The First Rule of Mastery | Michael Gervais
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Welcome to the Talks at Google podcast, where great minds meet. I'm Kyle, bringing you this week's episode with author and psychologist Michael Gervais. Talks at Google brings the world's most influential thinkers, creators, makers, and doers all to one place. Every episode is taken from a video that can be seen at youtube.com slash talks at Google. Dr. Michael Gervais visits Google to discuss his book, The First Rule of Mastery. Stop worrying about what people think of you.

The book is a groundbreaking guide for overcoming what may be the single greatest constrictor of human potential: our fear of people's opinions. Fear of people's opinions, or FOPO, shows up almost everywhere in our lives, and the consequences are great. When we let FOPO take control, we play it safe and small because we're afraid of what will happen on the other side of critique.

When challenged, we surrender our viewpoint. We trade in authenticity for approval. We please rather than provoke. We chase the dreams of others rather than our own. But it doesn't have to be this way. In the first Rule of Mastery, Michael Gervais shows us that the key to leading a high-performance life is to redirect our attention from the world outside us to the world inside us.

He reveals the mental skills and practices we need to overcome FOPO, the same skills he's taught to the top performers in the world, including sports MVPs, renowned artists and musicians, and Fortune 100 leaders and teams. Filled with fascinating stories from the worlds of sports and business, leading-edge science, and insights from the frontier of human performance, the first rule of mastery is a much-needed wake-up call that when we give more value to other people's opinions than we do our own, we live a life on their terms, not ours.

Moderated by Mike Abrams, here is Michael Gervais, the first rule of mastery. Hi, everybody. My name is Mike Abrams, and I'm excited to host here today. Just one quick housekeeping before we start our show today. If you are watching live and want to ask questions, feel free to throw them in the chat, and we will take audience questions at the end.

Our guest today is Dr. Michael Gervais, who is one of the world's top high-performance psychologists. His clients include world record holders, Olympians, internationally acclaimed artists and musicians, MVPs from every major sport, and Fortune 100 CEOs. He's also the founder of Finding Mastery, a high-performance psychology consulting agency, the host of the Finding Mastery podcast, and the co-creator of the Performance Science Institute at the University of Southern California.

He recently released a book, The First Rule of Mastery, Stop Worrying About What People Think of You, which is out now and what we're here today to talk about. So welcome, Michael, and thank you for joining me. Hi.

I'm so happy to be here with you. Thank you for hosting. Excited to have you. I want to start with the book. You've obviously had a long career. You've done podcasts. You've done one-on-one coaching. You've worked with NFL teams. But this is a very different medium. So why tackle a book? Why now? And how did you come up with this concept to bring to the world? Okay, so why now is because I was wrestling privately with this thing.

And there wasn't a name for it. I didn't know what it was. I first recognized it when I was 15 years old. And then as I started later in my life working with World's Best, I noticed that they had this thing too. But there wasn't a place to study it. There were no handles on it so that I could port it and understand what it was. So it was always this slippery little thing.

And essentially what it was is this fear of other people's opinions. And we had fun with it. We named it FOPO, fear of people's opinions. And it's this excessive worry.

that sits right underneath our programming, our internal programming. And it sits right underneath and it's part of the filter on how we choose our words, definitely socially, how we dress, how we don't dress. It's part of the way that we are making decisions in our lives. And why now? Two reasons.

Social media happened in case anyone missed the program here. Social media happened. So now that all of us have a sense of public awareness,

And so there's this public nature. And our brains are not optimized for what is happening to us right now. Our brains were programmed a million years ago. Maybe there was an update about 200,000 years ago. But we've got an ancient brain that's trying to solve modern dilemma. So it's one of the reasons we're finding people are so stressed out from social media. So social media is one of them. The second is we are obsessed.

with performance. We live in a culture that is obsessed with performance. So when you take those two and you put them together, there's this excessive worry that sits right underneath the surface for that sounds like this. Am I okay in the eyes of others?

And there's some ancient programming in our brain that's responsible for that mechanism. And it's amplified right now in a pretty radical way across the society. Yeah, you touched on a lot of things that I've got follow-up questions on. So we're going to get there. We're going to get to FOPO and performance-based, you know, the social norms of that. I want to hear a little bit about the challenge of a book versus the other mediums that you've had because you're

When you're tackling a book, you don't necessarily know the audience you're going to reach. Whereas a one-on-one coaching or a business or a football team, you kind of have that. How was that challenge? How'd you overcome that challenge of having to kind of mix and match all these different stories for a broader audience? Okay. So the origin stories, I wrote an article about this thing that I was struggling with, FOPO, and I wrote it for HBR. And 12 months later they called and they said, you know, like you're,

"Who are you? You're the number one downloaded article for 12 months in a row. You touched a nerve." And they said, "We'd love to turn this into a book and back it up with some research."

And I just had a few too many alligators. I was wrestling in my life, you know, around, you know, business development. And so they came back around 24 months later and they said, come on, you were number one downloaded again, 24 months in a row. And so it hit a nerve. And, and because of that, it felt like I owed the science of it to be shared and to put it in, in a format that we could distribute widely, you know, and hopefully I think so many people saw that article, saw themselves in it. Like,

Like, why do I worry so much about what people think of me? Like, yes, I struggle with that too. And so the medium was challenging because we wanted to tell a story. We wanted to have science to back it up and then make it super applied so that it's not just knowledge, but it's knowledge for application. And that's the way we went at writing this book. Yeah. All right. Let's get into FOBO.

I think, how do you define it? I mean, you kind of gave the overview, but how would you just define this and its impact to everybody that is facing this? Well, there's two. I think there's an easy way to think about it, and then there's a more technical. So let's start with the easy way. Faux post shows up when you're at a social event and you don't really want to be drinking, but you're holding a cocktail just because you don't want to be the odd one out.

FOPO is checking your phone at a social event so that you look like you're in demand or you're busy or you've got other things that are important in your life.

right? FOPO is when you're in your closet choosing which clothes you're going to wear, you're choosing based on what you think somebody will approve of or not. You know, it's pretending to like a song or a joke from a movie when you haven't actually seen the movie or you're not familiar with the song. It's laughing at a joke that you find to be a little bit unbecoming or maybe insulting, but you don't want to stand, you know, you don't want to be kind of pushed out of the group.

So those are like very slippery ways that FOPO shows up and it informs our decisions and how we respond. Okay. So that's kind of the fun way to think about it. But more technically, it's just an unproductive obsession with what other people think of us. And it's born out of the ancient brain and modern dilemma. The ancient brain figured out survival.

So we know how to survive from saber tooth and wildebeest and the dark ages. And so our ancestry have passed on some really nice gifts. We know how to mobilize. We know how to figure things out when it's hard or pressure filled or stressed. And so the other thing that got carried over is that if we were to do something in an unbecoming way to the tribe,

if we didn't perform properly, if we screwed up in some kind of way, and you and I might get kicked out of the tribe. That would be a near-death sentence. It's too hard to fight and forge and hunt and gather and protect our family. It's too much. So what we needed to do is figure out how to stay part of the pack. So we are excellent at figuring out the micro-expressions

of the potential rejection that somebody might be forming in their own opinion. We are excellent at figuring out, oh, they're approving of this. They like this. Let me keep going. Because safety is part of belonging. So when we belong to something, we feel safe. However, when it's at a compromise to our integrity, it's at a compromise to our first principles, it's at a compromise to our artistic expression, there's a great cost to it.

So that's kind of the more technical thing. And the more fun way is the way it shows up in a very slippery way in our life. Yeah. Your book does a really good job of breaking it down to these three sections, is understanding the unmasking of it, assessing it, and then redefining it. So I want to kind of go through that. And I think I would love to use even an example. So you mentioned technology.

What are you wearing? The social media of it. We were talking before, I've got a blurred background. People think about the books behind you and all this stuff. Technology has almost amplified this a little bit. There is all this ability of having notifications come to your wrist on a smartwatch or things buzzing and every device around you telling you all these things that's just adding to that FOPO. When you think about the evolution of that,

How do you kind of like start with that unmask of like, is it just the recognition it's there that that's happening? Or what's the cost kind of of the amount of time I thought about what shirt I should wear today? OK, so, I mean, I think the answer to your point is yes, that there are there are many ways to think about that.

how we go about talking about FOPO. But I think that FOPO, the number one way to start is to just ask yourself the question, like, is this happening? And you might not know right now. The person might not know. So the unmasking is really pointing to the psychological skill of awareness. And so let's just kind of pull it back. Let's see if there's something there for you. Maybe there's not. And that's either for, my experience is those that do not have any FOPO are sociopaths.

So you could be one of those, no problem. Narcissist, maybe that shows up for you. The enlightened, the full enlightened, you know, are not obsessed or worried about how well they're performing and how much they're approved in the eyes of others. And then deeply purpose-based people are less concerned

than you would imagine because they're more concerned with the purpose and the mission that they're on. Okay, so not to get too far in the weeds yet. Unmasking is really about opening up the awareness just to say, what do you think? Is this influencing your thoughts in any way? And I want to be really clear, Mike. FOPO is not about not caring about what people think. That's not this conversation. This is about not worrying.

So worrying is actually pointing to anxiety, worrying about are you okay in the eyes of others? And if you're not quite sure if you're okay, your brain's dictum is to figure out how to be okay. So it sends signals, heart starts to pound, breathing changes. You know, you start to say, ooh, there's duress in my system. This is what pressure or stress feels like. What's at stake here? What's happening? I know what it is. They could be rejecting me. And so then we start to have this second game.

And the second game is conforming and potentially contorting or doing something to just feel like I just need to be okay. Sometimes we leave, and sometimes we just shapeshift a little bit. That's FOPO. So the first order of business is just to bring it to awareness. And I'll tell you, David Foster Wallace, one of the great poets and writers, says he sets this up brilliantly when he says –

There's an old fish and two young fish swimming in the opposite direction. And the old fish swims by and he says, "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on, don't say anything for a while. And then one of the fish finally says to the other young fish, "The hell is water?" And so it's meant to elicit. Sometimes when you just point to the water that you're swimming in, the air that you're breathing,

You know, it's like, oh, that's the thing that we're doing. It's so obvious. It's so part of our the fabric of how we're making decisions that until you name it and call it out, it might just be the slippery little thing that's working under the surface. And so that's the fun part of introducing this concept.

Yeah, it's such a fascinating thing. I do love is, and we got a comment here that the worrying versus caring is a different piece and a very good distinction. I want to ask a little bit, you mentioned that one group that doesn't worry as much is the purpose-based type of personality. You also talk in the book a lot about performance-based personalities and the culture of that. Yeah.

Can you talk about the different types of those performance and purpose-based personalities that you wrote about and a little bit about how that impacts part of this FOPO? 100%. So I love that question because we are in a culture where we are obsessed with performance. And it makes perfect sense if...

not most, but the majority of people have a performance-based identity. So let's open that up according to research. Dr. Hochberg, one of the original kind of promulgators behind this idea is that he found that there's this way that when we start to identify ourself, not with who we are, but rather with what we do and how well we do it relative to other people.

So that's a performance-based identity. And let me make this really concrete. I'm using maybe a bit of a narrative here. Let's just pick a sport. Let's pick public speaking. Let's pick an art. You can fill in the blanks. Let's do public speaking because it's one of the great fears for people. Is that when you walk on stage...

and your heart is pounding. The reason your heart pounds, the reason that you've got a little extra energy or light sweat or your breathing has changed, the reason that's happening is your body has gone into fight-flight-freeze mechanism. So it's gone into that readiness for survival.

Now, what is dangerous? There is not a sniper usually in row four. There's usually not, you know, right? There's no physical risk in those moments. But the risk comes from the eyeballs of others. So it's simply the thing that's happening behind their eyeballs, which is their critique, their judgment, which leaves the potential for rejection.

So your body is turned on, it's switched on. It's one of the great fears for most people, certainly in the United States, is that that rejection is so dangerous that our body goes into survival mode. Okay, so how do we deal with this? Or let me draw one point forward. That's because we have attached who we are to our performance. And now all of us, my entire identity is at stake. It's at risk.

So what that means is it's at risk of the approval of others. Remember performance-based identity is your identity is based on what you do, how well you do it relative to other people. And that, that is a surefire way to play life based on other people's hopes and dreams for you to play life according to their standards, to play life according to, you know, whether you're going to be accepted or rejected by them. And that, that,

That's a very dangerous proposition. I think it would be hard for most people in the Western world to say, I don't understand what a performance-based identity is. Because at a young age, our elders, our coaches, our parents, our teachers, they ask us about grades. Our structure is for grades, which is an outcome based on your performance. And so it's just, again, it's like the water that we swim in.

And so that's a performance-based identity. And I think it's the reason why public speaking is so hard for us. It's why it's the great fear for so many. Now, I think what we can do is translate that to, if that's an on-ramp to FOPO, what's an off-ramp? One of the off-ramps would be to go from performance-based identity to purpose-based identity. And that subtle little shift

It changes the way that you think about walking on stage or being in the batter's box or a white canvas that you're going to draw your first paint stroke on or the white canvas that you're going to make your first notes on for a memo or a bio or whatever it might be. So the purpose-based bit is to be very clear about why you're here.

What is the purpose? This is not new science. This is not a new calling for people. But the freedom on the other side of it, it starts to downregulate or, yeah, let's call it downregulate. It starts to dampen, was the word I'm looking for, dampen that stingy little need for approval because what you're actually doing is you're saying, no, what matters more than approval from others is to be committed to the purpose that matters to me. And so when those folks walk on stage, right?

They come from a different orientation. If any of the world's greats, Mike, were here with us today, Mandela, Mother Teresa, fill in the blanks. If any of the world's greats were here, I doubt they would be nervous if we were going to approve or reject them. They are so committed to what matters most to them that they're all in. And they're working from a place from clarity, clarity of ideas, with conviction.

Okay, now that arc from clarity of ideas to conviction is something that we spend a lot of time with in elite sport. And so you want to know what you need to do. You want to practice that under high stress conditions as often as you possibly can.

And then when you're over the mound, when you are fill in the blank, wherever that high stress moment in sport or business or art is, that you're able to settle into that moment and have conviction to see the ball, conviction to listen to your colleagues speak or your supervisor or your direct report to solve the thing that you're trying to wrestle down to make sense of. So from clarity to conviction and what sits in the middle between those two are mental skills.

psychological skills to be able to navigate that emotionally charged moment. So clarity to conviction in between is where psychology shows up and we can train our mind bike. We can train our mind just like we can train our body, just like we can train our craft. And that's what world's best in sport have been doing for a long time.

And big sport is about 10 to 15 years ahead of big business when it comes to investing in the ability for their people to be their very best. And so it's an exciting time because it's starting to work its way into multinationals and large business and medium-sized businesses. Like, I want my people to be their very best.

What are the best practices? Well, what can we borrow from the world of sport? And certainly the crosswalk doesn't work between business and sport in many ways. But the investment in their people to live fully in the present moment, to adjust to hard scenarios, to be great under emotionally charged moments, to trust themselves, to be a great teammate to somebody else, to have clarity of purpose and to commit to it.

That is a playbook from sport that I think we can all work from. So I want to stick with that on the sports piece because there's a lot of conversation about how do you practice that moment? You know, the last second shot in your driveway isn't the same as 18,000 people staring at you and millions watching on TV. So how do you in the preparation process

bring that moment to get that mental ability. And I would say, let's take it also to the business world of if you're going to go deliver this big presentation, how do you practice it in the conference room to get through that mental state, to be able to go deliver when it's the high pressure situation? I love the question. So let's frame, let's frame something in a way that allows us to actually answer that question in a thoughtful way is that, um,

You and I are for the most time not doing a public grandstanding type of thing. And that's what sport is doing, like a million people plus watching every night, whatever. But what's happening for them is that they are using their mind to be fully focused in this moment for them, whatever that moment is for them.

And so maybe a million people plus are watching. That's noise. How many people are watching is noise. Even the outcome that could happen from that moment going poorly, the potential outcome is noise. So signal to noise ratio, it's an engineering term that we're all familiar with. It's also psychological. So our job, true masters of craft, are able to use their mind to be tuned to the signal and they get out the noise. So the signal is the present moment.

That holds true for game seven of whatever championships, the finals of this, that, or the other, the Super Bowl, the gold medal moment in the Olympics. It is marked by can I focus deeply in this moment on the task at hand?

Can I manage emotions well? Can I solve something that is complicated to solve? And that's using psychological skills. Now, you crosswalk that over to our everyday kind of hallway, boardroom, meeting room life. It's the same thing, which is can I use my mind to focus deeply in this moment?

Whether people are watching, whether the stakes, whatever the stakes are, all of that is noise. Can I focus my mind down to this moment? And I'll tell you why the present moment is so important. Yeah, be here now, the now, da-da-da, all of that kind of pop psychology stuff that floats around. I nod my head yes. But then we need to double click to say why. Why is the present moment so important? The present moment is where the unlock happens. It's where high performance is expressed.

So if you're not skilled at being in the present moment, you're not yet in the game of high performance. You're not there. You're definitely not on the path of mastery if you don't know how to use your mind to be attuned to the present moment. The second thing about the present moment is that that is where wisdom is revealed.

So those insights that go, oh, that's how this works. And that happens by being tuned deeply to the present moment. And the third is it's where all things that are beautiful and amazing and wonderful are experienced. So the present moment is the keyhole. And that's where, again, psychological skills training shows up in payloads to know how to focus your mind in the present moment, even when there's a lot of noise around you.

And sometimes, sometimes the noise is louder that's coming from inside your own head as opposed to the noise of the world around you. I love the self-help kind of piece because I think that there is this, it is in the word self-help is the self piece of that, but you're almost looking at it from the other side, which is what is the viewpoint of others and how to almost ignore that or put that noise away. So can you talk a little bit about like,

How do you view this part as part of the self-help industry, but also the aspect of it that comes from an external factor? Okay. So I've got some challenges with the self-help industry. One is because, and I know where I sit in it. So this is like, you know, sitting in my own, you know, boiling pot. But the self-help industry is focused on the self for the most part. I mean, that's where it earned its label, right?

And we are more like, meaning humans, we're more like a coral reef than we are like individuals nailed into a board. So we are intricately connected. And there's a fabric to how well you're living your life and how that impacts other people. If you're anxious, pissed off, if you are an irritable person, your people feel that.

They are now managing something in their life based on your inability to work in a graceful way with the present moment. And so we are so intimately connected. It is remarkable. So what I point to instead of self-help is help yourself for one reason so that you can be there for other people, so you can be a great teammate.

And, you know, in business, we talk about, you know, the science of teams. Yes. Wonderful. But what that drills down to, and I've seen this play out over and over again with world championship teams, whether it's the Seattle Seahawks, when we won the, you know, the, the championship there, gold medals in the Olympics is that it comes down to being a great teammate to be a great teammate. You can't be always working through your drama.

You need to have a way that you're working in the present moment where you're here, fully present so that you can be there for other people. So in other words, have your life vest on so that you can help the other. I mean, that analogy holds up so beautifully in so many ways. So I hope that answers it just a little bit.

You talk about Olympians, and I think you wrote a little bit about the spotlight effect, and that's probably as extreme as you can get in the moment of that. And there is a history of depression and mental challenges for Olympians after their time finishes. So how does your research and your experience of this FOPO kind of fit into that kind of phenomenon that's happened so frequently with such a population of people?

Um, so is the question, how have I seen the, um, kind of when the circus leaves town? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay. I'll say this just to maybe set the mood of it. Last 25 years, I've been fortunate to work with some of the world's best across multiple sports and disciplines, art, sport, business. Okay. I think if you knew what I knew about, um,

the cost, the dark side of high performance, I think you wouldn't be challenging, I'm not saying you, Mike, but I think people wouldn't be challenging their kids in the way that they are. Because it's not just the ones that get there and flash out.

or that get there and lose their way. And then 87% of people within two years of leaving the NFL are broke, divorced, both, you know, their life is upside down and that the NFL stands for not for long, right? That's the inside joke. So it's not just the ones that get there and then have a hard time leaving, which again, 87% to that number. Um,

It's all of the dark side of getting there where people lose their way. And when I say lose their way, it's that they don't recognize who they are outside of how special they can perform.

And it becomes this deeply constricted narrowing of sense of self because a performance-based identity is narrow. It's not beautifully big and bold and creative and taking up space. It's very, very narrow, even when you're one of the greatest in the world. Evidenced by some of our greats, you know, their brands. Look at the brands that they point to. You know, like I'm more than an athlete.

And like they're scratching for something to say, I am more than just what I do with a basketball. So there's a dark side on the way out. There's a dark side and a deep cost on the way in. And that we have not squared properly how to deal well with stress, how to deal well with performance-based identity. We are in an energy, a human energy crisis.

And that was, that was coined by a CHRO that I deeply respect. We are in a human energy crisis, not because the world is turned upside down. Again, the dark ages were hard. Like I don't want to go back there. I would rather wrestle with some of the things we're wrestling with now globally than that time. Um,

Okay, so why do humans have an energy crisis? It's because we haven't figured out how to use psychology, how to use the science of how you become your best version. We haven't used that science properly because we're still trying to beat back the stigma around psychology. And that's changing. It's unfortunate we started there, but we need people like you to highlight just how powerful and wonderful it is

When you can learn how to become more aware of your thoughts and emotions and feelings, more aware of what's happening outside of you, their thoughts, emotions and feelings, and then be able to eloquently adjust. Like that's radical. That is a that is a radical. That might not be a greater lever you can pull in modern times.

than understanding how to work from the inside out. That's why we call the book The First Rule of Mastery. How to work from the inside out really is what that's about. Yeah. So if you're talking about stress, anxiety, you wrote about burnout and those types of concepts that are happening, what would be the number one thing you'd say if someone's watching this and they're feeling that stress, they're feeling that anxiety? What's the number one thing? Where would you tell them to start? Well, first, just kind of scoot your chair back from the table and think through, like, am I...

Am I playing the second game? And is that second game a private game where I'm trying to be liked, accepted, okay in the eyes of others? Do I have a fear that their critique or judgment is a full-on assault on me? Am I sensitive to rejection? Do I take feedback well? Am I a wet noodle that I'm just hoping people will approve of my work and/or me? So just take a look at that and see if that is part of your DNA.

or your makeup, I should say, not your DNA. And if it's not, no problems. But the other piece is that we want to make sure that you are using the best practices of recovery because all of us are in a high stress life. All of us are. There's so much happening. If we're not recovering properly,

I mean, it's a tough way to go now. And I'm not talking about try to get your best sleep in on the weekend and try to get eat healthy on the weekend. I'm talking about thin slicing every day, like be disciplined and great at recovering from the stress. The second is that many of us are very expensive organisms to run exponentially expensive because we have that second game.

Because the tension underneath the stressful environment is, am I going to make it? Am I going to figure it out? Is she going to approve? Like, what happens if? And that's a very expensive organism to run. So anxiety, depression, addiction, other maladies that you're working from the inside out, they make it very expensive to be you. And so we end up being tired at, I don't know,

noon, as opposed to tired at, you know, 9pm. And so that that's one way to think about it. Yeah, I really liked in the book, there's one part in the first part of your answer was that put yourself in the receiving end of that. And how much did you pay attention? How much did you notice of that? And you're worrying so much about thinking when you're on the other side of that, how much everyone's watching, it's like, you're probably not paying attention to all

that either. So stop worrying about it. And I thought that was such a practical, immediate, quick way to kind of just put yourself immediately in the flip situation. Yeah. You're referring to the spotlight effect that Professor Gilovich introduced. Yeah. The idea is that most people think that they're kind of in the spotlight when actually we're not. People are not really paying attention. And I'm wondering, Mike, does any of this show up for you? Is this something that

you can recognize in your own life. And if not, like that's cool too. I mean, absolutely. I mean, we were, and before we started, we talked about just even this event, like,

Like I thought about what I was going to put on to where I thought about my background. I thought about how the day was going to go and managing energy to, to be here, knowing that this is going to go out to millions of people potentially versus, you know, it's the public speaking of that versus, you know, other things in life where, you know, I don't know. I, I don't read the comments. I'm not going to pay attention to that stuff, but that stuff exists. And I think there's that future aspect of it, which is this conversation is super fun. And in the moment,

really, really interesting and powerful, but then it's the after like this lives on now, this is where the social media, YouTube, this will be on the internet for a while. And so there is that future potential. But then I think back to the spotlight of how many do I watch? And do I think about what the moderator was wearing or all the other pieces of that? And that's kind of where it gets into it. And, you know, I appreciate that, Mike, making, making it real and bring it home. And, you know, and it's, I would say, um,

It's a little sloppy for the way I've described this to you is that we shouldn't think about what we're going to wear. Of course, that's like it's okay. But when we conform in such a way that we no longer are bringing ourselves forward and the decisions like in the closet, let's do that, is like will Mike like me or will somebody else approve of what I'm wearing as opposed to what do I feel good in? Yeah.

How do I want to feel in my clothes? So it's the inside-out mechanism as opposed to the outside-in. And so that's a little bit the difference between worrying and caring. And then right on the other side of it is letting both of those fade to the side and then just tuning.

you know, like what is right for me here. And if that goes with clothes, obviously that's cool, but also with the words that you're going to choose when you're in a hard conversation. And so again, it's, this wouldn't be about like, don't care about their experience because we need more empathy. Yeah. Right. That's not what this is. Right. And it's, it's all of that excessive worry, both before the engagement and then after the engagement. And so it's,

car ride home and the car ride there, you know, are like, they can be really stressful. And it's this private little experience with ourselves. It's the second game. It's the, the extra worry that sits underneath and there's freedom on the other side of it. Mike, you know, like I I've worked my way through it. Like I'm finding more freedom than I ever have with it. But yeah. So thank you for making it real for me too. Yeah.

So, um, just a reminder to throw in some questions here. We'll take a couple before we do that. I've got a couple more. I want to ask you, I think one is I really liked the, um, the idea of a litmus test of a, of a life well lived. You kind of wrote about that in the book. How would you like, how do you view that as a principle of like, when you look back at the end of life, is it, you know, like just, I would love you to dig into that. Like that, that was such a, an interesting topic to read about. Yeah. So the litmus test, um,

you know it's pointing to some of the work from the stoics and um you know when you start to hold fopo up against awareness of your mortality your morality i'm sorry your mortality um it's kind of it becomes absurd you know of just how how disconnected we are from who we are who we want to become

being okay with ourselves. And because we start to say, I'll see you later, later, we're planning for the future. All those things are great, but we don't really know.

how much more time we have. So the ultimate litmus test is if there was a shot clock on your life and absolutely you knew that time was expiring in 365 days, in 12 weeks, in 10 years, and you work backwards, how would you design your minutes? How would you design your days? And that's the litmus test. We don't know. We pretend we

Like we know we pretend like tomorrow is going to happen, but we don't know. So we're a bit sloppy. We think we're going to have plenty more at bats, but we don't know. And so that's the ultimate litmus test is like, if you knew where the shock Hawk was going to time out, how would you design your life? And so we just had some fun with that. And, um, you know, it's, it's ways to think about how you're organizing your experience in the present moment. And yeah,

I don't want to live with regrets. I have plenty of them. I don't want to change the regrets I have because I'm trying to do my best to learn from them. But I know I can be better tuned to the present moment because I don't know. I fully embrace. I don't know when it's going to end. And so that's one way to think about it.

All right. One more fun question before we open up to the audience. Was that Mike? That was a fun question. No, this is, this is, this is the fun question. I said one. Yeah, I guess this is the fun question. That was not the fun question. That was a serious one. And this is my fun one. You were with the Seahawks during the Legion of boom era and,

How do you think they thought about FOPO? Did they think about FOPO or they focused on what FOPO meant to other people about them? Like that was such a fun time of football for, for that group. Yeah. The Legion of boom or for folks that don't follow American football, it, it was a handful of some of the, Oh, did I just freeze?

I think you're still here. Okay. Yeah. On my side, I'm frozen. Okay. So the Legion of Boom is like this incredible defensive talent that really drove the team. And they were big and they were bold and they were like highly skilled. And they had a mindset that was different.

And boom, meaning they're hard hitting. Boom, meaning they're in your face. Boom, meaning a lot of things. But what made them very special is that they were committed to each other. And I'll tell you how we think about that. And they were committed to a shared mission and a shared purpose. And so those two things are really important. So how do we know they were there for each other? There's this little thing that they would do in every moment before games. Or sorry, not every moment. Before every games.

is that they would get in their little huddle and then one of them would say, we all we got. And the rest of the team would say, we all we need. We all we got. We all we need. We all we got. We all we need. And that idea is that we are here to be great teammates for each other. So that was kind of the very powerful part of it. And the second is they were very clear that their mission, their shared mission was to help each other be their very best, period.

And so it was so clear there wouldn't be one person on the Legion of Boom that wouldn't go, yep, that's exactly it. Our job was to be our best and help our brother in it be their very best.

And so did they have football? I didn't show up that way. It did not look that way. There was something very powerful about how they approach life. And it's very inspiring what they're able to create, which is one of the best in the league. Yeah. Full stop. So fun to hear about them and Super Bowl champions. All right. Let's pull up a couple audience questions here.

So the first question is, "Professionally, this applies as well. Layoffs are real. People are judged by optics and metrics-based performance. When and where does corporate culture meet purpose versus performance?" And this is from Jenny. Okay. So where purpose-based companies do it right is that they spend that intellectual horsepower to get the right words on the wall, to clarify in a nice sentence or two or a couple words what their purpose is. Awesome.

And you're exactly right that we all are responsible for performing towards that purpose. And so this isn't about like hiding from performance. This is about decoupling who I am from what I do. So that decoupling is the freedom and the responsibility in many cases of adulthood,

for us inside of the organization is to not have what we do define who we are. Okay. So we pull it apart and then that way we are in, in better service of the purpose of the organization. We give ourselves a chance to have better performance because we're not playing that secondary game of anxiety, which is, am I okay based on how well I perform? I am okay. I

I matter. I feel good about who I am. And I'm able to bring all of me to the purpose. I'm sorry, all of me to the performance. And that performance is

Whatever that excellence that I'm trying to achieve is, is in service of the purpose. So if you get that right, and that is how some of the best organizations, definitely in sport work, and I've seen it across multinationals as well, trying to conquer that internal organism about how do we bring our best part forward? How do we bring our very best assets, which for the most part is the humans inside of it, are the humans inside of it.

Awesome. All right. We're going to pull up our next question. Seems a lot of dealing with this personality dependent, which may arguably give extroverts an advantage. Where is a good place for introverts or even those with social anxiety to start? Great question. This is not personality infused here. That's not what we're doing. This is not a personality. This is not, we are not pointing to introversion and extroversion.

we are pointing to the relationship that we have with others, period. That's all people. We are social animals. We are not individuals masquerading in this world that we're separate from the pack. We are social beings first and foremost. So introversion means how do you gather energy in the world? Extroversion is how do you gather energy from within yourself?

Extroversion is the way that you gather energy from being around other people. It does not mean that introverts are more anxious or have social anxiety. Introversion is pointing to the way that we make sense with the information that comes in. A cartoon character of an introvert is like big eyes and big ears because we're taking in information first and then mulling it around, and then we choose to share it.

What is where FOPO does pay dividends is that for both introverts and extroverts is are we able to express ourselves clearly? Are we able to bring our most authentic, creative, problem-solving ideas forward without worrying about what are those others going to think of me? But there's a purity in bringing yourself forward.

I'm sorry, bringing your ideas forward because you find this freedom that I am not just my ideas. I am not just what I do as a performer. I am separate from that relative to the, or related to the first question that I answered there. So social anxiety is a clinical disorder. FOPO sits right underneath of it. It's not clinical that you need some sort of therapy.

diagnosis for it, it doesn't meet the criteria for that. So social anxiety is, is a clinical disorder that is well-researched. FOPO sits right underneath it, which, which is just an excessive worry, but it doesn't stop you. It just makes it, um,

There's more friction in how you work in social settings and how you feel about yourself relative to your performance. Last question is also from Jenny. We're pulling it up here. How do high school students that are self-motivated, brilliant, and amazing manage their academic and social activities for college entrance and acceptance? And it's a very stressful time for that group of students. There are people's opinions in our lives that matter. They hold weight.

They can deeply influence our path forward, like head coaches to sport organizations, like academic gatekeepers, supervisors. There's plenty of folks that their opinion of you will materially matter. This comes down to the signal to noise ratio again, is that you can't control what they're going to think about you. Intellectually, all people know that.

So from an intellectual standpoint, knowing that you can't control what they can, what can you control? Okay. So that's the work is to get down into the signal, get into the things that you can control. The things that you ultimately control are very simple. You can control your thoughts. You can control how you respond. You can control your attitude. You control your effort. You can control your preparation. You can control how much you are authentically bringing yourself forward.

So we're not interested in just controlling the controllables. We're interested in the path towards being able to master those things. And people who are true masters of self or masters of craft,

They are doubling down, tripling down on the things that they can control. Again, opinions of others is not one of them. And so they are working to be great at what they can control, like great with your thoughts, great with the way that you respond, fill in the blanks. And that all comes from an investment. You invest in your own psychology. You go upstream.

you are now playing a different game in life because you're not constantly finding yourself in the rapids of life. You've gone upstream because thoughts and emotions together impact behavior and thoughts, emotions, and behavior together impact performance. And if you're in the rapids of like, is my performance okay relative to other people in the eyes of others, it's so convoluted and messy. It's like, what do I grab onto?

It's quite simple. Go way upstream. Invest in having quality thoughts that serve you authentically and are in service of your purpose. You do those two things, you find a sense of freedom in life. And we need our next generation of kids to do just that. They have to show us now. We haven't gotten it right.

When I say we, I'm talking about the generation that I am. I'm 50 years old, so it's this generation and a little bit younger and a little bit older. We haven't gotten this thing right. So we need that next generation to own that my job is to work on mastering the things that are in my control and pour into those and do it with a sense of kindness and empathy and purpose. I think that the world is calling for it, and I think they're up for the challenge. And so are we. It's just a slight switch here.

And so, yeah, thank you for that question as well. Amazing. Jenny and Alan, thank you for your questions. Michael, thank you so much for taking the time to be here and join us today. It's been super fun to have you. And thanks, everyone, for watching. Be sure to check out the book, The First Rule of Mastery. Stop worrying about what people think of you wherever you get books. Thanks, everybody. Thanks for listening. To discover more amazing content, you can always find us online at youtube.com slash talks at Google. Talk soon.