Dr. Michael Gervais
2023
Dr. Michael Gervais is one of the world's top high-performance psychologists and leading experts on the relationship between the mind and human performance. He has spent his career helping the best of the best across the worlds of business, sports, the arts, and science when they need to achieve the extraordinary. His clients include world record holders, Olympians, internationally acclaimed artists and musicians, MVPs from every major sport and Fortune 100 CEOs.
Dr. Gervais is also the founder and host of the Finding Mastery Podcast, the co-creator of the Performance Science Institute at USC, and his work has been featured by NBC, ABC, FOX, CNN, ESPN, NFL Network, Red Bull TV, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Outside Magazine, WIRED, ESPN Magazine and more.
The First Rule of Mastery: Stop Worrying about What People Think of You Book Release: November 7, 2023
Renowned high-performance psychologist Michael Gervais—Seattle Seahawks, Red Bull Stratos, Team USA—presents a guide for overcoming what may be the single greatest constrictor of human potential: our fear of people's opinions (FOPO).
With the proliferation of social media, the intense pressure to succeed, and our overreliance on external rewards, metrics, and validation, FOPO is running rampant. Our concern with what other people think about us has become an irrational, unproductive, and unhealthy obsession in the modern world. And its negative effects reach into all aspects of our lives.
In The First Rule of Mastery, Michael Gervais shows us the key to leading a high-performance life is to redirect our attention from the world outside us to the world inside us. As one of the world's leading experts on the relationship between the mind and human performance, Gervais takes an in-depth look at the noxious effects of FOPO while laying out the mental skills and practices we need to achieve personal excellence—the same skills he's taught to the top performers in the world including sports MVPs and Fortune 100 leaders and teams.
Filled with fascinating stories from the worlds of sports and business, leading-edge science, and insights from the popular Finding Mastery podcast, The First Rule of Mastery is a much-needed wake-up call that when we give more value to other people's opinions than our own, we live life on their terms, not ours.