Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais

By Dr. Michael GervaisHealth & Fitness Mental Health Education Self-Improvement

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Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais episodes

September 30 The Psychology of Inner Peace | Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
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.
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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
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34 min
September 23 The Psychology of Pain | Dr Tom Walters
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.
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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
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1 hr 18 min
September 16 The Psychology of Motivation | Dr. Masud Husain
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.
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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/
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Download Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: findingmastery.com/morningmindset
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#FindingMastery #MasudHusain #DrMichaelGervais #OurBrainsOurSelves #Neuroscience #Neurology #Motivation #Apathy #Dopamine #Attention #Dementia #BrainHealth #Consciousness #Identity #HighPerformance #Psychology
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1 hr 45 min
September 09 The Psychology of The 10 Commandments| Jamie Metzl
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.
1 hr 17 min
September 02 The Psychology of Menopause | Tamsen Fadal
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.
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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.
59 min
August 26 The Psychology of Fighting Dementia | Dr Tommy Wood
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.
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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.
1 hr 19 min
August 19 The Psychology of Positive Habits | Jon Gordon
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

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40 min
August 12The Psychology of Authenticity | Seth Godin - From The Vault
What is the change you seek to make?
On today's episode we go back to the Finding Mastery Vault for a conversation with Seth Godin, author, entrepreneur, teacher, and one of the most influential thinkers of our time on leadership, creativity, and making meaningful change. Seth has written more than twenty international bestsellers, including The Dip, Purple Cow, and The Song of Significance, alongside one of the longest-running daily blogs in the world. His claim is that naming the change you're actually trying to make is more than a branding exercise. It's what helps make every downstream decision clearer… what to commit to, what to quit, whose opinion to take seriously, and who you will have to become to pull it off.
We first released this one a few years ago, and since then the world has only gotten noisier, faster and more demanding of change, which is exactly why we felt it was worth bringing back.
In this episode, you'll learn:
What Seth means by the change you seek to make, and why it clarifies everything downstream
Leadership as a voluntary act, and why enrollment and inspiration come before authority
Why consistency is what makes you trustworthy enough to lead change at all
How to tell a dead end from the dip when you're deciding whether to quit
Whose judgment has actually earned the right to shape your work
Who to go to for reassurance, and who to go to for insight

If you have ever felt your choices quietly bending toward the approval of people who have not earned it, this conversation offers you a perspective you need to hear.
Links & Resources
Seth Godin Photo Credit: Brian Bloom
For More on Seth, go to https://www.sethgodin.com/
Seth Godin’s Books: The Dip, Purple Cow, Linchpin, Tribes, This Is Marketing, The Practice, and The Song of Significance. His newest book, The Knot: Problems Can Be Solved, is set to be released in September 2026.
Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMastery
Get exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!
Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/
Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter
Download Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: 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.
1 hr 20 min
August 05The Psychology of Youth Sports | AMA Victoria Garrick Browne and Dr Michael Gervais
What questions are tugging at you right now, and how might exploring the answers to those questions help unlock your potential?
For this 30th installment of our popular Ask Me Anything series, Dr. Michael Gervais is joined by co-host Victoria Garrick Browne, a Forbes 30 Under 30 recipient, former Division I volleyball player at USC, mental health advocate, creator, and speaker. Victoria turned her own private struggle with performance anxiety and depression into a gift for millions, and she founded The Hidden Opponent, a nonprofit that brings mental health education and support to student-athletes on campuses around the country. She's the ideal person to sit alongside Mike for this AMA and help answer these questions with care.
The questions our community submitted are honest and vulnerable, and they keep circling the same root: identity. What happens when who you are gets fused to what you do? Mike and Victoria explore why the culture around us so easily hands young people a performance-based identity, what it looks like to move toward a purpose-based one instead, and why the way a parent talks about their child at the dinner table quietly shapes how that child sees themselves.
This is a practical and useful conversation for anyone who competes, coaches, parents, or is simply trying to figure out who they are.
In this conversation, we explore:
How to help young people build an identity rooted in who they are, not only in how they perform
Why the way you talk about your child, even at Thanksgiving, is shaping their identity
How to tell the difference between healthy competitiveness and unhealthy pressure
The warning signs of burnout in a young athlete, and why competing too early can backfire
How to share a mental health story in recruiting without it becoming a liability
Whether real confidence can exist without external validation
The difference between formal instruction and guided discovery in coaching and parenting
A simple, honest way to work with imposter syndrome

If your sense of who you are has ever felt a little too tied to what you do, this one is well-worth your time.
Links & Resources
To learn more about Victoria, please visit: https://victoriagarrickbrowne.com/
To learn more about The Hidden Opponent, the non-profit Victoria started, please visit: https://www.thehiddenopponent.org/
Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMastery
Get exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/
Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter
Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine: 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.
1 hr 6 min
July 29The 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 skill
What actually happens in the body when you’re put on the spot
How to shift from seeing a moment as a threat to seeing it as an opportunity
The two tools to use when your mind goes blank
The What, So What, Now What structure for organizing a thought quickly
Why great listening is pace, space, and grace
How to turn the spotlight off yourself and onto connection
Why the goal is never to sound perfect, only to connect
Matt’s work is a reminder to all of us that the goal was never to sound perfect. It was always to connect.
Links & Resources
Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMastery
Get exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!
Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/
Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter
Download Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: 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.
49 min

About Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais

From the publisher's feed

Dive into the minds of the world’s greatest athletes, leaders, thinkers, and doers with Dr. Michael Gervais—a high performance psychologist and world-renowned expert on the relationship between…