Recently I had the opportunity to hear Dr. Michael Gervais speak on a virtual crowdcast organized by The Flow Research Collective entitled “Sustaining Peak Performance During a Pandemic” where Dr. Gervais was interviewed by Steven Kotler and Rian Doris.
Dr. Gervias is a high performance psychologist who works with Olympic athletes, MVPs from every major sport, internationally acclaimed artists and musicians, and Fortune 100 CEOs. He is also co-founder of Compete to Create, a venture focusing on mindset training for individuals. He is also a writer and speaker on optimal human performance. He asks the question: “How do the greatest performers of the world use their minds to pursue the boundaries of human potential?” He is well-known for his great podcast “Finding Mastery.”
Dr. Gervias talks about how to develop your ideal mindset. He defines a mindset as “the way that you lean-in to a particular environment.” He talks about micro-decisions and micro-adjustments that change our mindset. He believes in three interrelated elements that have an impact upon optimal psychology: mind, brain, and nutrition. He says the brain is like our body’s hardware and our mind is the software. Nutrition is fueling our body. He believes that there are things we can do to “accelerate the learning curve to unlock human potential” and help us achieve our ideal state.
He encourages us to find, and design our lives around, our purpose and meaning in life by being involved in a cause greater than ourselves. He encourages us to become aware of our own personal philosophy. He says that whether we can articulate it or not, we have a guiding philosophy in our lives. Our personal philosophy is a set of principles that inspires our thoughts, words and actions. This philosophy guides the thoughts we have, the words we choose, and how we live our lives on a daily basis. He believes that knowing our guiding principles will allow us to maximize or optimize our human potential and will inform our thoughts, words and actions. When our thoughts, words and actions are aligned, we become powerful and can move into more challenging environments. When our thoughts, words and actions are aligned, we are in integrity, and we are in an ideal mindset for learning and for making a difference in the world.
No one else can give us our purpose or philosophy. According to Dr. Gervias, there are three tools to effectively help you find your personal philosophy: mindfulness, conversations with wise people, and writing. During this time of sheltering in place, many people are considering, or reconsidering, their personal philosophies and the purpose of their lives.
He also talked quite a bit about the power of positive thinking and how the thoughts that we say to ourselves really affect our health, well-being and chances for optimal performance. “Your relationship with yourself is met in a dialogue with yourself.” We are either constricting or making space in our bodies with our words. Having a sense of mastery is knowing how and when to create these in our lives. He encourages us to be in the driver’s seat of our own lives.
Regarding optimism, Gervias says it is both a skill and a state. Optimism is “a fundamental belief that things are going to work out. It is the idea that something good is about to happen.” He says that winning teams always believe they can win, but teams that do not believe they can win, do not win. He warns against naive optimism where you don’t have accurate reference points or are not grounded in reality. “Optimism is at the center of mental toughness, and mental toughness is the ability to stay in it when it is hard. You must adjust. Be flexible. Be vulnerable. Be nimble. Pivot. Create on demand. Let go. Optimists are willing to figure things out.”
This is a perfect time to define our personal philosophy; create our ideal mindset; find integrity aligning our thoughts, words and actions; and become optimists with mental toughness. If we can leave our shelter-in-place with these skills and states, we can face whatever we need to face in our futures. I am wishing these things for you.
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