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

Dr. Michael Gervais opens up about surviving a head-on car collision at 70 miles per hour and how decades of psychological training shaped his response in that split second. The high performance psychologist, who has spent 14 years inside NFL locker rooms and coached athletes through four Olympic Games, shares why he believes humans don't rise to moments but fall to the level of their training. He breaks down what he calls "the danger line," that messy emotional edge where growth actually happens, and explains why most people never practice getting there in their careers, relationships, or conversations with loved ones. Gervais also delivers a pointed warning about youth sports in America, revealing how untrained coaches are shaping the psychological development of children in a system where 99.95% won't achieve their athletic dreams. Whether you're navigating a career setback, building mental resilience, or raising kids who can thrive without tying their worth to performance, this conversation offers a framework for training your psychology the same way elite athletes train their bodies. The Greatness Playbook: The Psychological Strength EditionGet your copy of The First Rule of MasteryFinding Mastery PodcastIn this episode you will:Recognize why performance-based identity fuels achievement but never delivers freedom, and what to build insteadDiscover why negative self-talk is actually a protective mechanism borrowed from childhood and how to replace it with what Dr. Gervais calls "the epic thought list"Learn the difference between optimism, agency, and efficacy and why every world-class performer Dr. Gervais has met shares one of these traitsUnderstand how "fight, flight, freeze, and submit" plays out in boardrooms and relationships, not just physical dangerApply the "support then challenge" framework that the best coaches and parents use to unlock potential without causing psychological harmFor more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1890For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Jim CurtisMel RobbinsDr. Caroline Leaf Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

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

• 0:24Michael Gervais?

  I was working with a UFC fighter. He was aware that he would tighten up before he goes into the cage. I said, okay, when you're working to be at your best, like what's happening inside you? He looked at me and he's like, oh, I'm a tough. I said, well, I don't know. Can you back that up? And he says, um, yeah, when I was 14, I wet my dad's ass. What we can all learn from that is like for every epic thought that you want to say to yourself, what are three experiences in your life that give you the right to say that?

• 0:49Lewis Howes?

  One of the world's top high-performance psychologists and leading experts on the relationship between the mind and human performance is also the co-creator of the Performance Science Institute, Dr. Mike Gervais.

• 1:00Michael Gervais?

  Do you believe that you have power over how you navigate life? Not what life is going to give you, but do you believe you have the power to do it? And that is squarely pointing to psychological skills.

• 1:12Lewis Howes?

  What would you say if you could only give three psychological tools for everyday human beings, elite performers, underperformers, on how to have better performance in their own life? What would those three tools be?

• 1:25Michael Gervais?

  Okay, so.

• 1:28Lewis Howes?

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

• 2:02Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, that's cool. In the moment, um, any moment that has requires speed and accuracy and is as fast as that as a head-on collision, just forces you to be all present. Force, it's a forcing function to be completely in tuned in that moment. So, so I'm, when that happens.

• 2:23Michael Gervais?

  Completely engaged in the present moment, but that's interesting in and of itself. But the takeaway was right afterwards.

• 2:29Lewis Howes?

  Yes. How do you respond?

• 2:30Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 2:31Lewis Howes?

  How do you respond to situations that are not good in life? When things don't go your way, when it's scary, when it's?

• 2:36Michael Gervais?

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

• 3:20Michael Gervais?

  like move to a growth approach as opposed to a stress syndrome.

• 3:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, because some people, when they have, let's call it a failure or a breakdown or some injury, whatever it might be, whether they're an athlete or an executive or an everyday human being, they get fired from their job or they have something that is a breakdown, let's call it. They retreat back into fear, they limit themselves, they start thinking smaller as opposed to expanding their thinking capacity. They try to retrieve back to what they know is comfortable rather than taking certain risks to try to break through into a higher performance level. What strategy or technique did you use to continue to expand yourself forward, recover from the experience and go through the, you know, the reflection of it all, but then say, okay, I'm not going to not go out and drive again.

• 4:10Lewis Howes?

  I'm going to keep pushing forward. I'm going to keep expanding or I'm going to do things in a way that allows me to live life fully rather than retreat.

• 4:18Michael Gervais?

  It's a good framing. Yeah, think about just the science of post-traumatic stress disorder for just a moment. There's, we could list off the symptoms and kind of the requirements for that syndrome. But what is less talked about or even researched is post-traumatic growth. So what you're asking about is like, if you had an option, which we all have options based on our experiences and our psychology, we determine the experience, not the experience in and of itself.

• 4:47Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 4:49Michael Gervais?

  For much of my life, I have been framing things in a way like, okay, how do I grow from this? How do I benefit from this? How do I frame this in a way that helps me and others, you know, grow? So this was another moment that fit well with the model that I've already invested in for the last, call it 30 years.

• 5:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, but now you're the, the, the brain scientist who's doing open brain surgery and saying, okay, do these theories actually work, you know, after this?

• 5:15Michael Gervais?

  Well, that, I think that's the point, Lewis, is that take any smaller setback or challenge or adversity or whatever, or any kind of mundane, mundane life experience. Like, how do I take one more rep at the gym?

• 5:29Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 5:29Michael Gervais?

  Right? How do I stay in a hard conversation just a little bit longer? So it's these small little moments that just add up where you respond based on your training. Humans, this is a first principle for me, and this is, I don't know, somewhat controversial, I think, is that humans fall to the level of their training. We don't rise to moments, and I know you might think differently about that. Cause I think I've heard you say we rise to the occasion, but I can't remember.

• 5:54Lewis Howes?

  No, I think, I think I agree with you. You rise to the level of your training.

• 5:57Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 5:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I agree with that.

• 5:58Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, and so when it comes to psychological training,

• 6:04Michael Gervais?

  your entire community right now has a training module, has a training way. And it's like the way that they're framing this conversation, the way they, they framed the cold eggs that they ate or what. So we're always training something.

• 6:16Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 6:17Michael Gervais?

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

• 6:46Lewis Howes?

  That's good. What would you say, I'm just curious, you work a lot with elite athletes, peak performers. Of the world's population, what would you say is the percentage of people that are living a peak performance life?

• 6:58Michael Gervais?

  You know, it's a, it falls under a normal bell distribution, a normal curve, you know? There's the half percenters that are wildly known, world recognized. And then there's the 5% and 10%, the 15%, kind of that upper quadrille, if you will. And It's no different than in any population, any endeavor, like there's a half percenters in basketball, there's a half percenters in handball, there's a half percenters in music. Most people fall within one or two standard deviations of the mean. Eighty-four percent to be exact, right in that number of people are kind of similar in the way they approach life. And that's what the average looks like, eighty-four percent. Eighty-four percent.

• 7:43Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, or what I would say, or what we would call right, humming around the average. So people that fundamentally commit their lives towards any aim. And the word is fundamentally commit, have a chance of knowing how good or extraordinary they can be in any endeavor. And if your endeavor is handball, you have to fundamentally commit. If your endeavor is joy and happiness, purpose driven, you know, community minded, whatever it might be. So the word, though, the phrase is fundamentally commit. Most people don't even come close to fundamentally organizing their life around what matters most. Wow, they don't make a decision of what matters most. That's right. And they don't go all the way in on that.

• 8:28Michael Gervais?

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

• 9:09Michael Gervais?

  Amateur coaches with the psychology and emotional development of our children through a social force ranked stacked, statted, observed, critiqued and judged sport. Fill in the blank of whatever sport it is. Force ranked, statted. Now, I love that ecosystem. I love subjective and objective measures of growth. I love that you get to see how you compare to other people. I love that, that there is like rules to engage in. And I love that there is a process and a performance based approach to invest in to be your very best. I love that part of it. But when you put the psychological and emotional well being

• 9:52Michael Gervais?

  of young developmental minds and parents that are a little stressed, a little overwhelmed. They want the best for their kids. And you've got these amateur coaches in the U S with the most tender part of the, of the, the, the growth arc of psychology, the young.

• 10:09Michael Gervais?

  Like it's a dangerous proposition.

• 10:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. What should parents be thinking about then? If they want to put their kids into youth sports or they want them to have activities to support their growth? How can they combat against the youth sport system, the way it's built now?

• 10:26Michael Gervais?

  Parents need to be the greatest buffer, you know? I do not suggest that my, my son is in youth sport. I love youth sport. I just, I'm just saying it's dangerous.

• 10:35Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 10:35Michael Gervais?

  Okay.

• 10:36Lewis Howes?

  You're not saying take your kids out of soccer.

• 10:38Michael Gervais?

  No. Sport has taught me so much. Sport is my working laboratory, both personally, as, as a kid, as a young adult, even now, and it's been my working laboratory as a sports psychologist, you know, for working with world's best for a long time. So there's, I don't have anything about, but, but it is dangerous. So what do parents need to do? They need to be the greatest buffer. They need to to install all of the protective factors that will help their children frame, that will help their children work with all of the heartbreak that comes from the majority of kids who don't get what they want.

• 11:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 11:17Michael Gervais?

  And I'm talking about like, if you knew what I knew, that statement about the dangers of sport, you wouldn't push your kids because there's point zero one percent of kids that make it in the pros, point zero five percent, somewhere in that range of kids that make it to the pros.

• 11:31Lewis Howes?

  So a lot of them will be failures.

• 11:33Michael Gervais?

  They will not achieve the hopes and dreams in sport that they might have.

• 11:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 11:37Michael Gervais?

  But if you take it as a working laboratory to sort out how to work with mistakes, how to understand relationships, how to be a, um, the greatest teammate to yourself and the greatest teammate to other people that you possibly can, that ecosystem is rich, but you've got kind of knucklehead coaches.

• 11:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 11:55Michael Gervais?

  And I had a conversation with, um, one of my son's coaches and I'm, and he's like, so how'd the season go for you guys? And I said, for my, for my son, it was really hard. For us, I'm really grateful that my wife and I were able to, you know, be buffers and be kind of resilient shepherds, if you will, um, for him. And he looked at me with like, well, I was a little too honest. I said, yeah, it was, you made some questionable calls and, but gave us plenty of fodder to work against.

• 12:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I mean, at the same time, it's like, these coaches probably aren't well equipped or well trained to lead seven, eight, 12, 15 year olds psychologically, emotionally with the standards they have of like trying to win every game, the pressures they have of like their jobs on the line, or some of them don't even get paid. So it's, it's also figuring out, how do we figure out how to support coaches that don't have the tools and training?

• 12:47Michael Gervais?

  That's exactly the right question.

• 12:49Lewis Howes?

  Parents as well as great coaches who aren't getting paid.

• 12:53Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, we don't have the right investment. If in the U S, if we believe sport is a great, um, ecosystem for growth, which we do. Look at the numbers, you know? If you're in the bottom one third of sport as a, as a boy in high school, it's even more dangerous.

• 13:07Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 13:08Michael Gervais?

  Being on the playground, not getting picked, being the one that everyone rolls their eyes if you stumble, fall, you're trying your best, but you're like, you're causing a slowdown.

• 13:18Lewis Howes?

  That was me. I was picked last. In elementary school, it's like it was a formative moment that drove me to win at all costs.

• 13:28Michael Gervais?

  Yeah. So you figured out how to work with that pain, that rejection, that thing.

• 13:34Lewis Howes?

  Yes, in a destructive way that got results, but it didn't make me feel fulfilled or happy or like at peace. It made me feel like I always had to prove myself that they were wrong about me.

• 13:44Michael Gervais?

  Yeah. So you built what's classically called a performance based identity.

• 13:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 13:48Michael Gervais?

  That I am what I do relative to how well you do what you do.

• 13:51Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 13:52Michael Gervais?

  And so that performance based identity is really tricky. It can fuel you to be great at something.

• 13:58Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 13:59Michael Gervais?

  But it will never allow freedom.

• 14:01Lewis Howes?

  And I didn't have peace until I hit 30, when everything started to fall apart in my life. And that's when I started to reflect and start doing healing work that gave me a sense of a different mission of life in the last 13 years. And it's allowed me to have a lot more peace and freedom and be driven to accomplish and serve at the same time.

• 14:22Michael Gervais?

  And you know, when people hear you say that, there's this fine line between like,

• 14:30Michael Gervais?

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

• 14:51Lewis Howes?

  I want that. Yeah.

• 14:53Michael Gervais?

  So how? The question is how?

• 14:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 14:55Michael Gervais?

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

• 15:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 15:14Michael Gervais?

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

• 15:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And at the same time, I guess American sports developed some of the greatest athletes in the world.

• 15:46Michael Gervais?

  Because we have so many.

• 15:48Lewis Howes?

  That and maybe because the stakes are so high at a young age, not to say it's good, but maybe it's because there's such high expectations at such young ages. Not to say it's healthy, but maybe that also develops people to succeed under pressure at a high level.

• 16:02Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, you're right. For two reasons. One, it's a pathway out for some. It's an inspired way through for some, but we're so sloppy. Because we have next human up approach. So the washout in the US is uncanny. And so you've got to be extraordinary.

• 16:22Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 16:22Michael Gervais?

  To make an NFL team. You've got, you have got to be extraordinary. And we don't really have a youth development program. We got a college program. It's good.

• 16:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 16:32Michael Gervais?

  You know, but we don't really have. So these are the most fit, most extraordinary, most powerful humans that have endured public humiliation, you know, a lot to get to that place. And, you know, it was probably, I've been in the NFL, I think for like 14 or 15 years now. And as a sports psychologist, not as a, as an athlete.

• 16:54Lewis Howes?

  You're a punter.

• 16:55Michael Gervais?

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

• 17:36Lewis Howes?

  No, every day.

• 17:37Michael Gervais?

  Every day, on Monday, when you're potentially being called out for mistakes that you've made and or celebrations. You know, because it's

• 17:45Lewis Howes?

  In front of your peers.

• 17:46Michael Gervais?

  In front of your peers and your coaches. Remember, your peers are trying to take your job.

• 17:49Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 17:49Michael Gervais?

  Your coaches are deciding if you play or not. And to grow, you have to move to the danger line. You have to move to that messy edge, that place where

• 17:58Lewis Howes?

  Risk.

• 17:59Michael Gervais?

  Everything could fall apart, or it could be a breakthrough.

• 18:02Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 18:02Michael Gervais?

  And you have to be practiced at going to that danger line. And most of us, I mean, when's the last time? I'll take you out of it because I think you you're practiced at it. But for most people, we don't get to the danger line at work, in the living room, at home, with our friends and, you know, like our loved ones. We don't practice getting to that emotional or inner physical messy edge. And so we're unpracticed at getting to the required state to unlock what you're capable of. They are not.

• 18:32Lewis Howes?

  And they do it physically, mentally, emotionally, all these different things like. And when you add the physical element on a daily basis, it's even more risky because so many guys get injured playing that sport. Where you have to endure years of potential injuries that you did not get, or you overcame, and you were able to come back from. And continue on the danger line of potential injury and see guys go down that could have been you. And it's like, I'm going to keep fighting.

• 18:58Michael Gervais?

  That's right.

• 18:58Lewis Howes?

  And then I'm going to face humiliation the next day from my coaches or from up here or from the media. And I'm going to get called out and I have to keep going.

• 19:07Michael Gervais?

  That's why the best leaders and the best coaches understand what it takes. And they do not add to it. They support then challenge. So that in that order, those two ingredients are incredibly important for anyone to become who they're capable of, support then challenge. How do you support somebody? You get to know them. You care about them.

• 19:31Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 19:32Michael Gervais?

  You really invest in understanding them so that you know how you can properly challenge them. Support then challenge. The best coaches really do understand that.

• 19:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 19:44Michael Gervais?

  Because you're trying to challenge them as often as possible to get to the danger line.

• 19:49Lewis Howes?

  I'm trying to help them rise to the occasion, but you have to understand and support them first while before you challenge is what I'm hearing you say.

• 19:55Michael Gervais?

  Well, the rise to the occasion, no, I think it's rise. It's not rising, it's readying yourself psychologically to go to a place that is super unsettling because by definition, you're not good

• 20:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 20:10Michael Gervais?

  at doing the thing on the messy edge.

• 20:12Lewis Howes?

  So you got to get comfortable at doing it.

• 20:13Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 20:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 20:14Michael Gervais?

  That and it sounds so true, get uncomfortable or get comfortable being uncomfortable. It's Really foundational.

• 20:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 20:21Michael Gervais?

  But I don't think it ever gets comfortable.

• 20:25Lewis Howes?

  You just get more familiar.

• 20:26Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 20:26Lewis Howes?

  You're gonna be okay after you do it like.

• 20:29Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 20:29Lewis Howes?

  Gets a little bit easier, but it's still, the easier it gets, it's like you have to find new levels of danger.

• 20:34Michael Gervais?

  That's right.

• 20:35Lewis Howes?

  Emotionally, psychologically, relationally, spiritually, physically.

• 20:38Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 20:39Lewis Howes?

  To get to the next level.

• 20:40Michael Gervais?

  And that danger word is super provocative, but it does feel dangerous when you're at the edge.

• 20:45Lewis Howes?

  It feels like your life is gonna be over sometimes when you're having a vulnerable conversation with your partner and you feel like, I can't say these words.

• 20:52Michael Gervais?

  Well, because we know, you know, that our brain doesn't have redundancies built in like, oh, this segment is for an emotional conversation and this segment is for a saber to tiger. Like it's the same fight, flight mechanisms. And I think we don't, we under celebrate, fight, flight, we know those two, freeze and submit. That fourth one, we under celebrate.

• 21:15Lewis Howes?

  What does that mean to submit?

• 21:18Michael Gervais?

  As soon as it gets really intense and the emotional centers of your brain are louder than the reasoning parts of your brain. And the emotions are running the show that we fight, we flee, we freeze and we submit. And what submitting is, is like, we kind of roll over to power or authority and say, oh, I get it. You're, oh yeah, now I see. Now you're right. You're right. You're right.

• 21:42Michael Gervais?

  But we have a big idea that we want to present or we're complaining about something in the hallways and somebody says, well, are you gonna talk to Louis about it? And you're gonna like, tell him how you feel and say you're the supervisor? Yeah. Yeah. And then I set the meeting with you, takes a little courage. And then I said it with you. And then I say, Hey Louis, there's this thing I was, you know, thinking about and I'm not sure it's a good idea or not. I'm already hedging. And then I say, but you know, I need to tell you because some other people are kind of thinking about it. And then I actually tell you and then you go, well, hold on. And now you challenge me. Do I fight? No, I'm not gonna fight you. Do I freeze? No, I'm not gonna freeze. I can't leave. Whew, body just heated up a little bit. I'm starting to shake a little bit.

• 22:19Lewis Howes?

  Feel good. Yeah.

• 22:20Michael Gervais?

  Oh, my heart pounding a little bit. What's about to happen? And then I submit. You're right. You're right. Yeah. Oh, I didn't think about it that way. But I'm not being honest. I'm just reflexively doing whatever it takes to be okay in that moment.

• 22:37Lewis Howes?

  Survive.

• 22:38Michael Gervais?

  Literally, that's the survival mechanism. Fight, flight, freeze, submit. And in the hallways of enterprise and corporate and, you know.

• 22:49Michael Gervais?

  Intense environments is that submitting is a real choice and it's unfortunate because we never feel really good about any of those responses. So what's the response we should have that's not fight?

• 23:01Michael Gervais?

  Flight, freeze, or submit. So first is understanding how those mechanisms work. As soon as you interpret something to be dangerous or you're in some, in an environment that is physically actually dangerous, your brain lights up in all the ways that I don't need to recount, but, but that's important. The way either you perceive it or it actually is dangerous, you light up. So you can extend the danger line by the way you perceive. Okay. So if, if I perceive like, boy, you hold my future in my, you hold my future in your hands. What I say next is could determine if I'm hearing this job or not. Yeah. So I've given a lot of risk to your opinion of me.

• 23:45Michael Gervais?

  And we name that for fun, FOPO, fear of people's opinions, right? And so we'll get into that in a minute, but that's one way. You change the way that you're framing. So if there's like, wait, hold on, what I hold to be more important is working from first principles. So a first principle for me is something that matters to me. I've, I've thought deeply about how I want to operate on this planet. And if it's honesty, let's say, or it's having somebody else's back, or it is fill in the blanks, whatever first principle could be, then I need to operate from that even in dangerous situations, even in emotionally risky situations. So that rearranges the danger line because of the perception.

• 24:30Michael Gervais?

  Then you need to practice being in those intense environments as often as you possibly can. And that's what elite sport does. U-sports meant to be that way, but that's what elite sport does is it fundamentally creates an environment for people to get up on the edge because that's where growth happens. And then the third is having a whole set of psychological skills while you're in that emotionally charged environment to regulate breathing, self-talk, you know, knowing how to work with your, with yourself, if you will. And that's really what psychology is, knowing yourself and how to work well with yourself.

• 25:06Lewis Howes?

  What would you say if you could only give three psychological tools for everyday human beings, elite performers, underperformers, on how to have better performance in their own life, under stressful conditions, or under any condition? What would be, if you could only share three tools that they could use? Three psychological, emotional tools to improve your life? No matter how complicated or simple they are, what would those three tools be?

• 25:32Michael Gervais?

  A life commitment to self-discovery. Okay, so, let's call that bucket one. The second, what do I, hold on, what I mean by self-discovery? Like, to really know yourself.

• 25:46Michael Gervais?

  To really know how you work.

• 25:50Lewis Howes?

  So, understand you first, and why you react, and why you respond, and why you feel, think?

• 25:54Michael Gervais?

  That's right. Yeah. Really understand yourself. And that's a, self-discovery processes are ubiquitous. Like, what is your purpose? What's your vision for a better life? Like, what's your personal philosophy? Like, like, know how you work. The second is, um, practices for awareness. So that you can become aware of how your internal environment is working, so that you can adjust. Okay, so, awareness is kind of the, the main theme. How do you invest in awareness? There's three. Meditation, journaling, or conversations with people of wisdom. It's really one of the great kind of benefits, if you will, of meditation. It's like, yes, it's a practice for deep concentration.

• 26:39Michael Gervais?

  Yes, it's a practice for, um, you know, insight and wisdom, which are not to be understated in any way. But it's the practice of becoming aware of like, what's happening inside and what's happening outside of me. And without awareness, we're, we're kind of stuck. And then the third are psychological skills. And I think the big one probably that most of us need right now, I'll do three A and three B, self-talk and breathing, would be the two simple ones there. Knowing how to speak to yourself, to back yourself.

• 27:12Michael Gervais?

  And knowing how to breathe to down regulate in this high speed, high stress world that we're all in.

• 27:18Lewis Howes?

  Why do so many people have a limiting self-talk, a negative self-talk, a limiting self-talk instead of a positive or encouraging self-talk?

• 27:27Michael Gervais?

  Oh, we borrowed that. We built it from an early age. That's a protective mechanism. I know it. I lived it.

• 27:33Lewis Howes?

  How does that protect you when you talk negatively versus you got this and like versus like being a positive coach to yourself?

• 27:40Michael Gervais?

  It's maladaptive, first of all, but it's a self-esteem saving mechanism.

• 27:45Lewis Howes?

  How does it save your self-esteem to talk negatively about self?

• 27:49Michael Gervais?

  Because if you say you got this, you can do it. Oh, man, you're amazing. And then you go for it and it doesn't work out.

• 27:56Lewis Howes?

  Then what?

• 27:56Michael Gervais?

  It's really, it stings. It hurts. It's like, man, maybe I can't. Maybe, maybe I've been lying to myself. Maybe, maybe that's all BS. And maybe I am a loser, failure, whatever. So it, it pulls you into safety. When you say, yeah, you're not built for that kind of stuff. That's for other people. Big money, big happy, big joy. That's for other people, you know? So you're pulling yourself back into like a regression to safety and it's maladaptive. And if somebody had said to you at some point, like you're, you're kind of stupid now, you know? Or like, did you really decide to wear a black shirt? Like, really?

• 28:40Michael Gervais?

  So there's a negative, critical kind of lens, then you adopt the negative, critical lens. And because you've learned it, that's just how people work and they don't really realize that there's a whole set of people that are free that are like, wow, this is a, black is amazing on you. Like, yeah, that's a cool choice, man. I should try that out too. Like, there's a whole nother universe of people that see potential and see buoyancy and open up the aperture for what could be, as opposed to judge, critique, niche down, you know, like try to have you be something less. Have you be something different by seeing less?

• 29:15Lewis Howes?

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

• 29:54Michael Gervais?

  I think that question is

• 29:58Lewis Howes?

  Maybe it's a whole workshop we need to do.

• 29:59Michael Gervais?

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

• 30:40Michael Gervais?

  fundamentally commit to know how to work with yourself. I'm going to oversimplify the mind brain connection for a minute. The brain is the hardware, the mind is the software. That idea, it's way too

• 30:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 30:52Michael Gervais?

  It's not this simple. But the software runs the hardware. The mind runs the brain. And you can train the software. You can rewrite the code. You can say and do whatever you want. You can say whatever you want to yourself. The trick is, it must be grounded in something that is real. So fake it till you make it. I don't buy it. I don't want my medical provider to fake it till he makes it. I don't want, I don't have tattoos, but I wouldn't want my tattoo artist to fake it. I don't want anything fake. I want to know that what I'm investing in is real. So if you're going to speak to yourself in a way that is positive, let's just say, I don't do the positive negative thing very well. But if you're going to speak

• 31:37Michael Gervais?

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

• 32:00Michael Gervais?

  I can face the dragon. I can, I can really bite down and be about it when it's hard. Those are three sentences I just said. What gives me the right to say that? And if I'm very clear about the three things in my life that have given me the right to say that, then I can say it. Why not say it? Because it gives me a certain vibe. I'll tell you where this came from. I was working with a UFC fighter and it was a championship fight. And he, he was aware that he would tighten up before he goes into the cage. Seventeen thousand screaming fans, millions of people watching, equal, equally talented person across the cage. Some have the intent, bad intentions, you know, like there's a lot of violence in this sport.

• 32:45Michael Gervais?

  And he was very, very skilled. I said, what's it like when you're at your best? And he looked at me like I had four heads or something. He was like, nothing. It's just super clean. Like I'm not saying anything. He was talking about flow state, the zone, if you will. I said, okay, when you're working to be at your best, like what's happening inside of you? And he goes, let me, let me give you the locker room. Okay. There's a little, you can bleep it out if you need to. I'm a tough mother.

• 33:12Michael Gervais?

  And I go, oh.

• 33:13Lewis Howes?

  He's saying that to himself.

• 33:15Michael Gervais?

  That's right. And, but I asked him, what, what do you like? What are you saying to yourself when like, it's really good to be inside of you? You're working to be your best. And he goes, he looked at me. He's like, oh, I'm a tough mother. That's what he's saying. And kind of unimpressed, I said, well, I don't know. Can you back that up? And he says, um, yeah. And he looked at me like, are you questioning me? And, and so, I was, when I was 14, I what my dad's ass.

• 33:43Lewis Howes?

  That's pretty, I mean, yeah, you're a tough mother effort.

• 33:45Michael Gervais?

  Yeah. And then, so I paused again and I'd see how far I could take it. And I said, well, you got anything else?

• 33:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:50Michael Gervais?

  And he looked at me again, kind of like.

• 33:52Lewis Howes?

  All right. Well, yeah, yeah.

• 33:53Michael Gervais?

  And he goes, yeah, my last fight. In the cage, I'm getting choked out. I broke the choke hold, put him on my back, dragged him, the other dude across the cage, dumped him, finished the fight. And he looked at me and says, I'm a tough mother.

• 34:07Michael Gervais?

  So I go, all right, I mean, you got anything else? And then he, he kind of leans up and his, you know, he's, he's got the bald head tattoos scrolling up his neck like the, like lumpy as a human can be. And he leans at the edge of the table and he goes, if someone were to ask me one more question, I might choke him out.

• 34:25Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 34:26Michael Gervais?

  But the idea is he had three things

• 34:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 34:28Michael Gervais?

  in his back pocket that gave him the right to say, I'm a tough MF'er.

• 34:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 34:33Michael Gervais?

  And what we can all learn from that is like, how do you back yourself and speak to yourself? And that takes time to practice.

• 34:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 34:40Michael Gervais?

  And what gives you the right to say those things to yourself? We've all been through hard times. We've all been through real challenges. I think the best in the world, they have those things right at the surface. And they're using it to help them

• 34:57Michael Gervais?

  meet the challenges. They're using that awareness and self-talk to back themselves as they go into a challenging moment.

• 35:06Lewis Howes?

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

• 35:29Michael Gervais?

  You got it. That, that's how you meet the moment.

• 35:31Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 35:31Michael Gervais?

  Whatever the moment is demanding, can you step into the, to your best capabilities and meet that moment?

• 35:37Lewis Howes?

  Because you've trained it and practiced it over and over again.

• 35:40Michael Gervais?

  That's right. When I was in that car accident, I met that moment to my best ability.

• 35:45Lewis Howes?

  And the moment was really more after the moment. It was like, I just got hit 70 miles an hour. Thank God I'm okay. You know, a little banged up and shaken and a little scared, but am I going to fricking scream and beat this guy up? Or am I going to like somehow compose myself a little bit? To not, you know, have the the flag be on me. You know, it's always the second response in football. It's not the guy who punches the guy in the face. It's the guy who then spits in the guy after he gets punched in the face. Who gets flagged and ejected.

• 36:14Michael Gervais?

  That's great. That's a great framing.

• 36:15Lewis Howes?

  You know, that's. You work in football that long, you've seen it.

• 36:19Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 36:19Lewis Howes?

  Guys, it's a heated moment and you guys went a little long after the the whistle's done. And you punched and then just you had to react. You had to just get the last punch in, didn't you?

• 36:30Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, that's it. Yeah, well done.

• 36:31Lewis Howes?

  You know, um, it's not easy. No one likes having a cheap shot or something that's like risking their life. That's not fair. That's not within the boundaries of the rules of life or sport or relationship. We don't like that feeling.

• 36:46Michael Gervais?

  It's interesting you bring up fairness. Of all the virtues, like I really value working from values.

• 36:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 36:54Michael Gervais?

  So go back to that idea about first principles is that? How do you develop your first principles? You just kind of get your values in in line. Like, what are the, what are the handful of values that matter most to you? That's a good exercise in of itself.

• 37:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:06Michael Gervais?

  And then how do you express that value? Say honesty, somebody might, that's a value. And then somebody might say their first principle is brutal honesty. That's not mine. Okay. Somebody else might say radical honesty.

• 37:20Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 37:20Michael Gervais?

  So first principle is the way you're expressing that value. And, and I think fairness, I don't like it.

• 37:30Michael Gervais?

  It's one of the few, like, values I have a real hard time with because I don't know one system really that's fair.

• 37:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's not a value for me. I'm just putting that out there as like people within the rules of whatever the context of the moment is, I guess.

• 37:45Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, it's super interesting because my son's school is, um, it's one of their core values is fairness. Yeah.

• 37:52Lewis Howes?

  Life isn't fair.

• 37:53Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, and so.

• 37:54Lewis Howes?

  How do you create fairness within?

• 37:56Michael Gervais?

  No, it's like, it's complex. It's complicated.

• 38:00Lewis Howes?

  Life is complicated.

• 38:01Michael Gervais?

  And fairness, I don't think is the virtue to work from.

• 38:04Lewis Howes?

  Maybe you got to take him out of that school.

• 38:05Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 38:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's not your value. Get him out of there. But this, I want to go back to this thing about. Eighty-four percent. I think this is what you said, or maybe what's true is that eighty-four percent of the world population kind of lives on an, I want to call them average, but deviates at, I guess, an average standard of living in terms of, is that what you said?

• 38:25Michael Gervais?

  Like quality of life.

• 38:26Lewis Howes?

  Quality of life, or just like, they're not, what did you say? Eighty-four percent is the average, right?

• 38:31Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, plus or, that's plus or one minus

• 38:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 38:34Michael Gervais?

  standard deviation from the norm.

• 38:36Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha. So in terms of like peak performers, there's like, the elite, elite is point five percent, I think is what you said, or a half a percent?

• 38:44Michael Gervais?

  I call them the half percenters, just to kind of conjure up the Michael Jordans of the world.

• 38:48Lewis Howes?

  There's like twelve or thirteen percent of the rest of the people that are peak performers or above average performers, and there's a range of that peakness, down to the one percent, obviously, versus the ten percent of a range. But then the eighty-four percent would be, you know, in the average of everyone else in terms of income, in terms of like their skill sets and capabilities, right?

• 39:09Michael Gervais?

  I think even joy and happiness, too.

• 39:11Lewis Howes?

  And joy and happiness, too.

• 39:12Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 39:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I, I agree. What would you say is the difference between the sixteen percent of people that are living above average in their sport, business, career, inner emotional state, relationships versus the eighty-four percent who are not living at that standard?

• 39:29Michael Gervais?

  One, we need to adjust for genetic coding. Two, we need to adjust for environmental conditions. And three, we need to adjust for psychological skills. So the skills, by definition, are something that you can build and train. And there is, you know, depending on what research you're looking at, there's a combination of all three that are important to consider. While we cannot change our genetic coding, what are we gonna do about it? Like, what it is what it is.

• 40:01Lewis Howes?

  Maximize it.

• 40:02Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, my height and your height are different. And I need to figure out what's good for my height. You need to figure out what's good for your height, right? As a genetic coding, if you will. So there is a genetic influence on happiness and joy. We don't know exactly what it is, but there's some coding that we think, just like there's some coding that leads people to be a little bit more depressed, you know? Okay, so, one, there's a genetic influence, two, there's environmental, but what, what can we really invest in that has an outsized impact is your psychological skills.

• 40:33Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 40:34Michael Gervais?

  So what are the skills that we know that are best practices?

• 40:40Michael Gervais?

  To to lead a good life. Come to find out Harvard did an eighty five year study. Yes, I know you're aware of the study.

• 40:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 40:47Michael Gervais?

  The good life study and the two main findings out of that study are purpose and connection. Okay, what does that mean? That means folks that have somebody to love. Folks that are part of a community that are of interest to them. People have more connections that matter to them. They tend to report having a better life. Okay, so what do you need to do yourself to have somebody to love? Well, you give what you have. If you have love, you can give it. So it's not having people love you. That's not in your control. So the the in the flexion here, the hinge is that you have people to love.

• 41:28Michael Gervais?

  But if you're anxious, if you're tired, if you're overwhelmed, if you're irritated, if you're agitated, then that's what you give people.

• 41:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 41:37Michael Gervais?

  And then they now you don't have a community that is like amazingly fruitful.

• 41:43Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 41:46Michael Gervais?

  So you have it's what you're able to give. All right, so that's the connection.

• 41:49Lewis Howes?

  If you're relying on someone else to fix your state of anxiety or stress or not enoughness feelings, then you're attracting people maybe that are like, yeah, that you're just kind of like codependent, I guess, right? It's like, hey, I need you to make me feel safe in this moment. That's probably not going to help you have more joy and happiness if they don't give you exactly what you need. That's where if they like, hey, this doesn't work for me anymore. Then you're depressed for years.

• 42:15Michael Gervais?

  Let's go stay here one more turn is that Viktor Frankl, Edith Edgar, like survival survivalist of concentration camps and the most deplorable conditions on earth, they say the same thing. It's not, it is actually not the environment, but it's the way that you're framing, the way that you are interpreting the experiences around you. And that can be enhanced and developed as well. And so

• 42:40Lewis Howes?

  You could look at the head on collision as like the worst thing that's ever happened to you.

• 42:44Michael Gervais?

  This isn't fair.

• 42:45Lewis Howes?

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

• 43:12Michael Gervais?

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

• 43:56Michael Gervais?

  The, the, you know, the, the sport of life, if you will. But it is my job, I feel like to figure out how to make it as good as I possibly can. And I am constantly working to rise to acute stressors to like, I want great acute stress and then radical recovery.

• 44:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 44:17Michael Gervais?

  So for every unit of stress I spend in a day, I want radical units of recovery to match it. So I'm not talking about rising to occasion. I'm talking about rising to that fever pitch of intensity. So I can unlock some new capabilities because I really, that's where I learn what I'm truly capable of. And then I need equities of recovery. And so that's, that's like an everyday activity. And I did the same in the car crash. I did the same with you and I'll do the same when I go home and

• 44:42Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 44:43Michael Gervais?

  It's might sound exhausting, but it's actually quite fluid. I think, you know, like it's not, it's not so maniacal person, you know, in that way.

• 44:51Lewis Howes?

  What would you say someone can do to train their nervous system to feel calm and ready during stressful moments? And to feel safe under pressure?

• 45:01Michael Gervais?

  Oh, I don't think you feel safe under pressure.

• 45:03Lewis Howes?

  Oh, really?

• 45:03Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, I don't think you feel safe. I think you can, like, the idea that pressure is a privilege.

• 45:08Lewis Howes?

  Yes, it doesn't mean it's comfortable.

• 45:10Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, it's it's not comfortable. There's nothing.

• 45:13Lewis Howes?

  It's not, man. It could be it could be fun in moments, but it doesn't mean it's comfortable.

• 45:17Michael Gervais?

  It's really agitating.

• 45:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 45:19Michael Gervais?

  You know, um.

• 45:20Lewis Howes?

  The whole world is watching you and everything's on the line when it's like, this is make or break.

• 45:24Michael Gervais?

  And the whole world can be like the board of directors that you're pitching an idea to, like, or, you know, family members.

• 45:30Lewis Howes?

  Your world, yeah, yeah.

• 45:31Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 45:32Lewis Howes?

  So how do we train the nervous system to feel safe under pressure then?

• 45:35Michael Gervais?

  No, I don't think we feel safe.

• 45:36Lewis Howes?

  We don't?

• 45:37Michael Gervais?

  No, I think by definition, it's not safe. I think you're on the danger line. Okay, and then, but you need to frame like, yes, I'm in it. Great. This is where the unlocks happen. This kind of stress makes me, let's go, I'm built for this, this is what I want.

• 45:53Michael Gervais?

  That type of framing will open the aperture to give you better access to your skills. What I just said is very, very, very technical. Okay?

• 46:02Lewis Howes?

  That's when you need the positive self-talk training, that's when you need the breath work, you need to know yourself, that's when you need all of it to be like, we're in that moment. Now let's put the these things into practice.

• 46:12Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, and I would say, I'm gonna go back and, uh, I know I said positive, but I really don't use that language. It's productive.

• 46:19Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 46:20Michael Gervais?

  Like, I'm I'm I'm backing myself, I'm framing.

• 46:22Lewis Howes?

  Encouraging.

• 46:23Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, yeah, it's not like, hey, it's all gonna work out. Optimism is awesome.

• 46:27Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 46:27Michael Gervais?

  It is a fundamental skill that I have not yet met a world's best that has changed an industry, maybe even the global rhythm, that is not fundamentally optimistic. So if you want to take that page, I think that's a signal that it's good to train optimism. That's a good thing to invest in. I have not yet met a world's best that is not fundamentally optimistic.

• 46:52Michael Gervais?

  Why not invest in it then? Okay, I've not yet met the most happy and joyous people on the planet that I've got to work with. They're not fundamentally optimistic. Yeah. There's a place for pessimism and skepticism and cynicism. There's a place for that, but those are saving mechanisms. Not baseline mechanisms. No, yeah, optimism is this. I'm not talking about toxic optimism. Like this, it's a orientation about how you see the future. Do I believe that the best is yet to come? Do I believe that good is yet to come? Yeah. Do I believe I can overcome any challenges coming my way? Yeah, that's more efficacy, just to be kind of parse the applied science here. Yeah. So what you just said is you're anchoring in self-efficacy.

• 47:37Michael Gervais?

  What does that mean versus? Optimism is like a fundamental belief that things work out as long as I work it. Yes. Okay, that the best is yet to come, that there's something good that's going to come out of this, but that you know that you have to work it. And you picked up on that second hit, which is the efficacy piece. So let's, this will be just for optimism is the fundamental belief it's going to work out. Agency is that I get to choose in my life how I go about it. That's a powerful position in this wild world. Interpretation or? My interpretation and actually what I do. The action steps I take. Yeah, that is what Viktor Frankl and Edith Agar pointed to is that I choose. The response.

• 48:18Michael Gervais?

  That's right. Okay, I, I am going to choose, even though you have taken away all of the human dignity rights that, you know, I'm talking about the Nazi concentration camps, I'm still in charge of choosing. What did Viktor Frankl say between? Stimulus and response. There's a choice. He's attributed to that, but we can't actually find it. Gotcha. And if somebody can find it in your community, please send it to me. Yeah. Like I want to, I, I love, he, I never got to meet him, but I love that man. Yeah. Like he has taught me so much. Same with Edith. I don't know if she's. She's great. I've interviewed her twice. Yeah, me too. She's amazing.

• 48:57Michael Gervais?

  Okay, so agency is like I get to choose and then efficacy is when I choose and how I choose, I, I got some power to flex on it. So efficacy means power. Do you believe that you have power over how you navigate life?

• 49:13Michael Gervais?

  Not what life is going to give you, but do you believe you have the power to do it? And that is squarely pointing to psychological skills.

• 49:21Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 49:21Michael Gervais?

  Okay. And if you cannot regulate your emotional system, if you cannot regulate your arousal system, your heart rate and all, if you can't regulate, you can't be powerful.

• 49:32Lewis Howes?

  That's, gosh, this is, I'm so glad you're saying this, and I want you to say it again in a moment, because I had a brain surgeon who had done over a thousand brain surgeries, who's also a PhD in neuroscience. So he studied the mind, but also the brain, right? Both these things we're talking about.

• 49:48Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, cool.

• 49:49Lewis Howes?

  And I said, what's the number one skill that if you could only recommend one skill to all human beings to live a better life, what would it be? And he said, emotional regulation.

• 49:57Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 49:58Lewis Howes?

  And that's just what I'm hearing you say.

• 49:59Michael Gervais?

  It's a, it's a big part of it.

• 50:01Lewis Howes?

  If you don't have the ability to regulate your nervous system, your, your thoughts, your emotions, your interpretations even, you're not going to perform well when pressure is on the line or perform well at all in life. You're going to have a harder, more challenging life.

• 50:19Michael Gervais?

  Oh, well, I mean, super clear, I'm nodding my head to it. And if you think about the model, thoughts, emotions, behavior.

• 50:28Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 50:29Michael Gervais?

  And those three, the swirl of those three is really the output is how you're, what performance is. And if you have high performing thoughts, high performing emotions, high performing behaviors, you'll get to a high performance output.

• 50:46Lewis Howes?

  You will.

• 50:46Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 50:47Lewis Howes?

  You may not get the exact results you're looking for, but you're going to get better results than most.

• 50:51Michael Gervais?

  I'm not interested in thinking about outcomes.

• 50:54Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 50:55Michael Gervais?

  I want, I want, and everyone that I work with, like, we all want the same, we all want the gold medals.

• 51:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 51:01Michael Gervais?

  I want the, the, the world championships. We all want.

• 51:03Lewis Howes?

  Million dollar contracts. Yeah, all that stuff.

• 51:05Michael Gervais?

  But I wanted all those when I was in fourth grade, like.

• 51:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 51:08Michael Gervais?

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

• 51:51Michael Gervais?

  But, but I'm, I'm a thousand percent backed by this idea that if, if you do not love the way that you live your life, and then you will go get an extraordinary outcome, this is not the right way. And the outcome isn't satisfying. No. I was working with another world champion wrestling, and I was in the, in the stadium when he won his, his championship and the, um, the referee or umpire, I can't remember the name, put his hand up in the moment of celebration, world championship, boom. And he was crying. And he came off and he said, Mike, did you see those tears? I was like, yeah. I didn't know what they were about. And I didn't know if they're tears

• 52:32Michael Gervais?

  of joy, tears of relief. I didn't know what it was. And he said, he was, yeah, you know what? I realized in that moment, I thought I was going to feel different. I hate wrestling. Wow. But I know I've got to keep going to make my dad happy. Oh my gosh. It's crazy, isn't it? Yeah, man. There's, much of your psychology is related to your parents. I know that we, oh, blame it on your mom, blame it on your dad. No, it's not that. Like, parent, most parents try their best, but they're like dealing with their own stuff. And then they had us. And they, they didn't know how to have a great kind of approach to life, unless yours were amazing. They might have been, I don't know. But like, they're trying to

• 53:16Michael Gervais?

  figure out their stuff. We're all trying to figure it out. And I'm not convinced that people are investing properly in that investment, you know, so. As a lead performance psychologist coach.

• 53:31Lewis Howes?

  I'm a new parent, you know, I've got twin daughters that are two and a half months old.

• 53:37Lewis Howes?

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

• 54:19Michael Gervais?

  Well, you've got it. I keep asking that question. Okay, that's, that's the, if there's three things to do, keep asking that question. How do I get better at it? You know, because I haven't observed and I haven't seen and I don't know, I can't really start for you to answer that in a satisfying way. But in general, I would say, keep asking how to be your best. Cool. Number two is support then challenge and build your relationship on unconditional positive regard for the uniqueness of that child.

• 54:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 54:49Michael Gervais?

  And that's the support mechanism. And then challenge them, whatever that they're doing, to apply themselves in their very best way. And it's not about the output, it's not about the outcome. It's, it's about challenging to just be your very best in what you're doing. And look, there's time sensitive things because when kids are eight years old and they're washing the dishes or like, you know, like, this is not like, wash that dish better. You can do better. Just support then challenge. And then, then the third, build a community of people that really value the human experience in a way that is like joyful and fun and like, because they're watching.

• 55:31Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 55:32Michael Gervais?

  And so, keep growing yourself, support and challenge, and then build your community of intentional people.

• 55:38Lewis Howes?

  I love those. And I think, you know, a lot of people put their self-worth based on how they perform.

• 55:45Michael Gervais?

  That's performance-based identity.

• 55:47Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 55:47Michael Gervais?

  That is a massive problem to.

• 55:49Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 55:49Michael Gervais?

  Yes.

• 55:50Lewis Howes?

  So. Why do so many people confuse performance with self-worth? And how do they separate the two that they know they're worthy? No matter how well they perform or if they fail or succeed?

• 56:02Michael Gervais?

  Well, it's a very Western frame, you know, which is

• 56:07Michael Gervais?

  your value is coupled with what you do and how well you do it. That's a very Western frame. And your kids are going to grow up in the Western world, probably. And by the time they go to third grade in our state of California, that they're going to kind of be force ranked. They're going to be given grades at some point. And then they're going to ask their friends, how'd you do? And, okay, so we're starting to learn performance identity early here. And so decoupling what they do from who they are is part of your job.

• 56:38Lewis Howes?

  How do you do that?

• 56:39Michael Gervais?

  Well, you shine the spotlight on like, they matter because they breathe. They matter because the way that they show up in the world and da, da, da.

• 56:47Lewis Howes?

  Generous, they're kind, they're compassionate. Yeah, yeah.

• 56:50Michael Gervais?

  And so as a, as a general exercise, my wife and I, when our son was born, we said, hey, listen, let's be clear on the values that we want to build.

• 57:00Michael Gervais?

  And so we wrote down a bunch of values. She had two pages, I had two pages. And then we said, okay, let's circle five, that, you know, they're most interesting. At Circle Five, she, Circle Five, we came back around and we agreed on two that we were going to invest that first handful of years on. And it was very clear, it's still the same two now, is kindness and strength. So we want our son to be kind and strong. And so that's what we're trying to build more than anything else. And performance flows from there. So what, what, what can you do? Know the values that matter to you. Orientate that with your partner and then go to work on those things. And so you got to be those values first, though.

• 57:42Michael Gervais?

  You can't, you can't teach what you don't have back to that idea.

• 57:46Lewis Howes?

  Cause they're going to model who you are, not what you say, I'm assuming, right?

• 57:49Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 57:49Lewis Howes?

  I mean, they're going to watch you and say, all right, dad's telling me to do this, but he's not doing it.

• 57:52Michael Gervais?

  That's right.

• 57:53Lewis Howes?

  They're going to judge it internally.

• 57:54Michael Gervais?

  A hundred percent. So performance-based identity, the other thing is like, if you are leading a performance-based life, and I think you might fall into this trap. I think that you're on the performance clip, high performance and da, da, da, da. I would offer another hinge. Okay, to explore. Purpose based. So, and I think you have that too.

• 58:13Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 58:14Michael Gervais?

  Right, so.

• 58:14Lewis Howes?

  Both that, yeah.

• 58:15Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, and I'm not sure that you can totally do both.

• 58:20Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 58:21Michael Gervais?

  Okay.

• 58:23Michael Gervais?

  All right, but if your performance is in service of purpose.

• 58:27Lewis Howes?

  That's what it is.

• 58:28Michael Gervais?

  Okay, so if it's stacked correctly, you have a chance. But the greatest movers of industry, of the world rhythm that I talked about, whether it's Gandhi or Buddha or whatever, like, they were purpose driven.

• 58:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 58:42Michael Gervais?

  So what is your purpose? I'm not asking you outright, but.

• 58:46Lewis Howes?

  No, I know my purpose. My purpose is to serve and impact a hundred million lives weekly to help them improve the quality of their life.

• 58:53Michael Gervais?

  Okay, to me, that sounds like a mission.

• 58:54Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 58:55Michael Gervais?

  Okay, so do you want to play it out a little bit?

• 58:58Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 58:58Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, and I'm not saying it's right or wrong. But when I, when I hear a number attached to it, I hear like, that's the mission. That's the hill I want to climb.

• 59:07Lewis Howes?

  That's just the clarity, that's just the aim. You know, that's like, all right, as opposed to, I just want to help people. What does that mean?

• 59:13Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, so you're niching it down a little bit more.

• 59:15Lewis Howes?

  It's like being clear on, so I know how I can start to implement and execute that.

• 59:20Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, so you're collapsing purpose and mission. So, but purpose is really the fancy way for saying like, why?

• 59:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 59:28Michael Gervais?

  And so can you say it again, like, so I can hear why this matters to you?

• 59:31Lewis Howes?

  I mean, I wanted to call it mission, but my, my purpose to serve and impact a hundred million lives weekly, to help them improve the quality of their life.

• 59:39Michael Gervais?

  Dope. So why is that important to you?

• 59:43Lewis Howes?

  Because I dealt with a lot of pain and suffering internally most of my life, and I don't want people to suffer the way I did. I want them to have the psychological tools, the emotional skills, to understand why they suffer, so they can get out of suffering, and then hopefully improve the quality of their relationships around them, and have a loving, beautiful, rich life.

• 1:00:03Michael Gervais?

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

• 1:00:19Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:00:20Michael Gervais?

  Okay, that's a purpose now. That's a purpose.

• 1:00:22Lewis Howes?

  So I can say you're going to help end suffering, but it's like, okay, it's kind of broad.

• 1:00:25Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, and I think you could fine tune that a little bit more than that. But that's, but why do the mission?

• 1:00:32Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:00:32Michael Gervais?

  You've got a clear mission. How many people?

• 1:00:34Lewis Howes?

  Hundred million lives weekly. And I've never hit that. But the goal is to reach and serve a hundred million lives weekly. And then them improve the quality of their life.

• 1:00:42Michael Gervais?

  Okay, so I'm even more clear that that's, that's a great mission. That's a, that, that ambition is awesome.

• 1:00:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:50Michael Gervais?

  Why? Because I know what it's like to suffer.

• 1:00:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:53Michael Gervais?

  And I want to do everything I possibly can during this lifetime to help people.

• 1:00:59Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:00:59Michael Gervais?

  Live a, live their best, whatever, fill in the blanks.

• 1:01:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:03Michael Gervais?

  So I totally get you now in that respect.

• 1:01:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:06Michael Gervais?

  It's awesome.

• 1:01:06Lewis Howes?

  Thanks.

• 1:01:06Michael Gervais?

  And it's bold.

• 1:01:07Lewis Howes?

  It is bold.

• 1:01:08Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:08Lewis Howes?

  It gives me something exciting. It demands me, it requires me to live a standard for my life every single day. To wake up and do things that, that allow me to generate those types of, I don't know if you want to call it results or impact or influence or value into the world so that people can either learn in a certain way. So that I can get guests like yourself to reveal these, this research and this information. So they have the tools so they can start applying it. It requires me to, you know, continue to make better, whatever, systems around here. Hire more people, make more, all these things.

• 1:01:48Michael Gervais?

  So what, what you're saying there is like it, your mission, your purpose that's underneath the surface and the, your method to go about it, provide bumpers to make decisions.

• 1:02:01Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 1:02:01Michael Gervais?

  Yeah. So your decisions are kind of lined up through that. And when you're, when you're outside of those bumpers, you're off mission, off purpose, off method.

• 1:02:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. When I make decisions that are out of alignment, uh, something's off.

• 1:02:12Michael Gervais?

  That's right.

• 1:02:13Lewis Howes?

  You're asking me about how's the business growing? It's like, I don't say yes to certain money also. I could be making a lot more, but I don't bring on alcohol brands. I don't bring on gambling brands because I don't feel like that serves people. Sure, they can do it if they want to, but me promoting something that isn't serving. Or at least serving to the best of its abilities, you know, it's like, you know, not everything is perfect and you know, maybe something has a little sugar in it. It's like, okay, but it's like, if you're promoting something that is poison or addictive or something like that, it's like, that's not alignment with what I'm teaching. So I don't want to take a million dollars for it. It's not going to feel right.

• 1:02:51Michael Gervais?

  It's good.

• 1:02:51Lewis Howes?

  For someone else, it might feel perfect.

• 1:02:52Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, no problems. No, no critique, no judgment, whatever.

• 1:02:55Lewis Howes?

  It's just not in alignment to my mission.

• 1:02:56Michael Gervais?

  And we all have like, um, whether clearly articulated or not, we do have first principles we're working from. We do have a reason why. And for most people, it is like, unexamined, it's like, I just, I want to be okay. So I need to make some money.

• 1:03:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:13Michael Gervais?

  And I want to be okay. So I need some attention.

• 1:03:17Lewis Howes?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:03:17Michael Gervais?

  From other people.

• 1:03:18Lewis Howes?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:03:18Michael Gervais?

  I want to be okay. So I need to know I'm part of something.

• 1:03:21Lewis Howes?

  And I've been in that place back in my twenties when you're like, you just got to make money and get out of the situation. I get it. Yeah.

• 1:03:27Michael Gervais?

  You've changed since we first met.

• 1:03:30Lewis Howes?

  How so?

• 1:03:33Lewis Howes?

  Was a lot more performance driven?

• 1:03:34Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:35Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, you've changed.

• 1:03:36Lewis Howes?

  When was that? Twenty?

• 1:03:39Michael Gervais?

  I don't know. It was like fifteen years ago.

• 1:03:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:42Michael Gervais?

  You've changed.

• 1:03:42Lewis Howes?

  I'm trying to throw a lot of healing.

• 1:03:44Michael Gervais?

  This is good. Yeah, I can feel it. Yeah, well done. So you, I mean, you, I think you're asking the questions more for your community. I think you are a good learner. You are genuinely interested, but I also think you've done a lot of work. I can just feel it.

• 1:03:57Lewis Howes?

  Oh man, I've gone deep. I mean, I'm talking years. I was doing six to eight hour, Saturday or Sunday sessions with therapists, all day sessions for years. Cause I said, how do I continue to get better? So I can serve my mission. I didn't, I didn't want to do that. I wanted to go to the beach and hang out and watch football all day on weekends in sunny California. This was years of me saying, what's it going to take for me to improve? How can I overcome this suffering? Why do I keep making these mistakes? How do I improve? How do I get better? How do I serve people in my life better? And I'm still not perfect. You know, it's like maybe perfect, but it's like, it's an improvement path. Yeah.

• 1:04:38Lewis Howes?

  That I've had to have so much courage for me, there's an emotional courage to face people, create boundaries, face myself, all these things to heal wounds of the past and get to the danger zone that you talk about emotionally, psychologically with people I care about. And people you've hurt and people. People who hurt me and all these things. Yeah. And it's like, it's been years of intense, six to eight hour sessions on weekends, every single week, not right now, but in the past, you know, five years I was doing that. And it's given me such an emotional freedom that I've never had in my life because I was willing to go there. Not just once or not just for a week, but like weekly for years.

• 1:05:24Lewis Howes?

  And it doesn't feel good and it's not enjoyable, but I wanted what was possible for me to feel incredible amounts of peace and love because I'd never felt it. And I was like, I'll do whatever it takes to get it. That's amazing, dude. I can tell. I can feel it. And I had pain in my chest for years. Yeah. Just a ball of pain and a clinchness in my throat from different things that I wasn't able to address emotionally or psychologically. It was just like stacking inside of me and just clinging to my nervous system. And I could train hard with the best of them and work hard and make money and succeed and grow. But it was, I wasn't feeling peace and love momentarily, maybe, but not like a continual feeling of it. Yeah.

• 1:06:07Lewis Howes?

  I didn't feel emotionally safe in my body and it feels incredible to feel emotionally safe. It's a, the greatest gift I've ever given myself is emotional freedom. And I want it for everyone because I know how painful life is when you don't have it. No amount of money or success or fame will give you peace if you don't have it already. You know this from working with the top. There's an amazing documentary, which I'm sure you've either heard of or seen called The Weight of Gold. I don't know if you've seen this. Of course, yeah. And it is so powerful. It's about all these Olympic gold medalists or medalists who've won the gold after 25 years of searching for this goal.

• 1:06:48Lewis Howes?

  And then either committed suicide, gone through depression, ruined their life within a year after the Olympics being over. The pressure of success, thinking this is going to solve all my problems, it's not. It's not. And if people knew this.

• 1:07:07Lewis Howes?

  I just think it would give them a sense of, again, like you said, they wouldn't be needing to perform. They'd be more focused on purpose. And living a life, doing challenging things daily, acute challenges, like you said, daily. Cause they love the process, not because they need the result to make them feel happy. Yeah, you've got the mechanics of it. And I'm doing my best to try to shout this from the rooftops and bring people like you who are the best in the world, teaching it. Yeah, it's cool. To validate these things. I'm trying to learn these myself and then implement it and integrate it into my life. Towards my dreams and my dreams are no longer just for me. You know, when I was a kid, it was, I want to be a pro athlete because it was like a selfish goal. And now, as I was telling you before, like the last time I saw you, we were in Paris at the Olympics.

• 1:07:52Lewis Howes?

  And I was telling you beforehand that I went there because I knew there was still a dream inside of me that I haven't fulfilled. But it wasn't just about me. It was about. What would it be like to, you know, the times that I felt the most goosebumps and the most inspiration and the most charge in my life. Is not when I see the most talented person in the world accomplish what they're supposed to accomplish. It's the underdogs. It's the old person. It's the guy who was too young, who wasn't supposed to make it. It's this person who had a dream that they still went for. I get chills thinking about it. And they fulfilled a dream and it inspired a generation. It inspired a world, a community, a family of people. To say, wow.

• 1:08:37Lewis Howes?

  What they had to overcome to get there, what they endured, or how they committed to it, that. What do you call it? That fundamental commitment that they had to have for the last decade for 10 seconds. I don't care if they won or lost. You're like, that story I'll remember. You know, who's the guy, gosh, Derek Redman, Derek, uh, who's the guy who got hurt in the Olympics, in the Barcelona Olympics? He was running the 400 and he pulled his hamstring. And his dream was to win a medal, but he lost the moment he like had to pull up in his hamstring. And his dad came out from the frickin', you remember this story, this dad comes out onto the track and carries him across the finish line.

• 1:09:18Lewis Howes?

  Sure, he lost in Olympics, but people remember, still talk about that 40 years later.

• 1:09:24Michael Gervais?

  Through relationships, we become.

• 1:09:26Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:09:27Michael Gervais?

  Through our relationship with ourself, through our relationship with others, through relationship with experience, through relationship with setbacks and, and successes, through relationships we become. So part of our job is to build the right psychological broth.

• 1:09:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:42Michael Gervais?

  To be great with relationships.

• 1:09:44Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:09:44Michael Gervais?

  Self and others.

• 1:09:45Lewis Howes?

  That's it.

• 1:09:46Michael Gervais?

  And that, that is something that is available to all of us.

• 1:09:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:49Michael Gervais?

  And, you know, you're, I hear your passion. My, my passion is taking these best practices that the best in the world have shown me, the laboratory of science of psychology has shown me. And to take those and share them with people that would not have access. And that's in the enterprise business world.

• 1:10:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:06Michael Gervais?

  So the folks that I am most jazzed about is taking those best practices from world's best. And then, you know, the kind of everyday worker in a corporate environment. You know, our biggest clients are like Microsoft and Salesforce and, and, and, and they're running the same playbook in their organization to set the intentional psychological skills training, the same way we set that in, in pro sport.

• 1:10:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:28Michael Gervais?

  And if I can democratize what I've learned behind the velvet rope of high performance for folks like me, for folks like you, which you're well on the path, but for folks that would never have access. I feel really good.

• 1:10:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:43Michael Gervais?

  About the investment that these people have made.

• 1:10:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:46Michael Gervais?

  And that that's where I'm at with like the passion. Yeah.

• 1:10:49Lewis Howes?

  Curious as we get to, I want to wrap it up here soon, but speaking of the last time I saw you, I was saw you because I was, I was in the lobby in Paris.

• 1:10:57Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, about it.

• 1:10:58Lewis Howes?

  Meeting the handball coach for Barcelona.

• 1:11:01Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:02Lewis Howes?

  And you, you were in the lobby there and we bumped into each other and you were coaching, you know, some Olympic team.

• 1:11:08Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:09Lewis Howes?

  And I went there because I always still wanted to see if this dream was alive. And so it's kind of synchronistic that we're meeting now. And the last time I saw you was in Paris.

• 1:11:18Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, that's great.

• 1:11:18Lewis Howes?

  Meeting with one of the top coaches in the world.

• 1:11:21Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:21Lewis Howes?

  See if he would have me on his team in Spain. And, and I remember it's crazy because I feel like I'm time traveling and in that moment, there was like a time travel moment for me because I was like, oh, I'm meeting the top sports psychologists in the world. As I'm pursuing my dream and it was like a synchronistic sign.

• 1:11:38Michael Gervais?

  Oh, really?

• 1:11:39Lewis Howes?

  Keep going. Yes.

• 1:11:40Michael Gervais?

  And I told you that. No, we had a quick like.

• 1:11:42Lewis Howes?

  It was like 10 seconds.

• 1:11:43Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, like Lewis, how you doing?

• 1:11:45Lewis Howes?

  Good to see you, man. Yeah, yeah. For me, there were so many things that were telling me, keep going.

• 1:11:50Michael Gervais?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 1:11:50Lewis Howes?

  Because I was like, ah, should I go to Paris or not? And I go, I just need to buy a ticket. I need to watch a handball game and see if it's inside of me. And I got there and the whole game, I just have chills rushing down my whole body. And it's just like, you have to continue. It doesn't mean the goal is going to happen, but I just knew I had to continue. And then I meet you.

• 1:12:09Michael Gervais?

  Right.

• 1:12:09Lewis Howes?

  And I'm like, keep going. It's like this whisper.

• 1:12:11Michael Gervais?

  That's cool, man.

• 1:12:12Lewis Howes?

  My neck is like whispering, keep going.

• 1:12:14Michael Gervais?

  Oh.

• 1:12:15Lewis Howes?

  It doesn't mean it's like guaranteed.

• 1:12:16Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:17Lewis Howes?

  But you gotta keep going. And it's been a year and a half since then. This was August 2024. We're in 2026. January 2026 recording this and I'm two and a half years out from the Olympics.

• 1:12:30Michael Gervais?

  Come on.

• 1:12:31Lewis Howes?

  There's no guarantee.

• 1:12:32Michael Gervais?

  Right.

• 1:12:33Lewis Howes?

  But I'm doing all the steps I need to training, recovery, coaching, you know, acquiring the LA handball team. I'm doing all the things, building relationships with the European teams, doing everything I can to support USA handball, investing in the sport, develop all this stuff, marketing, promotion. I'm doing everything I can. But if you could give me three pieces of coaching for the next two and a half years to try to accomplish the dream in service of inspiring the world and giving myself the best chance possible with all the training you have from four Olympics, teaching the best athletes in the world, knowing that this is not me being the freak athlete that I could, you know, be at 25, but the best that I can be at 45.

• 1:13:17Lewis Howes?

  What three pieces of advice would you give me as a sports psychologist on my journey? Pass the ball back to me.

• 1:13:26Michael Gervais?

  First, keep going.

• 1:13:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:28Michael Gervais?

  You know, like you've got an idea, you see a compelling future. Check that box. Awesome. Like really see it now. Really see what a compelling future could be.

• 1:13:39Lewis Howes?

  Visualizing it?

• 1:13:40Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, but like I think you've done that first bit.

• 1:13:42Lewis Howes?

  All the time, yeah.

• 1:13:43Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, and then underneath of it is where mental imagery would sit, but I'm not there yet. I'm like, you check the box, you're organizing your life around it.

• 1:13:51Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:13:51Michael Gervais?

  Are you fundamentally organizing your life around it?

• 1:13:53Lewis Howes?

  Oh yeah, that's my wife. That's my wife.

• 1:13:56Michael Gervais?

  It's a fundamental commitment.

• 1:13:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:57Michael Gervais?

  Okay, so I'm just checking the box and keep going, right? And you, you have the right ecosystem, internal ecosystem, which is, look, I love trying to figure this thing out and it's hard and I'm up for it. And the way you approach your life that way, you're already in the win category, if you will. Now, if you get the outcome, it's like amazing. Okay, like I want that for you. Okay, but just keep, keep going. The second is, um, I'll ask you a question. At the elite level of your sport, what percentage of people, when you're on the court, what percentage of success is related to physical skills and mental skills? Just oversimplify it really quickly. There's physical, technical and mental.

• 1:14:41Michael Gervais?

  Okay, let's do all three. Let's do it. You can manage it. What percentage of success is related to physical, technical and mental?

• 1:14:51Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:15:14Michael Gervais?

  Okay.

• 1:15:15Lewis Howes?

  So I don't know if that's sixty percent, seventy, eighty percent. But then the emotional, how you respond, the mental, the leadership skills, that's at least twenty to thirty percent.

• 1:15:25Michael Gervais?

  Okay, let's, let's go seventy, thirty, just.

• 1:15:26Lewis Howes?

  Seventy, thirty.

• 1:15:27Michael Gervais?

  We'll do like physical, physical and technical kind of in one bucket.

• 1:15:30Lewis Howes?

  If you can't run up and down the court, you can't play.

• 1:15:32Michael Gervais?

  Okay.

• 1:15:32Lewis Howes?

  It's like you need to play.

• 1:15:34Michael Gervais?

  And then say thirty on the other side, on the mental side. Okay, easy. And we're starting to build your performance model as I'm just peppering and asking some questions. Then I would say, right, great, okay. If we're to oversimplify, maybe we go thirty, thirty, thirty, just for a minute, which I'm, we're being pretty sloppy with it. Like I'd want to scrub this with you. But just on the lane that I sit in, in high performance psychology, if thirty percent of the successes is psychological, what percentage of your time will you invest in psychological skill building? Okay. And if you've got an eight hour day, call it ten hours for you, I don't know, maybe you're at twelve. I don't know where you're at with your kind of full life efforts.

• 1:16:16Michael Gervais?

  Most elite athletes don't move more than four hours a day at, at like.

• 1:16:20Lewis Howes?

  Can't.

• 1:16:21Michael Gervais?

  No, that's like.

• 1:16:21Lewis Howes?

  You need recovery, you need down.

• 1:16:22Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, so like that's the upper limit. So call it two hours of physical training a day, that would be a lot for you, actually.

• 1:16:28Lewis Howes?

  A lot.

• 1:16:29Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, I would not recommend that.

• 1:16:30Lewis Howes?

  And then I do recovery time, which I add into it, which would maybe be another hour. So sauna, ice, recovery, you know, it's just time doing recovery stuff.

• 1:16:38Michael Gervais?

  But I would fold in, if your model is seventy, thirty, I would say thirty percent of your time should be allocated to thirty percent of the success. I would actually say that

• 1:16:48Michael Gervais?

  psychological skill building is an outsized leverage.

• 1:16:51Lewis Howes?

  More time I should put into that.

• 1:16:53Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, so what does that mean? That means.

• 1:16:55Lewis Howes?

  I can only do so much physical training, right?

• 1:16:57Michael Gervais?

  You're, you've got a limitation that we all do.

• 1:16:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:00Michael Gervais?

  You've, you've got your unique and I've got my unique.

• 1:17:03Lewis Howes?

  So what would be the main psychological skills that I should invest the most time into?

• 1:17:07Michael Gervais?

  Okay, there's no reason you should not be world leading, world class with the way you speak to yourself, your self-talk. Okay, so know your epic thoughts, know exactly what those are and what gives you the right to say those kind of things to yourself. Do that work, maybe you've already done it, I don't know. I would have all three breathing training protocols to be kind of in my back pocket. There's down regulation breathing protocols, there's capacity building training calls, training protocols, and there is focus building. So I do all three of those. I would meditate every day, follow good science, 20 minutes a day would be kind of in the sweet spot. Minimum threshold is between six and eight, but you're going to get minimum results out of that.

• 1:17:50Michael Gervais?

  And I would use mental imagery as one of the greatest assets, which is playing the most beautiful movie you can imagine with you performing towards your upper capabilities, both in compromised situations and in kind of full flow. So I would play that movie in a disciplined way from multiple angles with all the senses I could as if I was actually in it. I put myself in flow state as, you know, in my mind, and I would also be in compromised situations where I'm trying to work out how to solve something that's hard to do.

• 1:18:24Michael Gervais?

  In the mental imagery. During my mental imagery. And so, you know, I worked with Felix Baumgartner, who jumped from 128,000 feet. He was the first person ever to go to that high to jump, to want to free fall and potentially break the speed. Sound barrier? Sound barrier. Yeah, thank you. First person to ever break the sound barrier. And the brightest minds in aerospace, we're not sure what would happen when his body actually traveled Mach 1. Would he, would his body remain intact? Would his arms and legs rip off? Would like, and if he went into a flat spin prior to that, all the blood would rush to his head and his feet and he would land

• 1:19:05Michael Gervais?

  because of gravity, but land with like a hemorrhage and like, you know, like serious consequences. You only get one shot at that. So Felix did that whole sequence.

• 1:19:21Michael Gervais?

  Thousands of times in his mind so that when the moment arrived, he was very familiar. He was very equipped. He worked things out. So there'd be no reason and Felix is a dear friend. We lost him recently and so I just want to honor his life and how much he taught me. He went to the stratosphere, but he brought so many with us, so many with him. So I would do mental imagery on a, on a everyday basis.

• 1:19:46Lewis Howes?

  So fundamental commitment was the first thing?

• 1:19:49Michael Gervais?

  Keep going is the first thing.

• 1:19:51Lewis Howes?

  You keep going, take the next step every day.

• 1:19:53Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, you got it. Yeah. Fundamental commitment.

• 1:19:55Lewis Howes?

  World-class self-talk, the psychological skills was world-class self-talk, breathing, training, meditation, 20 minutes, mental imagery over and over again.

• 1:20:05Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:05Lewis Howes?

  And was there one other thing?

• 1:20:07Michael Gervais?

  That's good. And then be world-class at recovery.

• 1:20:10Lewis Howes?

  Recovery, yeah.

• 1:20:10Michael Gervais?

  Yeah. And so, and then I would, I think you already have this, but I would like secondarily support it is optimism. And so like everything that comes in, like working to reinforce and build an optimistic framework.

• 1:20:25Lewis Howes?

  What happens when self-doubt comes in?

• 1:20:27Michael Gervais?

  It's fine. Work with it. Yeah. That's normal. Yeah. You know, recognize it like, oh, I see you. Oh, cool. You know what? I want to examine that and we're going to do that right now. Or, oh, I see you and be like, not now.

• 1:20:38Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:20:38Michael Gervais?

  Yeah. It's not like you need to replace that thought or be afraid of that thought. Just like, oh, not now. Come back to the task at hand.

• 1:20:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Just focus on the now. Yeah.

• 1:20:46Michael Gervais?

  Yeah. Come back to the task at hand. Yep.

• 1:20:48Lewis Howes?

  You've got an amazing podcast called Finding Mastery and you've got, which I think is powerful for everyone to have a great morning routine. And if they don't know how to structure their morning routine, you've got a morning mindset routine, which is a free PDF and audio file that people can get as well at findingmastery.com. You've got a newsletter there. You've got a lot of great resources and content that they can get. So if you want psychological skills and tools, your site's got some of the best stuff that people can get.

• 1:21:17Michael Gervais?

  Thanks, man.

• 1:21:17Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:21:33Michael Gervais?

  No, listen, I appreciate the conversation and the most meaningful like.

• 1:21:39Michael Gervais?

  Opportunity that I could try to capture from your community is like if you're a business leader and you want this for your organization or for your team.

• 1:21:49Michael Gervais?

  We've got a know how, we've got a way, and we would love to do that.

• 1:21:52Lewis Howes?

  You guys coach executives and teams and setting these standards and processes for organizations.

• 1:21:57Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, as large as Microsoft, Satya Nadella and his senior leadership team and all 220,000 people. And as small as like, you know, hundreds of folks in the organization to run the same playbook that we want to run with world-class sport organizations.

• 1:22:10Lewis Howes?

  And you work with the Seahawks and other sports teams. You've worked with many Olympic teams over the last four Olympics. So world-class leaders, athletes, artists, you've trained them, you've worked with them, you've studied from them on how to apply this into everyday life for people. So if people are looking to get in the top 16% of performers in life or top 1%, use these strategies and tools to support your daily process.

• 1:22:37Michael Gervais?

  Thank you, Lewis.

• 1:22:37Lewis Howes?

  Of course, man. I've got two final questions. This is called the three truths. I don't remember what you shared last time, but I wonder if it's different this time. Imagine get to live your life for the rest of your life as long as you want to live, but eventually it's the last day. And you get to accomplish and experience life the way you want to, accomplish all your dreams. But for whatever reason, on the last day, you've got to take everything with you. Your work, your content, your message, your philosophies, your training, this conversation, it's all gone. Podcast gone, hypothetical. But in the last day, you get to leave behind three truths from everything you've learned about life or anything you want to share. What would those three truths be for you?

• 1:23:19Michael Gervais?

  Everything you need is already inside you. I am so clear on that.

• 1:23:26Michael Gervais?

  The second would be what you develop is what you can give. And so invest in your inner life so that you can be great for others. Love kind of runs the whole show.

• 1:23:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:39Michael Gervais?

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

• 1:24:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:24:01Michael Gervais?

  That's cool. Yeah. So I go, those are definitely not what I thought for the, you know, 10 years ago, those are what is available to me right now.

• 1:24:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:08Michael Gervais?

  And what I'm working on, like, to be able to say maybe in the next 10 years with you is like, I'm really working on being unbothered.

• 1:24:16Lewis Howes?

  By it all, by it all?

• 1:24:18Michael Gervais?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:18Lewis Howes?

  Anything that comes your way or?

• 1:24:20Michael Gervais?

  Yeah. Like, I know what is foundational to me. I know what I'm working toward. And like, just be unbothered. Like, I don't know how this thing works. You know, the Chinese farmer is an unbothered approach. You're familiar with that Zen koan. Unbothered. I just really love that.

• 1:24:38Lewis Howes?

  It's your next season.

• 1:24:39Michael Gervais?

  Yeah. And I'm really working on playing more. I'm a really intense person.

• 1:24:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:44Michael Gervais?

  And I love that. It's good for me, but I get really intense quickly. And so like,

• 1:24:47Lewis Howes?

  You're gonna have more fun in your life.

• 1:24:49Michael Gervais?

  I do want to play more. And so those are the, maybe next time it's like, be unbothered, play more, you know?

• 1:24:53Lewis Howes?

  That's good. That's good. Yeah. There's a lot of science behind play and how it helps you get in flow more.

• 1:24:58Michael Gervais?

  A hundred percent.

• 1:24:58Lewis Howes?

  It's like being more, instead of like so focused and intense all the time, it's like, being a little lighter, you know, it's like having a little fun, like,

• 1:25:05Michael Gervais?

  That's right.

• 1:25:05Lewis Howes?

  loosening up, right? Uh, I want to acknowledge you, Mike, for the constant service you have to everyone.

• 1:25:11Michael Gervais?

  Thank you.

• 1:25:12Lewis Howes?

  You know, you're constantly trying to help people be better through your skills, through your science, through your research. And again, emotional regulation, I think, is the key to living a fulfilling life. And you give people skills and tools on how to mentally and emotionally regulate, which is the thing is the most powerful thing to love deeper, to live better, and to be your best self. So I want to acknowledge you for,

• 1:25:34Michael Gervais?

  Thank you.

• 1:25:34Lewis Howes?

  constantly serving in the ways that you do.

• 1:25:36Michael Gervais?

  Awesome. Thank you.

• 1:25:37Lewis Howes?

  And my final question, what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:25:40Michael Gervais?

  Yeah, I don't remember what I said last time, but I think, um, it is not externally measured. I think greatness is, um, exploring the edges of what you're capable of. And it's, I'm more about the process of the whole thing than the outcome of it. So greatness is an honest commitment to, uh, what, what you're capable of, who you're capable of being.

• 1:26:02Lewis Howes?

  There you go.

• 1:26:02Michael Gervais?

  And I put an asterisk, being and doing are two different things in my mind. You know, so an honest commitment, a fundamental commitment,

• 1:26:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:09Michael Gervais?

  to what you're capable, who you're capable of being.

• 1:26:12Lewis Howes?

  Thanks, Mike. Appreciate you. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you

• 1:26:52Lewis Howes?

  if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.