Confidence, Anxiety, Resilience and More | AMA Vol. 4 with Dr. Michael Gervais

All right, welcome to another Ask Me Anything. I'm Dr. Michael Gervais by Trade and Training, a high-performance psychologist and host of the Finding Mastery Podcast. For this AMA, a friend of Finding Mastery is dropped by. He's an actor, an improv artist, a former member of the Groundling Sunday Company, and he's got an epic new podcast called Three Black Eyes on a Couch. O'Neill, Cespidus, welcome to the Mastery Lab. This is going to be great. All right, great. Dr. Mike, how you doing today? Great. Awesome. My man Pedro says, what are the steps to build resilience? Okay. It's a buzzword first. People want resilience. They wanted the ability to, what most people think is bounce back. Really, it's about being able to put your foot in the ground and bounce forward. So resilience is something people want. And the hard part about building resilience is that you have to go through hard times. You have to do difficult things. And so in the current state that we're in right now, when somebody asks that question, the first thing happens for me is I go, okay, what's really happening because we are in hard times. So how are we going to build resilience on top of the stress, the ambiguity, the uncertainty that's taking place right now? Which is really hard because it's like piling stress on stress. So how do you build resilience? Let me be uber clear. Is that you need to be able to go through and experience hard things. And there's three very specific ways that we think about it. If you go through a hard experience and you, the three C's, we'll keep it that way. And you stay committed to your purpose in life. And if you don't have that, you stay committed to see the hard thing through. Okay. The first C is commitment. The second is that you've reframe it like, okay, this is a challenge. This is an opportunity for me to see what I have. Just be able to rise to this challenge because my purpose matters. Okay. So it's commitment, challenge, and then the third C is about control, controlling what you can control. So if Pedro, you're going through something tough right now, then and you anchor to those three C's, you will be in the process of building resiliency. Because people that go through hard times or they're in the thick of it right now, but don't leverage those three, you just go through a hard time. If you want resilience, purposely design experiences or when your inexperience is leveraged those three, and here's what I add to it. You can build resilience by not just doing the difficult thing that's required of you. You can do it by searching out doing difficult things. What does that mean daily? It means having a hard conversation with someone that you love. It means being honest and truthful. So it doesn't need to be physical. It doesn't need to be technical at work. It can be emotional at home and it requires a bit of vulnerability. How about it? Okay. That last one seems like, if I'm speaking honestly here, that last one seems like something a lot of us don't want to, I mean, I don't want to have a hard conversation. I don't want to. If I see someone that I owe money or something to or not, I see them across the street, across the street, until I get the money to give it to them, right? So that's not where I went. Yeah. So to your point, you don't want to do always build on the hard thing. And I relate to that as well. But I'm not thinking about who I'm owing money to. I don't owe anybody money. I'm just saying. This is an example. I'm just an example. Major, I hope you got something from that. I understood that. Don't want anybody any money. Nico has a long question for you, Dr. Mike. And when I say Nico has a long question for you, it's a long question. I love your energy and wisdom. I have a question about my son. He's 17. He started playing tennis at eight. He has a dream to play college tennis in the USA. During practice, he performs at a very high level, but unfortunately, he can't perform during matches. He's not present. He double falls. And I don't know what that means. He double falls. He pushes the ball rather than hitting it. He chokes. He feels disgusted with himself. He wants to quit mid-match, but he doesn't want to quit tennis. He still wants to chase his dream. What do you think is wrong and what can I do to help him? Chase. Not only is it long, which I love long, that's cool. It's set up like when I hear that, I have a response, which is like, well, you just called out everything wrong with your kid. Okay, maybe you were trying to give the symptoms. Maybe you're trying to identify the things that aren't working. I wonder if that's part of the framing that the way that you see life and or your son, and or your son's condition. I would start, if he was in the room with us, I would say, tell me about his dream. Is he living through you? Then I would go to second point, I would say, how do you see or think about the mistakes? A double fault is like he put, he had two errors on the service line. So you're supposed to get a ball in, right? He makes two errors in a row. I would say, are you seeing as an opportunity? Are you feeling what he feels? Are you wanting to help him work from the inside out? Or are you working simply from the execution that is failing? Or that is not good enough to whatever standard? Why would talk about the way he's framing those with him? The third thing that I would be clear about is if you can't do it in practice and can't do it in the games, that's usually a tip that it's psychological. You have the physical and technical, but if you don't have the psychological skills and practices in place, pressure exposes that. If he can do it in low pressure environments, call it practice, but can't do it in high pressure environments, it's likely psychological skills. So there's an opportunity. So the answer is like, there's first some framing. What's his dream? Is he living through you? Are you living through him? And that's a decoupling between father and son that we'd work on. The second is like the dad's framing, like you're only seeing the negative. And it's not ever quite that simple. And the third is like, okay, what psychological skills are you good at? What are the psychological skills that are required to be great? And then let's just fill in a plan. Do you know how to build confidence on command? Actually, that's a good question for you as a performer. Do you know on command how to build confidence? Through repetition. Yeah. If I've done it a million times, if I've been there a million times, whether in my head or just practicing in my living room, end up on stage or in front of the camera, it's cake. Okay. So I would call that part of it. So that's necessary, but not sufficient. So the first part, so yeah, my father, I thought I was smooth with that answer too. I thought you had that right. Yeah. I was going to get my answer. Yeah, that's pretty good. So that is necessary. Like the preparation is required. And I'll share this insight with how I came to understand this is that best in the world, gold medals around their neck, they're up next for the world championships, let's say, they just coming off Olympics, underworld championships, and they go on to the arena and they don't have confidence. They're struggling a little bit. They've got some nervousness or some anxiousness. Why you're the best in the world. Why would that be is because so all the body of work is in place, the preparation is on point. The reason the last piece of it is self talk. So you need great preparation and then need to have a command of how you speak to yourself about yourself and about the challenge. And if you can own that piece and be great and be disciplined and be awesome there, it's a skill that you can develop. 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I beat all my friends all the time. But when I'm in chess tournaments, I suck. If I say to myself, amen, you're a good chess player. You're the best chess player. You'll always win. You'll do this. You'll do that. Going that continuously over and over again, you'll begin to experience some change because of I would, I would give you a slight twist on that is I would, the way that I would, like, let's say we're coaching, I'm coaching on this moment, I would say make statements that are always 100% true. So are you going to win? You don't know. So if you say I'm going to win this thing, it's not bad, but that's not a, it's not great either, because what happens when you get punched in the mouth or you lose your queen or something takes place? I don't know if you're punching, you get punched in the mouth in chess. That's a weird mouth. I'm very, very strong. You're very strong, human. You're all, yeah. So, so, but as soon as something goes sideways and it, it undoes everything, as soon as there's some errors in place, it quickly can undo that type of thinking. I'm the best and all of a sudden, like, I can't stay that if I'm going to go play hoops against Jordan. I can't say I'm the best. It's not real. It's not grounded in anything. Yeah. But I can say I'm a scrappy competitor. Yeah. And I'm going to be in at one point at a time and I got great feet. But I'm not, so those are all controllables. So the self talk, if you can make it real and it's credible and you've got a body work that's like right on the surface that's extraordinary that you can rely on. Yeah. And let me, let me talk about the body of work and the extraordinary being on the surface, the good stuff on the surface. That is like when you go back into your history and you think about things that have happened to you, can you put a spin on it and can you rise, have the cream rise to the top? So it's available. The spin is like, yeah, I got my ass handed to me here, but you know what? I'm a, I'm a great competitor. Like I figured that out too. Yeah. And or like I got great feet or you know what? I see the chessboard in a really clear way and I can rely on that no matter what. Despite a loss. Despite a loss, despite the queen getting taken, despite, you know, the reputation of the person across from you. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, I think that identifying the psychological skills that are important and we just hammered confidence and confidence comes from what you say to yourself and you can practice that. And that would be a place I would go to, you know, for this kid. I see, wow, I've never, I've never, never thought of it like that. Like things that, that are doable right, right then and there that are, yeah, it makes sense. And then you're wrong. No, no, you're probably not doing wrong. Like, look, look, you're doing good. But then you can get ahead of it. So it doesn't have to be real time, confidence building self talk while you're playing chess or walking to the chessboard. It would be the way we do it in sport is we front load it. So we get clear about how you want to speak to yourself. Like what are the things you say that give you that vibe, right? And then you write that stuff down and then you look at them and it's like, does that really give me the vibe? Or is that? Yeah. That's true. Like, yeah, those are believable. And then you practice those. And let's talk about the type of self talk. It needs to be credible. You have to earn what you're saying to yourself. And so when, when you are doing this inventory about how you want to speak to yourself, if it's not based in something, I mean, we're out in La La Land, it's like, it's not real. You know it. You can't fake it. Fake it till you make it is a problem. That is not a strategy. Yeah. Like a fake bag, a fake shoes, a fake surgeon doing your surgery. Like, like being authentic is the real deal. And so when you say that, when you say credible, it has to be grounded in reality. That's exactly it. And the reality you and I are talking about is your body of work. And that's why I was saying, pull it up to the, to the, to the top of the, your available memory, which is the, the things that you have done that are hard and real and allow you to say, I'm a great competitor or whatever it might be. Other than saying the things that you hope to do. Ex- On a certain, traditionally, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but traditionally we've been taught to shoot for the stars, you know, the whole, that, that whole cliche saying shoot for the stars, at least you'll come down with it, the star dust. So, you know, traditionally we say outlandish things like I'm going to own 10 lofts and dumbo when you don't even can barely put your rent. But people tell you to say that because the power isn't the worst. So I never, I've never thought of it like that. There's, there's, yes. And what you're saying is right. And there's another part to it because you want to have a great vision, great clarity of where you want to go and the things you want to experience and data. You want to have great clarity there. But then where it becomes hardened and catalyzed and real is the way you speak to yourself based on the things that you've done and the way that you're approaching a situation to say, well, this is part of the plan to get there. And you know what? Again, I'll go back to Amabry competitor. And sometimes what happens for folks is that they're not clear if they have done hard things. Yeah. So it's a funny little trick our minds play on us is that sometimes it's hard to recall the adversity. Yeah. Sometimes it's hard to recall the, the small things that I've really shaped you. And so it is nice to take this invisible world of our mind and put it on paper and to write it down. And just taking some time to have a true and honest inventory of the hard things, the things that have helped shaped you to believe that you can do hard things in the future. Just write that stuff down. It's amazing how far that goes. Yeah. All right, Nico. I hope you're happy. You got a nice long answer for your nice long question. All right. Deshant. Here's Deshant with a short one. What does be here now mean for a day to day life? What do you think it means? Be present, be aware, appreciate what's going on currently. You know, watch the butterfly fly by, smell the flowers, look at the car. Appreciate it. No, that's it. That's it? No, no. I was, no, shake my, yeah, call it because I was shaking my head like, yeah, it's that simple. That's what I was saying. Like, that's it. Yeah. Be here right now. And that's a skill that you can also develop. So it's really easy to be here now in a calm environment, an environment that is slightly stimulating or it's easy to be here now when the environment is so dangerous that your life depends on it. But it is hard to be here now in boring environments. It is hard to be here now when there's moderate stress online because it kicks up different parts of our brain. And our brain's design is survival and deep focus is part of survival. And when it's, when it's just moderately stressful, you can focus on a lot of different things. Yeah. And not necessarily the unfolding present moment because you have the luxury to think about, well, what might he think of me or she think of me? That's a luxury. That's a modern day luxury right now that many of us face. The fear of people's opinions is one of the greatest constrictors of human potential. And if we don't counter rotate to train how to be here now, we will fall prey to exactly the brain's dictum is just figure out survival. And one of the great threats are people's opinions of us. So how do you do? How do you practice that? I practice it through mindfulness. That's one of the ways that has helped me tremendously. Yeah. Wow. Go. Could you go back to the first reason you're present besides stress? What was the first reason when you're present? In rather calm environments that are gentle and there's no real threat and they're lovely. Yeah. And it's easy to focus because it's enticing and you're in a good conversation with somebody. And it's that feeling like, remember when you talk to somebody and it's like, oh my God, three hours have gone by. Yeah. Or like, wow, that was 45 minutes. It's that type of thing that it's just, it's lovely. And then the other is real danger. Those are the easy ones to get to. But the boredom and the moderate stress, the pressure environments, those are harder to be present. And there's a second part of this, the be here now. The now part is essential. Then why now? Because the now is where the present moment lives. And the present moment is the entry point into flow state. It's the entry point into high performance. It's the entry point into wisdom. So the be here right here now is the skill. Can I string together this moment and the next moment and the next moment and literally be on time with the unfolding present moment? That is the skill. And when you can trust yourself so much because you've built a radical body of work, you speak to yourself well, you've got a compelling future you're working towards. When you can trust yourself so much, you can be in this moment. And then when you string them together, as you know, it's amazing. But we can practice being here now in a very safe, calm environment. That's where meditation shows up for me. Is that sitting on a pillow and when my mind wanders, I recognize it. I celebrate that I recognized it because that's the kind of step one. And then I come right back to whatever the task is. Can I ask you a question just on that? Being it step by step, being present moment to moment to moment, how was that? Especially in this current environment that we live in now, right? Because we live in an environment now where your senses are being attacked by a million different things. There's social media. There's your phone. I hate to admit this, but I feel like this is a safe environment for me to admit this. I sleep right next to my cell phone. Like the cell phone literally has a pillow right next to me. It's on your bed or it's on the nightstand. I want to lie to you until you're on a nightstand. I'm not going to do that. It's on a bed. Like another person on the pillow. On the second pillow. On the second pillow. I'm not lying. And I keep telling myself, get rid of this, get rid of this. But I wake up every three, four hours and I check. And I'm like, man, I got a problem. Yeah. And there's so much going on because I literally feel like I'm missing something going on. And my mother's like, hey, sit in a room, meditate, pray, whatever. It's going to make you feel comfortable. Just get away from all of that. And from time to time, I do that. But my question is, how can we be in that present and be moment to moment when our iPhone is literally one of the most important things to us in the universe? Yeah. So, I mean, step one, you know the first step. Cut the corner of the pillow. Yeah, get the phone out the pillow. But you bring up a real important question because that iPhone represents so much, right? It's access. It's immediate access. And then let's just keep in mind that the people that are programming the apps that sit in that hardware are, they have thousands, like the big companies have thousands of PhD psychologists that know how to manipulate brains. Yeah. And so you've got yours, your brain and I have my brain and they have a team of a thousand. They're way ahead. They have figured out how to give us little hits of dopamine, which Allah is like little hits of cocaine. And it's a very addicting substance. And so each time we're flicking, we're getting a little hit of reward. And so there's a cycle in here that feels just like a drug user's cycle. And so they're winning. They are winning the battle, the war, if you will, for attention. And again, if we go back to this thought that the present moment is what allows you to reveal your truest potential, your high performance, it allows you to express the wisdom that you hold within. And if you're pulled out by what is happening on maybe later on the phone or you're scrolling on something that's rewarding you for not being fully present with the thing that matters most, it's a compromise. Yeah. I don't know, I think the cheeky answer is like literally put yourself on the way. And within, I don't know, I'll call it out. Like within 10 days, you'll be cool. You'll be fine. You'll detox a little bit. You know, I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and I was like, man, you ever feel like because of phones and texting that you're in demand. And when people, for some, I'm not very skilled with iPhone. So I always, I turn on that thing that lets people know that read their messages. So I'll read messages and I'll just, okay, I'll respond later. And I've gotten negative responses. Like I know you saw my message because it said red and I'm like, yo, this is crazy. So it's trained me to respond to everything. So that and also fear that I'm missing something because I get all my information and news from the phone. So whether it's a, it's something terrible that's going on in India or an earthquake here or something, I want to know is great. It's like I'm a fiend for it. I want to know what tragedy or good thing is going on. And also I don't want anybody to feel like I'm ignoring it. Yeah. I think you're, you're sitting right on the essence of like a general pervasive anxiousness about, you know, something out there is going to make me inside be okay. And that, that, that is a very, I know that feeling. It's hard. That's a tough way to go through. And especially on top of it, if sleep is compromised, because sleep is the number one investment back into your energy system is the big one. And if you're, if you're compromising sleep or you're waking up, I mean, let's say you say, let's say you don't want to get the phone out of the bed. Like you have a good relationship with your phone. I would say it's unhealthy at this point, right? But let's say you don't want to do that. Then, then when, when you wake up, which waking up happens throughout the night, having a strategy to go back to sleep rather than reaching for the little dopamine, it'll hit a dopamine. And once you get that little hit of dopamine, there's an on that starts taking place. And so it's really hard. Plus you got the light and the blue light and all of the other stimulants. They're taking place in the content of the things that you're looking at. You know, what's happened globally. There's stimulation there. So I would, I would just, I'd be, I'd go on a run. I'd go on a detox run. And then, and let me finish my point. If you say, no, I'm not getting the phone out. It's, that's way too, whatever for me. Then I would be radically disciplined. It's like you're have your cocaine dealer right next to you, but you're like, no, no, no, I'm going back to sleep. I mean, I couldn't do that. I need to, I would need to have the dealer outside the house, outside the room. And then not have, not try to think that I could face him down every time or her down every time that I see her. So yeah, I don't know. I think, I think you're up against it. And I appreciate you brought that up. See, the chant, you, you, you made me reveal something about myself. Hope you're not like me. Yeah. What do you got? All right. So Gwen says, how do you help an athlete or anyone for that matter who's trying to come back from a poor performance? Okay. It's a good question because I don't have enough information. No, I'd answer that. You know, what does poor performance mean? It's contextual. And I tend to, my first response there is I tend to use performance or information as that as, okay, this is, this is information that's going to help me grow. And so I don't get caught in like good and bad. That dichotomy is actually problematic. There's a value attached to it. So poor is like bad, right? And I get, I get the, I get the casualness of like, that was not good or that was a poor performance. But if we can be great researchers and we can research and use the information that's coming in about how we can grow and get better. Now we're constantly on our front foot and we're not letting the, I don't know, the social part of a poor performance getting in the way, the emotional part of a poor performance getting the way. I'm not saying you don't feel it. Definitely feel it, but use your, use your experience as a tuning fork and as a guide for how to grow. And so let's say that what it's Gwen, right? Yeah, Gwen. Let's say Gwen was with us. I just say, I was first, I'd say, listen, not everything's going to be in your language good. Like you've got to take some time to say, I'm a learner and how do I learn from this to keep going forward? How would you guide her? I mean, you know, traditionally the, I tell you to have a short memory. You just have to train yourself to have a short memory and believe that you're here for a reason. First and foremost, you're part of a small percentage of people that are performing at this level, right? Because there's a lot of people that want to be great athletes. So you've already beat 90% of the people if you're performing on a collegiate or professional level. So boom, you're already, you already deserve your place. You've earned it, right? So now that you've earned this place and you know that you should be here, you just got to have a short memory, you know, because I think I love that. I love that. You know what I love that you just did is that it's so reaffirming when you see right into the person and you remind them that they've done hard things, that they've been successful in their past and it is inside of them. I love that. I love that where you naturally went. That's really cool. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You think I got a future with them? Well, to be determined. Yeah. You got to do it in my phone first. Yeah, right. You change your relationship with your phone first. I don't know if I can do that, I don't know. I love my phone. Finding Masteries brought to you by Defend. I'm really excited to introduce this product to you. 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So what this feature does is basically Indeed is doing the hard work for you. As soon as you sponsor a job post, you'll get a short list of qualified candidates whose resumes on Indeed match your job description and then you can invite them to apply right away. Indeed knows that if you're growing your business, you got to make every dollar count. And that's why with Indeed, you only pay for quality applications that match your must have job requirements. So I want to encourage you if you're looking for great talent to punch over to indeed.com slash Finding mastery to start the hiring process that way. That's indeed, I N D E E D dot com slash finding mastery terms and conditions apply cost per application pricing not available for everyone. Need to hire? Need Indeed. Okay. Good old Chuck's as Dave Goggins, Dave Goggins. Dave Goggins, I love Dave Goggins. He talks about the idea of the 40% rule where he suggests that when your mind tells you that you're done, you're only 40% done. How does that line up with your experience working with high performers? Pretty good. Yeah, I think that that's I think that insight there's some there was some research around and I don't I'm not completely current with it right now, but the central governor as a concept. And so the central governor was this physiological way to understand capacity. And the idea was that our brains have a governor that says when you take to prevent us from exploding to prevent us from overheating from too much strain to prevent us from blowing out our system. Okay, there's lots of ways you can think about it, but there's this governor that says, no, no, no, no, you can't go further because we need to we need to take care of ourselves. And so the central governor is a limiter and bactic acid is one example of part of that process. So when you reach that threshold with a governor saying, this is this is where you need to stop. He's suggesting that you can change that relationship by knowing that you've got more in the tank. Your brain is telling you you've reached a threshold for survival that I want to make sure you don't go further because I don't know what the future is. So I need to hold on to the resources that are in the in the backlog. And so that 40% is interesting. I don't know if we can exactly say that, but it's clever. Yeah. And it gives you this idea that there is more room to go and for 99.9% of the world. Yeah, that's a good strategy. Yeah, I'm sorry. No, I was going to say, I think the central governor is not tested for most people. Yeah. Unless you have folks that are in the ultra space or the marathon space that understand what it's like to have one one cyclist explained it to me this way. He said, you know, for me to be great at my sport. He's an Olympian. He says, it feels like there's a toaster oven in my chest for hours at a time. That's how hot it is for him. That's how that's how uncomfortable he is for an extended period of time. Most people we don't I don't know what that feels like. So he's pushed his central governor and created real adaptations. Yeah. And it's not like it just goes away. So that 40% it's clever. I don't know. I can't point to the exact science of that, but I think it's really clever. Yeah, that's interesting. You say that or this question is even was posed because like I was saying earlier, I'm trying to train for this five K and drop my time down in Austin was telling me one day. He was like, hey, you just have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Right. And I thought about that whole 40% rule and the way you just so eloquently put it about this governor that's worried about you and telling you, hey, you know, I don't know how much you have left. So so you're basically saying is sometimes you can ignore that and go a little beyond it, right? But it's there for a purpose. It's there for a reason to, you know, keep you safe. It's like your big brother looking out for you. That's exactly what it is. But you can ignore your big brother sometimes and go a little further and dibble and dabble in that incrementally or something. You nailed it. And I wouldn't ignore the governor. I would have a relationship with it. You know, it's like, okay, there it is. I see you. And you know, and I'm going to just kind of keep going through here. And let's so I would have a relationship with it rather than like ignored or say some sort of dismissiveness. I would use it as information. And but it doesn't have to be the loudest voice. Got you. Got you. Got you. All right, Chuck, you don't, you know, don't ignore your big brother. You know what I'm saying? Listen to your big brother. All right, Sam, I'm curious to what extent do people have both an ability and responsibility to help others, especially like this one, especially family, cultivate their own inner lives. Any thoughts on that? Yeah. Like the most dangerous person on the planet, and I'm being cheeky here, is a second year undergraduate psychology student or third year undergraduate psychology student because there's this beginnings of information that is really powerful and wonderful. But the person doesn't have like command of the science of psychology or the field. And so they come home and they're like, Hey, you know, I just learned that you should be doing this or doing that or like, why are you doing it? And it's like a little bit of information can be dangerous. And then who, who, who do you think you are? That's where I go to that question. So this is me being a little counterculture and like, I don't, I don't like someone giving me advice. You say, what do you mean? I want to be in a partnership with somebody when we're trying to sort something out, but I don't like when someone flies over top of me and is like, Hey, you should do this. Yeah. So I'm, I'm responding to the question in like, what is our, I think the keyword was responsibility. So the responsibility is for you to be able to take care of yourself in an incredible way where you can be fully present. So you can be in the presence of somebody else's, maybe suffering or pain or excitement or challenge. So your responsibility is for you to be great so that you can be there for other people. And so that's how I think about it. It's like you are the pebble in the pond. And if you want to create great ripples, be a heavy pebble, like build something internally so that you can be there and create waves in the places you go. So I don't think it's a responsibility to take care of other people that to me, I get, I grew up in a family where, you know, there was plenty of codependency and there was plenty of challenges that we had as a family. And the codependent nature of things in a relationship is my happiness depends on you being okay. And so I've over rotated away from that to be, I need, I'm not going to, I could slip into that really quickly, especially my line of work. So what I do is I say, no, my job is so for me to be in any situation, any room, any environment to be grounded, to be present, to be authentic. So do you, do you feel like family members and friends come to you a lot since in your line of work because of what you do, because you're so good at it. And I'll come to you and they're like, you know, hey man, I just need, you know, I got this thing going on and I just want to do this and that. Are you very careful of giving them that advice in a technical manner? Yeah, I love the question because, yeah, I don't, I want to, I want to have relationships with people in the way that I also want to be treated. And I, again, like to the, or I don't like when someone comes to hip, check and end and like, hey man, why didn't you or you should or like, oh, hold on. Like, you don't, you haven't lived in my shoes and I haven't lived in your shoes. And my, my life experience is complicated and I bet yours is too. And so how, how can I partner up to understand? But people come to me and they have a, they have this idea that somebody outside of them might be able to help them. And then what I do is I hold the mirror up and say, no, no, everything you need is already inside you. Let's clear away. Let's get to that clarity. You've already solved hard things. You've already done, you know, real challenge in your life. How have you successfully navigated those times? Let's rely on that internal wisdom that you already have. So Aaron asks, when experiencing jealousy or envy in relationships, what tools can you use to temper the intensity of the emotion? Cool question. Those are, let's do emotions for just a minute. Let's do a little quick, a little hit on emotions and, and principles for that matter. So emotions and core principles that we have are a bit like seeds. And we all have all of the seeds available to us. You and I both have the seeds of jealousy and anger and love and compassion. And we have all the seeds. We have all of the core material for that. And so what we think about is like watering that seed. What we attend to in our mind and in our behaviors is watering that seed. Some of these seeds turn into weeds and they just really start to take over. Jealousy is one of those. It is a bit more like a weed. And if you are, if you want to change your relationship with, with the way that somebody else is experiencing something amazing in their life, meaning jealous or what was the other characteristic jealousy was one of those. Was it jealousy? And the envy, yes. Yeah. Okay. The first thing is recognize how it works. When you think about these things, they're growing. Okay. So when you're thinking about the success of somebody else or something that's amazing that's happened to another person and you notice that your response is of jealousy, what you do in the moment is you label it. So you recognize that you're going, that you're feeling jealous. And you say, okay, this is jealousy. And then just labeling it is part of the diffusion. We know that from neurobiology. When you can identify an emotion, you start to dissipate the intensity of that emotion. That's a cool first step. The second step is to say, where is it in me physically? Do I feel at my stomach? Do I feel at my jaw? Do my hands tighten up? Do I get clammy? So physically what happens? And then you can watch that experience and just watching it also dissipates it. So there's two levers there. Okay. Naming it and then watching it. The naming is, and watching is there's a requirement though that you're aware. So those are the three elements, awareness, naming and watching. Okay. So how do you practice awareness, meditation, mindfulness, journaling, or conversations with people of wisdom? That's how you practice becoming more aware. And then when you're in the throes of it, those are the two strategies naming and watching. And if you want to water another seed, that is how I would hope that I could help you train to be able to water the seed of compassion. To water the seed of hope and joy and excitement. So how do you water those seeds? Let's say on Friday somebody shares with you that they got a new car and your response is something about jealousy that on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, even Friday morning, I would be training compassion or joy or whatever. And then you're more likely to have that experience rather than the jealousy. So that there's a training mechanism to it. There's an awareness mechanism that I just talked about. And there's an actual strategy to deal with it in the moment. And then most things come down to those three levers to get better at the psychology or the emotional part of it. Krista asks, I'm always curious when is the optimal time for coaches to give an athlete feedback straight after training or competing doesn't seem like the right time. Even though, you know, that's what's been ingrained in me, I'd love some concrete backing for what intuitively feels wrong. That's cool. So embedded in that question is a second question, which is really about the relationship that the coach has with the athlete. And so figuring out how the athlete wants the information is part of it. And do you have the right relationship to provide the information? So let's assume that that has already been established. It's a great relationship between the two and the coach has an understanding of how the athlete likes feedback. Okay, so that's part one. You got to do that work. The second part is there's three bands for what I would call high performance feedback. So in environments of speed and accuracy, feedback is a great gift, but it can also create a distraction. So there's three like bands of it. The first band is immediate. So it's like, say I do something and you're helping me work on something, okay, whatever it might be. A little tick I have or a disfluency I have when I speak and I say um, or uh, or some sort of disfluency. And then I say it right now. And then you go, well, Mike, that's it. You just did it. Hold on. Come on. Let's go. And you bringing awareness to me. That could be if you give me something to focus on instead, that could be helpful, but you've just disturbed the flow of something. So real time feedback is considered a gold standard, but there's a cost to it. So the second band, just to give context is within one or two hours. So let's go gold, silver and bronze, right? So silver is within one or two hours. So that's like right after practice, if you will. And so within a glow of one or two hours. And so that is like using some sort of mechanism post practice within that glow using film or some other modality, including conversation to say, Hey, there's a few things I want to focus on. And typically in that experience, we would highlight the things that went well and we would get to great clarity of the things that we're working on that we've agreed to improve. So you, it's not like this soft thing that you've got to give somebody hold them with white gloves and like, or kid gloves is that the statement like that, you know, you got to give them the positive before the negative. That's not what I'm saying is you identify what's good because we want to build that, mechanism of confidence like this works, this works, this works. And here's a way we can get better. And then the third band is within 12 to 24 hours and you lose a lot of potency when you give that much time between feedback. So it's just understanding the cost, the laid feedback, you lose some of the potency because the neurological system is not firing. You're not fully immersed in the experience. Real time, the cost of real time is you disrupt the flow of what's taking place. And then I'll end it on this is that coach Carol at the Seattle Seahawks would not disrupt practice because the culture, the vibe, the energy was really important. And the mechanism of being able to make a mistake in figuring out and moving on was a capability we wanted the athletes to develop. So he would not stop a practice. Even though let's say a quarterback or a linebacker or whoever was making the same mistake three times in a row and everybody knows that that mistake happened again and again. The practice would still go on and then the coaching would happen right afterwards. And it's because the momentum and the energy was a capability that we wanted to make sure it was crystal clear and great. And it gives an opportunity for the athlete to try to sort it out. People that want to be great, they know when they make mistakes. They know exactly what they did wrong. Oftentimes I feel like we don't need a pile on in any kind of way. The feedback that I like in the immediacy is a nod. Okay. So would you say that that's the best one? The immediacy. Yeah. That is, yeah. But again, it's got to be the relationships got to be intact first. Finding mastery is brought to you by Sundays. If you're like me, your dog is a really important part of your family. What are you feeding them? I feed him Sundays and he loves it. So Sundays, it's the first human grade air dried dog food. And it's the only one I use now with my dog. Combining the nutrition and taste of an all natural human grade food. All designed with the ease of zero prep, ready to eat meal plans. Sundays is the best way to feed your best friend. 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What about like coaches who don't have that relationship with you and they're just, they're just, for lack of a better word, a hard case, right, who they've found success in delivering in any way, any form at any time, whether it's immediate lead disrupting the flow, that perfect middle ground like Coach Carroll does or telling you like a week later, like, hey man, I just want to let you know. Now you ran that route terribly last week doing it again. So what about, would you say that there is a place for people like that? Because I've seen, I've been coached by people like that where I'm like, man, are you terrible? But it works. The yelling, the screaming, the cursing, the telling you that you're not worth anything and which we don't want to admit those things happen. Who does that guy sound like that? I want to put him out there like that. But I've seen it. I was, ironically enough, I was on my way over here and I was looking at my phone and I shouldn't be as driving. This is a bad theme right now, man. I'm not as bad as I sound people. Someone sent me an IG, it was a little E coach and he was talking to the kids and man, it was, God forgive me for laughing, it was hilarious. It was being passed around as an IG story, but it was funny because he was running out to the kids and it was different kids on his team and he was like, which bus are you ride there? Short bus with a long bus or everything he was saying was extremely inappropriate, but the kids were laughing. He was laughing and his delivery made it so amazing that I was questioning it. I was like, how is he able to deliver all these extremely offensive things to these little little E kids? Can you pull it up right now? Yeah, yeah, here you go here. I know you're only 12, but the high school coach just texted me in your cat. I know I want to put this lightly, but we're getting killed out there and I think it's pretty much all your fault. Well, you win some and you lose some. Unless you're on the mound, we lose them all. I know you're new to our team, but do you always suck this better? Is it just a special occasion today? Well, that sucked on Capital S and a lot of use. Okay, so obviously this, you're right, 100% inappropriate, you know, and however, I don't know what, I don't know either of these folks, but it looks like, whether it's staged or not, it looks like this is this guy's purpose. He's a personality and these kids probably love him, right? And I just listened to a handful of them, but he doesn't, he doesn't, it's weird when I watch this, I don't go, oh my God, he is crushing these kids. That's how I felt. Yeah. Right. To your point. Yeah, there's, there's almost like humor, a reality and an uplifting kind of silliness, but I wonder what happens when the camera, when the edits off. Yeah. What's happening in other places, which he's like, you guys are amazing. I love you guys. Look, I'm just going to just poke some fun at some stuff. And I don't know, I don't know what else the context of this is, but yeah. But to your point about like, how does this work is that the, the old way of thinking about helping somebody to get better is that it's that person is only an executor. They are only an operator. They are only an athlete. That is so old. We are so much more than just the thing we do. And the coaches that are stuck in the old way, I don't know, I don't know what to say. Like that's not holding up anymore. Modern athletes are like, no, I'm way more than an athlete. Do not, do not think that I am just this physical form. That's a fact. How about it, right? And so, so there's a higher dignity that's required to coach the modern human, whether that's in business or in sport. And so if you don't have a high regard and a dignity for the other person, I don't think there's a place in modern human potential for you. And so it can work because fear is a tactic. It works. It changes people's physiology. It changes their psychology. They'll imprint on you in some kind of way. They'll be fearful of you. They'll work harder. And when they're done with you, they feel that as a human experience, it's they don't leave better. Yeah. They leave scared and anxious and angry and critical and fill in the blanks. So I think that there's a place for coaches to be honest with themselves. Like, are they coming from an anxious place? They're coming, you give what you have. If you have anxiety, you give it. If you have frustration, you give it. And so there's a place for coaches to do some work like, where am I coming from? And if you want to come, most coaches want to come from the right place. I love the coaching profession. They want, they've invested their life to help somebody else be better. And the great coaches, they, if you do this exercise above the line or below the line, and you just draw a piece of line on your piece of paper and draw a line on a piece of paper. And the coaches that you put above the line, usually those are the coaches that you would say, what made them above the line? Oh, those are the coaches that saw me. They got me. They gave themselves to help me. And the below the line coaches, usually it's the coaches that were in it for themselves. Right? And they left a stain on my spirit. And so that's a cool little exercise. And I think, I don't know, I just think that's the insight there is really important. And that's for athletes, but this also works for anyone in your life. That's mentors, that's business leaders, that's managers, it's friendships, that's emotional experiences or emotional relationships that you have with your spouse or otherwise. That model works for, I think, every relationship and every position that you have in somebody else's life. What he says, I've heard you say through relationships, we become, what does that mean? Cool. What's up, buddy? Through relationships, we become, I say that a lot. And it's meant to be a little open ended because it's through the relationship with yourself, with others, with mother nature, with experience itself. It's through relationships and in your case with your phone. You should have never told you about that, Dr. Mike. I'll never share anything with you. It's through relationships that would become the person that we're either hoping to become or that the environment is conditioning us to become. So the relationship is at the center. And if we're not attending to the relationship, and I would say first and foremost with yourself, if you're not attending to that relationship or whatever the relationship that you do have with yourself, you are becoming more of that person. Through relationships, we become. We are an unfolding experience that is human. And so we are becoming something or someone. And so the relationships sit right at the center of it. And what I love about that insight is that we can do something about it. You can enhance and build your relationship and you can be really clear about who you are working on becoming. There's a really compelling bit of research that's coming out of Harvard on happiness. And the insight is that relationships are medicine. Relationships are foundational for well-being. And there's only a handful of things that we can point to and relationships are one of them. Okay, so you mentioned through nature, right? Explain to me what you mean by that. Like, you believe that we depend on some sort of connection through nature along with other things to be? Yeah, I mean, it's a complicated ecosystem. So at one level, very concretely, we are nature. So nature is not the pond or the tree or the ocean or the forest. We are nature. And so honoring that we are this ecosystem, this amazing ecosystem that's happening inside of each of us right now and the ecosystem between the two of us right now and the ecosystem that how we're connected to mother nature, all of that is really beyond an easy comprehension for sure. And to be attuned to it is really important. That's wild because I'm going to be hundreds in a rear with you. When I think nature, I've never, ever in my life thought, me, you, us. I've always thought the birds, flower, air, the pond, the grass. And it seems like that's the, and I would argue that a lot of other people think that as well, not realizing that, yeah, you're right, we are nature. You are nature. I am nature. Human nature is what we're talking about. And it is, it's a weird separation that we've grown up with that. And when you talk to people that spend a lot of time in nature, they're like, you know, they have that understanding that they're part of the ecosystem. They're not dominating the ecosystem. And when we have right angles, concrete walls, we forget there are no right angles in nature. And so humans make right angles. And we, you know, we create institutions that are in many cases an assault on nature. They're assault on humans. You know, fluorescent lights sitting all day is an assault on the nature of being human. And we could take it from whatever the institution is, it's a, it's a, on assault to land and assault to humans in many respects. So being attuned to nature is a really powerful thing. But if you, you know, your, if your relationship with your phone is more important than your relationship with cheap. Oh, well, I was wondering what that was going to pop up. So cheap. I'm going to use that. Thank you, Dr. Mike. I'm actually saying to one of my friends like, amen, this is an assault on me being nature, bro. You want to restate that to me? You know? I want to just pull out this, um, this way that I wrote it. Oh, you need your phone. Huh? Yeah. I want to get, I want to know your life. I thought about this. Yeah. So when it comes to living a high performance life, yes, sleep, yes nutrition, yes psychological skills. And you know, it's a big one that gets left out relationships, real ones, durable weather tested where you've got there back and they've got yours. Those are the types of relationships I want to have and building that capacity to be present for other people and for them to be present to have my back. That's, that's where I want to be. Well, to add and to ask, um, for myself, I'm using myself for an example, I've created and I, I like to say this with people that I, um, have these issues with. I've created for lack of a better word, a protector for myself that I put in my pocket from all the struggles of life and things that I've gone through, you know, and, um, I always tell people, I feel like I'm, I'm very nice. I'm super nice. So because I'm so nice and I'm very inviting and I have this happy, go lucky smile on my face. People tend to want to, you know, take advantage or go a little further. So over the years to protect myself, I've created an alter ego or a, or a more aggressive, bullyish person that I keep in my pocket. And the running joke that I always tell people is I'm an alpha male wrapped in a beta package. Right? So I want to sit at the table and be a beta. Everyone can talk. Everyone can do their thing. Just don't cross me. I'll let you get away with anything. I'll let you do things, but just don't really think you can take advantage of me because if you do try to do that, I'm going to pull the other me out of my pocket and let him sit and handle that business. And for the longest for all these years, I thought that was a great thing until I started going to therapy and I was told that this was this twisted coping mechanism that I had to, you know, protect the quote unquote little boy in me, you know, that's afraid to be hurt and afraid to be taken advantage of. So Dr. Mike, I just want you to tell me that I'm right. Well, you know, I'm right, right? Right. Right. Right. Who's coming out? Which is the pocket coming out? No, this is the regular me, but I am. No, I think I was loving your strategy as you're talking like that's new, you know, like, and I was curious about where it came from and you answered it. Like there was something young, you know, that you needed that part, but I'm recognizing like the downside of that might be that you scare people. Like there's a hidden shadow part of you that is dangerous. That's a little scary. And so that might keep people away. Right. And so it's a mechanism to not have somebody come too far in. There's a cost to intimacy. There's a cost to that because when you say that, listen, I'm friendly, but I might cut you. I'm friendly, but if you get too close or betray me, it could be really bad for you. And so that there's a cost to that. Your protection and what ends up happening is that they don't fully come in because they don't know. But I don't know. I like the strategy. I think it's serving a purpose for you. I wouldn't suggest put it away. But if it's causing some sort of distress in intimacy, likely is that the thank you, Dr. Mike, for all you people I thought I was wrong. Dr. Mike sounds right. It's a multiple like it's God. Where is this going to go? I appreciate you. I appreciate you as well. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Great. Okay. Thank you so much for tuning into another episode, another conversation with Finding Mastery. I love creating this podcast and having these conversations and sharing them with you. I really do care for our community. As a quick reminder, information in this podcast and from any material on the Finding Mastery website and social channels is for information purposes only. If you are looking for meaningful support, which we all need, one of the best things that you can do is talk to a licensed professional. So seek assistance from your health care providers. And again, a sincere thank you for listening, for being part of it. And if you haven't already, hit the subscribe button or follow button wherever you get your podcast to automatically receive the newest episode when it's released. And if you're interested in any sponsor offers from this episode, you can find those deals at findingmastery.net forward slash partners. Lastly, if you're interested in more insights and or the transcript from every podcast, we also have a newsletter that we send out every Wednesday. So just punch over to findingmastery.net forward slash newsletter to sign up. And you know, just a note, no one does it alone. 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