Dr. Michael Gervais: How to Perform Under Pressure Without Destroying Your Mental Health | Mental Health | E383

How do you master the psychology of performing under pressure without falling apart? For over 25 years, Dr. Michael Gervais has worked with elite athletes and high performers who look unstoppable on paper, yet crack when the stakes are highest. Through decades of research and coaching, he’s uncovered what separates those who rise in high-pressure moments from those who spiral. In this episode, Michael breaks down the mental skills top performers use to stay calm, focused, and creative under pressure, and how entrepreneurs can apply the same frameworks to protect their mental health and perform at their best. In this episode, Hala and Dr. Michael will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (03:13) Mastery of Self in an AI World (06:47) Why Entrepreneurs Need Mental Training (10:25) Practical Ways to Train Your Mind Daily (18:20) Mastering Breath Work and Mental Imagery (27:40) The Psychology of High-Pressure Performance (38:11) Goal Setting Without Fear of Opinions (47:35) Managing Emotions in Leadership (54:56) Building Psychological Safety Within a Team (1:00:10) How to Truly Understand Your Team Dr. Michael Gervais is a high-performance psychologist, bestselling author, and host of the Finding Mastery podcast. He has worked with world record holders, Olympians, internationally acclaimed artists and musicians, MVPs from every major sport, and Fortune 100 CEOs to optimize mindset and performance. Dr. Michael is widely known for his work on mastery of self, emotional regulation, and thriving under pressure. Sponsored By: Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at ⁠Indeed.com/PROFITING⁠ Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at ⁠Shopify.com/profiting⁠. Spectrum Business - Visit ⁠Spectrum.com/FreeForLife⁠ to learn how you can get Business Internet Free Forever. Northwest Registered Agent - Build your brand in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes at ⁠northwestregisteredagent.com/paidyap⁠ Framer - Publish beautiful websites. Go to ⁠Framer.com/profiting⁠ and get 30% off their Framer Pro annual plan. Intuit QuickBooks - Take control of your cash flow at ⁠QuickBooks.com/money⁠ Quo - Run your business communications for free plus get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to ⁠quo.com/profiting⁠ Working Genius - Take the Working Genius assessment at ⁠workinggenius.com⁠ and get 20% off with code PROFITING Experian - Manage and cancel unwanted subscriptions to reduce your bills. Get started now with the Experian App and let your Big Financial Friend do the work for you. Huel - Get all your daily nutrients from Huel and get 15% OFF with code PROFITING at ⁠huel.com/PROFITING Resources Mentioned: Michael’s Podcast, Finding Mastery: bit.ly/F-Mastery Michael’s Book, The First Rule of Mastery: bit.ly/TFROM Michael’s Website: findingmastery.com Michael’s Instagram: instagram.com/michaelgervais Michael’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drmichaelgervais YAP E287 with Dr. Michael Gervais: youngandprofiting.co/TRBYMAPE287 Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Wellness, Biohacking, Motivation, Manifestation, Brain Health, Life Balance, Self-Healing, Positivity, Happiness, Sleep, Diet

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

• 0:00Hala Taha?

  Today's episode is sponsored in part by Northwest Registered Agent, Whatnot, Mod, and AG1. Northwest Registered Agent gives you the tools and guidance to build a complete business identity. Start using free resources at northwestregisteredagent.com/ yapfree. Whatnot helps sellers grow through live shopping, community, and real-time connections with buyers. Search Whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T, in the App Store, download, and you can start selling right away. Mod connects qualifying patients with licensed medical providers for modafinil to support sustained energy, focus, and alertness throughout the day. Visit mod.com for a free consultation and get 10% off your first order plus free shipping with promo code PROFITING.

• 0:45Hala Taha?

  See their website for important safety information. AG1 Next Gen supports your nutritional foundation with vitamins, minerals, pre- and probiotics, and superfoods. Go to drinkag1.com/profitting and get a free immune support bundle with your first subscription order. As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at youngandprofiting.com/deals.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  The world right now is saying we're more anxious, more depressed, more addicted, more loneliness than we've seen in our lifetime, at least. If you want to live in a way where you have buoyancy, and joy, and happiness, and a fire in your belly, then you need to train the skills. And those skills are psychological skills.

• 1:30Hala Taha?

  Today, we're diving deep into the mental side of greatness with one of my favorite returning guests, Dr. Michael Gervais. He's a high-performance psychologist, and he's here to show us that real success starts in the mind.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  When we study the greats, they are not trying, for the most part, to be the best. They are trying to be their best. The mastery of self is really when you understand who you are and how you work. And it is really about...

• 1:54Hala Taha?

  Talk to us about why we need to avoid FOPO and how we can.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  Fear of people's opinions, we believe, according to our research, is the greatest constrictor of somebody's potential. This is not not caring about other people's opinions. Okay? This is about the excessive worry. Now, the thing about this, Hala, is that...

• 2:29Hala Taha?

  Yap gang, we talk a lot about mastering our craft, but how often do we talk about mastering ourselves? Today, we're diving deep into the mental side of greatness with one of my favorite turning guests, Dr. Michael Gervais. He's a high-performance psychologist who's coached Olympic athletes, Navy SEALs, and top CEOs. And he's here to show us that real success starts in the mind. In this conversation, we're unpacking the science of mental training, how we can sharpen our focus and emotional control. And Dr. Gervais shares powerful tools like breathwork, mental imagery, and journaling to help us unlock our potential in both work and life. And hey, if you're new here, make sure you hit that follow button on your favorite podcast player so you can keep listening, learning, and profiting.

• 3:11Hala Taha?

  Michael, welcome back to Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  I love being on this podcast and having conversations with you. So thank you again.

• 3:20Hala Taha?

  I'm really looking forward to this conversation. I know last year, we talked a bit about mastery. But since we last talked, the world has changed so much. Everything is so AI-driven. We're using AI every day in our lives. And so I'm wondering, since we last talked, how has mastery evolved in your mind?

• 3:39Speaker 01

  The concept of mastery has not evolved. And let me just re-ground, but the world around us has. And I think that that's one of the really important characteristics of the nature of mastery, is that there's a timelessness to the idea. And I and others, I think, are really happy to upgrade when the timing is called for. But so far, it still holds true. And just to re-ground though, there's mastery of self and mastery of craft. And it really is about the path of becoming one's very best and moving toward the ability to artistically express yourself, whether it's on canvas or in Word or whatever it might be,

• 4:22Speaker 01

  to artistically express yourself on demand, independent of the conditions around you. And so that's mastery of craft. And mastery of self is a requisite. And the mastery of self is really when you understand who you are and how you work, how your thoughts and emotions work in set environments. And you have a command of yourself, no matter where you are or what the conditions are. So that's the path of mastery of self and the path of mastery of craft. And AI has not changed that. If anything, it's called for a deeper investment in mastery of self and mastery of craft, because the conditions are changing underfoot.

• 5:03Hala Taha?

  I'm really glad that you gave us this foundation of mastery of self, mastery of craft. Why don't we go a little bit deeper on that? Why don't you tell us what that really shows up like in our day to day lives? I know you work a lot with athletes, but if we're executives and entrepreneurs.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  You can pick any craft that's of interest to you, whether it's athletics or entrepreneurship or artistic expressions. And whatever that thing is, is actually not as interesting to me as the other part, which is mastery of self. But mastery of craft is just the pond that we're agreeing to swim in, the pond that we think is interesting to swim in. Again, whether it's a sporting pond or an artistic pond or entrepreneurship. And it is almost like the excuse to better understand who you are, how you're becoming, and the skills required to be artistic in your own sense of self. And so when I think about mastery of craft and self,

• 6:00Speaker 01

  that gives great range to explore who are we really capable of? How who are you capable of becoming? And that really is the quest of mastery of self. And again, just like psychology is not confined by the environment or the room that we're in, your psychology goes everywhere you go. Your mind goes everywhere you go. So whatever environment that you're inhabiting is the opportunity to work through and express yourself at the highest level. And whether it's entrepreneurs who are trying to figure out deal making or trying to figure out how to maximize output, whatever it might be, that's just the excuse. You know, that's the agreed upon pond that we're all swimming in.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  And it is really about, do you have the internal capabilities to be at home with yourself, wherever you are? And that, again, is a different way of thinking about mastery of self.

• 6:55Hala Taha?

  What kind of obstacles and challenges do you see when people are trying to master themselves, especially when it comes to entrepreneurs?

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Okay, so I said this the other day to a friend of mine, and he's a world-class singer. When I say world-class, I mean world-class. And so I said to him, wow, that is beautiful. I wish that I could sing a tenth of the way that you sing. I think I'm kind of tone-deaf, and I just don't think I could ever get anywhere close to that. Like, thank you. And he reflexively pointed back to me and said, asked me a question. He said, how often do you train singing? I said, oh, no, I really think I'm kind of tone-deaf. And he says, oh, that's really rare. He says, but so how often do you train? I said, no, I don't train. He says, well, how would you expect to be good at it? And I was like, fair point. And I think the same holds up in my relationship to singing.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  I had this idea that I could never sing like that, and he's just pointing to like, if you put in the work, you might get close, you would definitely get better. And I hold that same framing for the becoming of your very best. What I mean by that more in particular is dealing with stress well, dealing with frustration well, dealing with things that don't go according to plan well, working with emotions well. And the world right now is saying we're more anxious, more depressed, more addicted, more suicide ideation, more loneliness than we've seen in our lifetime at least. And so the health of the world, the mental health of the world, is not great right now. And that's because the external conditions are thorny, and they're fast, and they're

• 8:33Speaker 01

  moving in what seems to be erratic ways, meaning AI is coming in, the way that we're working has really changed in a lot of ways, not just because of AI, but because of COVID and because of the aspirations of how we want to live our lives. The old way is not working.

• 8:48Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  I give you the best of me to the company, and the company says, here's some money. That no longer works. Right? So there's a new model that's happening for us and we're still forming our ways through it. Okay, so back to my original point is if you want to live in a way where you have buoyancy and joy and happiness and a fire in your belly and this feeling behind your eyes to get after it, a connection with other people, then you need to train the skills and those skills are psychological skills. Now, what we have inhabited is from our parents and grandparents. We have adopted this way of thinking about psychology that it's for the weak, it's for those that don't

• 9:34Speaker 01

  have their stuff together, it's taboo. That is changing, not fast enough. And I would just suggest that if you want to live your very best life, I don't understand a way through that aspiration without training your own mind, without knowing how your mind works, how your emotions work together. And that really is, for me, what the definition of psychology is. It's the study of yourself so that you can build the right tools to live with joy and happiness, purpose and meaning, connection, fill in the blanks. Just like I was saying to the singer, "I wish I could," he's saying in the same exact thing that I say, "You can, you have to train."

• 10:17Speaker 01

  And people say to me, "God, I wish I could just live a little bit more free or happy or connected." You can, you have to train though. And it's not physical training. That's good, that's important, but it's something else with that, which is emotional, mental training.

• 10:34Hala Taha?

  I'd love to explore that more. You know, we love actionable advice on the podcast. So what are some tangible ways that we can actually train our minds? Therapy comes to mind, of course, but I'm sure you've got other daily ways that you're training your mind.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Let me frame it and then I'll drop right down to the actions. I've spent the last 25 years working with world's best in sport and high pressured environments across multiple disciplines. And it's apparently clear to me that there's three things that we can train as humans. We can train our craft, that's the technical skills. We can train our body, the physicality for health and mobility, whatever. And we can train our mind. So when you ask about how do you train the mind? I just want to put it in context that it's only one of three things as humans to invest in, in the way of becoming your very best. So now we drop down one level and we think about how to train the mind. There's two basic camps.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  One is self-discovery, the process of really understanding. And the other are mental skills training. You need both. So self-discovery is marked by three things. Conversations with people of wisdom. So maybe that's therapy, maybe that's sitting with your grandmother, maybe it's a priest or a rabbi or somebody, like somebody that has wisdom. That's one. The second is journaling. It's really hard to fake yourself out. It's really hard to kind of offer something on a piece of paper that isn't honest and real. And when you do that work, you become more clear. And then the third is meditation and mindfulness. So that meditation, journaling and conversations with people of wisdom, those are the three

• 12:15Speaker 01

  for self-discovery. There is no shortcut here. There is no seven steps or hacks or tricks or tips. It's like, go do the work. Okay, that's one. Now, the mental skills training, the other bucket, if you will. The way we train mental skills is the same way we would train technical skills or physical skills with sets and reps. So you start off like if, I don't know, do you play a sport or an instrument? Or do you have something that as an art or movement that you're invested in?

• 12:47Hala Taha?

  I love Pilates.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  So let's do Pilates just for fun for a moment. When you first go to a Pilates class, you need to get familiar with the apparatus. You need to understand what this reformer does. So there's a basic kind of knowing what the mechanics of the machinery are, right? Same truth in psychology. What are the basic skills? So on a reformer, you've got a platform that moves. You've got some springs. You've got a bar behind you that you can leverage. In psychology, you've got self-talk. You've got emotional regulation and you've got imagination. That's the three main parts to psychological skills. On your first session in Pilates, you would maybe do something kind of easy, right? You're not going to load up a bunch. You need to understand how it works. So we start in an easy path and then we move our way up

• 13:34Speaker 01

  to something a little more challenging. And eventually it's like really at the edge of what's hard. Okay. So there's a stacking of intensity, if you will. The same is true for psychological skills. If you're going to do, say, breathing work, you would start something relatively easy, understand the mechanics of the breath, and then you would progressively work into a more intense practice. Let me give a more concrete example. It sounds easy. It's not a trap question here, but how many parts to a breath are there? How long?

• 14:07Hala Taha?

  Well, there's inhale, there's exhale, there's holding it. Three?

• 14:12Speaker 01

  There's four.

• 14:13Hala Taha?

  Okay.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  There's the inhale. Then there's a pause at the top that you could extend or make it really short. There's an exhale. And then there's a pause at the bottom that you can make it really short or long. So there's four parts to each breath. So that's like understanding what the springs do in Pilates and whatever. But we have to know the basics. Isn't it wild that as smart as you are, as successful as you are, you and your community, that knowing how many segments to a breath kind of escape us?

• 14:43Hala Taha?

  Yeah, it's like the thing we do all the time, but we don't even know about it.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  And it's pretty remarkable. We've got thousands of breaths that happen every day, but it's below conscious awareness. When you bring it to the surface, breathing can actually change your psychology and your physiology. It's a dial that you can work with. Okay, let me go back to the training now. So if there's four parts to each breath, there's three types of breathing trainings. Underneath each type, there's hundreds of iterations, but I'll give you the basics. You've probably heard of box breathing. Box breathing is like four seconds in, four second hold, four seconds out, four seconds hold at the bottom. It's a square. It's easy. Over time, you can extend it to five, five, five, five, six, six, six, six.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  And you might even do box breathing after a workout, which is a little bit harder. You might do box breathing when you're emotionally charged, which would be even harder to do. So again, you were stacking the intensity, both in time, the four second units versus the five second units, and doing it in close proximity to an elevated heart rate. That would be kind of levels up. And the reason we do box breathing is to enhance focus, first and foremost, and then you get a nice little gold dust of relaxation. But it's really a focus training. That's one bucket. And we're going to stay on breathing, which there's other tools as well. The second bucket is what's called down regulation.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  So we're going to work on relaxing through this one. So the primary objective is to relax. And for every unit inhale you have, you have double the units of the exhale. So if you breathe in for five seconds, you would have a small pause, like a half a second pause at the top, with a 10 second exhale and a half a second pause at the bottom. 12 of those in a row has been said to reset the rest and digest system in our brain and body. So it starts to get us into that more relaxed state, right? For the science friendly folks, it's the parasympathetic nervous system that would be activated at that point, the rest and digest system. So that's about after 12 breaths of a down regulation sequence.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  And then the third is to build capacity. It's to, on design, stress you out, to create an acute stressor where you have to work with yourself in this highly stressed environment. So that type of breathing protocol is like this. So it's, let's call it six seconds in, six second hold, 12 seconds out, and then a six second hold. So it's six, six, 12, six.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Okay. If you can do that 10 times in a row for three days in a row, then you would graduate to 77147. If you can do each one of those sequences 10 times in a row for three days in a row, you would graduate up to 88168. Now, the thing about this, Hala, is that at about breath three and breath eight, your body says, get me out of here. I am starving for oxygen. This is really hard. I want a break. And of course, you can always break the sequence. But when you move through it, you change your relationship with stress. You physiologically give yourself a more robust, a more anti-fragile mechanism inside your body.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  So you extend your capacity to do hard things later. So those are three basic breathing protocols. And we could also get into self-talk. We could also get into imagery and other best practices. But I don't want to just be a science nerd and give you all best practices.

• 18:27Hala Taha?

  Yeah, well, I want to know, so a lot of the people that listen to the show, they're really young, they're hustling. And for even me, like I've had Wim Hof on the show. I've had all these people talking about breathing and I can never tell myself, okay, now we're going to breathe. So what would you tell a young hustling entrepreneur that feels like they don't have any time to slow down about the importance of learning these breath techniques?

• 18:55Hala Taha?

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• 19:36Hala Taha?

  $75 sponsored job credit to help give your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast, young and profiting. That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need the right hire fast? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. What's up yap fam? If you're building a personal brand, you already know how hard it is to stay consistent with content when you're also trying to actually run your business. I love creating content, but realistically, I'm not trying to sit in front of the camera every single day. I need time to work on my business. But the problem is consistency matters. The more

• 20:21Hala Taha?

  people see your face and hear your voice, the more familiar you become. That's why HeyGen has been such a great tool for me. You can record just 15 seconds of footage, create an AI avatar of yourself, and use it to make videos on demand. So instead of constantly filming from scratch, you can create more content, stay visible, and keep showing up without making your entire life be about generating content. And you guys know I'm always looking for tools that give entrepreneurs more leverage. HeyGen is definitely one of those tools. 30 million people already use it, from solo founders to 85% of the Fortune 100. Your first three videos are free at heygen.com/profitting.

• 21:01Hala Taha?

  That's H E Y G E N dot com slash P R O F I T I N G. Heygen.com/profitting.

• 21:14Hala Taha?

  What's up yap gang? I recently had Gary Vee on the podcast and he told me something that really stuck with me. If you've got sales DNA, you've got to be paying attention to live selling, because it's one of the biggest opportunities right now online. And that really got me curious, so I checked out an app that he told me about called Whatnot. I jumped into a live show and I instantly got it. The seller was showing products in real time, answering questions in the chat, and building a real relationship with the buyers. It didn't feel like boring shopping. It felt like a community. Whatnot is the largest live shopping marketplace in The country and for entrepreneurs, the results are really hard to ignore sellers on whatnot can sell up to 10 times more than traditional marketplaces. And the number of sellers making over a million dollars a year on the platform has doubled.

• 21:58Hala Taha?

  So if you've got products to sell and you're looking for a new way to reach customers, search whatnot, W H A T N O T in the app store. Download it and you can start selling right away. That's whatnot in the app store.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  When you think about the hustle hard approach to life, it's refreshing in one way because living a great life is not marked by a foot massage and avocado toast at 10 o'clock every day. It doesn't work. So we do need to apply ourselves and we really need to apply ourselves in a deeply nauseatingly focused way. That time under tension is a prerequisite. Okay, but that's for technical skill. That's so that you can think clearly and critically technically. But when you put pressure on that system and you don't have the psychological skills to navigate that pressure. It's as if those things that you've worked so hard to be able to do, just you don't have access to it.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  And in sport, we call it choking. You don't actually choke physically choke. But you do choke off access to the way that you want to behave. You choke off access to the way that you want to relate or think. And that's what stress is. That's what pressure is. Psychological skills buffer that so that you can think creatively and critically. You can access those skills that you've built even when the pressure's on. So there's no way around it. Either you're going to grind and never really know what it's like to consistently rise to that moment to be able to be artistically eloquent when other people are overstressed and not thinking creatively and critically or imaginatively.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Or you figure out the right inputs for the output. And what I'm going to say is when we study modern day greats, they are pointing to the value of investing in their psychology. And that's essentially what the sub-science of sports psychology is built on. Psychology is built on studying people that have disorders. How does that happen? What are the ways that they think that lead to depression or anxiety? What are the genetic factors and environmental factors that lead to depression and anxiety? And then sports psychology is the study of how do the people that perform and live the greatest way we can imagine? How do they use their thinking? What is their genetic coding that they're maximizing?

• 24:24Speaker 01

  And what are the environmental triggers to help them with the behaviors that they're looking for? So it's a very long way of saying the greats are showing us how. And it's an investment in three to eight minutes, maybe upwards to 20 minutes a day, to have the internal experience that you would hope you would want to have for your kids or your teammates or your loved ones. It's not that hard. Hala, you have the time. You probably need somebody in your corner that says, hey, I'm going to do the work with you. Okay, let's report every day to each other to see if we're actually doing the journaling work, the meditation work, the breath work, the imagery work, the self-talk work. And you just go on a training program.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  If you did it, Hala, for like 90 days, every day you trained your mind, just like you train your body. Do you go to the gym and outside of Pilates?

• 25:15Hala Taha?

  Yeah, all the time, every day.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  It's because you want something from it. You want a healthy cardiovascular system. You want healthy musculature. You want to look and feel a certain way, all of that, right? So the same is on the mental side. And you go to the gym probably 45 minutes to an hour a day?

• 25:32Hala Taha?

  Yeah, an hour and 15 minutes usually.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  And that's four days a week?

• 25:37Hala Taha?

  Four or five days a week, yeah.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  I'm suggesting eight minutes a day.

• 25:40Hala Taha?

  Hmm.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Eight minutes a day. That is available for all of us. And if we don't have eight minutes a day, something's wrong with the way we're designing our life and/or we don't really understand the value of it. We don't do things we don't value. And so if we don't understand the value, that makes sense to me. And that's why I point to the greats. It takes a little bit of time to get the feelings that you're looking for, whether you're in the gym, you don't go to the gym and all of a sudden. I don't know, I have 10% body fat or something like it takes time, right? Same is true for mental training. You don't do a handful of meditations or a handful of whatever and be like, I feel so happy in my life. It takes time.

• 26:19Hala Taha?

  Is there an easy way to get started? I know you mentioned eight minutes a day. So is that an eight minute meditation? Or what are you referring to in terms of eight minutes?

• 26:28Speaker 01

  I would say that meditation, I think the narrative is clear by now, the value of it. Eight minutes of meditation a day would be a great way to start. Eight minutes of a conversation with somebody of wisdom would be an interesting play to start. But usually those are a little bit longer. Eight minutes of breathing work. It's a good place to start. Eight minutes of mental imagery. That'd be an interesting play to start. And each one of those are uniquely different. And so let me just hit on imagery. So we're on the same page. I know you've had tons of gurus about meditation and something I think is very apparent in elite sport, but less, less apparent for the rest of us is that elite athletes use their imagination

• 27:11Speaker 01

  to see themselves performing and being their very best at a later state. Imagination is the thing that allows us to predict and muse about the future. If left unchecked, if left undisciplined, it's supposed to try to sort out survival. And so our brain's mandatory algorithm is to survive. That means it's going to scan the world and find danger. That means when left to its own devices, the imagination is to muse about things that could go wrong to prevent us from being eaten by the wildebeest. So left unchecked, our imagination goes to bad situations, dangerous situations. That's totally good.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  I want to make sure my mind does not lose that bias. Okay. Naive optimism, thinking about the future in a naive way is very dangerous. Grounded optimism is awesome.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  So mental imagery is literally closing your eyes. It's a little bit easier because we're visual creatures. To close my eyes and to see a compelling future and to see me being my very best in it. And it's like creating the most beautiful movie you can imagine, and it's your movie. I asked world's most dominant UFC fighter for the history of all fighting. Okay, the most dominant UFC cage fighter. And I asked him about imagery. His name is Hickson Gracie. So some of your audience will know Hickson, many will not. He's older now. He's out of his prime of fighting long ago. And he says, mental imagery. Oh, yeah.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  That's the most beautiful movie I can imagine. I play that movie every day from multiple angles with multiple scenarios. So I can see and feel myself being my very best in what matters to me. Whether that's being great in the cage because it's dangerous and being great at home. That's the power of mental imagery. Left undisciplined, I'll come back to this full circle, is that it moves to an anxious movie. It moves to a worried movie. It's okay sometimes, but if you're feeling a certain way, if you're unsettled, if you feel anxious, depressed, overwhelmed, much of this might be the programming that is just the natural byproduct of what your brain and your mind are supposed to do to keep you alive.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  I'm suggesting, learn from what the greats do. Purposefully design that movie every day from multiple angles, multiple scenarios, where you are absolutely seeing and feeling yourself being the rock star that you want to be. The joyful, bubbly, zest, fire, whatever the adjective is, you get to create that movie. And it doesn't mean, it doesn't mean if you see it, it's going to happen. It's not like that. It's not like. If you imagine the red Corvette showing up in your driveway that is just going to show up one day, it's not like that. But when you see yourself moving gracefully, when you hear yourself in your own imagination, like adjusting and showing up in tense moments,

• 30:18Speaker 01

  you are programming yourself for future states. And so that programming is not a secret, and it is something that requires skill to do. And in elite sporting environments, we have coaches for that. And the rest of us are kind of left to our own devices to say, well, how do I do it? Just like you're asking, well, how do I do it? I'll get off this narrative now, but it's just one more thing to say. Close your eyes. Imagine the colors, the scenario, the environment, the setting, bring all of your senses to it. And that takes time to get them right. And then play the movie however you want. You can fast forward it, rewind it, see it from different perspectives, change it altogether. If you don't like it, you know,

• 31:01Speaker 01

  move on. And if you did that eight minutes a day, that's pretty cool.

• 31:05Hala Taha?

  That to me is just so, so powerful. And while I don't do a lot of breathing or meditation, I do visualize myself and really have positive imagination in terms of like what my future is. And there's been certain moments in my life, like I remember Russell Brunson asked me to speak at Funnel Hacking Live in front of 8,000 people. And I just kept envisioning like a standing ovation and like that it was going to be flawless. And I practiced a lot to make sure that would happen. But it's like exactly what I imagined is what happened in those moments.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  So let's do the public presenting thing for a minute. It's one of the great fears for Westerners. And what's at stake on that public speaking is really

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Your identity, you know, the way that they think about you. And I think it's one of the great fears for modern people is the fear of other people's opinions is like the greatest constrictor, as you and I have talked about before. But when you're doing imagery, I think if I was to shape that for you, and that's the movie you're running, I would do an eighty-five fifteen. So eighty-five percent of the time, run that movie where you are one hundred percent in control of seeing how it goes. So the audience standing up and giving you all that adulation is not in your control. So I would actually not have that be part of the imagery.

• 32:34Hala Taha?

  Hmm, so interesting.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  Put a pin in that for a minute, okay? I would spend eighty-five percent of the time seeing yourself running this beautiful movie where you're walking onto the platform grounded and clear. You put in your words, those are mine. Grounded and clear and benevolently interested and curious, but also honoring, there's things that I really want to share and I know. But I'm also like a learner. There's a unique broth that is unique to me that you need to know what it is for you. So see yourself walking or entering into the room in a certain way. And then seeing yourself stitch ideas together from slide one to two. But it's about the feeling that you're looking for, not about their response. So that's eighty-five percent of the time, okay?

• 33:17Speaker 01

  Then fifteen percent of the time, this is going to sound contraindicated. I would suggest you see yourself walking on stage, being really anxious and nervous, like maybe nauseous, maybe a poor night's sleep. Fifty percent of the time being in a compromised situation so that you get familiar with some conditions that could show up. And then seeing yourself work with those. So on the Finding Mastery podcast, we had Bob Bowman on, which was Michael Phelps' coach. And he recounts the story of Michael Phelps and how he does imagery. Michael Phelps, the greatest of all time swimming, just to ground. And he put himself in that fifteen percent category.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  And he saw himself with his goggles flipping up at the Olympic trials and water filling up his eyes as he was making the last handful of strokes towards the end there. And he was using his imagination to see how he would adjust to that because goggles flipping up and water in your eyes is really distracting, but it happens. So he says, I want to know how to respond. I want to be familiar with that. So he would play that movie handfuls of times, just so he would be familiar with it. And just because you see it doesn't mean it happens. It's not how this works, but it does ready yourself. It does prepare yourself. And it did happen for him at the Olympic Games.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  And as the story goes, he stayed on time, on pace, unfettered, unbothered by his goggles flipping up, water gushing into his eyes, and he outtouches his competitor by fractions of a second and is on the podium as a gold medalist. So that 85 15 is kind of a mix that I think is pretty sophisticated. And the other thing is it's a nice little splash at the end and maybe see yourself standing on the stage. And I mean this, just a little splash, right? Seeing yourself standing at the end on the stage and seeing the audience roar. That's cool, but it's a nice little hint. It's a nice little splash at the end and that's it.

• 35:22Hala Taha?

  Yeah, so I'm hearing you saying focus on what you can control more so. Focus on how you're going to feel. Also give a little bit of attention towards what could go wrong to prepare yourself for how to show up if something goes wrong. So I feel like those are just really, really helpful pieces of advice.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  And then the last bit on the imagery thing is know that it's hard. Okay, this is not an easy thing to do. When I do imagery with myself, so I grew up big wave surfing and I'll just use that example. I put myself in a heavy situation because there's a couple of things I want to work out. I'm paddling for a wave and when you're paddling for it, you're putting yourself in one of two of the most dangerous moments on a wave. So if you're behind at that moment where you're paddling, you get pitched. If you're too early, you get crushed. So you've got to find that right rhythm and you pop up. And I see myself in my own body, moving down the wave and then making a bottom turn to set up my next segment of the wave.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  You can see yourself in your own body or you can see yourself watching from a different perspective. The science is unclear about which is better if either is all, but you want to feel it. You want to feel it. So as I see myself bottom turning, I would see myself, my back foot slipping off. I don't want that. So I would rewind, I'd rewind my movie and put myself in a situation that I would regather myself and work through that bottom turn and have great command over that moment. And I would go at 25% speed and then I'd run it back 50% speed and then I'd run it back 75% speed and then I'd run it back 100% speed. So that takes a discipline. That takes effort.

• 37:08Hala Taha?

  Also expertise, like you know how to actually do it correctly. You might not in practice do it correctly every time, but you know how to do it correctly.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  And part of the early research here is that they would wire folks up in the laboratory and observe a couple of things. How the nervous system would fire between people that were doing the activity, in this case it was basketball, and people that were imagining the activity. And what we found is just imagining the activity would fire across the nervous system, the same bundle, the same regions, as if you were actually doing it, but it's as if it was below detectable movement. So you're getting neurological wiring across the most sophisticated part of that movement. Okay. The second thing that they

• 37:57Speaker 01

  observed is that just observing in your own mind, movement, like a basketball free throw shot, created what's called myelinization across the nerve bundle. So myelin sheath is like the rubber coating in our nervous system that that wiring has, you know, when you hold a wire and it's got rubber around it and it's got the metal through the middle. So the wiring is actually really important for efficiency of how fast the electricity moves through that wire. So the myelin in our nervous system is made up of fat cells. It's made up of partly of omega fish oils. Okay. So the more myelinization you have on your nervous system, the kind of the healthier the nervous system is, the faster it moves

• 38:42Speaker 01

  as well, the more familiar that track would be.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  And so you've got to make sure that you've got the right kind of omega balance in your body. And when you just imagine doing an action, it lays more myelin across that nervous system. And if you see yourself doing something quote unquote perfectly, it's not a word I use ever, but I'm putting it in quotes for shorthand. If you see yourself doing it expertly is the right word, then that bundle becomes more grooved. So just seeing it creates more myelin sheath across your nervous system for the expert grooving of the pathway. Hola, that's a mind blowing idea.

• 39:24Hala Taha?

  Yeah, it's like getting reps in without actually physically doing anything.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  Without sweating, without putting yourself in harm's way without, it's remarkable. The reason this is not celebrated more, I think is because we're so interested in like a cold shower. We're so interested in a sauna. These are hard, interesting modalities, but they're flavorful of where we're at at a narrative. I'm telling you right now, mental imagery visualization, as some call it, has been around for a long time. So is cold, so is heat, I get it. But it's in plain view and it's a massive, massive advantage to living the life that you want to live.

• 40:05Hala Taha?

  For somebody like me who has a little bit of ADHD and has trouble sitting still and meditating, which I know stillness is really important to everything that you teach. Mental imagery sounds like something that I can do often and in a routine.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  You know what that means to me is like with ADD or ADHD, it's just a little harder. It doesn't mean you don't do it. It's just a little harder than somebody that doesn't have it. But you know what? It's harder for me to dunk a ball than it is for somebody that's six, five. But if that's important, I got to put in the work if I want to be able to do it. Okay? It might be harder for me to do X skill in my craft than somebody else, but it's important capability. So I've got to invest in it. And I would say, I'll give you this one for you and other fidgety people. When I do mental imagery, My eyes are usually closed because I don't want to be overwhelmed, like I said, but sometimes you can do it open, no problems. But I, for those watching, you can see my hands is that I'm actually using my body to kind of sink in,

• 41:06Speaker 01

  to feel. So it's not like I'm sitting on my hands in a meditative dignified spine. You can do that. You can lay down and do imagery, or you can have slight movements where you're using your body to go through motions. Feeling yourself walk on stage, right? Seeing yourself hold a moment, feeling your arms coming out. It's slight movements. It's not the actual full movement. It's just slight movements to accompany the imagery that you're doing.

• 41:36Hala Taha?

  What's up, Yap fam? If you're building a personal brand, you already know how hard it is to stay consistent with content when you're also trying to actually run your business. I love creating content, but realistically, I'm not trying to sit in front of the camera every single day. I need time to work on my business. But the problem is consistency matters. The more people see your face and hear your voice, the more familiar you become. That's why HeyGen has been such a great tool for me. You can record just 15 seconds of footage, create an AI avatar of yourself, and use it to make videos on demand. So instead of constantly filming from scratch, you can create more content, stay visible, and keep showing up without making your entire life be about generating content.

• 42:19Hala Taha?

  And you guys know I'm always looking for tools that give entrepreneurs more leverage. HeyGen is definitely one of those tools. Thirty million people already use it, from solo founders to 85% of the Fortune 100. Your first three videos are free at heygen.com/profitting. That's H E Y G E N dot com slash P R O F I T I N G. Heygen.com/profitting.

• 42:49Hala Taha?

  What's up, Yap gang? I recently had Gary Vee on the podcast and he told me something that really stuck with me. If you've got sales DNA, you've got to be paying attention to live selling because it's one of the biggest opportunities right now online. And that really got me curious, so I checked out an app that he told me about called Whatnot. I jumped into a live show and I instantly got it. The seller was showing products in real time, answering questions in the chat, and building a real relationship with the buyers. It didn't feel like boring shopping. It felt like a community. Whatnot is the largest live shopping marketplace in the country. And for entrepreneurs, the results are really hard to ignore. Sellers on Whatnot can sell up to 10 times more than traditional marketplaces. And the number of sellers making over $1 million a year on the platform has doubled. So if you've got products to sell

• 43:34Hala Taha?

  and you're looking for a new way to reach customers, search Whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T, in the App Store. Download it and you can start selling right away. That's Whatnot in the App Store.

• 43:47Hala Taha?

  Hello, young and profiteers. If you're running a business, getting website traffic is only half the battle. The real key to profiting is turning those visitors into paying customers. And I know checkout friction can quietly kill your sales. That's why I always say, "Serious entrepreneurs build on Shopify." Shopify is a commerce platform that helps you launch and run an online store without needing to be super technical. You can build your storefront, manage your business, and make it easy for people to buy. And here's the major advantage. Shopify Checkout with Shop Pay converts up to 36% higher than the competition. With Black Friday coming up, now's the time to get your store ready and simplify your checkout experience. If you're ready to launch your business before Black Friday,

• 44:32Hala Taha?

  go to Shopify.com/profitting to start your free trial. That's Shopify.com/profitting. Go to Shopify.com/profitting today to hear your first So you had briefly touched on FOPO just now, fear of other people's opinions. We talked about it at length in our last conversation. We're going to replay that episode later this week when this actually airs. But for those who might not catch that episode, talk to us about why we need to avoid FOPO and how we can.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  Fear of people's opinions, we believe, according to our research, is the greatest constrictor of somebody's potential. So this is not not caring about other people's opinions. This is about the excessive worry and addressing the excessive, nearly incessant worry, like, are they going to think of me based on what I wear, what I say, what I eat, what I look like, what I do and don't do? This excessive worry that is a rumination underneath the surface. That is something that we must square with in modern times. Because again, our brain is designed to scan all the dangers. The great danger for our ancestors that they passed on to us was being kicked out of the tribe.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  Because if you and I were responsible for something, Hala, we were meant to go hunt something or gather something or whatever. And we're the team. And we came back empty handed. The elders of the tribe would say something like, you know, Hala, you know, Mike, we're counting on you. There's going to be some hungry kids in our tribe because you didn't bring back the stuff. What happened? And you'd say, uh, it wasn't me, it was Mike. Or you'd say, look, okay, we understand. Okay, all right, give us another shot. We understand what we did. And the elders say, okay, you got another shot. We're backing you. So we go out and if we come back empty handed again, we're relegated.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  And being relegated socially 200,000 years ago was a near death sentence. Because you and I try to figure out the wild world of the wildebeest and the warring tribes and rain and heat. It's too much. We need each other. So our brain is tuned to listen for our name. It's tuned to what are they saying or thinking? And we're playing this game, this radical game of not being rejected, of avoiding rejection. So it's this fear of rejection that is just underneath the surface. And when you shine light on it, you have some optionality. And I would never say, stop caring. I say, stop worrying.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  And I would never suggest that being free from the opinions of others is the right path. But loving other people and holding your own standard for the values and the skills that you are working on expressing, there's a different math, if you will, amongst people that are, I think, the most game changing, shifting people on the planet. And those are the ones that I highlighted in the book and in the research. And we called it the first rule of mastery. And this is literally stop worrying about what they think of you and do it a little bit differently.

• 47:47Hala Taha?

  I'm wondering how that translates into goals. People are thinking about their New Year's resolutions. When I was just telling you about my goal of funnel hacking live, that big speaking thing I did was everybody's standing up and giving me a standing ovation. And you were like, don't make that your goal. So talk to us about how we should be framing our goals with FOPO in mind and with all your knowledge about mastery in mind.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  I don't think it's a bad goal. It's just you're putting yourself, you know, the standing ovation or winning in some way. It's like, they're great. I wanted to win everything that I did when I was in fourth grade. I just don't need to think that way anymore.

• 48:24Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  And because when I'm thinking about things that are, and my goal is something that's out of my control, now I'm out of leverage. And so, listen, I want to win still, but I'm placing my inputs on things that I can completely master. So I'm not interested in controlling the controllables. I heard you say that earlier. I'm interested in fundamentally mastering the things that are in my control. So goals that are about winning, that have to do with other people's participation. There's a place for it, but it's kind of that light little dusting that I've found that the best in the world, they are not trying for the most part to be the best. They are trying to be their best.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  And they also believe that their best is so world-class that if they just string that together consistently, all of that podium, all of that money thing does happen for them eventually. So when it comes to goals, there's a place for outcome goals that by definition do not have your full control. There's a place for it, no problem. I would put 95% of my thinking power into the goals that are 100% in my control and I would fundamentally commit to mastering those. That's the way that I think we put ourselves in the greatest position for being powerful. And so the way I think, the way I use my emotions, the way I work with other people,

• 49:51Speaker 01

  all of that is the stuff that is the broth, again, of mastery. And so I would distill those. Now, there is this mezzolayer about number of downloads, maybe for your podcast network, revenue stream for whatever, or number of shows that you want to sponsor. Okay, there is a thing there that's cool, and it's not about the ultimate thing, but it's about steps along the way. But underneath the surface, the magic happens when you figure out the things that you are 100% in control of, that you can invest in every day, that lead you to those objectives, to those outcomes. That is not new. That is not new information. I just want to make sure that we're saying the most obvious as a regrounding.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  And the other thing, resolutions, we know they don't work according to research. And why is that? Is because the plan is not adequate for the idea. And so within three months, the majority of resolutions fall apart.

• 50:52Speaker 01

  So there is good science, though, about the timeliness of a fresh start. So a fresh start happens on a Monday. A fresh start happens at breakfast. Start happens on January 1st. A fresh start happens in the US, let's say Thanksgiving Day. There's a fresh start going into a holiday season, something like that. So taking advantage of this momentum that happens around fresh starts, there's good science there. So when we use January 1st as a mechanism to get our stuff together, to declare and make a promise about how we're going to do a new, fresh year. And then we put in the work underneath of it, of the things, the skills that we need,

• 51:37Speaker 01

  hopefully to master, to be proficient with. That is how the best in the world work, is that they use the beginning of a season with an idea of what they want to go do. And then they spend all of their time working on mastering the capabilities so that when they have moments, like a game, that they're able to express themselves at the highest level, what they're truly capable of. And I'll leave you with this on the goal setting thing. I spent 10 years with the Seattle Seahawks. We won a Super Bowl and we lost a Super Bowl, which is a rare thing to do, super special. Both of those years, we only talked about winning once. It was like three weeks at the beginning of the year, when we're working on our culture, when we're working on our psychology as a team approach.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  Three weeks were installing the way that we think is going to give us the best chance of training our mind, training our craft and training our body to be great teammates for each other. So each person to be their very best, so we can be great teammates to each other. That's what makes a great team. Side note, I'm fatigued about like, how do we make a great team? You be great teammates. How do you be a great teammate? You invest in you being absolutely your best in the most stressful conditions. You will never be a great teammate if you're losing your shit as soon as it gets stressful, as soon as it gets scary, as soon as it's not going according to plan. When you're blaming other people, when you are pointing your finger, when you are... Intolerant of other people's process. You will never be a great teammate. You'll never be part of a team.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  And we need each other to do the extraordinary. So I'm ringing the bell. You've got to invest in your psychology to be great at the moment of stress. Okay, back to the scenario. This three week install at the beginning of the year. And then it's a throwaway comment by usually it was both of these years in particular. It was by the head coach, Pete Carroll. And he says, if we do what we just said, and we do it to our very best abilities every day, we just might win the whole thing. That was the only time that we talked about winning. I'm being dramatic. Maybe there was another mention somewhere in the year. But as a unit, we only focused on the things that were 100% under our control.

• 53:48Speaker 01

  So I've got living proof through that story that it is an outsized investment when you are mastering the things that are in your control.

• 53:58Hala Taha?

  And that goes back to what you were talking about meditation, breathing, imagery.

• 54:03Speaker 01

  Self-talk.

• 54:05Hala Taha?

  Self-talk. Those are the ways that you can manage your emotions. A lot of the people listening to this show, they're entrepreneurs, they're executives. And when it comes to being in a high level position on a team, I feel like when things go wrong, it's usually because you as a leader were unable to manage your emotions. And I feel like whenever I can think of any low point in my career as a leader, I have 60 people on my team. It's like, man, I wish, I wish I just kept my cool or that I just handled that with a little bit more grace and poise. And those are the only times where I look back and I'm like, I'm disappointed in myself. I could make a mistake. I could lose money. Those things I don't even think about.

• 54:46Hala Taha?

  It's when I lose emotional control that I feel like that has repercussions down the line. Because the way that your team responds to you is in direct relation with the energy that you're giving out as a leader.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  There was not a word out of place. I think what is important for me to add to that, which is very little, is that we have to practice working with emotions. And so if you're practicing, just like we talked about earlier, there's steps. You practice a skill, whether it's Pilates or throwing a football or speaking or singing, in a calm environment, then a moderately intense environment, and then a highly intense environment. There's an arc. And if you think that you're going to be good with emotions in a highly stressed environment, and you're going to sort it out at that moment, but you haven't practiced emotions at the four or two levels, meaning the calm environment and/or the more moderate stressful environment, it won't be there for you. So we need to

• 55:42Speaker 01

  work with emotions in calm environments. How do you do that? Meditation, journaling, conversations with people of wisdom, putting yourself in a situation to feel and follow that feeling, name that feeling. You know, emotional intelligence is a skill set. Intellectual intelligence, general intelligence, as it's known, is pretty fixed, according to research, most research. Emotional intelligence, as one of the core foundations for living a good life, is a learned skill. And so you got to look in, you got to understand. And just naming an emotion and following an emotion is two of the really big skills to be able to have in the bucket, if you will, of performance.

• 56:27Speaker 01

  And the other bit I'll just add is that people are pretty stressed right now. And when we think about our teammates and our partners, they're carrying a lot. People are carrying a lot around with them. And the world is not designed for our success. And if we want to have the great life that we imagine, we do need to understand how to work with emotions, more importantly, how to work with feelings. So emotions are the physical things we feel, and feelings are the private things that happen. So feelings are private to you, they're private to me. I have to ask you, like I noticed that your

• 57:09Speaker 01

  breathing changed, or your heart started pounding, or, you know, your hands were shaking, what's happening? And then you would go to say, I'm really scared, or I'm really excited. Physiologically, they might look the same, but psychologically, the feelings are so private. Emotions are public. We need to work with both the observable public parts, the emotions, and the private piece, which is our feelings.

• 57:33Hala Taha?

  Let's do a little scenario work. So let's say, you know, I'm a leader on a team and the team does something that is clearly wrong. There's an SOP, they've been trained and they made a mistake and a client got mad and it's because they didn't follow what they knew they should have done. How would you manage your emotions in this case?

• 57:58Speaker 01

  It depends on a couple of variables. I've invested a lot of time and attention to work well with emotions. So my emotions are available to me and I have the ability to toggle them up, toggle them down. For the most part, I get caught in this storm of emotions as well. But so one is I just want to level set that, that I am aware because of the how much time I've practiced them. For the most part, I'm not walking on water. You know, like my wife reminds me of that all the time. So there's, there's none of that that I would ever pretend. Okay. My 17 year old son reminds me of that more than you would imagine as well. So there's an awareness. And the second thing is now we're talking about somebody didn't follow an SOP and there's a poor performance moment.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  Is that I need to know and have a relationship with that person, with my teammate, with my employee. I need to know what their scar tissues are. I need to know what their hopes and dreams are. And I need to make sure that I have a relationship with them that if I were to express frustration is fine. It's just expensive for me and it's expensive and taxing for the other person. But if we have a relationship and they know me and I know them at the right levels, I can say, John, what the fuck? And John goes, oh shit, I know. And I say, look, all right, we'll solve this later. Okay. How do we fix it? How do we fix it right now?

• 59:24Speaker 01

  And then, so we go into, maybe that's kind of the lowest performance thing, I would say. At my highest version, the thing happens and I go market, let's solve it right now. We'll come back, no worries. Let's solve this thing. Come on, let's be great. That would be a range. And I have to know how they like to be coached as well. Some people fall apart when there's public coaching. So I have to know my teammate. So well in advance, I ask all of my teammates, how do you want to be coached? How do you want to be in intense environments when they're not going well? And some will say, pull me aside. Some will say, give it to me straight, you know, right between the eyes. Some will say, so I've got to know, I've got to know myself and I've got to know them.

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  And now I'm working to kind of match those two in service of performance. If it's a post review and we're sitting down, clearly John or Suzy kind of blew it. And then I will say, okay, listen, I want to understand what happened. And I'm hot and I'm frustrated, or I'm really nervous that this is going to happen again. I'll tell them my emotional state so that they can settle down. And I'll say, listen, I might even say, we've talked about this three times. This is a dangerous conversation here. We've got to solve this, meaning you're at the end of the rope. I might say that. Or I might say, look, it's fine. This happens. We all make mistakes. What's my part in it? So again, I've got to know the person, I've got to understand the context,

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  but I've got to work within myself to make sure that I'm working my emotions rather than emotions working me. And as somebody in a position of leadership, that context is really important. You know, as soon as you get frustrated, it's kind of sends ripples that are not necessarily advantageous for people to perform better, but it does shift their physiology and tightens them up. Sometimes that's a good thing. Sometimes tightening up the physiology in people is a good thing. Sometimes it's too much and the aperture shuts down and people are like, again, they feel like choked off to their ability to think clearly.

• 1:01:29Hala Taha?

  How else can we build psychological safety within a team? So obviously controlling our emotions is a huge part of it. Is there any other tips that you can give?

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  I would say not controlling emotions, I would say working with them. So emotions are a little bit like the elephant and you are the rider. And when an elephant, an emotion in this case, wants to run, it's gonna run. So I think working with emotions rather than controlling them is how I frame that.

• 1:01:53Hala Taha?

  And also to your point, you might feel the emotion, feel the feeling, but you strategically are presenting it in a way to your team that you feel is gonna bring out the best in them and help them actually solve the problem rather than make them feel anxious or, to your point, choked.

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  That's right. And you, as a leader, need to know the artistic with how much tension, how much not. Like, we need tension, we need tension to have that right kind of diamond expressing thing. Too much tension, we crush the coal. Not enough tension, we never get to the diamond. So there is tension in the environment that is awesome. It's so fun. Sometimes I gotta bring it, sometimes they're bringing it and I gotta back it down. Like, there's an art in here. So let's ground on psychological safety first. For what aim? Okay, psychological safety as a theory is designed for people to speak truth. To power, maybe, but just to speak their truth, to share their perspective without fear of being pushed out of the tribe. Okay?

• 1:02:54Speaker 01

  Psychological safety is not in the workplace. It's not designed for therapy at work. It is not designed so that you can bring your full mess to work. That is not what psychological safety is for. Okay? Psychological safety is so that when you see something, you can say it. Right? And so, hey, listen, I've been studying this thing all day. I know no one wants to hear this right now because we've all made a decision. We're down this path, but I gotta tell you, I'm seeing something that's not right. I haven't worked it out, or, and I've worked it out and I just gotta tell you. We need that. We need the diversity of thought, the diversity of unique life experiences, the diversity of unique smells across the planet to say, this doesn't fly.

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  This language doesn't fly for that group, for this group. We need to change some stuff. So psychological safety in service of the purpose, in service of the mission, so that you can speak truth, maybe it's the power, but not always. Okay? How do you do it? You have to know your people. That's it. So we spend so much time in high-speed, high-performing environments to know each other. Because when you know each other, you have context. And when you know that there's like, okay, Hala just stepped on a tripwire here. She's kind of like in a space. Okay, hold on, hold on, hold on. Slow down, what is it? Right? Or like, I see you ripping and running.

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  You're animated about something and I, I know, I know your, maybe your kids' names. I know some stuff about you. I know that this is really exciting. Or you're fresh, whatever. If we know each other, we're more likely to take care of each other. And again, it's in service of this shared thing that we're coming together for. That's a lot there. How do we do it? We take time to know each other. Full stop. That's how you do it. And I'll tell you a story. It was in Formula One. I spent some time in Formula One, one of the most high-performing sporting environments on the planet. And after the race, I mean, the engineers, we all know the, the athletes. They call themselves the pilots, the drivers of the cars. And they're kind of the stars. The car itself is a star in Formula One.

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  And there's thousands of people that are working to help the car and the driver to shave off hundreds of a millisecond across high-speed corners. This is an all-in, high-speed, high agile, consequential environment that they're working in. After debrief, the meetings that I've been part of, in one team in particular, the engineer, the lead engineer would raise his hand after the meeting and start the meeting by saying, okay, everybody, here's the two ways that I screwed up. You know, here's the two mistakes I'm going to sort out. I don't have the answers, but I, I'm aware of A, B, and C that I did at this moment, in this moment. And, um, you know, I'm going to look for Hala. I want to connect with you afterwards to, to make sure that you help me through some of these blind spots.

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  So they are showing that they are part of the ecosystem and none of us is perfect, of course. So when a leader does that, it creates air cover for other people to speak the truth about what happened. So again, it's in service of the shared mission. And if everybody's in service of the mission, but the mission is not in service of their experience in life, that doesn't work. It's an exhaustive, extractive model. So the company needs to know their, their mission or purpose, and the individual needs to know their purpose. And then we're in service of both of those together. That's what great teams do. That's what great teammates do for each other.

• 1:06:32Hala Taha?

  I have so many follow up questions, but the first one that comes to mind is when we're trying to get to know our employees. You had mentioned, we want to understand how they want to receive feedback. What other questions should we be asking people to really understand them and to work better with them?

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  These are hard questions, but there's no secrets in it. Everyone I work with, you know, whether they're athletes or teammates here at Finding Mastery, I want to know their personal philosophy. I want to know their first principles that they're working from. I want to know the values that those principles rest on. And I'll, I'll explain all these in a minute. I want to know what the compelling future that they're working toward. I want to know their purpose in life. Now, those are all very distinct, separate things that kind of get confusing for some people. But when I ask you how like, what's a compelling future that you see in your mind that you're working towards?

• 1:07:22Hala Taha?

  I envision having a hundred top business podcasters in my network, and I have a company that makes $30 million a year and a happy team.

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  There you go. Okay, that's the vision. And I go, oh, okay. Yeah, I want to be part of that, too. And then you say, Mike, what's yours? And I'll just, I'll make something up for the sake of like an opposite. And I say, you know, I want to be, this is actually true, but my vision of success is

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  Like having an adult relationship with my son and you go, oh, I'd like to help you with that, too. So now we got this thread. So that's us sharing this beautiful future state. That's why we're working so hard. I say, yeah, I'm gonna, I want to help. I want to participate. I want to be part of yours and I'd be stoked if you could support me along the way. And maybe you say, look, I'm going to pay you a lot of money and this is going to be a great environment and that's how I'm going to be in service. Awesome. We're clear. And then I say to you, what are the most important values? When you get tested, what can I trust? How are you going to show up from your values? And you would say, just give me one.

• 1:08:33Hala Taha?

  Loyalty. Excellence.

• 1:08:35Speaker 01

  Oh, you got two. Okay, great. And then I say loyalty. I say, okay, how do I know if you're going to be loyal to me or the brand? Now I'm asking you about your first principle. Cause you might say something like loyalty to those that are in my inner circle. Am I in it or not? Like, I need to know, like, how do you express that value? So you don't need to answer that. Like, you know, and then I would say, like, when it all comes down to, what is the philosophy that you're working from? And you might say, you know, my philosophy, I'll tell you mine, is that every day is an opportunity to create a living masterpiece. I see every day as the platform. I see it as an opportunity. So there's an optimism to it. I see creating something with other people like part of

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  it. And the masterpiece is the expression of my craft and myself in the most capable ways. So like, you go, oh, that's kind of what you're doing. That's your philosophy. Okay. So the compelling future, you got some values that you're working from. There's this philosophy thing. And then the last is what is your purpose? Can I ask you? Like, do you know your purpose? It's a big question.

• 1:09:42Hala Taha?

  It's a big question. Whenever I think about my purpose, I think about my ability to use my voice and my skills to help other people in their own entrepreneurship journey. So inspiring others to be great entrepreneurs.

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  That's a purpose. Why are you here? I'm here to help other people become. Better entrepreneurs, more themselves, whatever you color it, right? So a purpose has to have three things. It's got to be meaningful to you. Sounds like it is, right? It's got to be in service of something bigger than you. So when you're in service of one other or mores, more than one, it's bigger than you. And the third is it's out in front of you. It's something to work toward. So you just by definition, according to science, hit on all three of the vectors of purpose. And when you kind of put that constellation together, now I really know you. And then if you're like, Mike, that's really it. And I go, is it like this or like that? And we just kind of fine tune it. You go, yeah, it's more like that.

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  And then I would say to you at the end, I'd say, how do you want me to support and challenge you? And then we have that conversation. Now we're on the path to be great teammates. Now, if I am selfish and messy, and if I just told you a narrative, but I don't really believe it, and I'm just really kind of doing something else, we'll never be good teammates, you know? So those people, you gotta move out. They're not part of it. That might be hard because they might be high earners, but they kill culture. They kill the team. And so I have not yet met or worked with a world-class coach in sport and business, not coach in business, but executive in business, that hasn't said the same thing. Why did I wait so long to get rid of them?

• 1:11:27Speaker 01

  And I'm talking about the high earners that are saboteurs of other people's potential. Why did I wait so long? Ugh, I was scared. I was scared that they were going to take revenue and leave. I was scared that I was going to lose marketplace. I was scared that, you know, they were going to cost a game here or there.

• 1:11:43Hala Taha?

  Yeah, sometimes you gotta focus on the long term, not the short term. So I want to be respectful of your time. So I end my show, Michael, with two questions that I ask all of my guests. The first one is, what is one actionable thing our young improfitters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

• 1:12:01Speaker 01

  Understand the inputs to output when it comes to your psychological skills. Invest in one of the greatest inputs you'll ever have. Invest in how you work with your own psychology. Know yourself so that you can be a great teammate for others. And then the outputs start to flow in the right direction. Invest in your psychology.

• 1:12:22Hala Taha?

  I couldn't agree more. And what would you say your secret to profiting in life is? And this can go beyond business.

• 1:12:30Speaker 01

  I think my secret is that there are no secrets. There are first principles in life that I'm working from. And for me, profit, I think of holistically. And so I would put in place of that, this idea of living a great life. So what are the principles to living a great life? The research from Harvard's 85 year study pointed out eloquently two of them. Connection and purpose. So my relationship with myself and other people, my relationship with experiences and mother nature, that's the connection thing. So I invest there. And then I'm making sure that I'm lining up my thoughts, words and actions according to the purpose that matters most to me. So those two, I think, are in plain view.

• 1:13:14Speaker 01

  And if you couple that with, you know, investing in your own psychology, I think you really got something.

• 1:13:20Hala Taha?

  And where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?

• 1:13:24Speaker 01

  The podcast is a fun place. Finding Mastery is a podcast. You know, our website is findingmastery.com. And on social, Michael Gervais, spelt like Ricky Gervais, but with Michael in front of it.

• 1:13:36Hala Taha?

  Yeah, and he's got a great podcast, guys. So I'll put the link in the show notes and you guys should check it out. Thank you so much, Michael, for all of your wisdom and your time.

• 1:13:44Speaker 01

  Always a pleasure. Thank you so much.

• 1:13:51Hala Taha?

  What a transformative conversation with Michael. He just handed us the exact blueprint that the world's greatest athletes and performers use to unlock their potential and achieve mastery. And here's the truth that landed the hardest for me. Mastery isn't some distant goal reserved for the elite. It's just about two things. First, understanding who you are and how you work. And second, building the skills to express yourself at your highest level, no matter what is happening around you in that moment. And here's the beautiful part. While AI evolves and the world changes, these fundamentals will stay timeless.

• 1:14:25Hala Taha?

  Michael made mental training ridiculously practical. Just eight minutes a day is all you need. That's all it takes. Box breathing for laser focus, down regulation breathing to activate your rest and digest system, capacity building breathing to literally expand your ability to handle stress. These aren't gimmicks. They're psychological skills that separate people who crumble under pressure from those who thrive in it. And the 85 15 imagery rule completely shifted my perspective. I was doing it all wrong. Michael encourages us to spend most of our mental rehearsal on what we can control, your preparation, your mindset, your feelings, how you'll execute. Then practice responding when things go sideways as well. Don't only focus on what could go great. Focus on what could go wrong and how you'll handle it.

• 1:15:09Hala Taha?

  Michael Phelps won gold with water flooding his goggles because he already lived that moment hundreds of times in his imagination. I love the concept of mental imagery and I can't wait to use this tactic. And this is where it gets real. Stop obsessing over outcomes you cannot control. That standing ovation, that revenue target, that promotion, that's not where your power lives. Put 95% of your energy into mastering what's completely yours, how you think, how you handle emotions, how you show up. When you consistently nail those inputs, everything else will follow. And here's what I'm going to leave you with. Yap, bam. The world's best are not winging it. They're training their minds with the same discipline they bring to their bodies. Your psychology goes everywhere that

• 1:15:52Hala Taha?

  you go. So train it, sharpen it, master it, and make time for it. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Young and Profiting. If you enjoyed the show, drop us a five star review on Apple, Spotify, Castbox, wherever you listen to the show. Nothing makes me happier than reading a great review from you. And if you want to watch this episode, all of our episodes are uploaded onto YouTube. Go there, support us, subscribe to that channel, join the community. You can also find me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn by searching my name. It's Hala Taha. And of course, before we go, I've got to give a big shout out to my incredible Yap team. Thank you guys so much for all your hard work. This is your host, Hala Taha, AKA The Podcast Princess, signing off.