Beyond Performance: Exploring Purpose-Driven Identity with Dr. Michael Gervais

What does it take to do the impossible? What does it take to level up your game like never before? What does it take for individuals, organizations, for even institutions to achieve paradigm shifting? Nothing is ever the same again. Breakthroughs. Our mission is to decode the neurobiology of flow and cognitive peak performance.

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I'm your host, Ryan Dorris, and together with bestselling author Stephen Kotler, I present to you Flow Research Collective Radio.

Welcome to Flow Research Collective Radio. I'm Ryan Wicks, Chief of Staff at FRC, and today I have the privilege of sitting down with our Executive Director and bestselling author Stephen Kotler and a very special guest and old friend of ours, Dr. Michael Gervais, one of the world's leading high-performance psychologists. Dr. Gervais' clients range from world record holders and Olympians to internationally celebrated artists and musicians, as well as MVPs from every major sport and Fortune 500 CEOs. He's also the voice of the Finding Mastery podcast and co-creator of the Performance Science Institute at the University of California. Today, we're going to square up with one of the most significant barriers to human potential, the fear of other people's opinions. Or FOPO, featured in his new book, The First Rule of Mastery: Stop Worrying About What People Think of You. Oh, it's amazing too. It is amazing. Dr. Mike and Steven, it is an honor to be with you today. And Steven, I think I'll let you kick us off here with the first question and get this thing rolling.

Michael, this is so fun. This is so fun for 1,000 different reasons. But I think first is I was there. I literally, I opened this book and I realized that we met 12 hours before this book starts. And this book spins out of a conversation you had with an old college professor at the First Glimpses event, which was held by Red Bull. And I literally, okay, here's a true story that you do not know. That evening we had met that morning with Andy Walsh at Red Bull. That evening as we were going to the evening Glimpse event, you and I are walking over. You're telling me the story of your conversation with the professor that launches this book. I'm on mushrooms with Jamie Wheal, and we are about to meet Rodney Mullen, skate legend, who has become a really dear friend of mine for the very first time at this Glimpses event. And you were telling me this story, and I opened the book and I'm like, I've heard this before. In fact, I was on mushrooms when I heard this.

Oh God, that is so fitting.

So yeah, as a way to kick off this podcast, I thought maybe you should tell this story from your perspective.

Okay.

Mine's pretty funny.

Yeah. Yours is different, isn't it? Oh God. Yeah. I mean, so yeah, the concept around FOPO, fear of people's opinions, I privately wrestled with this wanting to be accepted, this playing a second game to fit in for much of my life. And I didn't know that other people were playing the same game, and I was embarrassed by it. And I was 16 years old when I first had this lightning bolt type of thing. I saved up for a couple of years to to buy my first car. It was a Mazda 2000, Mazda 2200 pickup truck. It was exactly what it sounds like. It was like a small little pickup truck. I could fit my surfboard in the back of it. And I was driving. It was like I was one of the first times I was solo driving, and I wanted to look a certain way. And there was a car that was passing me in the same direction on the left-hand side of me. And I remember I wanted to look cool when this person passed and looked into my car. And so I sat up a certain way, I grabbed the steering wheel a certain way and kind of had the cool kid lean. And I looked over to catch their eye. They weren't even fucking interested at anything that had to do with what was happening in my car. And I remember thinking, what am I doing with my life?

Really?

What did I just do? How much energy and time and thought process that I spend on paying attention to what this person might be thinking of me? And they had zero interest. That is where like this first thing happened and I just kept it quiet for a long time. And then to your conversation or to your point about like we first met and I was talking about my professor or not my professor, one of my mentors that I was having a hard time with. Man, I carried that around for a long time. He basically said to me, I had this moment where I was working with a fighter. It's a championship fight in the UFC, and we just did this incredible work as a camp, and it was so earnest and honest, and it was really good work. And it was fight night, and it was myself, the head coach, and the striking coach were in his corner. And so as he goes into the cage, And this is in Las Vegas, full stadium, 20,000 people wanting to see blood, that type of energy. And I'm going to where I'm supposed to be lined up, like, right outside the cage for pre-fight. And it just so happened that we had to walk in front of the cameras. And so that was just a moment that I was on camera. Okay. This was— how long ago was that? That was like, God, it was like 30 years. Yeah, it was like a long— it was right at the beginnings of MMA or right at the beginnings of UFC. And so I'm on high. He has a great fight, wins the thing. I'm on a high driving back from Vegas to Los Angeles, and I get a call from my mentor and he's like, I thought he was going to be like, yes, nice job. Nice job. There was some solid work in there. Tell me how camp went. And he didn't say that, anything like that. He said, hey, why don't you get yourself out of the camera? Why don't you find how to work from the background? Basically is how I decoded that. And I was so embarrassed, Steven. Like, I just, I felt like I did something really wrong. Like I wasn't supposed to be where I was. And it was just, it was all—

You talk about it a little bit in the book. I just want to add this line to give people a little bit of context because I think it's so important. I also recognize this. This was so much because you were a psychologist and it's like a dirty thing to be where there's like, especially, and I like, we went to college at roughly the same time. Like I remember this era where we were still shame psychology was a shameful thing. And if you were a psychologist, you were in the background, you were very quiet. You didn't talk about the work. You didn't, it was behind the scenes, right? Bad boys move in silence kind of culture. And so to like, this was that, this was, sort of our whole generation. This was me writing about neuroscience as a journalist for the first time, or psychology, and people being like, who the fuck are you? What are you like? You don't get to go do that.

That's right.

Right. And I remember that conversation for that same reason because you were wrestling with it professionally as a psychologist and I was wrestling with it professionally as a writer and thinking, do we do this flow work in public out loud? And I'm not an academic. It was the same kinds of questions at the same time that I think we were both thinking about.

Yeah, that's exactly, I mean, the idea that even if like today it's absolutely wild that if I'm working, let's say I'm a psychologist and you're the athlete that I'm working with, or say a client that I'm working with and I see you in a restaurant or I see you at the grocery store, I'm supposed to act like I don't know you. That's just like, that's the weirdest kind of thing. And I know it's meant to create like a true sanctuary around a person so they can go wherever they want to go when they're in session. But it is the most bizarre taboo thing to feel like we need to not honor that we actually know each other because doing psychology is embarrassing and we wouldn't want to embarrass somebody. If they found out that they were actually doing psychology, doing the work. So I think we've gone a long way from that, but there's still a long way to go.

I think so too. One of the things you said, and you just said it at the beginning, and I don't want to leave it for too long because it's such a cool point. This was one of the first insights I have reading the book, which was, you know, you talked early on that like we both had the same thing. Like we ran from other people's opinions into action sports and danger and then anger and anxiety. Right. And there's a pattern there that a lot of— that's a journey that a lot of people seem to take, and we were among them. But I remember, I mean, by the fuck, by the time I was a punk rock, whatever, I literally built my identity on not caring about other people's opinions. Right. So when I opened your book, I was like, yeah, other people's opinions, maybe it's been a long time.

Right.

Is sort of what I was thinking. And then I realized as I was reading your book that like none of that actually matters because the point at which I realized that other people's opinions matter, I was probably, I was 6 or 7 and it was the moment that I realized, oh shit, it's dangerous at home and it's dangerous at school. And the thing that is most dangerous is other people's opinions. And if I don't get it right, I got to learn how to fight. I'm not very good at it and I'm small. And oh, shit, it came like both ends. No place is safe and the passage to safety is through their fucking opinion. And I don't know how old I was when that got locked into the habit machine or encoded, but I realized that every single thing that had happened from that point happened. And I also realized This is like your guy in the car that like, how much of my life has actually been spent performing for the narrator in my head on the off chance that somebody might see so I could what, signal membership in tribe and hey, I got posse, I'm fucking safe. What exactly is this conversation I'm trying to have with the mirror or whatever it is? I had this whole experience when I was reading your book. That I was like, oh, I had the timing wrong. It doesn't matter how armored up I am in 2023, my wife can still wreck me in a line. My mom can still wreck me in a line. There are a handful of friends who can destroy me. Fuck, I think two-thirds of every book I write is written literally because I work with my best friend, Michael Warden, and he has an opinion. And so my books in a sense are reactions to his opinion on, you know, which is an opinion I pay him to have, but like, It was a wild realization. I'm going to shut up now because I don't want to—

No, you got it, dude. You're totally on it. And I think it's one of the greatest constrictors that we actually wrestle with. And the problem is that most of us, sounds like you did, and by forcing function, I did. Many of us don't recognize that it is the water that we're swimming in. It's the air that we're breathing. It's kind of like the movie Sixth Sense. Sixth sense is I see dead people. And then you realize that you see dead people everywhere. It's just part of the ecosystem is that other people's opinions are very dangerous and they're threatening. And it's because of this basic mechanism.

I see dead people, by the way. That's a great line in this context. This one's good. I'm writing it down. It's going to show up in something. My next book. Everybody has happened here.

Happened here is that the, the, the idea though that we talk about the, our brain has this mechanism for fight, flight, freeze, you know, the survival mechanisms. And, and we think of, we pair that with the running from the saber-tooth tiger or the tribal war warrior or something, right? Like we, we understand how we're supposed to fight, flight, freeze. However, belonging was when we got kicked out or potentially were getting kicked out of the tribe, that was a near-death sentence. And so that near-death sentence is, of course, tuned in modern times, ancient brain, modern times. And of course, that's still tuned in there. So that's why we're so sensitive to people's opinions, is because if we don't get it right and we're kicked out, capital punishment. Yeah, that's exactly it.

Dr. Mike, I had the same experience that Stephen did, which was like when I opened the book, I read the title, I was like, oh, you know, I don't know if this is me. Then I got into it and I was like, wait a minute, whoa. And then a week after I read it, it's like, whoa, right? There is a small sphere of people in my life, right, whose opinions really do matter and influence my decision-making. And it's so sneaky. You said it, you said it at the beginning, like this isn't very obvious to us, but, and it feels foundational.

I think, I think it's tier zero for sure. And I want to be very clear, this, the subtitle of the book. So the title is The First Rule of Mastery and the subtitle is Stop Worrying About What People Think of You. I want to explain this for a minute. This is not stop caring. That's not what this is. This is stop worrying. Understand the process of worry. Understand what you're actually worrying about. And that is that safety is belonging. And if you're organizing your psychology and your behaviors, and so the way you think and the way you move through the world to belong, And you don't recognize that that is one of the prime dictums of the brain is to belong, whether that's in the outcast culture or the off-access culture or the counterculture. Belonging there too matters, right? Sure. Or it's right at the center of, you know, whatever the culture that you want to be part of.

People, I think that's part of entrepreneurship, by the way. I like, I think entrepreneurs are people who like, they're going to keep going out and looking for their tribe and looking for their tribe and looking for their tribe until they find their tribe. And ultimately, you can't find a tribe, so you start one. We call it a company, but you're essentially trying to start a tribe, a bunch of people who share the same idea and want to work in the same direction. And I think it's—

and if you follow that just a little bit further, the founder at some point is wanting to belong and be part of something, but not necessarily be vulnerable. So they don't really fit in. Oh, yeah. It's a loneliness that— yeah. So that vulnerability is not part of it. And so it's a protective mechanism to have quote unquote organizational power. And so like that doesn't really solve it. And that, that's why there's so much dysfunction. You know, for sure.

Well, you, you hit it from a different angle. You talked in the book about de Tocqueville and de Tocqueville's take on American individuality, which he had never seen at this, you know, level when he showed up. And your point was, hey, wait a minute, that's very much a part of like, you know, tier zero to use your phrase in American culture. And this has a huge impact on how we see and interpret reality, especially social reality, is the point I think you're making.

Yeah, 100%. And you know what? I'll just talk about what's actually happening in this conversation and the content of the conversation is that, Stephen, I had to wrestle with myself. Like, what is Stephen going to think of this book as I was writing it and as I shared it with you? Yeah, no, but you love the book, and that's awesome to hear. But I just wanted to share, like, your opinion matters to me. And so I had to work in here. It matters to me, so it's important to me, but I had to work.

I was thinking, I've also watched you wrestle with a bunch of books along the way, right? And it took you— I mean, I don't know how many books you've written on the way to this book, but a bunch of them. You know, that much I know. Um, and I've been involved in a bunch of them at different levels, you know, but not published, to be clear. But unpublished. Yeah, right. Yeah, that, like, that was— that was the other thing is when I— when it came to me, because you didn't— I love this, that you just did it quietly. Like, I know I didn't know you were finishing a book, and suddenly, like, hey, I got an email, do you want a copy of Blake's new book? And I was like, my hand was like This is, wait a minute, this is very casual for what this actually is. This is Mike's first book. Holy shit. I've been like, it's 20 years in the making or whatever, however long, you know? And I remember being, you know, our first, one of our first conversations that same period we're talking about the glimpses thing. We, I swear we were talking about writing also and book writing and things like that.

Yeah, of course. I like, I, I, I enjoy writing. I'm not, it's not my first skill. It's not even something on my top 10 list really, but I enjoy the process of it. And in this book, like, there are people's opinions that matter and you were one of them. And I had to make sure that I wasn't spending all of that extra energy, like, worrying about it. And there's a difference between worrying and caring. And so that's why I had to go away because I know that if I'm If I'm sloppy in any way, I can let the noise of others' opinions impact and infect the choice of words and the way that I want to express the ideas that I'm trying to wrestle down. And so just because I wrote about it doesn't mean that I'm better than it. You know, like, I still wrestle with it myself, and at least I know I'm wrestling with it. That's the kind of the first gift is like, Why do you feel anxious? It's not the other person, it's not the condition. It's the way that you're interpreting the condition or the other person or whatever that's in your environment. And so I think this is a nice contribution to overall flourishing for people is to recognize this condition.

Oh, I thought it was great. So two questions off of what you just said. Actually, just one question. I noticed there was no flow in the book. And I know you, and so I know that must have been a very conscious decision. I hope I had nothing to do with it. No, I'm just, let me just say, like, Jesus. I was thinking, well, you were talking and I was thinking as you were talking, I was like, you know, Michael Wharton, who I mentioned a second ago, has been my editor for 25 years. And I got to tell you something, other than conveying information, like most of my books are really, can I crack Michael up during editing? It's like, we are going to work 5, 6 hours a week and I want, like, it's more fun if we're laughing. And like so much of, you know, and you try to, you can take a single joke. I mean, this sounds funny, but you're trying to turn a joke in your head, which is a line and funny into a joke in a book and it can be 2 pages. So I can, an entire chapter can be me like this. By the way, my new book opens with this, with me trying to tell a joke. It's a whole fricking chapter, right? And I'm really just trying to get one guy to laugh. Yeah, that's great. And that's right. So I was thinking as you were talking, but look back, my question is you chose not to put flow in a book on human flourishing and a really fresh opinion. And it made me think a lot about this challenge skills balance and what other people's opinions and how that would impact flow. And I was wondering why there was no flow in it unless you were just trying to keep a narrow subject, but what you thought about, what do you think about that question?

Yeah. I had, uh, it, it was in the original, um, chapter flow. It was in like the original outline. Um, and so was narcissism. Um, and so was like a deep neurobiology. And I took all three out. Um, and I just feel like there's, I didn't want to bore the readers.

Next book. That's next book. Yeah. There's your next book.

That's book 2. Yeah, like it's there, it's definitely there. And if you just think about signal to noise ratio, I know skill challenge balance is cool, but signal to noise ratio is where I've been honing in on flow a lot. And so gating out the noise to get to the signal. So what is the signal? It's the present moment. It's the task at hand. It's deep focus. Focus, as you know, as you've coined, is one of the great entry points into into flow state. So noise is other people's opinions. And so how do you work with that to be able to get to the signal? And so I just didn't want to go into the depths of it here. And so I thought there was other things I needed to hit first.

So I totally respect that. One of the things I really liked about this, and it was really evident, I mean, I always, I thought this was one of the, it's been one of the great strengths of your work is that One, so much of your work professionally for a while was shaped by the Seahawks and talking to 19, 18, 19-year-old, 20-year-old, 21-year-old, 22-year-old football players in a language that can reach them about complicated things like mindfulness and performance among other things was an interesting challenge for you. And I, and I, so it, it shaped, and I find that like it shaped a lot. And I, I had a feel, I had a feeling like it shaped a lot of what was being communicated and how being communicated. I found it very practical. At a, you know, to put it, sum it up in a, yeah, your book is extremely practical, dude. Really practical.

But it is, it was amazing. Wait, is that embedded in there? Like you've lost the ability to think, you know, and express complicated ideas?

No, because I do it too in my books. You know what I mean? Like I'm trying to communicate as much as I can with as many people as I can about ideas that I'm passionate about. And I felt like I saw that In your book, and you have to make the exact decision that you just made, which is you have to sort of choose, I'm not going to show off so much with the fancy because I'd rather communicate. And that's a decision, right? Novels are fancier than nonfiction books often because it's a different choice. Art versus communication approach.

Yeah. I really appreciate that recognition of choices. As you know, you're a great writer and a deep thinker and you manage complicated ideas well and you make them available to people, which is, and you do it with an off-axis flair, which this is why we're friends. And I really respect that you recognize that challenge to make it as simple as possible and at the same time try to not lose The depth of wisdom.

It's brave. People don't get it, but it's really like, talk about fearing other people's opinions. When you're making that choice, you're actually making a brave choice. You're like, yeah, I got— because there's a part of me, I'm sure of you, you want to seem smart. Oh, for God's sake. Somebody just gave you $30 for a book. You want to seem smart and you can, but you're making a choice between how smart do I want to seem versus how much do I want to communicate?

Well, let me add a complexity to it is that one of my early traumas was I thought I was not smart. And I'll tell you where that came from is that, God love my parents, I was being— my mom and I were wrestling down. It was like after school and it was either math or grammar. I can't quite remember. And I was just stuck and I couldn't do it. And this is like in 3rd or 4th grade. I think it was 3rd grade. And it was 4th and I just couldn't kind of make sense of it. And then she was frustrated with me. I was frustrated. It was not a learning environment. My dad swings over my right shoulder and he says, okay, let me handle this. And he says, Mike, what is this?

Bang, bang, bang.

And I go, I don't know. And so he responds one more time and one more time. And then he leans over to my mom right over my earshot and he says, they maybe he's just dumb. And that thing got in. It just got in, Stephen. Like it got in. And so I went on, I know I can mark my, I can mark, that's one of the reasons I went, you know, fuck everything. And I just, that's why I went counterculture. Like I'm not going to fit in in this, you know, sit in a seat type of thing. And it's why I went, I'm the first one to go to college in my family, and that's why I went as far as I possibly could. You know, like I, okay. And I can mark my early part of my career that I was trying to look and be smart and be recognized to be smart. And it's the anxiety that sits underneath of why I, at one point in time, there was not one research article in my discipline in a scholarly journal that was published that I didn't read and really understand. Like I, I was that crazy that I was sitting in dark libraries. That was before the internet, really dark libraries with a stack of all the sports psychology journals until I read 'em all. This was at the university and like, that's not healthy, dude. And so for me to try to make these choices to, to actually be in service of an idea that has mattered to me and I can try to make available, and to try to beat back that thing like, no, dude, you're okay. You don't need to be recognized by others to be smart or not. It was probably maybe you recognize it, but it was a pretty big hurdle for me. Yes.

Coming off of it is something else you talk about in the book that is so basic and we just forget it, which is that we react to other people's opinions. Primary threats, right? For the reason that you mentioned, exile was a fundamental threat. It's just such a, oh wow, dad says I'm dumb and that can kill me. And with what we know about the mind-body connection being like the same hardwiring, quite literally.

Yeah, that's right. And so I was operating from a threat for a long time. That's why I had I didn't diagnose it. I was too alpha something to even consider in high school and/or college to go to a psychologist. I mean, think about that for a minute. But I had such radical anxiety. That's why I had to go to consequential extreme environments to settle down. Because Mother Nature would say, hey, listen, if you don't get your shit together, You're going to play with some or pay with some flesh. You're going to be held underwater. I'd like, there's a consequence. So I needed a bigger consequence than I could give myself for sure.

It's funny because in high school when you're not particularly big and you're getting in fights with a lot of people often and you don't want to, the easiest way out is to convince everybody you're crazy. And the funny thing is, if you play crazy on TV, sooner or later, you know what I mean? Like, and then there was the day I realized I was drag racing across the front lawn of my high school to impress the girl who was sitting behind me, and it was 12 noon because I knew that the principals and the vice principal, because I've been in trouble so much, had their blinds down and they couldn't see the front lawn. So I won a drag race from Burger King back to school. Cutting across the front lawn of my high school at 12 noon in daylight to impress the girl next to me. And you sort of come to after that when you get into the parking lot, you park and you're like, oh, wow, I could have just ended my life in 11 different ways completely in a moment.

Those were daily choices for a long time, right?

For a long time.

Looking back now, I can fill in countless of those stories and as many people probably could. I've got one right now that's super pertinent is that my son is 15, you know, hedging 16 here. And when I was 16, I remember sitting in high school with the Dean of Discipline with 6 cops in her office, you know, saying, we know you did it. We know you've done it. You know, people have all told us. So, you know, why don't you just tell us and we can go kind of finish this thing down at the, at the, uh, at the station. Like I was for sure getting arrested in, in high school. And, um, and I just, I, I, I, I figured out dad's an alcoholic drug addict. Mom's codependent. Um, again, I love my parents and, but I, I need to speak some truth now. Right. And so I figured out how to read a room. Better than most because I had to figure out how to read my dad's temperament. And Mom gave me signals that things were always okay. That's not true. That was how she coped, but that wasn't reality. So of course I'm going to go into a discipline where I'm going to create forcing functions to find the truth of things. That being said, I had to learn how to be very socially attuned. Socially attuned. And so I figured out how to read that room. 4 or 5 officers, Dean of Discipline. This is not expulsion. This is like arrest, being arrested and the whole thing kind of unraveling. And I figured out how to just play it. And so there is this thing that's happening now. I'm looking at my son like, I can't even imagine, son. Please break some rules is what I'm thinking for my son. And I can't even imagine seeing a healthy kid right now that he is, like just how screwed up I was for a lot of years prior to that. And so we can do better, dude. And that's really what I'm hoping this book will offer some folks.

I want to, Brian, I know you have another bunch of questions. I've got one more that I want to get to and then I'll kick it over to you.

Fire away.

This is something you've mentioned at the end of the book. It really caught my attention, which was you were talking about studies that have looked at what happens in the brain when we talk about death. Ernest Becker won a Pulitzer Prize for the denial of death, saying we do everything to deny mortality. And then somebody went and looked, and it turns out we actually form very positive associations in the brain, not negative. And you and I are big fans of some of the wisdom traditions. And all of which have death practices, right? A daily acknowledgement of, I use a Tibetan Buddhist one that I love and I use it all the time. And I, you know, because it's a gratitude practice and things like that. You talk about saying goodbye to people every time as if it was the last time you were going to see them, which might be a little frightening. I think I would scare my wife to death if I started doing that.

Yeah.

I just want to say, no, no, people don't know.

You would know that I've done that, you know, almost every time.

If you're not like grabbing somebody's hand and like crying and like tearing up.

It's just a quick little meditation, meditative moment, you know, because you've lost people, right, Stephen?

Yeah, a lot of people.

Yeah. And it, you know, when you're in the throes of grief, you, you're so alive with how fragile life is. You're feeling all of it. And you say things to yourself like, okay, and I'm going to do better at this and that. And part of the grief process is that you weren't good enough for them. You didn't show up in the right ways most of the time because guilt is a big part of that process. And so this is just a quick little private moment I have with with people that when I say goodbye to them, I mean it. I don't know if I'm going to see you. And it just keeps it fresh for me that I don't know when I'm going to see you next. And so if it's fresh for me, it's a forcing function to be all in. And there's lots of ways to be all in. This is one way for me to just quietly be connected to, like, I don't know if I'm going to see you again. And because of that, the consistency of that thought, not waiting for grief, not waiting for tragedy, but the consistency of that thought eats me to— when I say goodbye to you and I don't know if I'm going to see you again, then whoever I'm with next, it's a handshake right into that next engagement to be all in because I don't know when I'm going to miss this person and then a handshake to the next engagement.

So it's a consistency. Have you lost somebody that you've done this practice with? And did it help?

Yeah, let me think that through. Yeah, I first recognized it when I lost my grandfather, who was one of great figures in my life. World War II vet, you know exactly the type and great generation, great man. And so it started after that. And so not that long after, handfuls of years, his wife died, my grandmother. And so I got to experience it, the death process with her. And so, yeah, the transition was significantly easier for me than I would have imagined. And so the grief process transition. So, yeah, I don't think that I've had Yeah, I can't point to anyone else right now, but I do, I could intellectually, I can certainly say that it will make your transitions easier, you know, because you're just more tuned. I don't know if I'm going to see you again, so let me be all in.

And the fundamental recognition of change, the base of everything.

It's the, yeah, everything's always new, right? I think we did a nice job nodding to that in the book as well. You know, like that's the hard part for so many of us is that Anxiety is part of the ecosystem, and that means that I'm not sure how it's going to go later. I'm a little worried about it, and I'm going to think about it and try to plan for it and talk about it and prepare for it. And when that becomes excessive, we feel a certain way, the anxiousness, as opposed to like, look, everything's going to be different, and I'm going to figure that out too.

It's all— all these ideas circle around the same drain, which is our desire to control everything to prevent disaster.

Our brain is trying, right? Our brain is trying, right?

Brain wants to control everything to prevent disaster. Anxiety is often about just— it's literally just— right, it's norepinephrine, which is— it's neutral, but it's energy. And the brain is just saying, hey, do you have enough energy to meet the next moment, the challenge? Right. Anxiety is I don't have enough energy. For the challenge ahead often. And it's nothing more or less than the fact that brain is a predictive engine that wants to always know, hey, what happens next? How much energy do you need so we don't waste any? Because calories are expensive. That's exactly right. And that becomes anxiety over time.

We are incredibly expensive organisms to run, like incredibly expensive. That's why we got to get the recovery practices right. That being said, we are exponentially more expensive when we are excessively worried. And that worry mechanism about what are you going to think of me or what might happen or what will or could he or she think, like, that becomes a radical drain to the system.

And so, oh, we talk, so I talk about this all the time as one of the peak performance basics. People don't get this. We talk a lot about the power of like, you know, other, we need other people. We need social bonding, blah, blah, blah, to be healthy, all that. It tells us endorphins, everything else. But people don't realize is that whenever you face a situation, right, the brain wants to know how much energy do I have to meet the challenges? Are the challenges a threat? And one of the first questions the brain always asks is, you solo or do you have a posse? Because if you're solo, wow, this could be a threat, right? Oh crap, I got to panic and I got to give you a lot of energy. Norepinephrine, have a lot of norepinephrine. But if you've got people around who love you, oh, you got positive, you fall down, they're going to pick you up, whatever they can lend you $5 if you run out. Cool, right? Not as big of a challenge, less of a response. And so I love the fact that you brought this up because we train people on this a lot because it's an energy problem. Yeah, it's got all kinds of downstream ramifications for quality of life and everything else, but really on a moment-to-moment basis, your brain's trying to make an energy decision about the next moment. And we have a limited energy budget. Why are we, why does willpower run out over time? This.

Yeah, 100%. I'm nodding my head in complete agreement. And so the challenge is that to know that you have a posse creates a great sense of safety and to not blow it. That's really what FOPO is about. Don't blow it. The fear of rejection from your posse is like, now it's really expensive. So yeah, you got a posse, but there's this undercurrent. That's really what this whole thing is about, is making sure that you're not blowing it. That's the fear that the organization has.

Well, that's the control suit to prevent disaster. That was a really funny realization I had in my life when I realized that You'd be like, you're trying to control everything, as if that was a bad thing, as if I was doing that out of selfishness or narcissism. But no, I'm not trying to control it. I mean, maybe yes, but I'm literally trying to prevent disaster for all of us. Can't you see I'm holding up the world? Yeah, right.

Can't you see? Jesus.

Yeah, no. Yeah.

Control will get you really far. Trying to control things that it puts you apart.

I'm going to guess 66. It got me here.

Yeah, but I don't think, Stephen, and I say this as a friend, it's not going to get you there.

I totally agree. I've learned that. I mean, this year, if there's been a big lesson this year, it's that. It's that very lesson.

Yeah.

It got me here, but this is the end of its usefulness. It's amazing I got this long and I'm still alive. Yeah, right.

And it's expensive in that when we're trying to control things that we're not really good at controlling or we don't really control them like other people's opinions, we put ourselves in a leveraged position and that becomes more expensive rather than a deleveraged position rather than putting ourselves in a highly leveraged position, which is deep focus on the things that we can master. And if you can put yourself in that highly leveraged position, oh God, I mean, what's the phrase? If you give me the— oh my God, I'm blowing the quote. It's a—

give me a fulcrum. Give man a fish, he eats for a day. Give man a fish, he eats for a day.

No, no, no, no.

It's like, I mean, I could— and that's not what you were going. I don't know. Sorry.

There's something about a fulcrum and I could move the world. I want to say—

give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum to swing it on and I can move the world. Isn't that Heraclitus or—

Yeah, that's what I was trying to do for the quote, but you got there much better than I did. So, but that idea is, I mean, that's right at the center of mastery as well. That concept is to put yourself in a well-leveraged position. And so trying to control other people's opinions is a deleveraged position.

Dr. Mike, one of the things that you pointed to was performance identity. A performance-driven identity, which is something that I hadn't considered until I read it in this book. And as we're having this conversation about control, is, I mean, is that, is a performance-driven identity in an effort to kind of control your environment and go and achieve your goals? I mean, where's that coming from?

Yeah, no, I think, okay, so let's start the context up in the right way is that our culture is obsessed with performance. And it would make perfect sense growing up in the cultures that we grew up in, certainly in the West, that to fit in, to do well in life, be a good performer now, do something special. And so it starts really young. I mean, we're giving grades relative to our performance.

SRAs or speed tests for multiplication. I was thinking about the speed test for multiplication when I was in kindergarten or whatever. You learned that. When I was reading that.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

They set that up fast, really young.

And so by the time I'm—

Yeah, 5.

5. We're obsessed with performance. But the performance-based identity, which makes perfect sense as an outcrop of the culture that we're in, is that your sense of who you are is in terms of how well you do something relative to others. And that's most of us now. So performance-based identity could get you on the world stage. It could get you really good at something. However, there's a deep cost. And this is one of the reasons that when athletes go and do their thing, that their whole identity is morphed with the thing that they do. That's why it feels so threatening. That's why there's such anxiety around it. Is because it's not, do I swing the bat and hit or miss? Okay, that's information. Good. I'm going to learn and I'm going to go do it again. That would be awesome. But for a performance-based identity, that's not how it works. Your entire sense of self is at stake whether you hit or miss. And so it's this mirroring of self with how well you do relative to other people that becomes eventually a constrictor. And so to go from a performance-based identity to a purpose-based identity, that's a real chasm to cross. And I think that the sense of freedom on the other side and the sense of true performance as opposed to just performative, that delta is real and it's noticed. And so you can't mess with people that are purpose-based, that are really purpose-based. When people pretend that they're purpose-based, but you poke them a little bit or things aren't going according to plan, that they fall into a thousand pieces. But when people are honestly backed by their purpose, like Nietzsche said it, right?

He who has a why can bear any how.

Yeah, I mean, 100%. That's it. And you think about any world great, any historical world great, they led with purpose and they were honest about it. It wasn't just like, you know, like this thing that was convenient. It's like it came from a place and it was honest. Those are my heroes. Those are the folks that whether they're known or not known.

Yeah.

You pointed to the chasm too, right? To really kind of make that transition. Stephen, you and I have had this conversation, right? So many of our clients want to know like, how do I hone in on my purpose? How do I get this down? How do I nail it?

What is that?

And Dr. Mike can—

Yeah, but it's funny that Mike talks about the performance, trading performance for purpose. I often say if you want to put this in quasi-religious terms, so I'm actually talking about it almost at an energy level. We said flow first, God second, which this is, I mean, what I mean by that is the same reason why if you want to study any of the meditative traditions, they do physical work, tire the body out, and then they do the mindfulness, right? You do yoga first, which tires the body out so it's quiet upstairs. Then you try to meditate like that flow first, God second. And the reason I think about that is something I see a lot of our clients doing, and I've done at various points in my life, especially around hard emotions like grief or trauma or those kinds of stuff. These people wake up in the morning and the first thing they'll do is like 2 hours of spiritual practice to try to get to balanced before they start their day, not realizing that they actually have to start their day, get absorbed in the day flow first, and then through that quietude, you can then find your center or find God, depending on however you want to interpret it. You probably can go backwards too, but I noticed from a psychological perspective, And all the religious traditions, all the wisdom traditions also fire up the body first with your day. Chop wood, carry water, then sort of think about God or whatever. It's harder the other way. Yeah.

And not everybody has the luxury of being physical first. If you have that luxury, there's a reason that so many of the practices have it. But also, Zen is just like fit. That's part of the practice is sitting.

Yeah, but let me ask you a question. I spent a long time, I used to sit with the monks in San Francisco. I used to live across from the Zen Center when it was in Lower Haight and it was a senseless killing neighborhood surrounding a Zen monastery, but in San Francisco back in the '90s. But don't you do the walking meditation first? Isn't that like when you come into the dojo, Was that just the dojo I was at?

I don't know if there's a strict practice there. I actually don't know that, but I know that it is valued. And so noble silence work.

It's hard. I do when I walk my dog sometimes, trying to do, but trying to find a pace where you can match your steps to your breath and get to stillness is like, if you're not already tired, right?

Yeah.

Start at a walking meditation.

It's tricky. I'm not sure I could do it with my dogs. My walking meditation is, if you were to look at it, you'd say you're barely moving. So it's like, it's really slow. And I don't know folks that walk fast for a meditation.

Yeah, we certainly didn't. I mean, it was really really slow. And, you know, as like an ADHD guy with one speed, right? It took me forever to write it, to write both of us, I guess. Took me forever to figure out that slow was actually a doorway into an entirely like cool universe. Like there's a universe there. I was like, I'm Grim Fiddle, I'm in a hurry, man, get the fuck out of my way.

Yeah, I mean, I, I, I think that I would—

this is—

you and I have both crosswalked both of these places, but I would love to take some Zen monks and, you know, face shopping, you know what I mean? Like, like, that would be— yeah, like, that, that's a real project, is to see how some of their work holds up in that space. And it's kind of like, yeah, flexible.

You'd be cool with a control group and an EEG group. I'm just saying.

Yeah, maybe even a VR set with it as well. Like, yeah.

By the way, I like, this is a phone call to Miles Dasher and the Red Bull Air Force.

Miles would love this.

Miles Dasher.

Miles would love this.

Yes.

Miles would love this.

And I love Miles. Could you imagine? Miles Dasher is a good moment.

He is a wild man.

JT Holmes and Miles Dasher, we got this done. We can do this. We need some monks, but we can, we got the crew.

We can, we can find the monks.

Red Bull.

Yeah.

We, Red Bull might pay for it.

The monks. That'd be, that'd be a fun project to consider.

That'd be a really fun project. Also, it'd be an excuse to go jump out of another airplane, which is, I haven't done a lot of years. Folks, we, you know, I read a ton of books. I probably read a couple hundred books a year. This is one of the better, and I, I, I'm not big on psychology books these days cuz there's so many of them and I've been reading them for so long. I've read so So to come upon a book about just new ideas, just period, just new ideas is awesome. And the fact that it was written by such a dear friend and it's like a great fun book and quick, I think I read this in 2 hours and I told you it was enormously useful.

So, you know, I would, but I'm stoked. Like, thank you for, you know, and it's not, I was so fired.

I was fired up. I was nervous when that came in the mail for all the obvious reasons. I love you, man. And I was like, oh shit, this better be good. I can't lie to you and I can't have the conversation if it's not good.

I knew that.

I knew that. So I was so thrilled and I was also thrilled to talk to Ryan about it because it wasn't just me. You know what I mean? There's parts of me that are in this book. So I was like, you're speaking right to me. I'm the target audience. I was like, I think one of my notes, excuse me, it's my note to her page. Kidding you not. Notes page 153 is, fucker, you're describing me. Like, literally, that's my note on page 153.

Oh my God, that was so good.

Word to God. That's the page where you talk about dealing with your fear of other people's opinions through action sports, anger, and anxiety. And I was just like, wow, dude, shut up. Go away.

It's awesome. You know why I'm so stoked to hear that from you? It's not because I feel relief that you saw something of value. It's not that, or that now I'm okay, or that your opinion was going to— it's not that. It's like you have a real community. And you saying, hey, when you point here or point there, wherever it is, that I know that it came from an honest, earnest place. And so I'm perfectly fine for it to be in the wild. And it is what it is. And I'll tell you a fun story in a minute. And, but the fact that you're going to point to it makes a difference in what I think is going to help a lot of people. And yeah, it's good.

Well, I got to say one more thing. Just, I had a wild experience. I read it back to back with Walter Freeman's The Neuroscience of Love and Hate, who Walter Freeman's for the bridge between complexity science and neuroscience in the '90s. And as a back to back, you were talking basically about the psychology of this, and Walter is talking about the neurodynamics of this at the mesoscopic population of the brain, right? Clusters of neurons. That was his, was what he, the work he did. And it was a really, it was sort of a treat because I was like, oh my God, I'm seeing it outside now. I'm seeing it on inside. You know, Friedman's a suspicious writer because you pick up his books and you're like, oh, they're 100 pages long. I'll be done in 10 minutes. And 3 years later. Jeez.

Yeah.

But anyways, it was a great experience. I'm proud of you, man. This is a great book.

Appreciate you. Thank you.

I appreciate you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mike. Hey, before you drop, where can our listeners find The First Rule on Investing?

Oh, I mean, your book. Yeah.

Yeah. It's sold everywhere.

Oh, and great ad campaigns. I love the banner ads. They're so cool.

The banner ads. Aren't those fun?

Yeah.

You can find the book anywhere. You know, fundingmastery.com/book to see the other things that we're doing as well is really cool. And but you can buy the book anywhere. I obviously I think a lot of people say this, but I mean it as well. Local bookstores are cool, you know?

Yeah.

So anyways, thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you, Mike.

Thank you. Brightness, man.

As an athlete, as a father, as a researcher here at the Flows Research Collective, man, it just landed for me. It really did. Yeah, this conversation between these two guys, you know, these two leaders in, in the space of human performance and potential, you know, that came from these counterculture backgrounds, um, DIY ethics, freedom, creativity. You guys just— thank you.

Uh, thank you both for a tiny little— there was a tiny little window called the '90s when they let the weirdos take over the world. For like 10 years. Punk rockers got control of media and all of us were this weird byproduct of this 10-year stretch that nobody even thinks about. But it was really weird right before the internet happened. It was really strange and there was a lot of money and a lot of creativity. And for the very first time since the '60s, in a sense, weirdos at the microphone.

That's cool, man. Love you, brother.

What an insightful journey this episode has been. It's clear how focusing on what's within our control saves us time and energy and guides us on a path to self-mastery. Mike, a heartfelt thank you for sharing your wisdom and time with us. And of course, Steven, special thanks to you. Your questions take us deep down the rabbit hole of peak performance in so many different directions, turning every discussion we have into a thrilling expedition. We're thankful to have you at the helm. To our dedicated listeners, if this episode resonated with you, please consider subscribing, sharing it with your friends, and leaving us your feedback. If you want to dive deeper into Mike's work, we'll have his resources linked in our show notes. Till next time, stop worrying about what people think of you and square up with the challenging but rewarding work of self-mastery. See you on the next Flow Research Collective Radio.