funny to me. It's actually offensive. But I want to be safe with you. There's a problem in this. I'll start to critique you, so I'll become offensive, So you don't critique me, I'll critique you. Or I'll critique somebody else, and you and I can partner in that critique. So now we're closer. I might just flat out disconnect from you because it's just too much.

1:10:42I'm so afraid of what you're going to think of me, and I so value you that I'm going to pull away. And I'm just not going to be around much. So there's a predictable handful of things that happen when you're operating from FOPO, when you're operating from a fear of another person's opinion. The antidote is found how? Well, so I think the first is to make a fundamental commitment just like athletes do to get better and to work from the inside out. That is the number one antidote. Mindfulness would be certainly the second. Like learn how you're working. Psychology is the study of self. That's where it starts.

1:11:20Study yourself. Know how thought one, two, and three creates feeling or emotion A, B, and C. Like, know yourself. Know your tripwires. Know where you speak to yourself in a way that builds you and backs you, where you can be free to be you. Understand the first principles that matter to you above all else, and know the thoughts and behaviors that line up for those first principles. And if you do that in service of purpose, you got kind of the whole buffalo lined up. It's a fundamental commitment to work from the inside out is the anecdote. This is such an insidious thing. Like I'm just reflecting on my own life and the decades that I was sort of unknowingly betraying myself to conform or to do the thing that would get the approval of my dad or my peers.

1:12:16without having any understanding of what my values were or what I even felt was authentically me. Because when you live in that space for a protracted period of time, you're so divorced with that inner voice that the notion of even connecting to it or listening to it seems entirely foreign until you reach some crisis point that forces you to reckon with it for the very first time. And that's a very disorienting experience. Perhaps that's the moment when people find themselves in the office of someone like yourself for the very first time trying to make sense of what's happening. Or they're calling their friends saying I'm fucked up.

1:12:57Right. You know, or they feel really alone. Or they're just privately, you know, contending with it to the point of, you know, severe mental issues. That's right. Because they're so afraid of raising their hand. That's right. Because we're conditioned to look a certain way rather than be a certain way. And we are obsessed with performance. Grades happen that way. Force rank stacks in youth sport happen. We want to give everyone an award, but really we're only kind of interested in the winners. And like, it's a tough world to navigate, period. And I don't think the world is safe. It is not designed for you to be your very best.

1:13:33The world is quite hostile. There are bad actors. There's good actors. There's selfish people across most communities. It's not designed for you to flourish. And so if you're going to play the game according to the world's standards, I think you get whipped around quickly. And that's why we talk about right now there's a human energy crisis. People are more stressed, more anxiety, more depressed, more addicted, more suicidal than we've had in the last, call it 20 years. It's not that the external world has changed that much. It's that finally people are saying, holy shit, like I'm a mess because I've been playing this game.

1:14:06This obsessed culture with performance, I've drank that poison and that's never going to fill me. And so I've been drinking this poison for a long time. Who am I and what the fuck am I doing here? And once you get down into that kind of organizing foundational type of thinking, there is a better way to go through life. And I don't think I know a better way other than to hit my head on the concrete. I need pain. That's what I needed. and I just want to be there hopefully for people that you know don't fall too far to hit their head in the concrete that it's a game over but like that they can feel their pain and do it in a way that is healthy.

1:14:46Did you see the David Beckham mini doc series? I did. I did. It's impossible to read your book without reflecting upon like that guy and how he navigated in the most extreme way the opinions of other people to basically be able to perform at the highest level. And of all, like, I learned so much about this guy. I thought I understood his career, but I was shocked to discover so many things about this human being that I didn't know. Super endearing. And his level of mastery when the entire world turned against him is extraordinary. to be able to tune out the absolute loudest voice one could possibly imagine and decide that his motivation was gonna be internally driven and that it was up to him.

1:15:38And then to be able to like show up and actually do it. I mean, you must've been like out of your mind watching that. I loved it, yeah. What a moment for people to really see what it's like to be on the world stage and the risk that goes with that. they told that story in just a beautifully endearing way. And so, yeah, I watched it with my son and my wife. The three of us watched that like in a great learning moment. You know, he's navigating the social world at age 15. Right. Tough. Remember when you were 15? Yeah. Yeah. At such a young age to be thrown onto the world stage. Yeah. And, you know, he's a human and there's obviously he has missteps and it's the tapestry of life and all its colors.

1:16:20But for him to kind of persevere and prevail in the ways that he did was really kind of a remarkable case study for all the things that you're talking about. 100 % agreed. Yeah. The converse of that is a story that I read just the other day. I don't know if you saw this. It was a Wall Street Journal article about this guy, Dave Hollis. Did you see this? Do you know who Rachel Hollis is? I know Rachel. This is her ex. So this was her ex-husband who passed away. And it's really a cautionary tale about what was going on in the last stages of this guy's life. By all accounts, somebody who had a very unhealthy relationship to other people's opinions on social media that was driving some errant behavior.

1:17:04And so addicted to the metrics and the approval that it's directly correlated with that guy's, the end of that guy's life. Like he was found dead in his bed with alcohol, fentanyl, and cocaine in his system with his phone on his chest. And it's this unbelievable cautionary tale about the influencer economy and kind of what social media and this outsized relationship with approval and, you know, other people's opinions. like extrinsic metrics to the nth degree can have on somebody's mental health that would like drive them to their death. Yeah. I bring that up. You're nailing it. Simply to say that this is like a very real thing with very real world consequences.

1:17:51It's not a small thing. It's not. And freedom will not be understood by the limited time that we have here if we're playing the secondary game to be approved or not rejected by other people. And so, yeah, thank you for the sobering reminder of like what the extreme looks like. Yeah. Yeah. What's happening neurochemically in our brains when we're engaging with this fear of other people's opinions? When we're actually in the anticipation or the check-in phase. It's basically, it looks, I would imagine, we haven't done a clinical trial or study on it, but it would look exactly like anxiety does. And so you'd have that right kind of cocktail where there's an urgency that's taking place to get something just right.

1:18:38And there's the right levels of cortical arousal with some cortisol and adrenaline. And so there's all of those mechanisms in place that amplify the experience. There's an attunement to get it right. And it can be actually addicting in some respects because there's an aliveness that comes with it. And you hear people talk about anxiety and depression. they don't want it but there's an aliveness that comes with both of those that sometimes they don't want to shed there's a tenderness that can happen with some depression deep depression like i'm talking about mild or moderate there's a tenderness that happens there's a an availability to feel in ways that you haven't felt before but you just can't get out of it you can't remove yourself from it so that's the opposite the anxious state that i'm talking about the cocktail there is that there's an urgency to get it just right.

1:19:31The energy level is really high and that can feel wonderfully stimulating. But the problem is that you can't down-regulate it well. And it's this chronic elevated hum that is an exhausting experience. And then when you're actually in the presence of the other person's opinion that you're trying to get favor for, you get basically whipped around by that intensity and it's tiring. What is the healthy version of being motivated by the opinions of others, because it's not hard to imagine, take a quarterback on a football team, like, I want to win for my team. I want to win for the fans or the rock is like, I do this for the fans.

1:20:10I work hard because I want you to, you know, it's like, there's something healthy about not being utterly self-referential in why you're doing what you're doing, but doing it for a purpose that extends beyond your own kind of selfish regard. Oh, I think you're nailing purpose. People can be very clever in how they cloak purpose. So is the purpose really about creating an experience for other people where they see a better version of themselves? Which just sounds better to say it that way. It sounds better. So I don't think there is a healthy version when the primary operating system is the need to be accepted or the fear of rejection.

1:20:47I don't think that that is healthy in the becoming. To be connected to other people is the fabric of the coral reef of humanity. But when it's a self-centered, self-preserving mechanism primarily, do they like me? Are they rejecting me? I don't know a healthy version. But I can say you can facilitate, you can use that mechanism, that model, if you will, to potentially be the best in the world at something. The best in the world oftentimes have just enough anxiety, just enough OCD, just enough narcissism, just enough perfectionism, where they are compelled to go the distance and to go to the dark caves of high performance and to suffer in those places just a little bit longer than anyone else will.

1:21:35You can find yourself on the world stage with lots of money, lots of fame, lots of attention, whatever the value proposition that you're going for is. And literally, you might be the best in the world. I'm not sure that you're going to be healthy, but it'll take you to that place. There is a better way. You can have a purpose. You can be connected to other people. You can know that you are going to need to go to the edges on a regular basis and have a community of people that you're processing with and doing it with that is not self-centered only. Right, but good luck convincing that person that there's a better way.

1:22:09Oh, yeah. That's gotta be the ultimate hard case, right? Because everything in their life has been a successful by-product of these unhealthy tendencies. There's no way you're gonna disabuse that person, that they should let go of that and that there's a better way when the world is just raining gold upon them. We did this study. My mentor, she designed a study in the NBA where the hypothesis, if you will, is that people that had a sense of what they're going to do post-career would fare better while they're in the league. And what she was going to do is provide a quick little questionnaire like, what do you want to do next?

1:22:46And then if they said, I want to be a pilot, well, then the team was going to figure out how to get off-season some pilot lessons or hook them up with a pilot that could show them the ropes or whatever. So there's a little bit of an internship slash harvesting of what that thing could be. All right. I can't remember the exact numbers, but let's just say it was an equal split. I don't think it was. That people said, oh, I know what I want to do. It's pilot. Versus people that said, why are we talking about this? I'm here. Yeah, I can't indulge in that. Are you kidding me? To even imagine what comes after is going to undercut my ability to be the absolute best in this very privileged situation that I find myself in right now.

1:23:27And so in that group, there was two main narratives. One narrative was, I can't afford that time. I'm hanging on and I'm going to do everything I can to be here. It's a short window. I'm all in here. I'll deal with the consequences of not knowing what the hell I'm going to do later. And the other narrative was like, why would I bother? I made it. I'm here. This is the good life. So what she found and they found is that folks that nested what they're going to do next performed better based on duration and had a better experience when they reflected post their time in the career. So it was on the folks that are like, why would I bother?

1:24:09It was shorter and they played with more anxiety. So that's a really interesting finding. And what do you make of that? Know what's next. Have an idea of like where you're pointing to and the things that are interesting and compelling for your future. Go back to almost our first part of our conversation, using your imagination to see a future that is not time bound by the things that you're doing right now, but later. That's a right of a passage for adulthood is to use your imagination in a powerful way. And I a thousand percent agree because when everything's kind of rolling and the train is going, it feels like it's going in the right direction.

1:24:49Even me, I'm like, wait, wait, wait, hold on. This is working now. And so it's hard when that energy is taking place to be thoughtful about later and maybe even a divergent path. So this is where that insight that I've shared with you before is that the reason people change is because of pain and how we grow is being uncomfortable. And so just kind of be ready and open, you know, when there's the pain that's there. And sometimes if people want a relationship with you, you can help induce pain. I'm talking about emotional pain, the honesty of like feeling what it's like to be unsettled. But that's for the brave.

1:25:26Yeah, that's a whole different thing. That's a different deal. Yeah. Kind of raise the standard before you actually hit your head on the concrete. Right. I want you to tell the story about the other mentor of yours because it gets into a whole other new area that I want to explore with you. I should separate these two because my deepest, longest, richest mentor, his name is Gary de Blasio, and he's known me since I was 15 years old and he's been there for all the versions of me that's not the other mentor i'm mentioning now which i mentioned in the book so this was a a professional mentor and he was one of the reasons i went to the phd program i went to and he helped me a lot i learned a lot from him and i'll keep him nameless i learned a lot from him and he trusted me and he got me going in the field and And I have such regard for how much he helped me.

1:26:18And so some time had gone by. I was in my career kind of like maybe 10 years into it. I don't know exact numbers. And I was working with a professional fighter in the UFC. And we did a great camp. It was a three-month camp. It was the head coach. It was me and his strike coach. And we did some great work together with the athlete. And he had a championship fight. We practiced everything, pre-rehearsal the night before. full ret rehearsal where we walk through everything and and not including all the three months of real work you know time under tension every day on mindset technical and physical training including whose hands he's going to shake what is the walk out to the octagon all of that like all of that yeah to the point where when he would walk up the five steps to get into the octagon like we got all to that to the details you're talking about but we didn't practice where we were going to go.

1:27:13So I just followed the head coach. So the athlete goes into the octagon. All of that was dialed in, but I hadn't taken care of myself yet. Okay. So I follow the coach. This is now unfolding with, I don't know, 18 ,000 people in the arena and all that kind of buzz energy. And I'm like, oh shit. So I just follow the coach up. And I actually didn't know where our corner was, what we're supposed to do. So I just follow the head coach. and as we're walking up the the same five steps that the athlete did we have to cut in the line of the camera and i follow him and he's like yeah right here we're here and so okay now i'm at home and so the fight happens great event on my way home my mentor calls and i was like oh man like maybe he saw the fight or something i'd like or maybe he was just checking in i don't know but i didn't know what was up but he says he goes okay nice job dude but what are you doing in front of the camera.

1:28:06Like, get yourself in the background. Like, that's not where we're supposed to be. And he didn't say all that. He just gave me a quick little shot that says, what are you doing in front of the camera? And then I internalized all of it and created this narrative. I've let him down. I've let the industry down. I'm breaking a rule. I'm not supposed to be here. Maybe I'm not even supposed to be at public events where there is cameras because psychology happens in the back room, not in the front room. And it was really unsettling. It was a problem for me. And I wanted to bring psychology forward, this beautiful science to help people be at home with themselves, wherever they are.

1:28:44And I wanted to bring it forward and I wanted to share like how the best in the world work. And then I just felt like I got gut punched. So I retreated to the background and I thought, I don't want to look bad in front of him. I don't want to let him down. And I certainly don't want to do something becoming for the whole field of professionals that I respect. Does his perspective represent the entire field's perspective on what you're doing? Well, he was so big in my life. Like, of course it did. You know, like he was big in my life. And so I just got small. I retreated to the background, still doing, loving my work and caring about the people I'm working with.

1:29:21But I just damped down that idea to celebrate the psychology, the process and the psychology. So much so that maybe it was another five years later, I was kind of afraid to re-engage with him. So the relationship kind of fell out. And then five years later or so, I saw him at a conference and I was like, oh man, he's out there thinking I'm a kook. And he was watching me present. And while I was presenting on stage, man, I had this near panic attack moment as soon as I made eye contact with him. I didn't put this part in the book. And I was on stage about to be run over with emotions. And I made a decision, do I shape my presentation for his approval or do I stay true to my experience?

1:30:08And I said, no, I got to stay true. And it feels like a hero moment, but thank God I'd done all this inner work like for 20 plus years to be able to navigate that moment. Cause I'm certain that if I hadn't done the work, I would have shaped it for him. And after I got on stage and kind of that post glow happens that there's a, I don't want to say a line, but there's a gathering of folks that want to talk to you. You know exactly what I'm talking about. And he was kind of nested in the back of that room, disinterested in me. And so after, I don't know, 20 conversations or so, the room had quieted down and I walked over to him and there's only like 50 people in the, it was a small audience.

1:30:47I walked over to him and I was like, oh, he never cared once. Just like that driver I was telling you about early in the conversation, like I made this story up. He didn't bring it up. He probably didn't even know. He was probably really disappointed and hurt that I had gone away for five years and I had like abandoned all the trust that he had shared with me for one fucking comment that I made up the magnitude of that to be something that shaped me in a way that I just didn't want to blow it again. and so, man, I feel sorry for him, and I haven't squared the relationship. I still haven't. Yeah, you talk about seeing him and how, you know, he's this larger-than-life figure in your consciousness, but in fact, he was sort of frail and, you know, kind of a bit of a sad sack in the way that you kind of describe him in that context, and so much so that you didn't even bring it up to him, like, because you were planning on, like, I'm going to go and talk to him about this so we can clear the air and then realizing like, oh, there's not even any point to doing that.

1:31:51I still had like a little bit too much fire in me about it. You know, I still wasn't, I wasn't healed from it in any way. And probably not as I'm talking to you about it now, only because I, I feel sadness and remorse on how I treated myself and how I treated him. And at the same time, I haven't honored that experience with him. But the story is potent and salient because it brings up the extent to which we empower other people in irrational ways that end up dictating big time life decisions in our own life. And, you know, these individuals who kind of lord over us in conscious and unconscious ways that, you know, bend the arc of our lives unnecessarily.

1:32:34And then to develop an awareness that, yes, you know, you have not been at the helm of your own life and you've given this person so much power. And for what, you know? Exactly. Is to, you know, to help us realize, and you get into this in the book, like how we over-index on other people's opinions. And we don't realize that, you know, everyone's walking around self-obsessed. We think that they're judging us and thinking about this. They're thinking about their own lives. They're not thinking about us at all. Just like the car that pulled up to you when you were 16. And all the social science supports this.

1:33:12And then on top of it, we have all these cognitive biases around thinking that people see the world the way that we see it or that they're understanding us in the way that we think they're understanding us and all of this stuff. It's this weird stew that just is like Vaseline on the lens of how we perceive the world. Oh, the color of your language right now. Yes, yes, yes. All of that. And I just feel so excited that you're seeing it in this way because I'm like, yes, yes, yes. It's how I lived it. I've seen a lot of people live it and there's good science to support it. And one of those bits that you're talking about is called the spotlight effect.

1:33:52Thomas Gilovich at a Cornell did a really interesting bit of research where, you know, it was dubbed the spotlight effect because we are walking around thinking that the world is looking at us. Is my hair OK? Is my shirt OK? Are my words OK? When in fact, you're doing the same for you, thinking about your hair and your shirt and your words. And so we end up being these weird kind of ships passing in the night, not really connecting because we think everyone's focused on us. It's quite tragic when you think about the aloneness that comes with that. And that's what happened. He said that thing. It was probably for him more than me.

1:34:26And I took it about all being me. And it's a dangerous proposition when we listen to the opinions of others too much. Was that also like layered on top of this other kind of maybe sense that you were breaking ranks with your profession simply by pursuing psychology in a different way? Set aside the public spotlight aspect of it, but just to break free of this paradigm that psychology is about kind of treating disorders and instead looking forward towards how psychology could be leveraged for human performance. I mean, that in and of itself was, we sort of take it for granted now. There's a lot of movement and energy around this field that you're in.

1:35:08But at the time that you were beginning, this was still kind of a maverick move that I suspect the hardened, you know, kind of leather elbow patched, you know, herringbone, you know, jacket wearing psychologists might not have smiled upon. to say the least and i still think we're in some of that because there still is some of that keep it out of the narrative of what's happening like let me be more clear i'm kind of dancing around my words is that the laws of psychology and the ethical codes there's a privilege and sanctuary that you're honoring for that person so everything that if you and i are doing work stays in the sanctuary that's called confidentiality and privilege is the fact that we're even having the conversation.

1:35:53So you hold privilege. And so by law, I cannot even say that I know you. If I were to see you in a grocery store, I have to pretend like you don't exist unless you acknowledge me. That's weird. Yeah, it is weird. That's weird. That's not healthy. Because now you're in your own world like, man, I love Gervais and I love the work we're doing. Why is he not making any eye contact? And like, I think he looked at me. but so it's like this weird thing and so you got to get ahead of it and say hey have I seen you in a grocery store look I understand the roots of that there's a similar paradigm in Alcoholics Anonymous like there's you know anonymity and privilege and you know confidentiality like these are all rooted in ideas that that that make sense they just get they get stretched and and kind of practiced in odd yeah in odd ways I have this conversation with people that if I work in a private way with them ahead of time.

1:36:49I'm like, listen, and I say that grocery store analogy, I go, I can't help myself. I'm coming up. I'm giving you a hug. Do you like hugs? I like hugs. Yeah. All right, cool. You know, so I do my best to work with, you know, the natural relationships. And as long as the guy who's kicked back and he's like poker face. No, that is not my style. Yeah. Right. No. Yeah. We're in it. It's intense and it's fun. And it happens when I'm working with a sports team. It's happening on the bus in the hallways. I purposely don't have offices when I'm working with a sports team. So it's much more organic that way.

1:37:30There's a great African proverb that you have in the book that opens one of the chapters that says, The lion does not turn around when the small dog barks. we're so obsessed with other people's opinions when in truth we should be honoring our own sense of what we're doing and it goes to the round table piece like yes there are certain people you need input and we can all benefit from getting feedback you know from people who are worthy of that time and energy but the extent to which we sort of ruminate on people's opinions that don't matter is insane. I think that that's a good way to say it. And oftentimes, if you think about the analogy between feeling like a puddle versus the ocean, and this is an ancient kind of Zen Cohen, is like, be the ocean.

1:38:27But oftentimes we feel like a puddle. And somebody, anybody in this case, could jump in with two feet into your puddle and displace you completely. And you're completely kind of turned upside down, if you will. But when you feel like the ocean and you are that type of magnitude and breadth, and I mean, a tanker dropped in the middle of the ocean is not really going to displace the power of the ocean. So be more like the ocean, be more like the lion than the barking dog or the puddle. And that takes practice. That's part of what the inner work is, is to be more like the ocean, the mountain, you know, the lion, as opposed to something small that's easily displaced.

1:39:07part of this practice or a practice as a way into kind of connecting with these ideas that you suggest is contemplating your own mortality oh yeah i mean it's been around a long time yeah but um yeah it's a good way the stoics but i like the tyler durden example of him jacking up the convenience store guy like he everybody who's seen fight club he goes in and he robs the convenience store clerk and takes his wallet and asks the guy what he wants to do with his life. He says a veterinarian, but he abandoned it or whatever. And what does he say? He's like, I'm taking your license. I'm going to come back in six months.

1:39:48If you're not a veterinarian, I'm going to kill you. And Edward Norton's like, I can't believe you did that. And Tyler Durden's like, what do you mean? It's the best day of this guy's life. Right. Like he now knows he's got a real choice to make. And I love that. Like I've had a practice for a long time that I also share in the book that when I say goodbye to people, I want to practice the fragility of relationships. So now it's going to be weird. You're going to, when we say goodbye, you're going to be like, oh, I know what he's doing. But when I say goodbye to you, I'm going to mean it like, I don't know if I'll see you again.

1:40:18And that gives me just a thin slice moment to honor our friendship and the time we spent. And it also prepares me in a practice way for the next engagement I'm going to have with somebody else, the next relationship, the next conversation, to be all in it with them too. So it can sound morbid because one of us is going to die at some point. The time that we have together, I want to make sure I'm in it because I don't know how long we'll be able to do it together. So I just practice when I say goodbye, like, I hope I see you again. You know, and like, if this is the last time - How does that go when you do that?

1:40:53You go out in the world and you do that with, people that don't know you as well? It's quiet. They probably don't know. It's for me, not for them. And it's to prepare me better to be highly focused, highly attuned in my relationships with people because that time is precious. Yeah. Who in your mind, like, I guess, I don't know, in the sports world is an amazing example or practitioner of these ideas? Somebody who is just on their game in full connection with their mastery, with a healthy relationship with their own value system and purpose, detached from the unhealthy side of being influenced by other people's opinions.

1:41:37Like who's out there like rocking it? I don't know who to point to. Really? Yeah, I don't know who to point to. Because you must watch sports like a film director watches movies where you're seeing with x-ray vision, you're kind of looking at it differently. And I've been privileged to be in the inner workings of so many lives that have been the best in the world at what they do. And I think some have done a really nice job. And I'll tell you who I want to put on the pedestal here to answer your question is I want to put Alex Hanold there. and I want to put him there, but I don't know well enough the actual fabric of his relationships with his loved ones.

1:42:15I leave it a little open. I think he's the most significant athlete in our era. I think he's the one that I think about that is done and moved into territory that the rest of the world thought was incredibly stupid or dangerous or could not be done. And so I have great regard and respect for that, but I don't know the fabric of his relationships with others? I think his relationships with others are pretty good. I mean, he's a very unique individual, not just as an athlete, but psychologically. I think it's a great choice because if you really look at this guy, like his internal barometer or compass is just super attuned.

1:42:53Like he knows who he is. He knows what he's doing. He knows what he's trying to achieve. and he's not unaware of the world's perception of him, but it doesn't seem to at all impact him in any kind of negative way. Like his connection with his North Star is like impenetrable. Yeah, sounds like you've had a chance to spend some time with him. A little bit. I mean, not a ton, but he's been on the show a bunch of times. Same here. And like, I think he's the most significant athlete of our time. And so I love that you have that texture, which I don't quite have for him. I hope so. That's right. That's really rad.

1:43:30That's a good choice. I like that. See, you were like, I don't know how to answer that. And then you just rocked it with an awesome choice. So who do you put up there? Oh yeah. Throwing it right back at me. Wow. It's hard to top Alex. I mean, I would think I'm not like watching a ton of sports. So you're probably catching me off guard. I mean, who else would be, I think what Kai Lenny is doing right now would be out there as well. I would double down. You have him on as well, right? Kai is a special human. Yeah. I think he's the new leader. He's not the like, look at my brass that I've shined up.

1:44:08He's like, I'm a learner. I'm a beginner. I'm an explorer. And he is rad. You know, from the soul out. He is awesome. I love that choice. I really think I pulled that out of my ass. Nice job. No, he's good. Nice job. This idea of being in kind of emotional connection with our own mortality and kind of understanding the temporality of everything and the limited, you know, kind of lifespan that we have and how we all kind of squander time. I mean, this is our greatest resource and it's the one we least protect, right? We can understand that intellectually and we can read the Stoics and we can listen to Steve Jobs give his commencement speech and do all that kind of stuff.

1:44:49But for some reason, the human brain has difficulty translating that into kind of any real palpable emotional experience. Like it seems to fade quickly. That's right. Like what is that? Why can't we just hold on to that and bring that into our conscious awareness? Yes, I can say to you when you leave, I hope I see you again and mean it. And mean it. But I'll snap right back to, you know, whatever bullshit is like circulating in my mind. If you practiced it for a week with every time you said goodbye to someone and you meant it, you'd be closer to honoring the fragility of the relationship and you would be more tuned.

1:45:28This is maybe one reason Alex is so tuned, because he knows that mistakes cost lives and he's lost a lot of friends. And so he's probably more tuned than most of us because he works in highly consequential environments. And so we don't practice it. I got snapped back by a musician. And I was like, man, like, whew, if I could just, like, that's amazing how you can sing. And he says, have you practiced? I was like, no, I think I'm tone deaf. He goes, yeah, but have you practiced? And I'm not tone deaf, but, you know, like, I can't hit a note. And he goes, yeah, but how much time do you practice?

1:46:06No, no, no, I don't practice. But he's like, this is like a kind of a stupid conversation. So I'm not saying that to you. I'm saying like we don't practice it. And that real denial of fragility of life serves a purpose because we could be overrun by just how fragile life is. And all we do is kind of, you know, niche down in such a way that we don't do very much. We don't explore. We don't leave our kids side. You know, we don't leave our spouse's side because like we want to be with them and they're the ones. And so it can it can become overwhelming. So I think that the denial mechanism there is serving a dual purpose.

1:46:43Right. That idea of practice. We look at somebody who can sing well and we just believe that that's God's gift to them. And it's just they came out of the womb that way. That's right. And we don't appreciate that it's its own act of mastery over many, many years. We don't have that same relationship with other people who are good at things. We understand it took a long time for them to get there. But with certain talents, yeah, we have blind spots around that. And, you know, similarly, you talked about the evolutionary kind of underpinnings of these fear impulses. But the other piece is the learnability of all of this.

1:47:19So when practiced, you know, there's this, well, I'm just wired this way. Like, I can't help it. Like, I'm just, you know, I can't help thinking about all these other people. What you're saying is, no, there is a method that if you practice it, you can kind of transcend this crippling thing. Oh, 100%. Like we can get better a lot. You know, where do we put our gaze and our attention and our time? And what resources will we muster to get better at something? And honestly, like I am totally biased in what I'm about to say, but I cannot imagine the path of becoming your very best in this limited time, unknown amount of time that we have without having somebody in your life that is as unbiased as they possibly can to commit to seeing you, supporting you, and challenging you.

1:48:09And that's their job. That's their role. I'm describing what I would consider to be a great psychologist. And if that feels unavailable for whatever reasons, somebody in your life that commits to seeing you, supporting you, and challenging you to be your very best, paid or unpaid, is a radical accelerant. You can do it on your own, it's harder, right? You can become a better version of yourself, not having to rely on another person to help you. We are more like a coral reef than we are the hammered nail. But one of the dangers in life is thinking that I need someone to act or do something for me to be okay.

1:48:50So one of the great insights is to not have the other person love me, but actually for me to give love to others. And so the directionality is significant. And so we become powerful when we know how we want to be in life and relationship with others, and we're not dependent on the other person being just right or just so. So I just can't imagine how to become one's very best without a partner in that process. Yeah, because the accountability piece, the necessity of honesty and the kind of mirroring back, you know, to point out your blind spots, like you can't perform this in your own mind because you're trying to solve a problem with the same mind that created it, right?

1:49:39Which is like an old trope, right? And part of the process of getting better and and transcending these patterns and identifying these blind spots is a bit of a surrender. Like you have to surrender that illusion of control that you believe you have over these things. And that requires vulnerability and a level of honesty that's uncomfortable. But that's part of it in and of itself. Just the act of being able to be vulnerable and honest with another human being and trusting them is like half the game altogether. It doesn't even matter what you're saying. Like, you have to be able to do that in order to even get to the part that's the acute problem that you're trying to solve.

1:50:21So every year, my inner circle and the team at Finding Mastery would do the year of. And so it's an individual promise that you're making. It's not a resolution, but it's like an intention and a focus for the year. And so for me, the last two years in a row, because I didn't quite have the experience I wanted on the first time, this year, 2023, was the year of play. And I wanted to do it more like a panda bear. I wanted to go through life like I didn't have predators out there and I could be free and big and play and like the year of play. And so my wife is committed to helping me be my very best and I am in return to her as well.

1:51:00And so when blind spots are noted, I can be defensive or I can be more like a panda. and that was the kind of the image that I wanted to have when she says hey whoa really you know and those those moments like how many times and so the way I want to do it is a good example is so she gave me a moment where she was like hey you're saying one thing and doing another my reflexive nature is like oh really you know like like defensive right and so this moment that we had and it was that and I said oh god I'm trying so hard thank you thank you and I've got this big smile and I just wanted to inhabit being a panda with her.

1:51:38And she looks and she's like, oh, I got diffused. Like, okay, cool. You know? And so now I'm, you know, like, so I just think this idea of being playful in these relationships is materially important. And I'm an intense, serious person and I like that, but I want more range and I want more dimension and I want to have more fun and I want to play more. And so I just bringing this up because it doesn't have to be so serious. Right. That's a really good point. Wow. That's interesting. So what is 2024 then? We're not quite there for you to figure that out. I might do it again. Like the year of play again.

1:52:15I've really liked it. And so I feel like I've done pretty good at it and I think I can still get better. And so when we first met, you inspired me. I haven't shared this with you. It was the year of roots and reach. and so it was after we met and so roots be grounded stay true to your roots a meditative practice about roots being connected to first principles all of that was still something i do on a regular basis but then i was going to extend out to reach because i wanted to build a community of people that are exploring and sharing and i'm going to share and celebrate how some of the brightest minds like you work from the inside out the brilliant psychology of excellence roots and reach.

1:53:00Not just reach. Not just roots, but roots and reach. I did that for like four years in a row. And so you were part of that inspiration. Very cool. Yeah. Well, you inspired me towards play. Yeah. I'm just walking around grinding my teeth. You know, like I just, you know, I need a lot more levity. Pandas are pretty cool now. In my relationship to like everything that I'm doing. I get overwhelmed and then I get grave about everything. Yeah. Obviously that's at cross purposes with the kind of experiences that I'm trying to create here and everything, right? Right. Sometimes it's hard to connect with that joy or what it is that inspired you in the first place to even do this.

1:53:36We can practice. Holding on to that. I need an accountability partner on my roundtable for that. I'm in a rookie. Can I solicit you for that? 100%. Yeah. All right. Back and forth. I appreciate you. One more thing before we round it out. Obviously, you're somebody who believes deeply in the human capacity for change, for positive change. I think a lot of people walk around lacking a sufficient appreciation for their own agency to change their lives. So in parting, I think it would be instructive to share a few thoughts just about that capacity. Like what is the nature of change and what is the best way for somebody who's thinking about or on the precipice of trying to access a better version of themselves?

1:54:25Like how do they begin to think about what this could look like and take the first step into practicing it? Very cool. If people knew what I knew, based on my unique life experiences and what I've studied and the rooms I've been in with some of the leaders of human potential, they would know this single idea. We are capable of so much more. And there is so much more room to grow, to give, to build, to become. and this becoming, to have a love affair with experience like we talked about before, and to have a love affair with who you are becoming more often, it's awesome. And we are capable of so much more.

1:55:06And I would just start with thinking about what you are capable of. What does the good life mean to you? And using your imagination in that way is where this begins. And if you can have some partners along the way that understand it with you, it does get easier because it's easy to slide back to the habits of thinking that you've developed over your 20, 40, 50 years of life. And part of the change, whatever change you want in your life is changing how you think, is changing how you behave. And that is not an easy thing to do to change your thoughts because they're invisible. So I need to make them public and I need to be clear about them first to myself and then clear with other people that have my back and will support and challenge me in that order.

1:55:54And so start with your imagination about who it is that you want to be and who you want to become. And so much is possible. We must put in real work to create the skills and capabilities for that version of you to become. And then I'll add one more component, which is just for fun, how many versions of you do you think you're on? What version of Rich are you on? Well, there's broad slicing and thin slicing. Yeah. Let's go broad. Let's go kind of big versions. Let's see. I think version four. I love it. Okay. So most people do somewhere between four and six. And I think it's really interesting.

1:56:37People don't say like 200 or 50. It's like somewhere between we've had four to six massive upgrades or versions of ourselves. Now there's a 4.1, a 4.4, whatever. But so you're saying version four. And then maybe one way to think about next, the turning of the leaf of the new year is an interesting time. But if you thought about V5, what is V5? It doesn't need to be V10, but what does V5 look like? And use your imagination to push right to the edges where you're like, is that really possible for someone like me? Who's had, you're about 35, right? About 35 years of trauma and experience. I had like 25 years of that, but go ahead.

1:57:20Me too. Yeah, so like, is that really possible? And then sharing that with your inner sanctum. It's a pretty cool way to do it. And so what does V5 look like? Maybe make that commitment the year of as the primary capability that you're trying to build. for V5 to be honest and true in quiet moments and consequential moments. That's a great frame. I've already done some of that, but I think what you shared kind of brings it into focus in a technicolor way where I have like a context to drill down on it in a more meaningful way. Cool. So thank you. Thank you. This is great, man. Yeah, it's really fun.

1:58:00You're so good at this podcasting thing. Thought about starting a podcast? I learned it from you. Yeah. Finding Mastery podcast. Anybody who's listening to this probably is already listening to your show as well. But Michael, your show is a gold mine. And the work that you put out into the world and just your spirit and sensibility, the way that you share and kind of comport yourself with what you do, I think is really kind of a remarkable thing. And I commend you for that. I'm inspired by your example and I'm a fan. And if there's anything I can do to further put further wind in your sail. I'm always here for that.

1:58:38So thank you. That is not lost on me at all. And so thank you for that. Thank you for so much that you've already done. Absolutely. And the book is great. The First Rule of Mastery. Stop worrying about what people think of you. Available everywhere. USA Today bestseller and perennial bestseller, I'm sure. Appreciate it. Time will tell. Yeah, I loved it. and it's just a great way in to start thinking about mastery in a way that I would, like I would have not have thought this would have been your first book. But I'm so glad that it is because I think, like I said at the outset, it just casts this wide net that allows everybody to come in, you know, and there's this welcome mat that everybody can relate to.

1:59:18That's a great way to hear about it. So thank you. All right, man. Until next time. Very cool. Cool. Cheers. Peace.

1:59:31That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything. discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and or comment.

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2:01:35Thank you.