Advertise on podcast: Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais

Why is change so hard, and what actually makes it possible? Dr Joe Dispenza returns to Finding Mastery to talk with Dr Michael Gervais about change, health, and the patterns that shape our lives. Dr Joe is an author, lecturer, and researcher whose work on meditation and the mind-body connection draws people from around the world to his weeklong events. He says many of us run on familiar thoughts and reactions, often without noticing them. He describes health changes he has observed among participants at his events, and explains how he interprets the data. Joe and Mike discuss the prefrontal cortex and its role in setting a clear intention, why the present moment is where we encounter the unknown, and what can shift when attention moves from a narrow focus to a wider one. Joe’s definition of mastery is knowing that you know. With it, he says, comes a kind of quiet grace. Enjoy the conversation. __________________________________________ Links & Resources Join Dr Joe for a life-changing retreat experience filled with connection, inspiration, and transformation. https://bit.ly/48uAADh Dr Joe Dispenza’s Website: drjoedispenza.com Dr Joe Dispenza’s Books: New You, New Life: Reprogram Your Mind and Body to Create the Future You Want (audio original), Becoming Supernatural, You Are the Placebo, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself Dr Joe Dispenza’s Retreats and Online Courses and Programs: drjoedispenza.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: 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.

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: 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: 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 2023. Since then, she has won Olympic slalom gold at Milano Cortina and her sixth overall World Cup title, tying the women’s record, and what she describes in this conversation is the inner 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 developed to put her own assessment first, 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 what becomes possible when you do it in a world-class way. Enjoy the conversation. -------------------------------------------------- Links & Resources Mikaela Shiffrin: linktr.ee/mikaelashiffrin Mikaela Shiffrin’s YouTube Series: Moving Right Along, on her channel 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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 downstreamLeadership as a voluntary act, and why enrollment and inspiration come before authorityWhy consistency is what makes you trustworthy enough to lead change at allHow to tell a dead end from the dip when you're deciding whether to quitWhose judgment has actually earned the right to shape your workWho 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: 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 performWhy the way you talk about your child, even at Thanksgiving, is shaping their identityHow to tell the difference between healthy competitiveness and unhealthy pressureThe warning signs of burnout in a young athlete, and why competing too early can backfireHow to share a mental health story in recruiting without it becoming a liabilityWhether real confidence can exist without external validationThe difference between formal instruction and guided discovery in coaching and parentingA 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: findingmastery.com/morningmindset Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X Learn more about The Hidden Opponent: 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 skillWhat actually happens in the body when you’re put on the spotHow to shift from seeing a moment as a threat to seeing it as an opportunityThe two tools to use when your mind goes blankThe What, So What, Now What structure for organizing a thought quicklyWhy great listening is pace, space, and graceHow to turn the spotlight off yourself and onto connectionWhy the goal is never to sound perfect, only to connectMatt’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: 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.