Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais

Mike’s son, Grayson, wrote a book to parents about young athletes, and it challenges how we think about supporting our kids through sport.

Those of us with kids in youth sports know what the experience gives them... teamwork, commitment, the skill of balancing a full week. We have come at that subject often on this podcast, usually through the lens of the coach, the parent, or the research. This one comes from the kid’s angle – from the court, the car ride home, and the receiving end of those parent and child conversations.

Grayson has played competitive club volleyball for six years, four of them as a varsity player and a captain. He wrote the book as a high school senior, in the middle of his last season, while the lessons were still fresh.

It’s called Dear Parent: Sport Isn’t Easy. Here’s How to Have Our Back. Eleven chapters… tough teammates, coaches who get something wrong, and what a club sport actually costs in time and sleep. Each one is a story, what he took from it, and something a parent can try that week.

Mike and Grayson get into the moments Grayson felt supported and the times where he didn’t, how he learned to separate the player from the person when a season went sideways, and the thin line between extra work and burnout.

You also get to watch Mike as a dad and Grayson as a son.

The question the book leaves us with is not whether our kids’ teams won or lost... It is whether we honored the person while we were developing the player.

___________________________________________________

Links & Resources:

Grayson Gervais’s Book: Dear Parent: Sport Isn’t Easy. Here’s How to Have Our Back.

Book Website: https://www.dearparentbook.com and you can get your copy here.

Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMastery

Get exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!

Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/

Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter

Download Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindset

Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Finding a way to coach yourself with challenge and grace can be an extraordinary unlock for performance.

Mikaela Shiffrin is an Olympic gold medalist and the winningest alpine ski racer in World Cup history. We first released this conversation in 2024. She has since won Olympic slalom gold at Milano Cortina and a record-equaling sixth Overall Crystal Globe, and what she describes here is the work that was already well underway.

Mikaela and Mike get into the performance anxiety that had her sick at the start gate years into her career, the self-coaching habit she built to interrupt it, and the race she lost at Killington that she calls the most free she has ever felt in her career. She is open about how long she let the outside world dictate how she felt about her own skiing before she reclaimed that for herself.

Coaching yourself well is incredibly difficult, and Mikaela shows us in this conversation the power you can drive when you do it in a world-class way.

Enjoy the conversation.

--------------------------------------------------

Links & Resources

Mikaela Shiffrin: https://linktr.ee/mikaelashiffrin

Mikaela Shiffrin’s YouTube Series: Moving Right Along, on her channel https://www.youtube.com/@mikaelashiffrin

Mikaela Shiffrin’s Podcast: What’s the Point with Mikaela Shiffrin: listen here

Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMastery

Get exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!

Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/

Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter

Download Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindset

Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What happens to the rest of your relationships when the one you have with yourself goes untended?

Dr. Thema Bryant is a clinical psychologist, tenured professor of psychology at Pepperdine University, director of the Culture and Trauma Research Laboratory, and former president of the American Psychological Association. She hosts The Homecoming Podcast and wrote Matters of the Heart: Healing Your Relationship with Yourself and Those You Love.

Thema emphasizes that one of the biggest predictors of our mental wellbeing is not your achievement or your bank account. It is the people you spend your time with.

Thema and Mike get into her working definition of trauma, the difference between guilt and shame, and why so much people pleasing begins as a strategy for staying safe. Thema talks about being evacuated from Liberia as a teenager during a civil war, and the shift in her own identity after the death of her mother.

This conversation is also for the person doing well by every external measure who sees no reason to do any of this work. It is not that you need to, Thema says. It’s that you deserve to.

At one point, Mike asks her how we would lead differently if we knew what she knew. Thema’s answer is that you would not leave yourself behind.

Enjoy the conversation.

__________________________________

Links & Resources:

Dr. Thema Bryant’s Website: https://drthema.com/

Dr. Thema Bryant’s Books: Matters of the Heart: Healing Your Relationship with Yourself and Those You Love, Reclaim Yourself: The Homecoming Workbook, Homecoming: Overcome Fear and Trauma to Reclaim Your Whole, Authentic Self, The Antiracism Handbook

Dr. Thema Bryant’s Podcast: The Homecoming Podcast with Dr. Thema (video version on YouTube, audio on Spotify and Apple Podcasts)

Mentioned in this conversation: Dr. Lisa Miller’s research on spirituality as a protective factor for mental health. Her Finding Mastery episode: The Psychology of Spirituality | Dr. Lisa Miller. Her book: The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life.

Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMastery

Get exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!

Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/

Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter

Download Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindset

Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X

#FindingMastery #ThemaBryant #DrMichaelGervais #MattersOfTheHeart #Relationships #Trauma #Healing #Shame #EmotionalSafety #SelfWorth #Attachment #Loneliness #Therapy #Psychology #MentalHealth #HighPerformance #Emotionaltrauma #reltionshiptrauma #selfhelp #selfhealing

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“…the stories that we tell ourselves and other people become our lives.”

— IN-Q

This is a conversation about the story you are living inside, about creativity as a practice rather than a talent, and about why being witnessed helps us release what we might otherwise carry alone.

Before this conversation started, IN-Q walked the entire Finding Mastery team through a poetry workshop. Each person wrote about a personal experience with risk that changed the direction of their life, then read it out loud to the room. Mike opens this episode saying he has never started a podcast feeling the way he felt coming out of it.

IN-Q is a spoken word artist, two-time Emmy-nominated lyricist, multi-platinum songwriter, keynote speaker, and bestselling author of Inquire Within. He has written songs with Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus, and Aloe Blacc, and he was one of the original members of Da Poetry Lounge in Los Angeles, the open mic he calls church without religion.

IN-Q and Mike get into the three guidelines he gives people before they write, and the night he read his old breakup poems and realized every one of them applied to the new breakup.

He also describes giving himself the room every morning to decide not to be a poet. Choosing it again each day – instead of waking up already being one – keeps the work from turning into a life he inherited from a version of himself that has already faded away.

Both of them tell stories about an old chip on the shoulder, and the two trace back to a similar place. The chip became fuel. IN-Q calls it unhealthy fuel, and describes chipping away at it now, trying to turn it into a sculpture.

Change your story, change your life, is how he puts it. He also tells you exactly where to start.

Enjoy the conversation.

____________________________________________________________________________

Links & Resources

IN-Q’s Website: https://www.in-q.com

IN-Q’s Books: Inquire Within, The Never Ending Now Poetry Journal

IN-Q’s Album: The Never Ending Now (featuring Isabella Turso)

IN-Q’s Poetry Special: IN-Q – Live at the Ace Theatre, streaming on Amazon Prime Video

IN-Q’s Poetry Workshops and Retreats: https://www.in-q.com/poetry-workshops

Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMastery

Get exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!

Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/

Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter

Download Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindset

Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What if the calmest person in the room isn’t avoiding pressure, but experiencing it differently?

Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is one of the world’s most recognized spiritual teachers and humanitarian leaders. He founded the Art of Living, which teaches meditation, breathwork, and service in over 180 countries, and he is the author of Notes for the Journey Within.

Stress has a use, and Gurudev compares it to a pinch of salt in food, useful in that amount and unconsumable past it. Most of us have taken on far more than that, and have never learned how to put it down or manage it well.

Gurudev and Mike get into why he defines success as exhibiting your limitation, why he thinks failure is worth being proud of, and why authority over your own mind is the only authority there really is. Mike asks him when his body last went into fight or flight. He says it never has.

This one is for people who are working hard and running warm. What Gurudev points back to is something simple and repeatable: breathing, meditation, and learning how to release stress before it accumulates.

Near the end, Mike asks him to finish a sentence: Mastery is... Gurudev’s answer: recognizing you are not there.

Enjoy the conversation.

______________________________________________________

Links & Resources:

Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s Website: https://gurudev.artofliving.org/

Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s Books: Notes for the Journey Within: Essentials of the Art of Living, An Intimate Note to the Sincere Seeker, Celebrating Silence

The Art of Living Foundation: https://www.artofliving.org/

Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMastery

Get exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!

Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/

Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter

Download Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindset

Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How much of the time you spend in pain comes from the injury itself, and how much comes from the fear around it?

Dr. Tom Walters is a board-certified orthopedic physical therapist, strength and conditioning specialist, educator, and founder of Rehab Science. He has spent more than two decades helping people understand pain, movement, and injury recovery, and he is the author of Rehab Science: How to Overcome Pain and Heal from Injury.

Tom’s starting point is that pain and injury are not the same thing. Pain is an unpleasant sensory or emotional experience tied to actual or potential tissue damage, which means what you believe about your body can change what you feel in it.

Tom and Mike get into the nocebo effect, how a clinician’s words or reaction to a scan can amplify pain, why the field traded the word chronic for persistent, and how to manage exercise loads as your body adapts.

Mike tells the story of an MRI he had around the age of 23. The doctor looked at the film, his eyes got big, and he asked if Mike was okay. Mike says his pain felt worse instantly.

Tom says many musculoskeletal conditions improve with time and movement. He encourages people to take an active role in recovery: try an appropriate movement, notice how your body responds, and adjust from there.

Enjoy the conversation.

___________________________________________________________________

Links & Resources:

Dr. Tom Walters’ Website: https://rehabscience.com

Dr. Tom Walters’ Books: Rehab Science: How to Overcome Pain and Heal from Injury, plus the 2026 Rehab Science body-region series: Knee, Back and Spine, Hip, Shoulder, Elbow, Wrist & Hand, Ankle and Foot, and Head & Neck

Dr. Tom Walters’ YouTube Channel: Rehab Science

The Rehab Science App: Rehab Science on the App Store

Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMastery

Get exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!

Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/

Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter

Download Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindset

Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A letter landed on Masud Husain’s desk about a man in his thirties who had stopped doing anything at all.

Dr. Masud Husain is a clinical neurologist, neuroscientist, and Professor of Neurology and Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Oxford. He is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Brain and author of Our Brains, Our Selves, winner of the 2025 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize.

The letter was about a man named David who had been highly productive, worked in finance, and was charming company. Then he lost his job, stopped showering, and could not be bothered to claim the benefits that would have covered his rent. Asked why he no longer listened to music, he said it would take five minutes to connect the cables.

David was not depressed. He had suffered two tiny strokes in the basal ganglia, structures deep in the brain that help link motivational cues to action. Nothing was worth the effort to him anymore.

After an initial treatment failed, Masud’s team tried another drug that acts on the dopamine system. Three months later David came back with a haircut, a suit, a new job, and a new girlfriend.

Addiction researchers had arrived at that same circuit from the other direction: Masud says it is the circuit hijacked by almost every drug of addiction. He and Mike get into what that overlap means about the science of motivation, why apathy and depression are different conditions, why there are more than 200 causes of dementia and what that means for prevention, and whether there is a self to be found in the brain at all.

This is a conversation for anyone who has decided to do something and then not done it. Masud frames motivation as a calculation of whether the reward is worth the effort, and the lever most of us have is the size of the effort.

After thirty years of seeing patients, the thing Masud says he has learned is that the self is not set in stone. You can change.

Enjoy the conversation.

______________________________________________________

Links & Resources:

Dr. Masud Husain’s Website: https://www.masudhusain.org

Dr. Masud Husain’s Books: Our Brains, Our Selves: What a Neurologist’s Patients Taught Him About the Brain, Oxford Textbook of Cognitive Neurology and Dementia (co-editor)

Dr. Masud Husain’s Journal: Brain, where he is Editor-in-Chief

Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMastery

Get exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!

Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/

Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter

Download Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindset

Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X

#FindingMastery #MasudHusain #DrMichaelGervais #OurBrainsOurSelves #Neuroscience #Neurology #Motivation #Apathy #Dopamine #Attention #Dementia #BrainHealth #Consciousness #Identity #HighPerformance #Psychology

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What moral code do we need when our tools can reshape intelligence and biology itself?

Jamie Metzl is a technology and healthcare futurist and geopolitical expert, founder and chair of OneShared.World, and a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He has served on the U.S. National Security Council and with the United Nations in Cambodia, and he is the author of Hacking Darwin, Superconvergence, and his newest book, The AI Ten Commandments.

The book began as a question Jamie put to a popular AI model, asking what ten principles, drawn from all of recorded human history, would produce the most peace and human flourishing. What came back pulled from traditions he already knew and others he had never encountered.

Jamie and Mike get into what it takes to be a participant in this rather than a bystander, why Jamie thinks the moment belongs to all of us rather than to a handful of technologists and billionaires, and what he would keep from the original Ten Commandments.

Mike’s push is that principles on their own do not necessarily hold. Most of us sign off on them easily. What happens to them in a high stress, consequential environment is the harder question.

Jamie says technology is what gets us to this conversation, and the conversation is about values. The unsexy word for the rest of it, he says, is governance, and it starts with governance of the self.

Enjoy the conversation.

Links & Resources

Jamie Metzl’s Website: https://jamiemetzl.com/

Jamie Metzl’s Books: The AI Ten Commandments: A New Moral Code for Humanity, Superconvergence, Hacking Darwin, Eternal Sonata

OneShared.World, where Jamie is founder and chair

Atlantic Council, where Jamie is a Senior Fellow: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/expert/jamie-metzl/

Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMastery

Get exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!

Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/

Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter

Download Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindset

Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tamsen Fadal was 47 and anchoring the evening news when the first hot flash hit.

She got off the set and lay down on the bathroom floor. No one had prepared her well for any of this. The answer, when it finally came, was a short note from her doctor in her patient portal with four words: "In menopause, any questions?"

Tamsen Fadal is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, executive producer of the PBS documentary The M Factor and The M Factor 2, and New York Times bestselling author of How to Menopause. She spent thirty years in television news before turning to the thing nobody had explained to her.

Tamsen and Mike get into what menopause actually is, how its symptoms can resemble anxiety or depression, and what changed after the 2002 hormone study.

This is a conversation for men as much as for women. Every man is a partner, colleague, son, or father to someone moving through this. Tamsen’s line is that men don’t have to go through it, but they do have to understand it.

Tamsen calls what comes after menopause “the next 30.” Her point is to decide what you want those years to look like, and start building toward them now.

Enjoy the conversation.

___________________________________________________

Links & Resources:

Tamsen Fadal’s Website: https://www.tamsenfadal.com

Tamsen Fadal’s Books: How to Menopause: Take Charge of Your Health, Reclaim Your Life, and Feel Even Better than Before, The New Single, Why Hasn’t He Proposed?, Why Hasn’t He Called?

Tamsen Fadal’s Documentaries: The M Factor: Shredding the Silence on Menopause and The (M) Factor 2: Before the Pause, both on PBS

Tamsen Fadal’s Podcast: The Tamsen Show

Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMastery

Get exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!

Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/

Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter

Download Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindset

Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What are the things we can do today to help minimize our chances of developing dementia as we age?

Dr. Tommy Wood is a physician and neuroscientist, Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Neuroscience at the University of Washington, and author of The Stimulated Mind.

The book takes on a belief many of us still hold, that the adult brain becomes fixed at an early age and then declines from there. Tommy traces that idea back to 1906 and to the words of a Nobel laureate. Then he unpacks what the latest research and data say, and it’s not what you might think.

This is a conversation about a tough subject, mental decline and dementia. Many of us have been touched by this in our own families, and what Tommy has to say gives all of us hope that we have more agency than we think when it comes to this part of our health.

Tommy and Mike get into the 14 modifiable risk factors named by the Lancet Commission, why midlife is when risk starts to diverge, and the three buckets Tommy sorts everything into: stimulus, supply, and support. Mike talks about his grandfather, who had vascular dementia and covered for it so well that the family did not see it for years.

Tommy tells us that “At 70 years old now, you are less likely to be diagnosed with dementia than any other time in history.” The trajectory is not fixed, but there’s a lot more work to be done.

Enjoy the conversation.

____________________________________________

Links & Resources

Dr. Tommy Wood’s Website: https://www.drtommywood.com

Dr. Tommy Wood’s Book: The Stimulated Mind: Future-Proof Your Brain from Dementia and Stay Sharp at Any Age

BetterBrain, where Tommy is Chief Science Officer: https://betterbrain.com

Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMastery

Get exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!

Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/

Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter

Download Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindset

Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a conversation about habits, the ones you want to build and the ones you want to get rid of.

Jon Gordon has written more than 30 books on leadership, habits and mindset, including numerous bestsellers.

Jon's most recent book is titled The Power of Positive Habits, and it tackles a critical issue so many of us face: how do I break the habits that no longer serve me, and how do I build ones that will help me flourish?

Jon and Mike discuss the inward reflections that have helped them break the patterns that have held them back. Jon talks about how he needed to heal wounds from his childhood before he could really break his most challenging habits. The path he describes is not easy, but one well worth considering.

This is a conversation about self-awareness, self-challenge, and how to build practical habits, like gratitude, visualization, and something Jon calls the habit before the habit.

"You are your habits," Jon says, and the best part is you can choose new ones.

Enjoy the conversation.

Links & Resources

Learn more about Jon here: https://jongordon.com/

Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMastery

Get exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!

Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/

Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter

Download Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindset

Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X

Jon Gordon’s Books: The Power of Positive Habits, The Energy Bus, The Power of Positive Leadership, The Power of a Positive Team, The One Truth, The Coffee Bean, and The Hard Hat

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What is the change you seek to make?

On today's episode we go back to the Finding Mastery Vault for a conversation with Seth Godin, author, entrepreneur, teacher, and one of the most influential thinkers of our time on leadership, creativity, and making meaningful change. Seth has written more than twenty international bestsellers, including The Dip, Purple Cow, and The Song of Significance, alongside one of the longest-running daily blogs in the world. His claim is that naming the change you're actually trying to make is more than a branding exercise. It's what helps make every downstream decision clearer… what to commit to, what to quit, whose opinion to take seriously, and who you will have to become to pull it off.

We first released this one a few years ago, and since then the world has only gotten noisier, faster and more demanding of change, which is exactly why we felt it was worth bringing back.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• What Seth means by the change you seek to make, and why it clarifies everything downstream
• Leadership as a voluntary act, and why enrollment and inspiration come before authority
• Why consistency is what makes you trustworthy enough to lead change at all
• How to tell a dead end from the dip when you're deciding whether to quit
• Whose judgment has actually earned the right to shape your work
• Who to go to for reassurance, and who to go to for insight

If you have ever felt your choices quietly bending toward the approval of people who have not earned it, this conversation offers you a perspective you need to hear.

Links & Resources

Seth Godin Photo Credit: Brian Bloom

For More on Seth, go to https://www.sethgodin.com/

Seth Godin’s Books: The Dip, Purple Cow, Linchpin, Tribes, This Is Marketing, The Practice, and The Song of Significance. His newest book, The Knot: Problems Can Be Solved, is set to be released in September 2026.

Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMastery

Get exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!

Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/

Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter

Download Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindset

Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What questions are tugging at you right now, and how might exploring the answers to those questions help unlock your potential?

For this 30th installment of our popular Ask Me Anything series, Dr. Michael Gervais is joined by co-host Victoria Garrick Browne, a Forbes 30 Under 30 recipient, former Division I volleyball player at USC, mental health advocate, creator, and speaker. Victoria turned her own private struggle with performance anxiety and depression into a gift for millions, and she founded The Hidden Opponent, a nonprofit that brings mental health education and support to student-athletes on campuses around the country. She's the ideal person to sit alongside Mike for this AMA and help answer these questions with care.

The questions our community submitted are honest and vulnerable, and they keep circling the same root: identity. What happens when who you are gets fused to what you do? Mike and Victoria explore why the culture around us so easily hands young people a performance-based identity, what it looks like to move toward a purpose-based one instead, and why the way a parent talks about their child at the dinner table quietly shapes how that child sees themselves.

This is a practical and useful conversation for anyone who competes, coaches, parents, or is simply trying to figure out who they are.

In this conversation, we explore:

• How to help young people build an identity rooted in who they are, not only in how they perform
• Why the way you talk about your child, even at Thanksgiving, is shaping their identity
• How to tell the difference between healthy competitiveness and unhealthy pressure
• The warning signs of burnout in a young athlete, and why competing too early can backfire
• How to share a mental health story in recruiting without it becoming a liability
• Whether real confidence can exist without external validation
• The difference between formal instruction and guided discovery in coaching and parenting
• A simple, honest way to work with imposter syndrome

If your sense of who you are has ever felt a little too tied to what you do, this one is well-worth your time.

Links & Resources

To learn more about Victoria, please visit: https://victoriagarrickbrowne.com/

To learn more about The Hidden Opponent, the non-profit Victoria started, please visit: https://www.thehiddenopponent.org/

Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMastery

Get exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/

Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter

Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine: https://findingmastery.com/morningmindset

Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X

Learn more about The Hidden Opponent: https://thehiddenopponent.org/

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When the moment arrives and you don’t have a script, are you trying to impress, or working to connect?

Matt Abrahams is a lecturer in organizational behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, host of the Think Fast, Talk Smart podcast, and author of Think Faster, Talk Smarter: How to Speak Successfully When You’re Put on the Spot. His path into this work starts very young and is almost comically literal. His last name starts with AB, so all through school he was the one teachers called on first. He felt what it is to be put on the spot before he had any tools for it. Later, in the corporate world and then at Stanford, he watched how much rides on those unscripted and authentic moments, and he set out to study what actually helps.

The central idea of this conversation is freeing: speaking in the moment is a skill, not a gift you’re either born with or not. Like any athlete, you can learn it and train it, and, as Matt puts it, you can prepare to be spontaneous. That reframe changes everything downstream. When the spotlight hits and the heart starts pounding, the body reads the moment as a threat. The work is learning to meet it as an opportunity instead, to buy yourself a little space, and to put your attention where it belongs: on the person in front of you rather than on your own performance.

Matt and Mike spend time in this conversation getting quite practica. Matt shares the two tools to reach for when your mind goes blank, the simple What, So What, Now What structure for organizing a thought under pressure, and a listening practice he calls pace, space, grace. Mike opens up too, telling the story of a first international conference where he tried to breathe his way to calm on stage and realized, mid-panic, that he had never trained the skill he needed most. In the end, they land on this simple concept: being present, grounded, and in service of the other person is the big rock that makes the rest work.

In this conversation, we explore:

• How speaking in the moment is a trainable skill
• What actually happens in the body when you’re put on the spot
• How to shift from seeing a moment as a threat to seeing it as an opportunity
• The two tools to use when your mind goes blank
• The What, So What, Now What structure for organizing a thought quickly
• Why great listening is pace, space, and grace
• How to turn the spotlight off yourself and onto connection
• Why the goal is never to sound perfect, only to connect

Matt’s work is a reminder to all of us that the goal was never to sound perfect. It was always to connect.

Links & Resources

Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMastery

Get exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!

Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/

Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter

Download Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: http://findingmastery.com/morningmindset

Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X

Matt Abrahams’ Book: Think Faster, Talk Smarter: How to Speak Successfully When You’re Put on the Spot

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What if the kids who look like they’re doing just fine on the outside are quietly struggling to make sense of what’s happening on the inside?

Ross Szabo is one of the leading voices in youth mental health education: founding Wellness Director at Geffen Academy at UCLA, founder of the Human Power Project, co-author of Behind Happy Faces, and author of A Kids Book About Anxiety. His story starts long before the titles. Born into a family with severe mental health disorders and addiction, Ross was 11 when he visited his older brother in a psychiatric ward, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder himself at 16, and coped with drinking that began at age 12. In his senior year of high school, after months of crippling depression, he attempted to take his own life… and this occurred while serving as class president, playing varsity basketball, and carrying a high GPA. On the outside, everything looked fine. The inside was a different story. That distance between the outside and the inside became the through line of his life’s work.

The idea Ross has organized his career around sounds simple: treat mental health the same way we treat physical health. That means a clear definition, a shared language, and trainable skills. His definition is a helpful place to start… mental health is not about having a problem, it’s how you address the different challenges in your life. At Geffen Academy, he built what he describes as the only program in the country where students learn about mental health and healthy relationships once a week, every week, from grade six through grade 12, timed to the second largest period of brain growth, which happens between the ages of 12 to 25. His graduates report feeling far more prepared for college than their peers, especially in the interpersonal sense: living with new roommates, managing relationships, and knowing how to ask for support.

Ross and Mike walk through how mapping the self-defining memories that shaped you helps build coping mechanisms the way athletes build skills (the more consistently you do something, the better you get at it). And they discuss how expanding your emotional vocabulary improves your mental health. Ross and Mike dive into the difference between vulnerability and trauma dumping, how the crisis shows up differently in young men and young women, why modeling beats lecturing at home, and what a shared language for mental health could unlock in families, schools, and businesses.

In this conversation, we explore:

• Why so many young people look fine on the outside while struggling on the inside
• A clear, working definition of mental health, and why most of us don’t have one
• The difference between feeling nervous and having anxiety
• Why the more words you have for your feelings, the better your mental health
• The neuroscience of coping, and how to actually rewire a habit
• How the youth mental health crisis shows up differently in young men and young women
• What parents overlook when preparing kids for college
• Why every family, team, and business needs a shared language for mental health

Ross's work is an invitation to care for the mind with the same clarity we bring to the body. And if you're raising, teaching, or leading young people, this conversation offers the language and the skills to close the gap between the outside and the inside.

Links & Resources

Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMastery

Get exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!

Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/

Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter

Download Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindset

Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X

Ross Szabo’s Books: Behind Happy Faces (co-authored) and A Kids Book About Anxiety

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What has been the cost to women of relying on research that was never designed around female physiology?

Dr. Stacy Sims is an exercise physiologist, nutrition scientist, and bestselling author of ROAR, which challenged the idea that women should train and fuel like men, and Next Level, which focuses on health, performance, and physiology through perimenopause and menopause. Over two decades of research, she has become one of the leading voices reshaping how we understand women's health, with a message that has become synonymous with her work: women are not small men. That line started as a throwaway teaching point during her postdoc at Stanford, and it has since become a paradigm shift.

At the center of this conversation is a quiet, costly problem. For decades, much of the science on training, nutrition, and medicine was built on male bodies and then applied to women as if they were simply smaller versions of men. Stacy walks through what that gap has cost, why the literature thins out for women between the ages of thirty and fifty, and how a hormone fluctuation can get mistaken for a panic attack, leading to solutions that were never going to fully work.

Stacy and Mike then move into what to actually do about it. They get into why "eat less, train more" often backfires and drives the body into a low energy state, why fasting through the morning for women can dysregulate appetite and stress hormones, and why lifting heavier loads may protect not just muscle and bone but the aging brain. They also draw the line that runs through the whole conversation, the symptoms of perimenopause are the physiology, not the person, and explore why this episode isn't just for the women in the community. Stacy explains why having men in the conversation helps drive action, what partners can actually do... listen first rather than rush to fix... and why the rising noise around menopause online, along with AI tools built on outdated male data, makes clear thinking here more valuable than ever.

In this conversation, we explore:

• Why so much health and performance research was never actually done on women
• What "women are not small men" really means in training and nutrition
• Why "eat less, train more" often backfires for women through midlife
• Why fasting through the morning can dysregulate appetite and stress hormones
• How lifting heavier loads may help protect the aging brain
• Why men belong in this conversation, and how to show up for the women in their lives
• Why most AI health tools still run on outdated male data

Whether this conversation is about your body or the body of someone you love, it offers a science-backed way to understand what's happening and what to do next.

Guest Links & Resources

Website: Learn more about Dr. Sims here: https://www.drstacysims.com/

Dr. Sims' Books: ROAR, Revised Edition (2024) and Next Level (2022)

Finding Mastery Links & Resources

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMastery

Get exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!

Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/

Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter

Download Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindset

Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X

Dr. Stacy Sims’ Books: ROAR and Next Level

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How do great leaders build teams to become who they're capable of becoming, and prepare them to handle their emotions when the pressure is highest?

Eddie Jones is one of the most accomplished coaches in world rugby. He has led Australia, England, and Japan on the international stage, and guided Japan to one of the greatest upsets in rugby history at the 2015 World Cup. He has built a career on turning teams around, creating pressure, and challenging more from the people he leads. There is a fine line in that work. Too little challenge and we never understand who we can become. Too much and we create the wrong conditions to explore. That line has not always been easy to walk. Eddie’s demanding methods have drawn criticism over the years, and his exits from England in 2022 and Australia in 2023 came under intense public scrutiny... a chapter he alludes to here when he describes the mistake of letting the noise come down on top of him.

In this conversation with Dr. Michael Gervais, Eddie walks through how he builds team identity, starting with a picture in his head of how a team could play and then closing the gap between that vision and the group in front of him. He explains why he keeps training about 70% successful, so the 30% of failure becomes the learning, and why training should always be harder than the game. He makes the case that immediate, private feedback beats public humiliation every time, and that the best coaches ask far more questions than they answer.

Eddie also talks about understanding the individual, why coaching has shifted from team-based to one-on-one, and how a single moment of feeling important from a coach 30 years ago still moves him today. He opens up struggles he has faced with his own emotions, the mistakes he has made, the generation that taught him to never show vulnerability, and why he is still learning to make room for joy.

In this conversation, we explore:

• How great coaches build a team identity and close the gap between vision and reality
• Why training should be about 70% successful, so the failures become the learning
• The value in training harder than the game
• Why the best coaches ask more questions than they answer
• How understanding the individual has become central to modern leadership
• Why you should never assume, and always confirm by knowing the person
• The thinking time every leader needs

By the end of the conversation the two land on a question every leader should ask: would you want to be coached by yourself?

Links & Resources

Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMastery

Get exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!

Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/

Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter

Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine: https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindset

Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X

Eddie Jones' Books: My Life and Rugby: The Autobiography and Leadership: Lessons from My Life in Rugby

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What if the most important work of parenting isn’t about your child at all... but about understanding yourself?

Dr. Dan Siegel is a Harvard-trained clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, a neuroscientist, and one of the leading voices helping us understand how relationships shape the developing mind. He has authored over 20 books, five of them New York Times bestsellers, including co-authoring The Whole-Brain Child and No-Drama Discipline. Trained as a developmental attachment researcher through the National Institute of Mental Health, Dan has spent more than 40 years studying how the adults who care for children influence who those children become. And his interest isn’t only academic. Dan describes his own childhood as decidedly non-optimal... a father who was intrusive and at times terrifying, a mother who was emotionally distant. He carried every non-secure attachment stance into adulthood, and earned security later in life, with the help of a therapist who finally saw him.

What he found over those four decades reframes how we think about raising kids. The research is remarkably clear: how a parent has made sense of their own childhood, assessed before their baby is even born, predicts how that child will attach. Children don’t need perfect parents. They need three things... to be seen, to be soothed, and to be safe. When those are reliably present, a fourth emerges: security. And when we inevitably blow it, because every parent does, what matters most is the repair. As Dan puts it, there’s no such thing as perfect parenting. There’s just being present.

In this conversation with Dr. Michael Gervais, Dan walks through the science of attachment and why the pop-culture version on social media is quoting a different field entirely, the myth that a mother should be able to do it all alone when children are wired for a village, and the daily Wheel of Awareness practice he uses to start every morning. The two also explore loneliness as the experience of a “partial mind,” the shift from a threat mindset to a challenge mindset that protects against burnout, and what it means to keep the “me” while belonging to a “we.” And Mike opens up about the moment his son was born, when he and his wife wrote down their first principles as parents and landed on two words: kindness and strength.

In this conversation, we explore:

• Why there’s no such thing as perfect parenting, only being present
• The four S’s every child needs: seen, soothed, safe, and secure
• How your own childhood story quietly shapes the way you parent
• Why repair after a rupture matters more than never rupturing at all
• The myth of the lone parent, and why children are wired for a village
• Why loneliness may be the experience of a partial mind
• The daily Wheel of Awareness practice Dan has done with 77,000 people
• How shifting from a threat mindset to a challenge mindset protects against burnout

If you’ve ever lost your cool with your kids and worried you’ve done lasting damage, this conversation offers a hopeful, science-backed way to repair... and grow.

_____________________

Links & Resources

Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMastery

Get exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!

Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/

Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter

Download Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindset

Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X

Dr. Dan Siegel’s Books: The Whole-Brain Child, No-Drama Discipline, Parenting from the Inside Out, The Power of Showing Up, Aware, and Becoming Aware

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

If your body already has powerful systems designed to repair and protect you, are your daily habits helping switch them on... or working against them?

Dr. Valter Longo is a professor and director of the Longevity Institute at USC, one of the world’s leading researchers on aging, nutrition, and lifespan, and the author of The Longevity Diet and his latest book, Fasting Cancer. His path into this work is an unusual one. He started as a jazz performance major, chasing rock guitar, and walked away the moment they told him he had to direct a marching band. What pulled him toward aging traces back to being five years old, in the room when his grandfather died, and a question that lodged in him and never left: what if little things can make such a big difference?

That question became a career. Longo walks Dr. Michael Gervais through the science of living to 110, a number drawn from two real people he followed personally, and the trade-off at the heart of aging: the body can pour its energy into growth and reproduction, or into protection and repair, but not both at once. From there he challenges one of the loudest narratives in health and performance today, the push for high protein, laying out why he believes most people are eating far more than the research supports, and what a safer balance actually looks like.

The conversation moves into the work Longo is best known for: fasting-mimicking diets, why he says fasting on its own doesn’t mean anything, and how cycles of eating less may activate the body’s own repair and regeneration. He and Mike explore what this could mean for cancer, where Longo is careful and precise about what the science does and doesn’t yet show, and they close on what it takes to unlearn a foundational belief when the evidence stops holding up. Mike opens up about how this conversation pushed against a narrative he’d carried his whole life, and why he wanted to have it anyway.

In this conversation, we explore:

• Why aging and cancer are deeply connected, and what that means for prevention
• The trade-off between growth and protection that shapes how we age
• Why Longo believes most people eat far too much protein
• What a safer, mostly plant-based protein balance looks like
• Why fasting on its own is a meaningless word, and what to do instead
• How fasting-mimicking cycles may trigger the body’s repair and regeneration
• What the science does and doesn’t yet show about food and cancer
• What it takes to unlearn a belief when the evidence stops holding up

If you’ve ever wondered whether your daily choices are quietly helping or hurting the systems meant to keep you well, this conversation offers a science-backed place to start thinking about your health and lifestyle.

A note from the team: This episode doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Over the last several months, Mike has had numerous conversations on health, nutrition with world-renowned experts like Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, Dr. Jason Fung, and Dr. Tim Spector, among others. These are all rich conversations that at times hold conflicting advice and guidance. We encourage you to listen to all of them, and as always, consult your doctor on what practices are best for you. Health, nutrition, and longevity are all deeply intertwined with living a life of full potential, and we’re committed to having these great conversations with world experts on these subjects. Keep commenting with what’s working in your life, keep passing these onto your friends, and as always keep pushing the frontiers of your own performance!

Links & Resources

Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMastery

Get exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!

Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/

Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter

Download Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindset

Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X

Dr. Valter Longo’s Books: The Longevity Diet and Fasting Cancer

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What does it take to build a team that trusts each other enough to go through hard things together... not around them?

Mike Macdonald is the head coach of the Seattle Seahawks and one of the youngest head coaches in modern NFL history to win a Super Bowl. His path is an unusual one. He grew up with almost no family pipeline into football, a baseball kid in Georgia who fell in love with the strategy of the game watching his dad’s home video of his eighth-grade football games. When an injury ended his playing days in high school, he didn’t walk away. He filmed practice, coached the linebackers his senior year, and discovered the itch that would carry him from the pressure cooker of big-time college football at Georgia to the Baltimore Ravens, and eventually to Seattle.

At the center of how he leads is a principle his team lives by: through, not around. Earn what you achieve. No excuses. Work the problem together, and in a way that’s matter of fact rather than personal. Mike tells the story of the biggest adversity of his NFL career, a blown multiple-score lead as Baltimore’s new defensive coordinator, and the decision that followed: no blame game, name himself the common denominator, and square up with the problem alongside his players. When the players felt the coaches were in the fight with them, the buy-in came, and the defense turned.

This conversation is also a rare one for Finding Mastery: Dr. Michael Gervais has spent the past year working alongside Coach Mike and the Seahawks, and that shared history opens avenues for discussion most interviews never reach. They dig into why confidence and self-efficacy are trainable skills, even for a Super Bowl winning head coach, why clarity is one of the deepest forms of respect a leader can offer, and the Harvard baseball dream a young Coach Mike let slip because, in his words, he played it too safe. Mike Gervais opens up about recognizing that same story in his own life... the fear of looking like you don’t have what it takes. They close with imposter syndrome on the way to a Super Bowl, a graduation photo full of badges, and what it means to hand the trophy back to the team.

In this conversation, we explore:

• Why “through, not around” is the foundation of the Seahawks’ culture
• How confidence and self-efficacy become trainable skills
• Why clarity from leadership is one of the deepest forms of trust
• How taking responsibility in front of the room earns buy-in
• Why players always know which leaders are authentic
• How fear of failure quietly keeps us playing it safe
• What imposter syndrome looks like on the way to a Super Bowl

If you’ve ever been tempted to go around a hard conversation, a hard problem, or a hard moment, this conversation offers a way to go through it... together.

Links & Resources

Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMastery

Get exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!

Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/

Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter

Download Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindset

Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.