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Training the Mind for High-Stakes Sales: How FOPO Hurts Executive Presence with Dr. Michael Gervais
01:00:03
Dr. Michael Gervais joins John Kaplan and John McMahon to unpack FOPO, the fear of other people’s opinions, and its impact on executive presence, listening, trust, and decision-making. Drawing from his work with Olympians, world champions, Fortune 100 leaders, and elite teams, Dr. Gervais explains how mental skills like awareness, breathing, self-talk, imagery, and honest team dynamics help people operate with more clarity under pressure.
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- [00:00]
Dr. Michael Gervais
Those folks that have experienced trauma and work through it, they're the best teammates. Yeah, they are flat out the best because they've embraced the fragility. They've looked the dragon in the eyes and wrestled it down and become friends with the dragon. So now they go out into the world with the dragon and it's awesome. They are the best of the best of the best teammates. But the ones that don't do the work, the ones that are still thumping their chest to say, I'm a alpha, whatever, don't trust them. Do not trust them. They haven't done the work to know what they really stand for.
- [00:39]
Podcast Host
Today we're joined by Dr. Michael Gervais. He's one of the world's top performance psychologists. Dr. Mike trains Olympians, world champions, MMA fighters, Fortune 100 CEOs, an elite performance on how to master their minds under extreme pressure. He's the founder of Finding Mastery, a high performance psychology consulting agency. He's the host of the podcast Finding Mastery. He's a co creator of the Performance Science Institute at the University of southern California. And Dr. Mike is also the author of the best selling book the First Rule of Mastery. Stop worrying about what other people think of you. Dr. Mike has developed practical frameworks and training that help individuals and teams unlock their potential in the most demanding and competitive environments. So for enterprise software sales leaders, sales reps who face long sales cycles selling to a number of complex stakeholders, facing constant rejection, and always under the gun to make the quarterly sales number, this conversation is going to be pure gold. Dr. Mike, thanks for joining us on the Revenue Builders podcast. So Dr. Mike, you discuss Fox. You know what, what you refer to as fear of other people's opinions is one of the biggest hidden barriers to human potential.
- [02:12]
John Kaplan
Can you expand a little bit on that? So for the audience, so they understand exactly what you mean.
- [02:18]
Dr. Michael Gervais
Yeah, when I talk about fopo, I'm really talking about an excessive preoccupation with what other people might be thinking of us. The word might is important and it often shows up before an interaction even happens. Is this constant, chronic, if you will, worry about what they're thinking about us. And it is full on anticipatory. So it's readying us and preparing us to, to tune, to be accepted and, or rejected. And it's a mental loop that starts happening before we even enter a room, before we make a call, before we ask a question. This is not about not caring about what people think. That would be a terrible thing. But this is about not worrying. Stop worrying. About what they're thinking about you. Because what that does is it touches on one of the first principles in psychology, which is the signal to noise ratio. And the signal, when you are tuned to the signal of you being your very best, you gate out all the noise, all of the chirping from the sidelines, all of the heckling from the crowd, all of the what the supervisors might or might not be saying, what the crowd wants from you and is agitated that you're not giving, but you are absolutely bringing your brilliance forward and that's the signal. So FOPO is really an excessive worry about what people are thinking about you. And it is biologically based. We are primed and tuned to make sure that we are searching for approval and avoiding rejection. And that is something that was built 200, 300,000 years ago and it is no longer serving the same purpose now, but we're operating under the same biological mandate.
- [04:11]
Cap
And when you say that, it really. What you're talking about is we were running around in packs and tribes, and if you got bounced out of the tribe, you just like the animal kingdom. If you get bounced out of the tribe, you. You don't survive. So I think that's fascinating. I've heard you talk about that before in some of your stuff on this signal to ratio. Could you just help me with the brain science? Because I'm hugely into this and being a former football player, I'm trying to gobble up as much as I can to figure out how much longer my brain's going to last from the, from the smashing that I did. But in the signal to noise ratio, I'm assuming that that comes from a couple different parts of the brain, like the prefrontal cortex or the executive function. And then the feeling one. Could you. We've talked about it before in our podcast. If there's any level setting that you could help us with on how the focusing of something helps engage certain part of the brain and turn off other parts of the brain. You're the Dr. G, so you help me with that for sure.
- [05:16]
Dr. Michael Gervais
Okay, so let's keep in context of FOPO fear people's opinions is, and I'll be succinct with it, that there's a biological experience that's happening in all of our brains, which is safety and approval are commingling together, meaning that if I am approved by others, that I'm pulled to the center of the pack, that is safety. If I am rejected or if I am ridiculed or made fun of and I'm pushed to the end or edge of the pack. That's where the predators pick off the week. And if I'm pushed all the way out to your point earlier, the wild is just too wild to try to survive alone. And so we are tuned to be able to desire to be accepted by other people. And unless we confront that, we have a real problem. We are constantly whipped around by what they might be thinking about us. And we never bring our best forward because we're trying to bring what they will like of us forward. That's the center of the crisis that we observed when we did this research. Now, when it gets to the brain performance pieces, there's a center in the brain called the default mode network. The default mode network, we're still studying it. We're still trying to understand exactly what's happening in this region of the brain. Best we understand right now is that the default mode network is this mechanism that is constantly checking to see if you're okay. So when the default mode network is active, it's basically saying, does Cap think I'm okay? Does Mac think I'm okay? Am I okay? Does John. Wait, does John really think I'm okay? Wait, what did he just say? Wait, how did he tilt his head? Oh, wait. Okay. Is the room safe? Am I safe? Is this okay? So it's constantly checking to see if you're okay.
- [07:10]
Cap
And it is basically that goes in the background that's not an active. That's just running.
- [07:15]
Dr. Michael Gervais
That's always running.
- [07:16]
Cap
Yes.
- [07:17]
Dr. Michael Gervais
Okay, now how do you quiet that down? Because that I think is kind of the. The captain seat of fopo. I also think, and I'm not alone in this, that it is the captain seat for suffering.
- [07:31]
John Kaplan
Yeah.
- [07:31]
Dr. Michael Gervais
Because you're constantly tuning to yourself rather than tuning to the world around you. Now, there's times to tune to yourself and there's times to tune to the world around you. But if you're chronically stuck just trying to figure out if you're okay, it's a very low form of living. Right. It's just a survival based mechanism. So how do you quiet the default mode network? One way to do it is deep focus. So if you are hanging on the side of a cliff and you are digging your nails into the side of the cliff, the mechanism of like, am I okay? Only needs to be asked once. No. And then you need to go into action mode. Right. I got to get my feet dug in. I got to figure out the next handhold. Okay. I got to relax. I got to breathe. I got to get my wits about me, take the next move, yell whatever it might be. And so if the entire time you're like, oh my God, I'm not okay, this is bad. Wow, what are people gonna think of me if I fall? This is terrible. That whole mechanism that's taking place doesn't allow you to make the next best move. So how do you quiet the default mode network? Deep focus. What are the practices for deep focus? Well, putting yourself in high risk situations, certainly not necessarily recommended if you're not skilled. But this is one of the reasons that we love sport. Because we're looking for that edge of where our skill is not quite developed. But we know if we could just put it together right on the edge we get these awesome unlocks, these beautiful moments for ourselves. But if we don't have the skill and the risk is too great, that's where injury takes place, mistakes happen, all that other stuff. The other place is meditation. So we've got a risk focus and a meditation focus. Those are the two ways that require a full on investment in focus. And when you do that, you quiet the default mode network. You are no longer self checking. Am I okay? You are tuning into the signal rather than all the noise of survival.
- [09:35]
Cap
And it's almost like there's only so much energy in the brain, right? And when you, when you quiet one, you, you take resources from that and you put it into the thinking brain. I call it the thinking brain. But I know that's not the technical point, but yeah, and I love what you're saying. There's so many different scenarios that I'm thinking about. Like one time my wife, who was a psychology major and I was back, crap crazy, you know, with something and she actually walked me outside, is, it's, it's almost a little embarrassing. Had me take off my shoes and stand on the grass. And I at first was, you know, adamantly against going outside and not dealing with the fopo that was happening. And it was just an amazing thing. And it was this, I think people call it grounding Dr. G. But something that got me off the focus of what was going on in my brain and got me connected to the ground
- [10:34]
Dr. Michael Gervais
actually that is, I don't know, we've been walking on mother nature for, you know, eons. And the science there is actually call it fringy, you know, it's right on the fringe. I like it, I use it, I am a proponent of it. But just for your listener and audience, the science is not well formed there, but there's enough Science where I feel comfortable that I would recommend it as well. So your wife is right on the path there. And yeah, there's something about being in mother nature that just kind of quiets us down and that research is actually clear. We really do understand that being part of nature and a tick down from there is looking at nature and a tick down from there is looking at a picture of nature. All three of those are found to quiet our central nervous system.
- [11:22]
John Kaplan
Yeah. What strikes me in this conversation is with FOPO you try and not to look bad when you're building a relationship or in a sales situ complex sales situation. But at the end of the day, if you're worried about that you're not your authentic self and you're not truly in the moment makes it really difficult to listen and then hear what people are saying and actually use your intuition.
- [11:48]
Dr. Michael Gervais
You nailed it. You've absolutely nailed the performance aspect of it. It's a little bit like a strobe light effect. Go back to when you were young in middle school and you were at the high, the, the middle school dance and the DJ put on the strobe light and everybody thought it was really cool. And, and when you moved, you would take like nanoseconds or fractions of a second out of the frame. Everything would go dark and everything would go light again. And that's kind of what happens when you are, when your default mode network, when PHOPO is active. It's as if the external world goes dark. And then when you say oh no, no, hold on, what did John say? You finally come up and you're trying to tune to the signal of what John says. The lights are on, if you will, then you're able to say, oh, he's squinting and kind weird way and then, and then if you go, wow, is he thinking about me? Oh my God, I'm going to blow this deal. You're back inside in the darkness. Right. If you will. If you were able to not do as much self referencing, if FOPO you had a handle on fopo, the fear of what they're thinking, you could attune all of your attention to what's happening in the environments around you. And that gives you the chance to eloquently adjust. That gives you a chance to bring your best to solve the problem or the opportunity that's in front of you. And nobody does the extraordinary alone. We need each other by definition. That's kind of how this ecosystem of humanity works. And if you are just trying to take care of Yourself because you're in a survival brain and FOPO is part of that survival brain. It's the anticipatory part. You're, you're, you're just a bad teammate. You're not, you're. I don't know, I don't have another way to say it. Like you're just not a good teammate, you're not a good partner because you're just consumed with yourself. And so, John, when you're able to, to work with this FOPO and you can ground yourself, I'll use both of your analogies and you're able to be fully present with the other person. You got something they feel seen and understood, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know the narrative. And, and you've got a relationship that is actually grounded in something that is not self serving.
- [14:03]
Cap
Dr. G, what do you do with the phenomenon? Like in sales or business where you have so many people that are overachievers, that have overcome some type. I don't want to be too sappy, but overcome some. We've all got trauma and we've overcome trauma in some way. We use it as we think, we're using it as a superpower. We walk around the world telling ourselves, I came in this world by myself, I can take care of myself, I'm going to die by myself. Whatever the mantra is. And because we all have this built in innate need to be a part of the pack. How do you approach when you're leading people, those people that are highly independent, highly self sufficient, proud of it, effective. How do you help them reach another level by pulling them out of that? It's not, you know, your superpower is actually helping you, but it's also hurting you. Does it make sense?
- [15:09]
Dr. Michael Gervais
Yeah, I think the way that I'll go with that is that I've been fortunate to be part of some of the most extraordinary teams at the Olympic level in pro sport. Been able to win the super bowl twice with two different teams. Same, same franchise, two different coaches. I think it's like 32 Olympic teams.
- [15:30]
John Kaplan
Gold medal, Seattle Seahawks, right?
- [15:31]
Dr. Michael Gervais
Yeah, that was the Seattle Seahawks with the Super Bowl. But I think the number is like 32 medals in the Olympics. I'll just kind of stop there. There's, there's a lot more. But what I want to say is that none of that extraordinary feats or those outcomes, those winning outcomes happen by one person being the one. There's a team, even an individual sport like surfing or tennis or whatever it might be, there's a team underneath the team. And I think you guys will remember that the work I did with the Red Bull Stratos project where Felix Baumgartner went up to 128,000ft and was the first person to jump and travel the speed of sound, there's a team inside the team there too. So your trauma and my trauma either. If you haven't had a trauma, you're heading toward it, no problem. You got to figure it out some kind of way. The end game for us is to understand how to work well and not be constantly triggered by the. The thing that scared us, you know, and fractured our sense of safety. That's really what trauma does. And it makes us feel alone. It makes us feel as though no one's there to take care of us. It makes it feel like we're fragile because that thing happened and it could happen again. So post traumatic stress disorder is the name for what happens after trauma, but it's actually not a great description of it because what happens when people go through traumatic experiences, they reorganize their lives to protect themselves from being re traumatized. So it's a protection of re traumatization is what we should call it. And what that does is it keeps. Oftentimes it keeps people at a distance because for the most part, humans also are predatorial. And so events can change us, but also the disappointment from other people in the way that they behave during those events or even the cause of those events. So we protect ourselves and we feel like we're alone. That type of trauma can be an amazing laboratory to get down to. Wait, hold on. How do I work through this? Oh, I gotta figure out how to take care of myself. Okay. When I work those psychological school skills and practices, I feel a little bit more together. And then I can't just be by myself in this world. I need to figure out how to be great with other people. So that's kind of level two. And when this starts to emerge, those folks that have experienced trauma and work through it, they're the best teammates. Yeah, they are flat out the best because they've embraced the fragility. They've looked the dragon in the eyes and wrestled it down and become friends with the dragon. So now they go out into the world with the dragon, and it's awesome. They are the best of the best of the best teammates. But the ones that don't do the work, the ones that are still thumping their chest to say, I'm a alpha, whatever, don't trust them. Do not trust them. They haven't done the work to know what they really stand for. But the ones, again, who have wrestled with the dragon in their own life and they've come and they can talk about it and you can feel that they are not whipped around by the external world because they are governing by their, their values and their principles. They've got some purpose that's bigger than them. They've got. Those are the ones you want in your life, those are the ones that will have your back. Those are the ones that you want to, to partner with because you go further when you work with other people. And that's the essence of elite sport. That's the essence of great teammates in great companies.
- [19:10]
John Kaplan
Talk a little bit about. I'm getting ready to go into a meeting with an economic buyer. I've been working on a sales situation for nine months. It's a multimillion dollar deal. And I feel nervous. Even though I think that I'm, I've, I've definitely prepared, but I care so much, you know, I'm nervous. At the same time, you know, maybe there's this fear that's, you know, fear of failure, fear that I'm not going to get the deal. How do, how do I determine if I'm really scared and fearful or if I'm just a little nervous because I want it so bad?
- [19:46]
Dr. Michael Gervais
Cool question. I'm prepared.
- [19:48]
John Kaplan
Is that a deep expression?
- [19:50]
Dr. Michael Gervais
Is that a what?
- [19:51]
John Kaplan
Is that a decent question?
- [19:53]
Cap
Good question.
- [19:53]
Dr. Michael Gervais
Great question. That's a great question. You're speaking right to the heart of what? Activation. So it's a technical term in high performance psychology, which is arousal. And that arousal state is really talking about your level of internal activation. And if you think about a normal distribution curve, right, where you've got like a inverted, uh, as the model would suggest, that. And if you break that up into three sections, you've got the low part of the curve, the 1, 2, 3, 4. You've got the 4, 5, 6, which is the highest part of the curve, the top of the U. And then you've got the 7, 8, 9, 10, which is on the, on the right side. And go back to what our grandmothers likely taught us, which is the core, the porridge is too cold, it's too hot, or it's just right. And when you lay that framing with activation, that is this. It's the same type of thing, is that there's a, there's an activation level that's uniquely right for you. Right. And if you're too high on that activation, maybe you're. You got a Little tremor, maybe you've got a little cottonmouth. Your breathing's change. Maybe you're racing up in your mind about distractions and what ifs. That's like a 7, 8, 9, 10. You can do fine at a 7, but you're not in that kind of strike zone where the porridge is just right where your body switched on. You're then at 4, 5, 6 mode where you've got an activation, but you're harnessing it. You've got butterflies, but they're working in formation. You've got that energy, but you're able to capture it and drive it with the right type of calm intensity. And then again on the lower part of the scale is like you're yawning, you're bored, you're just kind of lame, if you will, from an activation level. So how do you discern if it's nervousness or it is
- [21:44]
Cap
danger?
- [21:45]
Dr. Michael Gervais
Yeah, so. So one way is like, what's my number, man? This feels like an eight. Okay. Oh, well. Ha. This is like a four. This is like a six. This is so in. I'm in the sweet spot. Four, five, six. I'm in the sweet spot. I just want to back it down a little and I'm pretty good. I need the skill to know how to back it down. So the skill of being calm comes from one place and one place only, which is breathing. So when you breathe, you back down your activation level. But to know you first must be aware of where you are and to know how do I calibrate, is this an 8 or is this a 4? Is this a 7? And then you need the psychological skills to be able to bring it up with intensity or back it down with intensity. And so it's awareness is always kind of first, and then breathing is the big lever to back it down. By the way, on the world stage, I don't know any athletes that need to bring it up. And when they start talking about like, I need to bring it up like that, they're kind of on their way out. Like there's other stuff happening, but for the most part it's about bringing it back down. And then the third lever mental skill is self talking. So awareness, breathing and self talk, working with yourself to back yourself, to coach yourself. And you put those three skills together and that's kind of like the most powerful, dynamic skills you can use. Now, last, last part on this, John, is that if you are about to go on stage or into a boardroom or you're going to make a pitch to an Exco. And you're like, oh, I remember I'm supposed to do those things. I'm supposed to be aware and breathe and self talk. And you're hoping while you're waiting in the lobby that you're going to get those things. Right. That's not how it works.
- [23:32]
John Kaplan
Right.
- [23:33]
Dr. Michael Gervais
Just like elite athletes front load their physical training, they front load their technical training, they also front load their mental training in modern athletes so that when they get tested they've got real skills that they can play with. So we were in the gym, we're in the mental gym. Meditation, breathing, self talk stuff, mental imagery. And then we're also doing technical stuff on the field. And that's what I would suggest is happening for the avant garde enterprise companies. Big Sport is about 10 to 15 years ahead of big business when it comes to investing in the performance attributes of their people. Because in big sport the only, the only, the only asset is the person. And again, like I don't know, 20 years ago in big sport they're like psychology, get out of here. That's for the week now. Now that's changed. Yes, that's totally changed. But big sport, I'm sorry, big business is about 10 to 15 years behind and that's why I'll give a plug for my business here really quickly is that we're, we're so fortunate to work with senior leadership at Microsoft and Salesforce and companies like that to help them train their minds to be their very best and then the cascade that throughout their organization. The same way we work with athletes on mental skills training, they're investing in their people in that same way. We just got back from London, worked with WPP who's just having a real shocker in where they are in the industry and you can feel there's a swell happening because they're investing in their people for their psychological skills to be world class. Those are the companies that I like to pay attention to.
- [25:20]
John Kaplan
Yeah, we're Talking with Mike, Dr. Michael Javet, whose book the First Rule of Mastery. Stop worrying about what people think of you. And in the book you refer to what you just did, what you just did, where elite performers, they train three things. You said, you know, the body, the craft, in our case, selling skills. That's right in the mind. And while you were talking about that, the times when I have been, maybe this is a cliche, been in the zone and I just felt like I got this and even when it was not even business and sports and people like I was yelling at you, didn't you hear it or didn't you hear what the other people were saying and screaming at you? No, I was like, in the zone. I didn't try to get in there. It was like, in that moment, I got in there somehow. And I can't really explain how I did that. And maybe it's what you said. I've. I worked really hard on my skills, worked relentlessly on my body, and then I was just so prepared in my mind that I knew I had this. And then for some reason, I went into the zone. But I also feel like there were other times when I feel like I was so prepared and I couldn't really get in the zone. It's kind of. It's difficult.
- [26:45]
Dr. Michael Gervais
Yeah. So I love that we're talking about this because the zone is what athletes call it, musicians call it being in the pocket. Scientists call it flow state. And there's lots of names for it, but the technical scientific term is called flow state. And the reason it earned the name flow state is, is because the original researcher. This is a mouthful. His name is Dr. Csikszentmihalyi. He interviewed a bunch of people, and they kept describing their very best as a very fluid state. What does that mean? It means that my awareness of what was happening and my actions of what I was doing were like, collapsing on each other where it was, like, seamless. I feel like I could just adjust to anything. I was completely fluid with my mind, my body, my craft. It was just all happening, and it was amazing. So flow state is considered the most optimal state a human can be in. Now, what we've also found out is there are ways to enhance the frequency, the amount of time that you can ready yourself to strike into a flow state. Okay, so let me back that up. You can't just say, today, today's the day to go to flow state. But what you can do is do a bunch of very deliberate practices to increase the frequency of you being right on the edge of maybe slipping into flow state. The only way to enter flow state is through deep focus. So if you want to increase the frequency of being in deep in flow state, you must train yourself to deeply focus. Meditation and being on the edge of risk are the two. Are two great ways to train deep focus because it's a forcing function for you to be right here, right now. So that's one. The second is when you can frame a situation that this is something that could make me versus this is something that can break me. So even if it's risky, but you're like, yeah, but this is where I come alive. So you're embracing the risk. You're saying that stress is the thing that, you know, lights me up, and I am so well prepared on it that you can use that deep focus to kind of grease the grooves, if you will, to slide into flow state. And then you're embracing the high stress. You're finding a moment of deep risk, and then what you're able to do is back yourself with self talk, which is basically like, this is where I come alive. I'm prepared for this. Let's go. But that can't be BS it has to be grounded in hard training. It has to be grounded in the cauldron of iron, sharpens iron. It must be fortified, because the. Fake it till you make it. I mean, who wants. You don't want a fake watch or fake handbag for your. You know, you don't want your surgeon to be.
- [29:44]
Cap
Especially in things like mental health, when they tell you that, it's just like it. That that's like the farthest thing from helpful.
- [29:51]
Dr. Michael Gervais
Oh, God, it's so dangerous. Fake.
- [29:54]
Cap
What now?
- [29:56]
Dr. Michael Gervais
Being yourself.
- [29:57]
Cap
Dr. G, get us in the laboratory here for a second. Because I'm. I'm so excited about what you're saying, and you're talking. You're calling it meditation. But I want you to help us. Like, we've got to have a way to be able to get inside ourselves. Every morning, think about, you know, if you got up in the morning. If you could just give us some advice. We got to look for trailheads or whatever they are. Do we look for things that are causing us angst? Do we look for, like, how do we get inside? How do we identify? And how do we do that work? Obviously, there's training to help us do that, but, like, how do you do it? Like, you find something, you sit there, you embrace it. Give us the. Give us whatever you can on the sauce.
- [30:43]
Dr. Michael Gervais
What do you mean by that? Like, what is the thing?
- [30:45]
Cap
So, for me. For me, I wake up every morning.
- [30:49]
Dr. Michael Gervais
Yep.
- [30:50]
Cap
And I'm a big believer in Schwartz's stuff on the family systems. So I got a little bit of trauma from the past, and I got these parts that are barking at me, and they bark at me. And I've just accepted they're going to be barking at me for the rest of my life. And they're not bad parts. They're just parts of me. So when I wake up in the morning, I just hold court and find out who's barking.
- [31:13]
Dr. Michael Gervais
How do you do that?
- [31:13]
Cap
Cap for me, typically, there's something that's happened, there's a trigger, there's a feeling that I have anxiety in the chest, there's anger, there's. And I'm just getting ready to face my day, and I just go look for those in the body, and they're normally related to something that's happened around me that is causing me, you know, to get triggered from these parts from years ago that didn't feel safe, didn't feel, you know, what, you know, you. You were using the language on the fringe of something bad happening. And so I just kind of sit there with them and I understand them and I give them space. Like, I used to just blow them off, and that led to some really bad outcomes for me. Now I just give them space and try to understand what they're telling me. And it's amazing. They'll tell me, hey, dude, you're not prepared today for your meeting, or you didn't have a good interaction with that person yesterday. And it's. There's. There's something bad going to happen in that relationship or what have you. That's the kind of. That's the kind of thing that I do. And it helps me because it, you know, I have to go find it if I'm honest with myself. And that's not always comfortable, and it's not always, you know, sometimes it's a drag.
- [32:33]
Dr. Michael Gervais
Yeah. So what you're. What I hear you're doing is there's lots of tactics, there's lots of ways to do it, but you're turning inward, and then you're working with. So it's. You're turning your attention inward to become more aware of what's happening, and then you're working with whatever the nature of that narrative is. Yeah, that's good. That's a great practice. And I think if I, if I suggest maybe a couple of things. One is there's only a handful of mental skills. That's. That's all there really is. And then. And I'll explain those to your community right now for great clarity. But there are thousands of ways to work those skills. One way is you hear a lot of people talk about, you know, routines and start in the morning and how do you start your day, which is what you're describing. And here's, here's the one that I like to do. It's about 90 seconds. And I'll never forget, this was the Chief Commercial Officer at Microsoft. This is. He's. I think the new title is CEO of Commercial Enterprise. I Think is the new title. But when we first introduced this to him, he was like, okay, look, I can do that. This is 90 seconds. And it's a way to start your morning before you even get out of bed to wake up certain circuitry in your brain. So the first thing, there's four steps to it, and I'll send you a link and so you guys can send it to your.
- [34:04]
Cap
We'll put them in the show notes.
- [34:05]
Dr. Michael Gervais
Yeah, and I think the link is morning mindset.finding mastery.com and I'll double check and make sure. So the first thing is one deep breath. That's all you do. Your sheets are still on. And before you check into the noise of the world, you check into the signal. And that signal is one deep breath. Okay? So you breathe in through your nose, four or five seconds, whatever lung capacity you have, and then you exhale for double the length. So if you're going to inhale for four, you. You exhale for eight. If you're going to inhale for five, you exhale for 10. Just one. What that does is sends a signal to the brain. And that signal is, we're in charge. There's no predators. It's okay. Now, if you did more than one breath, I think it's a good thing. And all I'm suggesting is just start at least with one. Okay, so one breath. The second is one thought of gratitude. So this is not a check the box. I'm grateful that I've got my eyes. I'm grateful that I've got a bed. Just really embody one of them, whatever that might be, fully embody and feel the one. And that should take a handful of seconds when you get good at it. But it might take a while to practice that where you can really feel it. Most people are intellectual with their gratitude, which doesn't really do what we would hope it would do.
- [35:32]
Cap
That's a great point.
- [35:33]
Dr. Michael Gervais
One breath, one thought of gratitude. Again, John, if you wanted to do three gratitudes or six, whatever, like, good, there's more is better for this practice. One breath, one gratitude, one intention for the day. What's an intention? An intention is when you use your imagination and to see a compelling future and you snap into like a moment in time when you're like, I want to show up with John and John this way. And you're laying in bed, still you're using your imagination. You're kind of going through how you want to show up later in the day. It could be for a pitch meeting, it could be just the way that you enter into your building, it could be the way that you, you know, experience your first meal with somebody, whatever. You're just using your imagination to see yourself being great. One breath, one gratitude, one intention for the day. And then pull your sheets off, flip your hips to the side of the bed, and just take a moment to be where your body is. That's training being present. So those are the four mechanisms to wake up very particular parts of the brain. The more time you spend in each one of those, the better. That's training is really time under tension. So we want to do more if we can, but if you just did those four things and that became kind of part of your morning routine before you got out of bed, you'd be waking up your brain in a very specific way. And I like that one a lot. I use it every day.
- [37:03]
Cap
I love that one. And the intention, so. And the intention piece, Johnny was talking about a meeting that he had. Others will, you know, critical conversation, going to the doctor and getting results or something.
- [37:17]
Dr. Michael Gervais
That's right.
- [37:18]
Cap
Do you. You. I think you said this. I think you encourage people to not wait to spontaneously experience that, but see if you can simulate it in some way before so your brain recognizes that, hey, no problem. I've seen this before. Can you give us the science behind that or the how behind that?
- [37:41]
Dr. Michael Gervais
Yeah. Well, as an elite athlete, you would recognize the power of mental imagery. And it's something that elite athletes have been using for a long time. Matter of fact, the whole field of the psychology of sport or sports psychology came from studying how the best in the world use their mind. And mental imagery was one of those best practices, is now we understand how to share it with other people. So intention is this thing that I was talking about in the morning. Mindset is really hanging off of mental imagery. And what mental imagery is. There's nothing wrong with spontaneously experiencing life. Like, that's actually the high art is loving the spontaneity of a moment, but having such a requisite emotional and psychological skills that you can play, that you can work with it. But for most people, when they just want to spontaneously experience life, they get knocked off balance or somebody says something or like they worry that something could happen. And because they don't have those, they haven't invested in the psychological skills. Mental imagery is one of them. So what is it? It's very simple. We've all done it, actually. I think it's.5% of the population is not able to see images in their mind. They're not able to see in their mind's eye like the color of an orange, or even any shape of an orange, if you will. So if you're one of these, the 5% of folks that can't see it, you know, no problems. That's just kind of the luck of the draw. But most people, 90 plus percent, are able to see and use their imagination in their mind's eye. Now, what athletes do is they purposely direct it to something that matters to them, and they see it and play it over and over again from different angles, different perspectives. They rewind it, they see it again. They slow it down, they speed it up. They put themselves in multiple scenarios and work it out. Sometimes in compromising situations, like, if, I don't know, you're presenting and the deck goes out or something, or somebody says something sideways and you play it out. Or they just see themselves being absolutely, like, world class at doing the thing they want to do. So mental imagery has been around for a very long time, and most of us in business, we don't slow down to do that. We don't slow down to feel the way that we want to feel in a moment. That quote, unquote, is important, and that is a best practice for elite athletes, and that is available to all of us.
- [40:11]
Cap
Do you also create the space in that mental imagery for things not going well, like seeing what could go wrong? I'm just struck by. When you were talking, I was thinking about, like, those Blue Angels. If you go on YouTube, they sit in a room and they're. And all of them are. They're not talking, they're like, they're moving their bodies because all those planes are, you know, a foot away from each other. And I just find that so fascinating. And. And crap is. Crap's gonna go wrong. I think the most success people, the most successful people in life are the ones that have seen the bad stuff that could happen. And in. In the best possible way, they're prepared for it.
- [40:51]
Dr. Michael Gervais
Yeah. So I used to think early in my career, I used to think that, oh, you don't want to see mistakes because you're programming that. Yeah. And that's not right. It was naive. It was me not really understanding the science, and it was me being afraid of seeing something not go brilliantly and come to find out best in the world. I think the ratio that I'm comfortable with is 85, 15, 85% of the time you're seeing yourself being absolutely world class. And 15% of the time, you're seeing yourself in a tricky situation. And I'LL tell you. I'll tell you the story about this again. It was relatively early in my career, and I was working with a cage fighter in the ufc. I'll tell you, this sports psychology thing has taken me to wild places. I've been able to corner three fights in the ufc, which I never thought that would be part of my career arc. And so. So where I'm working with the fighter and we're working on mental imagery, and he says, doc, we keep seeing myself being great, like, that's cool. But the guy I'm going against is the best in the world at a triangle choke with his legs. And so what a triangle choke basically is the. The other person would wrap their legs around your neck and squeeze the air out of you until you. You pass out. Yeah. Until you tap out. So he's like, he's the best in the world at it. Put me in that situation. I go, oh, what do you mean? He goes, well, I got to work that out too. I was like, okay, so next session, we put him in this situation where the guy grabs his arm, pulls him down into the mat, locks his elbow, and then wraps his legs around his neck. And usually this is considered for this particular fighter, a game ending scenario, because he's so good at it. And what you're supposed to do in that moment is like, build your back big and, like, have a big posture. And so you're using all of your back muscles and your neck muscles to create great tension so that it pushes against his groin muscles, which are weaker than back muscles, so to speak. And so it's the counter to it. But what most people do is they panic. They hunch over and they lift the other person up.
- [43:12]
Cap
Yes.
- [43:12]
Dr. Michael Gervais
And then try to slam them on the ground to break the thing. But that just makes it worse for them. So we put them in this compromised situation and then just see himself, trust himself to make the posture, make the posture panic. Panic, panic. It's not working. Stay the course. Stay the course. Okay, there it is. You're noticing it's getting a little weaker. Stay there, stay there. Okay. It's, you know, and then doing it that way to give him a free look without actually getting choked and come to. It was like three weeks later, quartering the fight. Before you know it, my fighter's arm is on the mat. The guy the. The other fighter had pulled him into the mat, and his legs are wrapping around his neck. And the coach looked over at me like, this is what we worked on. And so both of us were like, oh, Excuse me, you know. Oh, let's see what happens here. And so our eyes are as big as wide, because I didn't know at the time, you know, and the coach wasn't quite sure. He's like, man, I told you, you know, we should not put him in mentally in this scenario. And both of our eyes are really big. Sure enough, the athlete did exactly what his mental and physical training suggested. Big back, hold the core, Stay. Stay with it long enough. He broke the chokehold and eventually won the fight. It was awesome. And it was the first moment I had the experience of, like, wait, hold on. This idea that if you see something going wrong, you're going to make that. So, no, you need to work that out so you don't hit the panic button. When I worked on the Felix Baumgartner project, the Red Bull Stratos project, where he jumped from 128,000ft, it was so dangerous that the entire kind of community said, you should not do this. The brightest minds in aerospace were not sure if he went to 128,000ft and if he was successful in being able to get out on that ledge and if he was successful jumping and able to put his head straight down because he could get into a flat spin. If he rotated in a flat spin, all the blood would go to his head and his feet and he'd land incapacitated, right? But if he was able to get his head down and do the transonic speed of sound, that his head and his body would do Mach 1, but the drag on his arms would be less than Mach 1, and they weren't sure if his arms and legs would just rip off. So this was so dangerous for multiple reasons, and the team had to be great. And what that team taught me, before I get to the mental imagery, being a member of that team, this is what I love about honest environments, where enterprise companies, I find, are not as honest as I would hope. In these environments of consequence, it forces them to be honest, because if you're not honest and you're not real, there's so much on the line that maybe you're going to miss something. And in those environments of consequence, when it's real and they are speaking to each other in honest ways, it's kind of prickly. It's a little unsettling. Because, John, you might say to me, hey, Jervais, you got to get your stuff together. Like, you're showing up a little late and it's not okay, or Jhave, like, you're showing up and. And it looks like you're bored, man. What the. Fill in the blank. Like, what do you. What's going. Hey, Gervais, that bolt that you said was secure, it came loose at 70,000ft. It came loose. Like, get your stuff together, dude, like. Or you're out of here. There. It's so honest because the consequences are real that it forces us to be great. And in the enterprise companies, the ones that are honest, they've got something, but we're so afraid to offend the other person. We're so afraid to say the thing that might upset them or make them feel bad that we don't speak honestly. But there's something that I'm missing that I want to make sure I suggest to you, is that when the environments force honesty, the teams that make it do two things very, very well. They get to know each other so they can support each other and have each other's back and they can challenge each other. So it's support, then challenge the honest environments that don't have the support mechanism in place. And it's all challenge. It falls apart quickly. So you must invest in the relationship to quiet fopo. To quiet all the worry that goes into. Like, am I okay? Because once you get to know somebody, you're like, look, I'm going to be a great teammate with you as long as you are a great teammate in return. If you're going to carry your water, I'm telling you I'm carrying my water. Let's figure out how far we can go. And if you need to put your water down, I'm going to pick it up. But I'm going to tell you I'm picking it up. And I'm going to tell you I'm not going to carry it forever. Right. So you better get yourself together. So those honest types of relationships, they're built on relation of the honest types of commute in teams, they're built on relationships so that they can support, then challenge each other. And so those are the ones at the enterprise level that I want to be part of.
- [48:33]
Cap
You said something really critical there for me. You said, if you know somebody. And I can't gloss over that because I think that's what that's wrong with. That's what's wrong with most big biz.
- [48:44]
Dr. Michael Gervais
Yeah.
- [48:45]
Cap
Is that we don't really get a chance to know somebody. And part of it is, is that many of the people don't know themselves. And so there's an old saying, I think, that the most successful people in the world are the ones who've made sense of their own story. And so if you, you gotta be able to create space for people to be able to share their story. And then once you know their story, like in one of your talks I heard you talk about Bill Russell, used to get on the train and just think about how I can help my teammates. And he was the greatest in the world, but he was thinking about how he could help his teammates and that's how they won so many championships, I think. Is that, that's your hypothesis?
- [49:24]
Dr. Michael Gervais
Yeah. Bill Russell, you know, he won like 11, I think it was 11 championships. And he knew when he came to speak us to us at the Seattle Seahawks, he said exactly what you just said, Cap, which is, he's like, I knew I was good. In other words, he, he knew how to take care of himself. He wasn't worried what other people were thinking about him. He wasn't. You know, he was getting his right sleep, his right training, and he was highly skilled. He's like, I knew I was good. I had to figure out how to be a great teammate. I had to figure out how to help my guys be great. So before he would arrive at the facility, the training facility, he would go through each teammate and coach and he would have a plan. How am I going to be great for John today? Maybe, maybe, Cap, maybe you need a little, like a little, you know, knee to knee conversation, as we call it. Yeah, we got to sit down and have a knee to knee conversation. But maybe John, maybe John, you and I need to go like you need a hug and I need to ask you about your kids. So he would go through each one. Now what we do with enterprise companies, I think you guys will love this is we with the exec team and I'll tell a story. Satya shared this in his book about this process that we did when we sit down with the exec team. And Satya had, I think 17 direct reports. Satya Nutella, CEO of Microsoft, and he had 17 direct reports. And we got, we carved out a day to invest in the psychology of excellence. And we got to probably about hour three. And one of the practices that we do is ask everybody to be very clear about their personal philosophy, be very clear about their first principles in life, and say it in one or two sentences. That's all you get. But it's a forcing function to say, what do you really, really, really, really, really stand for? What is your personal philosophy? Gandhi had one, Jesus had one, Buddha had one, Confucia had one, Mother Teresa had one. John F. Kennedy had one like, what's yours? Okay, and we got to that section, and Satya, he goes, hey, everybody, I want to go first. And he shared his. And he says he didn't look around the room. And he said, we've got a wildly ambitious opportunity in front of us. We need to know each other. And he looked at me and he said, mike, I do not care if this takes six hours. I want to really understand everybody's philosophy, where they're working from, and I want everybody to understand mine, where I'm coming from. What are the most important first principles, how I am using these first principles to make all the decisions in my life. And I want you to hold me to that standard. And I want to hold you, Amy, and you, Judson, I want to hold you to those. Your first principles and your standards of being your best. We're going to need each other. And so, John, to that level of commitment to do the internal work so that we could become what the culture was hoping to become, which is learn it alls, not know it alls. And to be great teammates. Everybody wants to be on a great team. What does that mean? And I'm fatigued by, you know, like, people saying, I want to have a great team. It's simple. You need to be great teammates. How do you become great teammates? You got to know each other, you care about each other, you support each other, and you challenge each other in an honest way. And you. As leaders, we need to create that environment to do that internal work and then to stay on it, because once you do the internal work once, you know, like in sport, like, coaches be like, oh, team building. Let's go shoot paintballs, or, let's go do. Let's go bowling night. And they do it once and like, yeah, that's good. Team building. That's. That's not that. That. That. What is that? And so what we did at the Seattle Seahawks this year is that every Thursday, we did what's called a walk and talk. So we gave two guys from offense, three guys from defense, or some sort of mix like that, and one coach. We put them together so that both sides of the ball would know each other. We wanted to. We understand if we want to be a great team, we got to be great teammates. That means we got to know each other. So we carved out. Every Thursday, we've carved out time for these guys to get together and to answer or explore four questions or thought stems. And they would walk around. Sometimes they take off their boots and they'd walk in the grass. Some would go find a spot up in the kitchen and sit down. But it was a walk and talk for them to wrestle with questions like, what's the most difficult thing you've been through? Or what was dinner like when you're growing up? What's the most disappointing gift you've ever had at Christmas? What's the best gift you've ever had at Christmas? Whatever the time of the year was. So that to do that in elite sport every Thursday was a wild, ambitious, brilliant commitment that coach Mike McDonald made as a leader. And I mean, the team won the Super Bowl.
- [54:30]
Cap
No wonder they won the Super Bowl. Holy smokes.
- [54:33]
Dr. Michael Gervais
They had each other's back. No matter what, they had each other's back. They were supporting each other to be their very best every day. And they were challenging each other to be their very best every day. You must have both. And to do that, we've got to know each other. To do that, you've got to know yourself. So all we do at finding mastery is we create the mechanism for you to do a self discovery process, share it with other people, and then train the mental skills to be calm, confident, deeply focused, to trust yourself in, in, you know, high vuca environments.
- [55:06]
John Kaplan
Amazing. So we had a person on the podcast a couple times. His name is Doug Holiday. He wrote a book called Redefining Success.
- [55:15]
Dr. Michael Gervais
Cool.
- [55:16]
John Kaplan
And it reminds me a lot about what you said. He gets teammates up and they have to tell their life story. And he said, like, people are attracted not to, you know, people that come across as shiny objects that never did anything wrong. People are attracted to your broken parts. And people that get up and tell their own story, sometimes, you know, they're crying, it's emotional, can barely get the words out, but it really bonds with the other teammates. To your point, if I don't, if I think you've never experienced anything like me, or maybe you experienced something way more difficult than me. I'm a lot more attracted to working with you and understanding where you're coming from. So it's super powerful. What you say, what you're doing is you're adding more depth to that and then repeating it on a, on a weekly basis. So it's truly ingrained in what guys, Right?
- [56:15]
Dr. Michael Gervais
So power. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, John. Like, we're interested in mastery of self and mastery of craft.
- [56:23]
John Kaplan
Yes.
- [56:24]
Dr. Michael Gervais
And modern business. I'll tell you one other thing that we're, we're tripping on that sport is good at and business is not good at. But herein Lies. A great opportunity for, for business leaders is in sport, we don't ask the athlete to go meditate or do mental imagery after practice. If it's valuable, we put it inside the rhythm of business. And so in business, when are you supposed to meditate? Hands down, we know meditation is a first rate training. When are you supposed to do mental imagery in between your meetings? No one's scheduling that because there's not a system, there's not an operating system to put the psychological skills inside the rhythm of business. But that's what we're doing in elite sport. So if I cast out, I don't know, five to ten years from now, I think that psychological skill development will be inside the rhythm of business. For the most progressive companies that know that the greatest asset is the human. It's not the technology, it's not the code, it's not AI. AI is great. I'm bullish. It's the people that are running AI. It's the way that you are using AI. It's the intellectual and emotional capabilities that sit at the center of the human. Now's the time to invest in those skills because AI is going to do so much more computational stuff than we ever thought imaginable. So the human part, this is the advantage.
- [57:52]
Cap
Wow, Dr. G, I got about five more hours of stuff I'll talk to you about, brother. Holy smokes.
- [58:01]
John Kaplan
Dr. Michael Gervais, he's the founder of Finding Mastery. He's the host of you have your own podcast, Finding Mastery Podcast. He's a co creator of the Performance Science Institute at the University of Southern California. And we're talking a lot about his best selling book, the First Rule of Mastery. Stop worrying about what people think of you. Really awesome. Thank you so much.
- [58:26]
Cap
And the company. Did you say this already? The Finding Mastery Company. How can they find you? How can we find you?
- [58:33]
Dr. Michael Gervais
Yeah, website's cool. You know, like findingmastery.com is cool. Go grab the morning mindset.findingmastery.com morningmindset. Findingmastery.com and then you'll kind of get in our flow a little bit and we'll send you an audio file. That's a fun way to stay connected. And I like social media. I'm having fun on it. So you can find me at Michael Gervais. And it's G E R V A
- [58:56]
Cap
I S Crushed it.
- [58:57]
John Kaplan
Thank you so much, doc. Truly appreciate it.
- [59:00]
Dr. Michael Gervais
Appreciate you guys.
- [59:02]
John Kaplan
Yeah. Thanks to Dr. Michael Gervais, thanks to John Kaplan, and thanks to everyone for listening to another episode of the Revenue Builders Podcast.
- [59:12]
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