Coachinginterview

BEATING NEGATIVE THOUGHTS: WHY 99% FAIL AND HOW YOU WON'T | DR GERVAIS

with Dr Gervais

37:57·5 October 2023

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DR GERVAIS

Dr Michael Gervais is one of the most-cited high-performance psychologists working today. He worked with Pete Carroll's Seattle Seahawks during their Super Bowl-winning era, with Olympic gold medallists across multiple disciplines, and now hosts the Finding Mastery podcast — one of the most respected interview shows on elite performance. His framework for mindset, deliberate practice, and the relationship between fear and performance has shaped how a generation of professional and amateur athletes prepare for high-stakes events. For Roadman listeners chasing PBs, racing decisions, or just consistency, his work is a primary reference.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Elite performers score high on BOTH intrinsic and extrinsic motivation simultaneously — not either/or. Most people stuck at low motivation are missing the intrinsic component entirely.
It's not the negative opinion that derails you — it's the fear of it. The exhaustive scanning of cues in the environment to pre-empt rejection is what consumes mental bandwidth, not the rejection itself.
Recovery isn't a two-week vacation after months of grind. It's thin-sliced daily habits — long exhales throughout the day, real food, 8 hours sleep, social connection — that build the soil where motivation can stick.
Set goals that are 100% under your control (effort, preparation, consistency). Outcome-based goals (wins, podiums) create fragile motivation that collapses when results are slow.
"Awareness training" is pillar one. You can't change the way you're contorting yourself for others' approval until you become conscious of doing it. Most people grind without ever entering "the game".

TOPICS

CYCLING NUTRITION

Your inner dialogue is silently sabotaging your potential. Dr. Michael Gervais, a high-performance psychologist who's worked with elite athletes, CEOs, and military operators, breaks down why negative self-talk is the number one constrictor of human performance—and reveals the practical framework to rewire it so you actually follow through on your health and fitness goals.

Key Takeaways

The greatest performers have both high internal drive (loving what they're solving) and high external drive (pursuing tangible rewards)—it's not either/or. Most people stuck at low motivation are missing the internal component entirely.
Recovery isn't a two-week vacation after grinding; it's thin-sliced daily habits. Small daily acts—long exhales throughout the day, eating real food, 8 hours sleep, social connection—create the fertile soil where motivation can actually stick.
Your negative self-talk exists because your ancient brain is still scanning for social rejection as a survival threat. Awareness training is the first pillar; you must become conscious of how you're contorting yourself for others' approval before you can change it.
Set goals that are 100% under your control (your effort, preparation, and consistency) rather than outcomes (winning, podiums). Pair small wins with genuine celebration to hijack your neurochemistry and build momentum through dopamine, not willpower.
Start by identifying the feeling you want to have more often—not the external goal. Design your life, training, and recovery to generate that feeling regularly, then anchor your actions to it. Psychology and emotion drive behavior; behavior alone is exhausting.

Expert Quotes

"If you're not investing in awareness training, you're not really in the game of the potential that you have dormant lying within you. You end up burning a lot of internal resources trying to be accepted and not rejected."

"There's no substitute for deep hard disciplined highly intensely nauseous work, but what we need is equal units of recovery on a daily basis. For each unit of stress you need an equal unit of recovery."

"The ones that are just externally driven and low on internal they tend not to be able to stay the course. You need to revisit the love of what you're trying to sort out in your life and spend time on: what do I love unlocking, what is the feeling I'm looking to have more often."

CLAIMS FROM THIS EPISODE

Each tagged with the strength of evidence behind it.

EXPERT
Dr Michael Gervais, high- performance psychologist and host of Finding Mastery, has worked with NFL teams, UFC fighters and US Tier 1 military operators across his career.
Source: Dr Michael Gervais, interviewed on the Roadman Cycling podcast
EXPERT
Gervais argues elite performers across multiple domains score high on both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation — rejecting the common either/or framing as a conceptual constraint that artificially caps long-term drive.
Source: Dr Michael Gervais, Roadman Cycling podcast
EXPERT
Gervais's central insight on negative thinking: it is rarely the actual negative opinion that damages performance — it is the pre-emptive fear of negative opinion that causes constant environmental scanning and depletes cognitive bandwidth.
Source: Dr Michael Gervais, Roadman Cycling podcast
EXPERT
Gervais reframes recovery as "thin-sliced" daily habits (long exhale breathwork, whole-food nutrition, ~8 hours sleep, social connection) rather than infrequent large recovery blocks — consistent small acts build the substrate motivation depends on.
Source: Dr Michael Gervais, Roadman Cycling podcast

KEY QUOTES

“I spent the last two years adjacent to your question researching what is the number one constrictor of the potential of people what gets in the way more than just about anything else”
Dr Michael Gervais — High performance psychologist, Finding Mastery podcast host

“if you're not doing something in your life to invest in awareness training you're not really in the game your grinder you're getting after it but you're not really in the game of the the potential that you have dormant lying within you”
Dr Michael Gervais — High performance psychologist, Finding Mastery podcast host

“it's not the actual negative opinion that's so problematic it's the fear of that opinion and it's this again this exhaustive attempt to preempt a negative opinion by interpreting clues in our environment to see if we're okay”
Dr Michael Gervais — High performance psychologist, Finding Mastery podcast host

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT8 SECTIONS

Revisiting the Dream Behind Performance

I think that we are pretty average when it comes to understanding how to work with emotions and I say that like I work in some of the most Alpha competitive environments in the world and pretty freaking average when I think about the external thing I chat with high performers in the podcast or you know some of the best athletes in the world all the time and that thing is quite tangible for them it's uh like you say it's a championship it's a Tour de France title it's an Olympic gold medal you start with this dream about how you want to live your life the feelings that come with it you know you start with the dream and then you figure out what kind of you when we peel it back to our everyday Joe's and chains I call them someone that's balancing conflicting demands on their time work family maybe a side hustle and they're still trying to prioritize Health getting that thing that's a little bit more of an abstract concept they revisit the dream and that's all I'm suggesting in this conversation is go back and revisit like what is the feeling that you want to have more often in your life and and then design your life for that foreign everybody and welcome back to the channel if you're new here my name is Anthony I'm a former lawyer turn cyclist turn podcast host who's based in Ireland my goal with this channel is to introduce you to the people and to the ideas to help you optimize your health your happiness and your longevity today we have an episode that you absolutely cannot afford to miss we're delving into a topic that silently impacts each and every one of us our internal monologue and how it is stopping us from reaching our full and true potential now to help us unpack this subject I had the honor of speaking with Dr Michael Gervais a high performance psychologist who's worked with some of the most elite athletes CEOs and artists in the world he's the man behind the finding Mastery podcast and has leveled up the greatest athletes in the world from his work in the NFL with the Seattle Seahawks to the best known UFC fighters and even U.S Tier 1 military operators this guy knows what it takes to perform at the Pinnacle of human ability Dr Gervais is a published peer-reviewed author but he isn't just about the theory he's about actionable insights he's been featured in every high profile news Outlet around the world including NBC ESPN The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times in today's episode we discussed the internal narratives that hold us plaque the power of self-talk and the Practical strategies to revamp are internal dialogue for healthier happier and more fulfilling life so make sure you stick around until the ended the episode because Dr Gervais is going to give us one simple action that you can take right after the episode to Kickstart your journey towards consistent motivation and Peak Performance trust me you really don't want to miss this one before I jump into the show I do have one small favor to ask can you please take one second just to hit the Subscribe button I still around 90 of the viewers watching the channel haven't subscribed and when you subscribe the channel gets bigger and the channel gets bigger we can attract bigger and bigger guests so it's win-win all around this is the roadman cycling podcast and now dear friends it's Dr Michael Gervais Michael welcome to the roadmap podcast Anthony it's great to be here I want to start off many of our listeners struggle with motivating themselves consistently so they're bombarded with information this podcast and others and they know how to recapture their health they know how to recapture their happiness they know the pathway they should be taking but they can't seem to get out of their own way to take that patch why do we see this disconnect why is it so common I love the question and it's a it's not an easy one to just say oh here let me tell you the one thing or the seven steps I I don't think when it comes to high performance um there's no hacks there's no tricks there's no tips you know there's no shortcuts so this grounded question about motivation I think is right on the money so maybe what we can do is we can just pull back a little bit make sure we're talking about the same thing and so motivation is this basic drive to go do something and when you study that concept from a evolutionary perspective there's no such thing as a motivation like not being driven to something because survival is such a strong driver for us our brain and our bodies optimized to solve for something and for the most part it's survival so if we are talking in this conversation about optimization

Internal vs External Motivation

We're talking about high performance not necessarily survival then it's a bit of a different conversation so I just want to ground it to make sure that we're talking about the same thing which is the conversation of high performance is that right yes the conversation yeah so when it comes to motivation um and we think about internal versus external motivation we can also think about internal versus external rewards and so let me let me just kind of frame it one more time and then I'll drive into what I think is an important unlock for folks so because depending on the type of motivation depends on the best tool to be able to unlock that drive there's internal external and exactly what it sounds like internally driven people they don't need alarm Bells they don't need people tapping their shoulder they don't need prodding they don't need people checking up on them they are driven from this internal mechanism to go explore to go figure something out and then if you're internally driven you're going to have an easier time staying the course because it's coming from within meaning that you love figuring out period the other is external so you're chasing something a reward uh some sort of validation something from the outside of you that fuels the required drive to keep going so obviously you can see from the setup this is why psychologists have been so attracted to at least Illuminating the idea of internal motivation as opposed to the external rewards that people often are find valuable now it's not that simple though what I found by working with the best in the world over the last 20 some years is that they have both internal drive that's high and external drive that's high so it's not like oh just flip it around and be some sort of Zen monk you know only appreciating the internal motivations and drives it's not that simple so I think having high on both is what the big unlock is so to do that we often have to go back down to base level which is like what do you love sorting out figuring out and it's not like riding faster or jumping higher it's like what is it inside of that that I love the feeling of and what I found with most high performers is that they love the unlock they love sorting out like I'm just about able to break open this new thing this new idea this new gear and I just I'm stuck in a plateau and when they're stuck in the plateau is where they get caught up in the the low motivation to be able to stay the course so you got to come back to home base just for a second like what is the thing I love unlocking so what's the size of somebody's in their external or internal motivation Camp if they're intrinsically or extrinsically motivated is that in in Ace quality that's different in each of us dependent on you know genetics upbringing or is it a way to switch on one versus the other it's more of it I think so environment and genetics and um socialization all play factor and culture is a big factor included in all of that and those Regional you know cultures and there's also local cultural cultures so my experience has been that depending on The Narrative of the street and the community that you grew up on plays a big part about what you're driven toward and if you play a couple of scenarios out if you're born with the silver spoon in your mouth it's kind of a different narrative than if you were born you know with very little and I'll tell you a quick story um it was on the finding Mastery podcast and I had a um world's best on I said I'd known him for a long time and he played in the National Basketball Association the NBA I said hey man how you could how are your kids and he said um you know they're good they're really good and he's all of six five 215 pounds Elite athlete in every sense of the world won a national championship twice and um he paused and he said I give them the best coaches I got they've got the best shoes they're in the best camps like they're doing good Mike and he pauses and he says but the one thing that I can't give him the one thing I had as a kid I can't give him and that was nothing yeah that's right and so so that that it's closely related to motivation but not squarely at that conversation so the closely part is like when your narrative from your social Community or your environment is like you gotta go prove yourself you got to go get yours no one's gonna give it to you and so and then you see your parents or somebody struggling and you see on TV

Everyday Goals vs Elite Ambitions

Or social media now with people that have so much that it it contorts the um the internal love to unlock for the external validation the external desire to have the thing now what happens if you spend 20 plus years working at something and you're born with some genetic talents and you layer on top of it high skill and you're chasing the external thing and you get the external thing it's a whole different conversation and I don't know if your community is in that conversation or there's something else happening for um for them yeah so when I when I think about the external thing I chat with high performers in the podcast or you know some of the best athletes in the world all the time and that thing is quite tangible for them it's uh like you say it's a championship it's a Tour de France title it's an Olympic gold medal when we peel it back to our everyday jewels and chains I call them someone that's balancing conflicting demands on their time work family maybe a side hustle and they're still trying to prioritize Health getting that thing that's a little bit more of an abstract concept because that thing is yeah it's it's health and health it's or maybe it's happiness or maybe it's living a little bit longer but to kind of client Peter a t in a tears phrase it's more Health span and lifespan it's living longer about having good quality to those years as well rather than an actual tangible destination that the elite athletes have yeah and so the elite athletes just to round that that part of the conversation is they tend to have high on both external and internal the ones that are just externally driven and and low on internal they tend not to be able to stay the course it it becomes problematic if they don't get the thing or if they do get the thing and what I what I found is that taking time to revisit the love of what you're trying to sort out in your life that just spending time even right now for us and or your community is like what do I love unlocking what is the feeling that I'm looking to have more often what is the compelling internal experience that keeps me going and you can also have all of the external things but you're just not in control if you actually get those external things but you are always in control of the internal state and I spent the last two years adjacent to your question researching what is the number one constrictor of the potential of people what gets in the way more than just about anything else and I'd love to talk to you about that as well it's just adjacent though to motivation yeah let's let's put a pin in that one and come back and I I have a guess as to what I think it might be we'll come back to that one in a second if somebody is in that situation I've described and they they understand the beneficial habits are going to take them to this imagined destination this place where they're going to be happy and they're going to be healthy what are the strategies to kick-start that like what's the Catalyst for motion to get them out of that roof that they're in at the moment well I want to make sure I hear you correctly because I don't think I agree with the premise which is that they're going to work hard and one day they're going to have happiness is that is that the framing well I suppose they're they're envisaging themselves in a place right now where I'm busy I don't have time for my health Pursuits I'm not I'm making sober optimal choices around diet and sleep and so when I say happiness it's maybe a it's a future stage where they have all the things now that they earned when they have all the things then that they aren't currently doing now yeah I think therein lies some of the fallacy is that later it will be better if I can just sacrifice more now and when it comes to health we used to believe it was about 10 or 15 years ago we used to believe that true high performance began where Health ended and that was a mistake we didn't we didn't know better we didn't know how to balance the right amount of rhythms for health versus the the Deep intense High strain work for high performance and we thought that you couldn't have both but now the research and science is holding up in a more interesting way to say no there's there's a better way and so this idea that I'm going to grind now and I'll be happy later or healthy later it just actually doesn't work that way and so there's no substitute for grinding there's no substitute for deep hard disciplined highly

Stress, Strain and Thin-Sliced Recovery

Intensely nauseous work to understand what you're capable of like that's just part of it but what we need is equal units of recovery on a daily basis and those equal units of recovery is a bit esoteric like for each unit of stress you need an equal unit of recovery and that that is the right way to go after your day if you want to play the game of potential if you want to play the game of high performance you need to play the right game of recovering properly to stay the course because high performance and potential expression takes time and time under tension most notably so our days are designed with the um the teams I work with or the individuals or the organizations is to understand the units of stress see if there's more to strain because what ends up happening is when we're fatigued and tired because we haven't done the recovery bit quite right we tend to hold back just a little bit so we want to make sure that we're at the upper limit as long as we possibly can in the work that we're doing and that work depending on the nature of the work is sometimes you know 10 minutes to you know 45 minutes somewhere in that range but we know that 15 minutes is a really interesting time Bound for high strain and 45 minutes is really interesting for high cognitive strain and so so whatever that so what I'm saying is that we want to understand High strain make sure we're doing that and then equal units of recovery let me take a second to talk about today's show sponsor because of something really exciting to share with you it's a game changer that's been making a noticeable difference in my performance recently especially when it comes to sleep allow me to introduce you to pillar while we're all familiar with the importance of electrolytes and carbohydrates in our rice preparation pillar is taking a different route it's focusing on something called micronutrition ensuring that you're ready to perform even before you ever hit the start line it's all about promoting a good night's sleep facilitating effective recovery and replenishing those crucial micronutrients so you can perform at your best over the past month I've been incorporating pillars triple magnesium supplement into my routine I take it every evening about 30 minutes or so before bed and I've seen a remarkable Improvement in My Sleep Quality I've been tracking my sleep my woop device and the results they're there every morning when I wake up in black and white I'm waking up with about a 10 Improvement in my restorative sleep I'm waking up feeling refreshed having had that deep restorative sleep I'm now ready to attack work training and life the next day but don't just take my word for it let the data from your Fitness tracker tell the story so if you're ready to elevate your performance and the quality of your sleep why not give pillar a try head over to pillarperformance dot shop and use the code roadman on your local website for 15 off your first order or for us listeners if you head over to thefeed.com forward slash pillar and use code roadman for the same 15 off your order the details of this offer are in the description below now back to the show and Recovery is not complicated Grandma and Grandpa I kind of got it right eat food that comes from the Earth sleep about eight hours you know make sure you're laughing throughout the day and you've got some social connections and people you can pour into love um and making sure that you're hydrating on a regular basis like those are kind of the big rocks of recovery and I work my ass off to get those in because I want to I want to have that buoyancy in life I want to have that zest you know when I wake up in the morning and that fire to go after the thing that I'm trying to solve and I want that from the folks that um are trusting me to help them as well you mentioned there's something that stops people reaching their potential I wonder and I know for me in the past it has been myself it's been that inner voice my inner dialogue that's stood in the way of realizing my true potential that's it and so if we double click on that the reason that inner dialogue is so critical or negative or short-sighted or self-doubting the reason we have those conversations with ourselves is because of this latent just this very kind of uh invisible limit and that invisible limit is based on survival so our brains are optimized to scan the world and find all the things that are danger to Keep Us Alive and we had to scan the world to find like is that rustling in the bush is that a bunny or is that

Fear of Opinions and Self-Talk

A saber-tooth and we biased towards Sabretooth because if you buy us too much towards the bunny like game over right so we're biased to the alarm Bells inside the fight flight freeze submit the mechanism we don't talk about submit them enough but that fight flight freeze mechanism turns on but in modern times we've got this ancient Kick-Ass brain but it's not optimized to modern day threats so what's the number one threat that we have now in modern times it's not the saber tooth anymore it's it's not the the dangerous dark alley that you know that is dangerous but it's like it's not that uncommon or I'm sorry it's not that dangerous for most folks in most communities it's the fear of people's opinions it's the scanning the world the your environment and and thinking like it's this exhaustive attempt to try to interpret what they're thinking because if you are rejected then and you are kicked out of the tribe long ago hundreds and thousands of years ago long ago that meant certain death and so it's not the actual negative opinion that's so problematic it's the fear of that opinion and it's this again this exhaustive attempt to preempt a negative opinion by interpreting clues in our environment to see if we're okay and so that's the strategies for changing that in our dialogue well first it's recognizing that we we often find ourselves conforming or contorting or like ship shifting or shape-shifting are our true self to be approved by others and so that's one level to to pay attention to the second is when you are aware of this compromised way of of contorting yourself or conforming for social approval in very subtle ways that's part one part two is to become more aware of the way that you excuse the locker room language here the way that you talk to yourself the way that you coach yourself in an absolute like amateur way is you need to become aware of that as well so the first seat of this whole thing the first pillar is awareness and if you're not investing this is a big statement I'm going to make but if you're not doing something in your life to invest in awareness training you're not really in the game your grinder you're getting after it but you're not really in the game of the the potential that you have dormant lying within you and so you end up let's go back to recovery if you're not aware of how your inner self is working you end up burning a lot of internal resources a to make sure that you are doing what you can to be accepted and not rejected and B to be aware of that critical negative debilitating narrative awareness is required for both of those and so kind of the whole thing starts with awareness training and then you start to get more sophisticated on how I'll tie this thing full circle um the things that you love and the feeling that you're trying to I'm sorry let me be more precise it's not the things you love that is not what motivation's about it's about having the feeling the internal experience where you feel most alive and it's not having an external event dictate or cause that internal feeling true Mastery is being able to have that feeling wherever you go or I should say those feelings wherever you go so it's awareness first and then it's knowing kind of the way you want to live your life from the inside out and then it's practicing ways of thinking that way and ways of um being authentic to your actual values rather than being liked by other people whenever I've had a goal in my crosshairs and I'll specify on this this is an external goal something that's objectively measurable to win a bike race to Podium in a national championships whenever I've had this goal and I said about you know in cycling circles we'll do we'll reverse engineer the demands of the goal and we'll build out a periodized train and plan around that but I found that my motivation Ebbs and flows within that training cycle it could be you know a six month training cycle we'll have natural recovery rhythms built into that based on performance and data metrics but my motivation won't naturally ebb and flow in this in harmony with my physical training load like I could be expected to complete quite a difficult arduous training week but I'm on a very low ebb on motivation how can we deal with those natural Ebbs and flows and motivation so I want to make sure I understand this correctly you're saying when you're in a heavy trade when you're a training cycle there's Ebbs and flows and motivation yeah is that right yeah training cycle dietary goal even a a work Target that I have I'll find myself with periods where I'm like getting after it everything's lined up but then

Building Higher Lows Through Habits

Something will come along and it'll slightly derail me and I won't be able to like snap back out of it and I kind of have to Surf this low until I get back to that next high again yeah so we're talking about like increases so that happens to everybody you know get knocked off the perch or knocked off the whatever like that does happen so I think what we're talking about is increasing the speed of getting back after it right and that is that yeah I think it's two things increasing the speed it's making I suppose to use the wave analogy it's to make higher lows so the low isn't as if I think about some of the clients I'm working with so one in particular he'll have a training week where he'll go basically to zero training errors and he'll say works too busy families too busy I got zero training errors in I'm trying to say okay well instead of zero can we make that four you know can we make that okay five hours yeah I think you you probably know the answer here which is habits and so it and this this ties back into recovery and so it's both habits and Recovery if you are if you're tilling the soil and you're creating an environment where you know it's fertile for growth things happen you know and it's easier for things to grow that's what recovery is the basic practice of recovery is having fertile soil so that when you apply sun and stress and pressure or wind or rain or whatever to the seed it grows and and it's the same thing in sport so mechanically it's making sure recovery is in place and there's two ways to think about recovery one is a mistake and one is like more advantageous the mistake is I'll recover later I'll take the two-week vacation I'll take the month vacation I'll recover better after I get through this training cycle it doesn't work it's not how we're designed so the the more optimal way to do it is what we refer to as thin slicing of recovery so being great every day with thin slices it's like you could sit on a pillow and do meditation for 20 minutes good science it's been around 2 600 years I've been practicing for 25 years myself however a hundred long exhales spread out throughout the day in chunks of twos and threes is really important it's different than meditation but it's a really important thin slice of recovery so the first three I like that just to jump in there sorry to interrupt you that's really interesting because that's something I'm really passionate about and you see this all the time in modern culture when someone does come off the wagon you hear this Mantra oh well I may as well be home for a sheep as a lamb so this could be someone who's trying to give up drink and then they have one glass of wine and their rationale is well if I have one glass of wine sure I may as well have a whole bottle but what you're really advocating here and quite elegantly is instead of All or Nothing maybe just do all or something yeah right I mean basically you know and so and there's different benefits of of both right the basic thing I'm trying to just put a stake in the ground is to say um make sure your recovery is is on point okay and then that allows that four hour like I want to get after it for four hours um as a minimum threshold but instead I'm choosing zero hours to your analogy is when the fertile is is ripe and like you're taking care of yourself 4 is more doable if you're exhausted and the soil is hardened and you haven't been watering it properly zero might be the best call actually because you haven't been taking care of yourself and that's where things break and um you know that's where burnout happens and if it is one more level or layer to this complicated conversation is maybe you're not prioritizing um what you want in the long term over what you need in the short term and so prioritization is really important as well one of the things that best in the world do is that they tend to have a pretty singular focus and that singular focus is very clear those goals are very clear like I'm going after X and again that can be internal and or external and and not a whole lot of other stuff competes with it and sometimes unfortunately including family including social life including other things so maybe for the working person we need to readjust the kind of the ambition for the long term you know like yeah I'm going for health or we're going for records and setting that goal is it's an interesting conversation in itself because you know the professional

Small Goals and Dopamine Wins

Athletes it's wanting the goals you know in a lot of ways they pick themselves sort of big shiny objects that were in reach but they're more difficult for a lot of us and for me personally I found that in cycle anyway we take our winter break so we'll race all the way up to the summer and you'll normally take like two to three weeks total off the bike so you lock it away until the point where you're just dying to get out cycling again and when I'm getting back into it when I'm setting goals I filmed for a long time I set these lofty goals okay I'm gonna get back into it this week back to three times a week in the gym back to riding the bike 20 hours and the lofty goal didn't work for me it was nice to have a North star goal yes I want a podium in in National Championship so I want to Podium in this race that said it and then put it away but then practically to make much smaller goals because when the threshold for Action was so big it was just like oh that's so big it's so scary and it's so far away I'm just gonna do nothing but when the goal was absolutely minuscule like my goal today is to find my shoes for tomorrow the threshold for taking action is so easy that I almost can't fail on that what's the theory behind setting big goals or setting small goals or how should we balance those two so I'm much more I love what you're doing because what the small goals that you're talking about are have is habit formation is you know is setting something that eventually becomes a habit in many respects and when you when you achieve those small seemingly small goals you'd want to pair that with being really excited about achieving it so you want to have your back you want to kind of celebrate like a wild person like nobody else would understand yeah right but what that does is it it pairs like this this foot in the door this momentum it pairs that momentum towards the next thing with uh enjoyment fun and excitement and dopamine in particular so like you want to you want to try to be clever with your your neurochemistry your psychology and your behaviors if you get all three of those working in favor great and so so the small little goals there is interesting because they start to turn into habits when because our body wants to do stuff that um is associated with pleasure and some sort of reward so you can artificially create that reward by the celebration I'm talking about I'm much more interested in goals that are 100 under my control and that the art of knowing how to set a goal that's 100 your responsibility and um 100 in your control is a very important important part of the art of the science of goal setting so goals that serve um with more potency and power are ones that are 100 under our control interesting so if I am looking to get started now I'm a listener on this podcast I finish this podcast and I want to take one positive action towards achieving this idea of consistent motivation what would be that first step you will take okay first step is to be very clear about the feelings that you want to have more often in your life okay so if it's specific to cycling what is the feeling I want to associate that activity with and so I'll tell you why that's so important is because it is psychological and emotional first and psychology and emotion Drive Behavior so if you put Behavior ahead of psychology and emotion you end up diluting the potency so what is the feeling so now you're you're shaping the bullseye and then from that you line up small behaviors that will help you be more aligned with those feelings vocabulary around the feelings hard though isn't it like what is the feeling for someone trying to get in shape is it a feeling of freshness is it a feeling of Freedom effortless on the biker to run like it is a difficult vocabulary for someone that's not used to expressing a goal through a Feeling Yeah a hundred percent I and I think that we are pretty average when it comes to understanding how to work with emotions and I say that like I work in some of the most Alpha competitive environments in the world and pretty freaking average and so if if intellectually if you say yeah no I am a thinker and a doer and there's no there's no room for emotions like intellectually it's hard to make that that that logic in that statement so most people would say yeah being human is about having emotions about having thoughts and about having behaviors you know there's something about those three

The Resonance Model of Mastery

That's really important and they're so difficult to deal with emotions and feelings actually are separate uh constructs but they're so difficult to manage or deal with that we just try to numb them down or put them aside and what I'm suggesting is the greatest driver and motivator is is to be able to work well with your emotions and that starts with first identifying the feelings that you want to have so to be really concrete when I I'm looking for unlocking Concepts and ideas that are new to me and fresh and there's a thrill with that to try to get I'm dedicating my life to Mastery of the psychology of high performance and so when I can see and hear and feel something that is new it's exhilarating it's wonderful and so I want to be clear that that's why I'm grinding it's not for money it's not for I need money I'm not independently wealthy it's not for attention while that can feel nice when you're recognized for something that seems clever or smart or important or meaningful but it's like I need to be responsible for my life and my life the way I want to feel when something unlocks with another person that that's the feeling that I'm looking for which for each person I think it's important to recognize that and then I'll anchor this one more one more time with you Anthony this comes from the work of Dr Newberg it's called the resonance model and so the idea is you start with this dream about how you want to live your life the feelings that come with it you know you start with the dream and then you figure out like kind of you go to let's say that's 12 o'clock on a clock and then you move to three o'clock and it's like okay how am I going to prepare and train and what are the capabilities I need to be able to develop okay so that's a preparation phase then you swing down to six o'clock and you're gonna have some success you're gonna have some obstacles you're going to have some setbacks SOS setbacks obstacles and successes and what most people do is they go right I need to prepare good I'm glad I had this setback or obstacle or success now what do I do let me go prepare differently and they swing back up to three o'clock and then they train again and they swing back down to six o'clock they reach another success or obstacle or setback and they just find themselves in that grind between three and six o'clock and that is exhausting it's a plan for staleness and burnout and fatigue it's the dull part of life right and so what we found what Dr Newberg found is that the extraordinaries when they hit a setback obstacle or excess they revisit the dream swing over to nine o'clock now they revisit the dream and that's all I'm suggesting in this conversation is go back and revisit like what is the feeling that you want to have more often in your life and and then design your life for that think that way have conversations with yourself that support that be in relationships with other people set up your recovery and training program to have those types of feelings more often and I'm not suggesting by any means to have one feeling Joy or happiness or fun I want the full range I wanted I want to understand the depth and the range of the human experience and that squarely sits in emotional Frameworks not physical like it's it's just not and it's not psychological alone it squarely sits in the emotional part of being human and if you go to any of the great wisdoms they will they will point to the same thing and so does modern science in a lot of ways I think that's a lovely place to wrap up Michael I love that finishing clock analogy Dr Michael survey thank you for joining me on the Roman podcast appreciate you if you enjoyed that episode please press here for another conversation that I know you're gonna love and don't forget to subscribe to the channel and share it with your Club mates foreign

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How do you stop negative thoughts from affecting your performance?+

Dr Michael Gervais argues that trying to suppress negative thoughts directly is why most people fail. The more effective approach is to redirect attention toward a specific, meaningful feeling tied to your performance rather than fighting the thought itself. This shifts the brain's focus without requiring willpower to silence the inner critic.

Is intrinsic or extrinsic motivation better for performance?+

Dr Michael Gervais rejects the idea that you must choose one over the other. Elite performers, including NFL athletes and Tier 1 military operators he has worked with, score high on both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation simultaneously. Treating them as opposites is a false framing that limits long-term drive.

How do top athletes stay motivated when progress stalls?+

Dr Michael Gervais suggests anchoring motivation to the specific feeling of breaking through a plateau, rather than to titles or external outcomes. That felt experience becomes a reliable internal reference point that sustains drive even when results are not coming. Chasing outcomes alone creates fragile motivation that collapses when progress slows.

Do mindset hacks actually work for building mental toughness?+

Dr Michael Gervais is explicitly critical of shortcuts and hacks in mental performance. He frames motivation as an evolutionary baseline hardwired for survival that must be deliberately redirected toward performance goals through consistent practice, not quick fixes. There is no substitute for that longer-term process of building mental discipline.

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