Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais

The Psychology Of Speaking Under Pressure | Matt Abrahams

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 & ResourcesSubscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet 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/newsletterDownload Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and XMatt Abrahams’ Book: Think Faster, Talk Smarter: How to Speak Successfully When You’re Put on the SpotSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Psychology of Youth Mental Health | Ross Szabo

What if the kids who look like they’re doing just fine on the outside are quietly struggling to make sense of what’s happening on the inside?Ross Szabo is one of the leading voices in youth mental health education: founding Wellness Director at Geffen Academy at UCLA, founder of the Human Power Project, co-author of Behind Happy Faces, and author of A Kids Book About Anxiety. His story starts long before the titles. Born into a family with severe mental health disorders and addiction, Ross was 11 when he visited his older brother in a psychiatric ward, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder himself at 16, and coped with drinking that began at age 12. In his senior year of high school, after months of crippling depression, he attempted to take his own life… and this occurred while serving as class president, playing varsity basketball, and carrying a high GPA. On the outside, everything looked fine. The inside was a different story. That distance between the outside and the inside became the through line of his life’s work.The idea Ross has organized his career around sounds simple: treat mental health the same way we treat physical health. That means a clear definition, a shared language, and trainable skills. His definition is a helpful place to start… mental health is not about having a problem, it’s how you address the different challenges in your life. At Geffen Academy, he built what he describes as the only program in the country where students learn about mental health and healthy relationships once a week, every week, from grade six through grade 12, timed to the second largest period of brain growth, which happens between the ages of 12 to 25. His graduates report feeling far more prepared for college than their peers, especially in the interpersonal sense: living with new roommates, managing relationships, and knowing how to ask for support.Ross and Mike walk through how mapping the self-defining memories that shaped you helps build coping mechanisms the way athletes build skills (the more consistently you do something, the better you get at it). And they discuss how expanding your emotional vocabulary improves your mental health. Ross and Mike dive into the difference between vulnerability and trauma dumping, how the crisis shows up differently in young men and young women, why modeling beats lecturing at home, and what a shared language for mental health could unlock in families, schools, and businesses.In this conversation, we explore:Why so many young people look fine on the outside while struggling on the insideA clear, working definition of mental health, and why most of us don’t have oneThe difference between feeling nervous and having anxietyWhy the more words you have for your feelings, the better your mental healthThe neuroscience of coping, and how to actually rewire a habitHow the youth mental health crisis shows up differently in young men and young womenWhat parents overlook when preparing kids for collegeWhy every family, team, and business needs a shared language for mental healthRoss's work is an invitation to care for the mind with the same clarity we bring to the body. And if you're raising, teaching, or leading young people, this conversation offers the language and the skills to close the gap between the outside and the inside.Links & ResourcesSubscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet 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/newsletterDownload Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and XRoss Szabo’s Books: Behind Happy Faces (co-authored) and A Kids Book About AnxietySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Women Are Not Small Men | Dr Stacy Sims

What has been the cost to women of relying on research that was never designed around female physiology?Dr. Stacy Sims is an exercise physiologist, nutrition scientist, and bestselling author of ROAR, which challenged the idea that women should train and fuel like men, and Next Level, which focuses on health, performance, and physiology through perimenopause and menopause. Over two decades of research, she has become one of the leading voices reshaping how we understand women's health, with a message that has become synonymous with her work: women are not small men. That line started as a throwaway teaching point during her postdoc at Stanford, and it has since become a paradigm shift.At the center of this conversation is a quiet, costly problem. For decades, much of the science on training, nutrition, and medicine was built on male bodies and then applied to women as if they were simply smaller versions of men. Stacy walks through what that gap has cost, why the literature thins out for women between the ages of thirty and fifty, and how a hormone fluctuation can get mistaken for a panic attack, leading to solutions that were never going to fully work.Stacy and Mike then move into what to actually do about it. They get into why "eat less, train more" often backfires and drives the body into a low energy state, why fasting through the morning for women can dysregulate appetite and stress hormones, and why lifting heavier loads may protect not just muscle and bone but the aging brain. They also draw the line that runs through the whole conversation, the symptoms of perimenopause are the physiology, not the person, and explore why this episode isn't just for the women in the community. Stacy explains why having men in the conversation helps drive action, what partners can actually do... listen first rather than rush to fix... and why the rising noise around menopause online, along with AI tools built on outdated male data, makes clear thinking here more valuable than ever.In this conversation, we explore:Why so much health and performance research was never actually done on womenWhat "women are not small men" really means in training and nutritionWhy "eat less, train more" often backfires for women through midlifeWhy fasting through the morning can dysregulate appetite and stress hormonesHow lifting heavier loads may help protect the aging brainWhy men belong in this conversation, and how to show up for the women in their livesWhy most AI health tools still run on outdated male dataWhether this conversation is about your body or the body of someone you love, it offers a science-backed way to understand what's happening and what to do next.Links & ResourcesSubscribe to our YouTube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet 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/newsletterDownload Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and XDr. Stacy Sims’ Books: ROAR and Next LevelSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Psychology Of Building Team Culture | Eddie Jones

How do great leaders build teams to become who they're capable of becoming, and prepare them to handle their emotions when the pressure is highest?Eddie Jones is one of the most accomplished coaches in world rugby. He has led Australia, England, and Japan on the international stage, and guided Japan to one of the greatest upsets in rugby history at the 2015 World Cup. He has built a career on turning teams around, creating pressure, and challenging more from the people he leads. There is a fine line in that work. Too little challenge and we never understand who we can become. Too much and we create the wrong conditions to explore. That line has not always been easy to walk. Eddie’s demanding methods have drawn criticism over the years, and his exits from England in 2022 and Australia in 2023 came under intense public scrutiny... a chapter he alludes to here when he describes the mistake of letting the noise come down on top of him.In this conversation with Dr. Michael Gervais, Eddie walks through how he builds team identity, starting with a picture in his head of how a team could play and then closing the gap between that vision and the group in front of him. He explains why he keeps training about 70% successful, so the 30% of failure becomes the learning, and why training should always be harder than the game. He makes the case that immediate, private feedback beats public humiliation every time, and that the best coaches ask far more questions than they answer.Eddie also talks about understanding the individual, why coaching has shifted from team-based to one-on-one, and how a single moment of feeling important from a coach 30 years ago still moves him today. He opens up struggles he has faced with his own emotions, the mistakes he has made, the generation that taught him to never show vulnerability, and why he is still learning to make room for joy. In this conversation, we explore:How great coaches build a team identity and close the gap between vision and realityWhy training should be about 70% successful, so the failures become the learningThe value in training harder than the gameWhy the best coaches ask more questions than they answerHow understanding the individual has become central to modern leadershipWhy you should never assume, and always confirm by knowing the personThe thinking time every leader needsBy the end of the conversation the two land on a question every leader should ask: would you want to be coached by yourself?Links & ResourcesSubscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet 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/newsletterDownload Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine: findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and XEddie Jones' Books: My Life and Rugby: The Autobiography and Leadership: Lessons from My Life in RugbySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Psychology Of Parenting | Dr. Dan Siegel

What if the most important work of parenting isn’t about your child at all... but about understanding yourself?Dr. Dan Siegel is a Harvard-trained clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, a neuroscientist, and one of the leading voices helping us understand how relationships shape the developing mind. He has authored over 20 books, five of them New York Times bestsellers, including co-authoring The Whole-Brain Child and No-Drama Discipline. Trained as a developmental attachment researcher through the National Institute of Mental Health, Dan has spent more than 40 years studying how the adults who care for children influence who those children become. And his interest isn’t only academic. Dan describes his own childhood as decidedly non-optimal... a father who was intrusive and at times terrifying, a mother who was emotionally distant. He carried every non-secure attachment stance into adulthood, and earned security later in life, with the help of a therapist who finally saw him.What he found over those four decades reframes how we think about raising kids. The research is remarkably clear: how a parent has made sense of their own childhood, assessed before their baby is even born, predicts how that child will attach. Children don’t need perfect parents. They need three things... to be seen, to be soothed, and to be safe. When those are reliably present, a fourth emerges: security. And when we inevitably blow it, because every parent does, what matters most is the repair. As Dan puts it, there’s no such thing as perfect parenting. There’s just being present.In this conversation with Dr. Michael Gervais, Dan walks through the science of attachment and why the pop-culture version on social media is quoting a different field entirely, the myth that a mother should be able to do it all alone when children are wired for a village, and the daily Wheel of Awareness practice he uses to start every morning. The two also explore loneliness as the experience of a “partial mind,” the shift from a threat mindset to a challenge mindset that protects against burnout, and what it means to keep the “me” while belonging to a “we.” And Mike opens up about the moment his son was born, when he and his wife wrote down their first principles as parents and landed on two words: kindness and strength.In this conversation, we explore:Why there’s no such thing as perfect parenting, only being presentThe four S’s every child needs: seen, soothed, safe, and secureHow your own childhood story quietly shapes the way you parentWhy repair after a rupture matters more than never rupturing at allThe myth of the lone parent, and why children are wired for a villageWhy loneliness may be the experience of a partial mindThe daily Wheel of Awareness practice Dan has done with 77,000 peopleHow shifting from a threat mindset to a challenge mindset protects against burnoutIf you’ve ever lost your cool with your kids and worried you’ve done lasting damage, this conversation offers a hopeful, science-backed way to repair... and grow._____________________Links & ResourcesSubscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet 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/newsletterDownload Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and XDr. Dan Siegel’s Books: The Whole-Brain Child, No-Drama Discipline, Parenting from the Inside Out, The Power of Showing Up, Aware, and Becoming AwareSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.