 Well, welcome back to the show, Michael. So great to have you. Oh, I'm stoked to be here with you guys. Thank you for including me. Well, I know our audience has definitely heard of FOMO. They may not be familiar with FOPO. So what is FOPO? Well, for short, it stands for fear of people's opinions. And I think it is one of the greatest constrictors of human potential. And so what it essentially is, is this ancient brain of ours trying to solve a modern dilemma. And the ancient brain, millions of years old, passed down through our ancestors, were optimized or are optimized to scan the world and find all the threats, the danger. And without having to think, we have this very particular mobilizing system, which is the fight flight freeze mechanism. And long ago, our ancestor figured out that will the beast and saber through tigers were definitely a threat, warring tribes definitely a threat. And then we figured out that if we got kicked out of a tribe, that that was nearly a death sentence. So we focused in on knowing how to be able to sense at the slightest indication of rejection and acceptance. So we've got this general adaptation to be able to find survival, mechanisms for survival, and a very specific lens on the way that they look at me, the way that they respond to me is either getting me closer to the middle of the safety of the tribe, or I'm on the fringe getting kicked out. And so this fear of people's opinions has been around a long time. It's just now we don't have will the beast and saber to tigers, we have the eyeballs of others. And that's that's kind of what's happening for us. Yeah. And I think technology has definitely grown the tribe. So from having to worry about a handful of peers in their opinions, we now have cameras, we have social media, some of our viewers on YouTube are catching us. And with that number of eyeballs multiplying, it feels like we're always in a spotlight under the microscope of other people's opinions. A thousand percent, like at some level, okay, it's more heightened now, but at some level, everybody's a public figure. Okay. And let me take it back like 100 years ago, you were public in your neighborhood, you were public in your family. The circles were just smaller. And then now fast forward 100 years, the advent of social media and and and we are exponentially larger when it comes to every human being public. There's just a larger circle. But we've always had this public sense, hundreds of thousands of years ago, public was the tribe. And now that tribe to your point is exponentially larger. So we've had this mechanism for a long time. It's just more complicated right now, because as the tribe has increased, I don't think our skill set to manage it has. And that's really what this book is about. I think a lot of the Greek philosophical movements came out of trying to figure this problem out. So when we think of like people like Diogenes, you could say he was like the first punk rock philosopher. And his whole thing was of cynicism and skepticism and not caring what other people think and behaving in a matter that would showcase that. And of course, that comes with its own peril as well. But when we have cynicism and skepticism, these are all sort of along the lines of discounting what other people are thinking and then figuring it out yourself. And then there's also this aspect of disconnecting and going off to a cabin in the woods or a cave in the wilderness and with a candle on a notebook being alone with your thoughts and journaling to be detached from all of this perception and other people's opinions. So it goes with the saying of in order to combat consciousness, we need more consciousness. And in that self examination, I tend to think that a lot of what we're going through today has been to combat those things, but it's almost as if the more we dig the more in the hole we put ourselves. I love that what you're suggesting is that like there is a remedy, you know. And yes, it's hard right now. It is really hard for us to work with this ancient brain because the doctor in there is strong. And let's oversimplify this because it might set up all the possibilities of how to get better at being a little bit more free from worrying about what other people think about you. So let me set it up that we've got this three pounds of tissue in our brain and I'm sorry, in our skull and that's our brain and it's very powerful. And then we've got our mind and our mind is maybe a little bit more akin to the software that's running the hardware. And if you don't optimize the software, you know, just you're going to use the software that your parents gave you or that your neighborhood friends gave you or that muscle and fitness magazine or whatever this magazine that you're looking for gave you. And there's a calling right now mindfulness is has had its moment is having its moment still. There's a human energy crisis for people were exhausted were irritated were tired were anxious were expensive as an organism to run because we've got this leaky valve call it anxiety call it an untrained mind. And we're expensive. And that's how we get to two o'clock and we're when we're educated well enough to know that probably shouldn't have more caffeine after two o'clock because doesn't be the system fast enough. And some people are reaching for stronger stimulants and some people are gossiping as a stimulant. And some people are just feeding off of the anxiety. And by the time they get home, they're agitated, irritated, like I said, and exhausted. So part of my mission is to pull back the curtain on this beautiful science of psychology and share how best in the world use their mind to be able to find their very best to have a sense of freedom in life to be buoyant in whatever mission that they have. I just think that this is kind of one of the first places to start is what is your relationship with other people? What is your relationship with evaluation? What is your relationship with being true to your purpose? Or is your purpose really to be accepted by other people? Like going away on a into a cave or into another cave necessarily, but cabinet of the woods, man by the river candle. Yeah, right. You know, like that's cool. It's just that's hard to do. Yeah. In the book, we talk about how Beethoven did that, because I think he had a really strong case of Foppo, and he was able to go and get away. But I don't know, I don't think I can do that. And I think if I went away for six weeks, unless I did psychological based work, I would come out the same person, just maybe a little bit more rested. So that's why this is pointing to doing psychological based work, whether that is act, whether that is mindfulness based training, whether that is cognitive behavioral training. There's a whole host of different theories and applied practices that the world is like going, can I get some of that? Oh, but I'm not doing psychology. I'm not going to a psychologist. That's for those people. Oh my God, I hope we're so much further away from that narrative than we were two years ago. But and we have a long way to go. Well, it seems clear that avoidance is not the answer here, whether it's a cabin, whatever the case may be for you, we can't avoid opinion. Right. And it does also feel like we give weight to different opinions. So, you know, being a bit of a public figure on a podcast and putting our voice out there, of course, we know online the cost of opinion versus in your tribe where you say it to someone's face and there might be a physical confrontation is the lowest it's ever been. You can leave a message online, you could be in a negative state, you can then comment on someone else and leave that opinion. And that opinion can rock the creator, it can rock the public figure, it can rock the person who's on the receiving end, and you won't even give it a second thought because you were in your state and you just had an opportunity to put your two cents into the world. And now there's a digital record of that two cents. So it's not just your reputation in the tribe, it's there. Even if you go away for six weeks, well, you come back and your phone's going to notify you of all the comments and the reviews you got while you were gone. So avoidance is not the answer. And we're hardwired to care about people's opinions for our survival. So what is the process of FOPO that we need to be aware of? And then how do we start to find the antidote to succeed under the pressure of all these opinions around us? Well, I think it might be useful to just kind of also talk about just how slippery it is. Like, FOPO is checking your phone so that you appear busy or in demand. It's working late because your boss is still there. It's laughing at a joke that you don't find funny. It's pretending that you know a song or a movie that everyone's talking about. It's like holding a drink at a party even though you don't really want to drink, but you don't also want to be the odd one out. So like, there's FOPO is slippery. It's not this necessarily dramatic moment. It could be a panic attack experience, but it's usually not for people. It's just this slippery little adjustment that you do that you're conforming or contorting or you're shape shifting in a way that is pulling back your true self to be in favor of others. And when FOPO is working, you're living your life on their terms, not yours. And that's the real cost of it. And so how do we set it up? Avoidance? Correct. It's a bummer of a strategy because it just keeps kicking the can down the road. The good news is when you do that, though, you feel safe. You don't feel whole, but you've got, you know, you've played the game well enough that other people kind of lift their eyebrows and gently smile at you, meaning you're okay because you like my joke. You're okay because, you know, you're okay in my eyes, which is just, again, exhausting. So all right, let's talk about the phases of it. I think that that could be really good to talk about. There's this anticipation where you're worrying before you go to your holiday party, right? You're worrying about what they might think of you if you wear this or that or who's going to be there and what they might want to talk about. And again, that's normal. It's normal to use your imagination. It's normal to think forward. It's when you're excessively worrying or you're worrying at a level that it's altering the clothe that you might choose to wear because you want to be liked by another person. You want to fit in rather than be you. And then once you're actually in, this is like the second phase, once you're actually in a social setting, it's this relentlessly, you know, checking in and you're searching for external cues to see if you're accepted or rejected. So there's an anticipation phase, there's a checking phase. And then like I said, the way you respond, it is tragic when you're doing it, but there's an abandonment to yourself, to your family of origin, to your neighborhood, to your core ethos of who you are and what you represent. And that's kind of what happens at the extreme level in FOPO. There are some on-ramps to FOPO and there are some off-ramps as well. And I think the greatest off-ramp before I get onto some of the on-ramps is just recognizing that it is a thing and it's a thing for so many of us is worrying about what they might think of me. And just recognizing it is a little bit like the sixth sense, you know, remember the movie where there's there's ghosts everywhere and you can't undo or unsee it once you know that it's there. So it's a little bit like that. And I hope that your community will say, wait, hold on, do I have FOPO? Do I have a fear of people's opinions? And you need to recognize the value of other people's opinions for sure, because some people's opinions can give you a job. Some people's opinions can get you fired. But it's an excessive worry about the opinions of others, not necessarily just the one person that actually does have, you know, radical influence about the trajectory of your life. Now I think for our audience, what's important to recognize here is that working with elite athletes in performance heightened environments, they're feeling the anticipation face just like you are listening to this here. So there's no avoidance that's happening at the elite level where they just turn it off and it's not there. They just recognize the anticipation and then they use their training and their ability to overcome all of those internal biological patterns that are happening to perform even with this present. Because I know a lot of our clients are like, I just want to turn it off. Like I just want to give the flying double middle finger to other people's opinions and just walk in everywhere not caring whatsoever. But that's not a solution either. That's not going to keep us safe. That's not going to get us ahead in our career. That's not actually going to lead to performance. Yeah, those people are assholes. Like those people are narcissists. They're people that don't care about another person's experience or their opinion is a hubris. There's something else there that is really unbecoming and that's not what I'm suggesting. What I'm suggesting is it's again, I'll worry about it. So worrying about their opinion, you can hold two things in common. You can be curious about their opinion. You can want to understand their opinion. You can engage and explore their opinion, but their opinion does not define who you are. And it doesn't force you to shift in some sort of way to be accepted or this fear of rejection that when you actually do speak your truth. Come to find out according to research, people actually aren't thinking about you anyway. There's a classic. Grandma was right. People are not thinking about you as much as you think they are. We stripped down, if you want to look it up, there's a bit of research called the Spotlight Effect. The author is Thomas Gillovich, which is great. He's so smart and so awesome and unheralded in so many ways. In essence, he took about 100 college kids, put them in a room, and then had some other kids wear the ugly T-shirt of Barry Manilow and walk into the room and do you think kids are going to notice that you're wearing the ugliest shirt we could imagine giving you? Those kids that were walking into the room with the ugly shirt, they predicted that at least 50% of people would notice that they have the ugly shirt. Come to find out, only about 25% of people are actually paying any kind of attention to you. Two and a half out of 10 people are barely noticing. It's not like we should live our life on their terms. Most people are consumed with their own stuff. Anyways, I think that that's cool to note as well. We often ascribe this idea that we are mind readers of other people along with that. Not only do we believe there's a spotlight on us, but we also think we can then see inside the other person's mind and know that there are negative opinions about us there when that's not the case at all. We don't have that ability as much as we love to think. Mind reading to your deep understanding, it sounds like, is one of the cognitive distortions that leads to or is evidence of anxiety, depression, or addiction. Trying to mind read other people who are really bad at it. There's a whole host of problems that come with that. It is, according to research again, it is so much more powerful to just ask a person, hey, what do you think about that? Instead of trying to interpret or guess, because we are wrong more than we are right when it comes to reading another person's mind. Certainly our lives and our experiences are going to color those perspectives. And every time I read the Barry Manilow study, I always laugh because there was a phase in the 90s, and maybe it's still going on, but it's the whole irony thing where that Barry Manilow shirt became the most popular shirt that you could be wearing. Yep, right. For us, counterculture, I know. Where everyone's in the room going, I'm wearing this Barry Manilow shirt, Manilow shirt, and everyone is going to make fun of me too. I'm wearing this Manilow shirt, and I'm going to be the man tonight because I scored this at the thrift shop, and I'm going to blow everyone's mind. But again, it's a perspective that is there. And for us to pretend that we understand how that is going to be viewed is ridiculous. We don't. No, we don't. And you know, it's really interesting about the studies around beauty is that there is a bit of a golden ratio to beauty, meaning us predictable symmetry across people's faces or bodies that holds up across cultures. However, not all cultures, but many. However, it's the less than perfect, it's the interesting, you know, mole or it's the weird shape of a chin or there's something else when a person is confident and they own it and they're comfortable and they're engaging and they've got like this zest behind their eyes. That's where we find beauty. It's not so much the perfect anything. It's the owning your own experience. And it's there's when you get the chance to know somebody and you go, Oh my God, that person is like, there's some sort of thing that's attractive to you, as well as there's this deep knowing and aliveness that comes with the person. When we talk about beauty, we often talk about kindness. We often talk about like, you know, other features, characteristics that are go beyond the beauty of it or the physicality of it. So to your point, when you're wearing bare man alone, yes, there's a timely aspect where one day it's cool and the next decade it's not. However, when you rock it and you like it and you feel really good about who you are, you could wear just about anything. And so that goes a long way when you work from the inside out. And that isn't that's the name of the first. The book is called the first role of mastery and that is it work from the inside out. Yeah, invest in your psychology. Now, there are certain types of opinions that I could care less about. So if you were to argue with me about my opinion of rock and roll music, I have no identity tied to my love of rock and roll music. Whereas Johnny, you know, he'll gladly go toe to toe with you over your taste in rock and roll. And there's an identity to Johnny and his love of rock and roll that's tied to that opinion. And you talk about this great experiment you ran with Ricky Fowler in the book. And I think it's just really interesting to unpack how identity plays a role in this because we've talked about the number of opinions out there and the fact that the tribe is ever growing. But we've all been in that situation where there are certain opinions that cut to our identity that we hold on to longer and often create the bigger scars that lead to decrease in performance later. Totally. So I think that I think the Ricky Fowler story that the research we did with him with Red Bull was really interesting because it sets up exactly what you're talking about. Would you mind if I shared that? Yeah, please do. So at Red Bull, there was an early mission to set up a true high performance program. And it was one of the first of its kind. And the idea was let's surround some of the already best in the world talent with all of the great science to support people to be their very best. And so psychology and nutrition and physiology and technology and motor learning and strength and conditioning and amazing, very stimulating time. One of the research projects that we ran, we did both application and research. It was myself and Leslie Sherlin, Dr. Sherlin. And he's a physiologist on the psychologist. And we took three golfers, one everyone knows their his name, Ricky Fowler, one of the best in the world. Then we took the local pro. So if you go play golf at your local place, he's the guy. He's the best there is in LA or the best that he is in whatever your town is. And then we took a weekend duffer, just like a local hack, a guy that plays like, I don't know, three times a year. And so we walked them through three different levels of pressure. So the first level of pressure was me with a clipboard. Oh, and by the way, we monitored everything. So we had like their, we're measuring their brain activity, how much they were sweating their heart rate, we're measuring everything that you could imagine. And the first level of pressure was me with a clipboard and one camera. And we just had like 15 balls laid out. And we said, okay, go ahead and putt, we're going to watch your, your bio data, they're going to get an understanding what's happening inside you. The local duff guy, you know, he I'll make this number up was like eight for 15, he did okay. It was fine. The weekend pro hit like 13 out of 12 out of 15. It was good. It was really good. He said, wow, that was hard. And I thought, but he had enough skill in there to manage his quote unquote early level of pressure. Then Ricky Fowler, he hit 13 for 15. And at the end, I said, how'd you do? And I asked that question to everybody, how'd you do? And he said, um, yeah, pretty good. I was 14 for 15. I said, Oh, no, you're actually 13 for 15. He says, no, 14 for 15. And I look at the clipboard and I go, uh, no, and there's two balls out there, right? And I go, no. And he goes, and he squares up with me and he says, no, no, no, you're not understanding. I committed to 14 good shots. I'm 14 for 15. He goes, I don't care. It didn't go in. I committed to 14 good shots. I was like, oh, look at that. Like there's something there that's really cool. And there's an urban legend about great performers that are committed to the process and committed to their way and not overly burdened by the outcome. And the rest of us mere mortals say, yeah, but you know, that can't really be true. It's all about winning. Isn't it? Well, when you get inside the minds of the greats, they are more interested in quote unquote, perfecting the process, even though perfection doesn't work or doesn't exist. They're much more interested in committing. Okay, but that's not where the story gets really good. That's interesting, but not where it gets really good. So level two, we brought out a bit more pressure, more cameras, harder shots. Okay, so there's a bit more of a observation effect. Level three, big galley of people, you know, we brought in a stadium. We brought in big booming cameras, like a big crane with a sweeping thing. And we're measuring all of their physiology again. So it's like we're getting an inside look on how their brain is interpreting stress. And then we've got their data up on this huge screen TV in front of the galley. So like this huge, okay, so you get the stage, right? So on this third one, the local guy, the hack, his activation level was high. Okay, so he was, he was nervous and he had lots of energy and it was high. And but it wasn't overwhelming to him. It wasn't overwhelming as far as an absolute number. Let's, let's make up the number for simplicity. It was like a seven and a half out of 10. It's high. You want to be, let's say for this, for this model at about like a five and a half. Okay. So he was up there, it was okay. And he did his thing and he's kind of laughed like, oh, shit, that was hard. You know, like, wow, okay, man, like I've never done anything like that before. And he performed just a little bit worse in that third condition. The Ricky Fowler, let's go to Ricky. Ricky went all the way up to five and a half, spilt up to six, just a little bit in intensity. And then as soon as he putted, there was a lift to about a seven and a half eight, and then a quick recovery down. So in other words, he was using all of his mental skills to keep it in the right ideal range. And then as soon as the ball left his, his club and he was done with it, he like let the top off. There's a flood of intensity. And then he, he came back down so that he recovered quickly. But the key part here is he held the tension. The local pro, the local expert, he was flooding up at a nine and he couldn't maintain that five and a half texture. He was flooding up at a nine. He absolutely, you know, shit the bed when it came to measuring level one stress versus level three stress. And afterwards he looked at us and he said, that's the hardest thing I've ever done. And his eyes are well done. And he said, I'm seriously, I need to talk to you about afterwards like I'm really a mess right now. I've never felt anything like this. I just want to escape. So it was really triggering for him. And good thing we signed all the right waivers ahead of time at all the right, you know, you know, of course we debrief properly. So the point that we ended up extracting here is that the key thread through all three of these people independent of the conditions is just like you would imagine the weekend hack guy. His identity was not attached to it. He felt all the emotions. He felt all the anxiousness, but his identity wasn't involved in it. So it's okay. Yeah, I would say he probably already felt like I've already won. Like I'm here. And that framing is really important. Oh yeah. Right. Okay. So that's about his psychology. Framing and skills is kind of what it gets down to thinking and psychological skills are kind of the mechanics of sports psychology or the performance or the psychology of excellence, if you will. Okay. And then you would imagine Ricky Fowler, his identity was not attached to how well he did. His identity was attached to the process of becoming his very best of being authentic to his, his process. And so of course he's got some identity around being a pro golfer, but he was the inoculation to that becoming problematic is that he was committed to the process. All right. Very cool insight. And then he had all the skills to manage it. Okay. That's what pros do. Professionals train their craft, they train their body and they train their mind. The rest of us are going, Oh, the mind. I don't know. That's, isn't that for depressed people? You know, and like for decades, the best in the world to be at least in my experience have said, Hey, doc, what do you got? You got something good here? Come on. Let's get after it. Like I'm trying to do something here now. What can we do? What can we work on? What can we do? Can you help me out? That's what the best in the world are. They pull you. They hold the standard. They make you better too, because they want to be their very best. All right. Sometimes some of them want to be the best, but no problems in that either. All right. The local guy, the local pro, his, his entire identity is being the good guy locally. It was too much. So the takeaway is when you have a performance based identity, you run right into the on ramp of fopo. You are overwhelmed by trying to manage what people think of you. And when your identity is wrapped in to what you do and how well you do it relative to others, every time you go to do that thing of yours that, that, that matters to you, your entire identity feels like it's at stake. Your, it's as if your entire life was at stake. There is no redundant part of the brain that says, this is the part for your identity. And this is the part for your physical survival. They're the same. So this is a very important takeaway. And our world, Western world in particular, is obsessed with performance. Look at me, culture is real. And, and if, if you want to find freedom in your life, I would highly suggest that you square up with, is my identity connected to what I do and how well I do it? Or is my identity more tuned to a purpose based identity, where I'm more connected to something that is larger than me that I'm pouring into, that can't be solved by me alone. It's bigger than any one of us. And I play a small part in this large purpose in life. So performance based to purpose based is the crosswalk to get to for a deep level of freedom. Now, in working with athletes, especially a lot of young athletes, most of their accolades come around performance. So talk about childhood and how traumatic that will be once their athletic career is over. And there is no standing ovation. There is no gold medal. There is no people treating you differently based on your performance. How do they then transition? If you've found now you've discovered I am in a performance based identity state, I need to get to purpose based because I got a long life ahead of me. And this doesn't feel really good right now. And I certainly don't want this to be my future. Most of us change because the pain is too great. And that's why one of the greatest things and kindest and most loving things we can do is help people feel their pain. So that they can get ahead of like rock bottom type of pain before they make these changes. I think the first order business is to like get with yourself, get a journal out, get with a wise person, meditate, one of those three best practices to get down into like, how do you feel about who you are in this world? And are you are you overly connected by how people are going to judge you or think about you? Are you overly connected to your performance aspect? Listen, for so long, I propped up that I was who I was because I was a grinder and because I was a hard worker and because I was smart, according to me at least, and because I was good at something. And it's a mixed feeling for me because that anxiety, it did get me good at something because I was outworking everybody else out of grounded anxiety. I'm thankful for that because I'm able to be more artistic now. And I'm really thankful that I had people in my life that kept knocking the calcium off saying, what the fuck are you doing? Like, is this really who you are? Like, you're going to make that choice over this choice. You're going to go and do that work rather than be with your family. So I'm not saying this naively and I'm not saying this out without scar tissue. And I understand the need to get good or be good at something. I understand that. There can be a cost when it's, there just can be a cost now. So to your point, come full circle here, is how do we do it? Is that first order businesses feel the pain that comes with maybe the anxiety that you feel when you perform? Maybe it's a general anxiety in life, even when you're not performing? Maybe it's this confrontation, I'm sorry, this contorting or conforming to social approvals that is kind of keeping you stuck and you know it. It's facing that up a bit and getting there before you have a full blown crisis. I'm thinking of a Super Bowl champion that said to me, Mike, I knew I was in trouble when I turned to my wife and I said to her, this is post Super Bowl. How are you going to give me the love of a hundred thousand screaming people? How are you possibly going to fill that energy? How could you ever think that you're going to replace that part of my life? And he said, he heard the words as it was coming out of his mouth and he thought, I'm twisted. I've lost my way. And so that's one way to think about it. Another way is that 87% of athletes in the NFL within two years are broker-divorced, or both, 93 in the NBA. So having a performance-based identity and having just the right amount of obsessiveness, anxiety and narcissism can get you good at something, could even get you on the world stage. Doesn't mean you're going to have it for a long time. Doesn't mean you're going to be happy. It doesn't mean it's sustainable. It is not the path of mastery. It's the path of high performance, which is like worlds apart. They look from the outside similar, but they are worlds apart. And when you listen to somebody on the path of mastery and somebody who is on the path of high performance, they don't sound the same either. So how do you do it? Feel some pain? Get down into some suffering? Have a community of people that you've invested in so much that they're going to be honest with you? And when you start to do some of that stuff, you go, yeah, yeah, yeah. What is my purpose in life? What am I doing here? And that's a big question, John. That's a big question, AJ. Like, how do you do it? How do you know your purpose? Well, this just goes to show why this is so important. And we're talking about athletes who have tied their identity to that performance. Musicians do it well. And if you have that type of success early in life, it's not a guarantee that it's always going to be there. And obviously an athlete's career is rather short. Certainly, I mean, and their performance are going to be peaking at an early point in life with a whole life to live after that. AJ and I have been thankful to have interviewed people like Kobe. One of the grades, we were interviewing him for a children's book that he had written, and his excitement and passion for what he was doing at that time was through the roof. I'm sitting there thinking, this could be a game or writing a book, he's bringing that same amount of passion to whatever he is working on in that moment. And again, that was a skill that was developed over a very long time to get to that point. And I think he had something right in that passion didn't just come from doing a thing. Passion was the way I was going to live my life with all the things that I do. Correct. And that passion trap is unexamined for most people. And there's this level of frustration that I don't have that zest for life. I don't have that type of happiness or passion quote unquote in life, because I can't play the guitar as much as I'd like to because I can't go surfing as much as I can't draw as much as I'd like to because I've got this nine to five gig or I had this altered experience where I could have gone the music route, but I took the sure thing and went into the family business, filling a million different narratives here. That's a nice way to stay a victim. And I'm using that word provocatively here because it is possible to live with passion at everything that almost everything let's say let's be realistic. It is possible to live with passion across all things that you do, as opposed to just having passion on the one thing that is easy for you to feel the passion. That's like an adult decision, I think. That's something that takes some real work to get better at just like if you want to be healthy. That's an adult decision. We have to work to be healthy. It is so easy to grab a package, a man made package of something or a human made package of something versus organic from mother nature. It is so much easier to choose the easy as opposed to the hard right. And I think there's a handful of those adult decisions that we all need to make. And whether you're living aligned to FOPO or not, whether you're living more attuned to the fear of other people's opinions or your own unique way to write your own script, that's an adult decision as well. So Moby is obviously controversial in how he approaches life. And he's out there now. And he's got this, he and I had, I don't know if you guys have had the chance to get to know him, but he shares this story that the first time he saw himself on the cover of a magazine. And when he was a musician and he was in it and he says, Oh my God, I've done it. Like this is a moment of validation for me. They love me. Here I am. People know me now. This means that I have meaning. I've arrived. They care about me. They're being nice to me. I have friends, you know, like filling all the narratives. And then he said he spent the next 15 years obsessing over what people said about him. And, you know, he had to go cold turkey, just like with drugs for him, that he stopped paying attention. He had to go cold turkey and not hand over his sense of who he was to people that didn't even know him. And it sounds logical. Like, I hear that and I go, Yeah, that's what I would do too. But it's such a slippery drug. When somebody looks across the room and nods at you, like, Yeah, I like what you're saying. And you're like, Oh, I am okay. That's FOPO actually. That's like, that's like loving the acceptance of that somebody's giving you. But on the other shoe that's ready to drop is the fear of rejection. As opposed to you being your own tuning fork. Not that you're not that you don't care about what people think, but you're clear about the words that you're choosing. You're clear about why you're choosing those words, because they ladder to your purpose. And you're clear that you want to include everybody in what you're doing that wants to be part of it. And the exclusion doesn't mean hatred or belittlement or critique. It just means that this mission of my mission, your mission are not lined up. No problems. Love you wish you the best. If Dr. King Jr, if Malcolm X, if Gandhi, if Mother Teresa, if you fill in the blanks, if they were in this conversation with us today, if Gandhi was here, I'm sure we'd be talking about freedom. If Dr. King was here, I'm sure we'd be talking about equality. If Mother Teresa here, I would bet that we're going to be talking about, you know, helping people that don't have the same kind of base of, of health that we have. So my question to my community and to my loved ones and to you guys and to your community is like, what are you doing here? We don't know how much longer we have. So what are you going to do with it? What is your purpose? And that is a adult question worth wrestling. Yeah, I think it's easy in a lot of ways to then fall into a trap of solitude and practice your craft and chase mastery in the dark on your own, whether it's your physical body, whether it's your tools or your skill sets. But there comes a point for everyone, not just these professional athletes that we've talked about with the cameras and the spotlight, but every single one of us are part of a community, whether we like it or not. And that craft is going to see other people's opinions. That thing you've been working on, that you've been performing at your best on, that you're super passionate about, is going to be out in the world. And if you've worked in solitude as a lone wolf, which we find in a lot of our clients, then all of a sudden, you haven't built the calluses to handle the opinions that are going to come your way when that spotlight, when that craft sees the rest of the world. So outside of avoiding it, recognizing your purpose, tapping into it, and then being willing to share that purpose and that passion with others, which we discussed in a toolbox earlier this month, we find a lot of our clients are shamed about their passion, don't want to share their passion. And then we heard from Coby, that's exactly what I look for in every single person that joins my team to help me with this book, to help me with these movies that I'm producing. I'm looking for passion. If you can share your passion with others, you actually tap into a community of high performers who are also pursuing mastery, instead of doing it alone in the dark, hoping that you'll be successful later if you just trudge on your own. I'm down with it. I think it takes incredible courage to do two things, to say the thing that you're passionate about, to walk the talk. There is like real work and some vulnerability there. And then to be public in any kind of way with the things that you're passionate about, because we are not perfect. My wife is in my head all the time, hey, we're all just trying to figure it out. And we are imperfect in all ways. So mistakes are part of the process. And when you give yourself that space and permission to make mistakes, it's so much easier. That's hard to do on a performance based identity. Here's the thing, your identity can change. Your purpose can also change. You do not have to go get neck tattoos or write it in stone. You can change in any way that you want. Take an example. Do you know the name George Mario Bergoglio? No, don't believe so. Okay. So in his younger years, he was a bar bouncer. He was a janitor. He was a part-time technician. He was responsible for raw materials and chemicals in a lab in Buenos Aires. That's his younger years. Today, fast forward, many decades. He's based in Rome. He lives in Rome. And he leads an organization, which is one of the largest organizations on the planet. They have 1.34 billion followers. Okay. Think about the size of that organization. In 2013, he became the head of the Catholic Church. Pope Francis is his name now in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, of animals. Do you think he thought at age whatever that as he was a technician in Buenos Aires that he was one day going to run the show for the Catholic Church? Now listen, they got some problems. Okay. So I'm not putting this on a pedestal. I'm saying that our purposes are not evident from a young age. We tend to think that, oh, those people, they always knew. There are the rare ones like, I think Kobe played basketball at a young age and says he loved it, right? Like, that can happen. Listen, I didn't know what the hell I was doing as a kid. I barely know it now. But I do know that I'm clear about purpose to help people live in the present moment more often, period. How? Helping people train their mind because that's how we do it. Train your mind so you can live in the present moment more often. Many people listening to this go, great, Michael, you've cracked the code. You must be completely impervious to other people's opinions. And you share an anecdote in your own life of training an MMA fighter, going through the process to help him succeed. And then a mentor in your life actually sharing an opinion with you that is much different than a YouTube comment left on this video. And then having to wrestle with that opinion and work your way through it, because this is from a mentor, this is from someone that you care deeply about and whose opinion you hold in high regard. If you can impact that for our audience, I think it's really powerful because outside of the negative comments you might get in your day-to-day life, when we really put other people on that pedestal, we look up to them and value their opinion, whether it's parents, whether it's partners, whether it's people in our lives who are close to us or mentors, it can be really difficult for us to overcome those opinions. I want to work backwards and start in real time. I am not immune. I've been studying this a long time. The path of mastery, this great constrictor of people's opinions to my potential and other people's potential. I'm not immune to it. I am better at it than I've ever been because I work at it. I train it. But when I was young, this was a real thing for me. When I was 15 and a half, or 16, I should say, I just got my driver's license. I saved up for a couple summers to get a car. I remember I was driving and there was a car passing me, and this was like week one or two of having my driver's license. They were passing me going in the same direction. I sat up, I grabbed the steering wheel with the cool kid lean, and I just wanted to look cool. I looked over just in that way as they're passing by, and they didn't fucking look at me. They had no interest in what was happening in my world in my car. In that moment, as a 16-year-old kid, I thought, what am I doing? I was embarrassed by it. There was no one else in my car, but I was embarrassed by myself. I'm just trying to look cool. I'm like a phony, and it stuck with me. I didn't know how to change it. I didn't know how to shift it, and it just kind of was quiet, but I knew it was underneath there. I knew it got in the way of me potentially going pro and surfing, and I knew it got in the way of a lot of things. Sure enough, here I am working with the best in the world. My mentor says to me, there was an MMA fight, and it was early. It was like, I don't know, MMA 43 or something like that. The fighter asked me, he says, hey, will you be at the fight with me? I was like, yeah. He says, will you corner the fight with me? I was like, oh my, yeah, okay. That sounds cool. Let's have a game plan. So we worked out a game plan. We did a lot of work to prepare for that, and we rehearsed everything on how I was going to support him while he was in a cage, except we didn't rehearse where I was supposed to walk when he went into the cage. So I just followed the head coach, and he didn't know where he was going to walk either, and so we just kind of had to make our way to the spot. And so there I am kind of in front of the camera. We're all kind of in front of the camera walking on the outside of the cage as the fighter's walking into the cage. My mentor calls me afterwards. The fighter did a really nice job, and my mentor called me on the way home as I was driving, and he's like, congrats. Like that looked pretty amazing. He says, won't you stay out of the camera, though, dude? And I thought, I was like, oh my God, I thought you're going to say like congratulations. It's cool. I know how much you love the MMA game. And he shot me, you know, like right in the heart, and he's like, stay out of the camera. That's not where you're supposed to be. And I was like, oh man, I did something wrong here. I was not a good custodian of this beautiful science, and I let him down. I don't know. And it just stayed with me for a better part of a decade. And I never confronted him. I was again embarrassed by it, and I didn't know what to do with it. Coming to find out, he didn't really. It was just kind of a little comment. It was a monster that I grew. And it was because I was afraid of what he was going to say to me. And I was afraid of what would happen because I liked the moment where I walked on and like it was caught that I was part of something. I liked it, but we weren't supposed to do that. We're supposed to be behind the scenes. But I liked being part of something electric and fun. And I know that I was supposed to just be behind the scenes. And I wasn't, to be clear, I wasn't trying to hog the spotlight or anything. But so it was really kind of confusing for me as an early professional in my career. And coming to find out, he really, it just wasn't a big deal to him as it was for me. But I made it a big deal. So I got scar tissue. I got stuff that I've worked through as well. And I'll tell you, it is much better on the other side of doing this work. I'm thankful that I've got people in my life that hold me to task. And I hope that everybody has that in their life. And if they don't, you can pay somebody. In some respects, that's what psychologists do. They don't say, oh, it's okay, sweetie. It's okay, honey. Oh, okay, it's not that. It's like, oh, is this the person you want to be? No? All right, well, let's go to work. Yeah, for those in our audience who feel in that solitude, they're strengthening their frame and their resolve and they're working towards mastery, those opinions on their own, especially without a supportive community who can help you unpack it and see the opinion for what it is and assess it truly to recognize. And then you had the opportunity, I'm assuming, based on that story to share with your mentor and frame to say, listen, it was just an off the cuff statement. I wasn't holding you to that and certainly wanting to feed that monster for you. But oftentimes, if all we do is tuck that in, we avoid community, we avoid working in the professional, we avoid actually understanding the opinion, the impact it's having on ourselves, it can steer us away from the performance that we want and it can take us off track from even finding our passion, our purpose. 100%. And if you're working inside an organization and you're really in, you want to do a nice job for the organization, football also decreases risk-taking because you won't say the thing that needs to be said. You don't speak truth to power. You feel a look, some kind of way about not speaking the truth. It also decreases creativity, innovation. There's a whole bunch of things that take place in organizations. So in many respects, if you're suffering with this in some kind of way, or you see your people that are not speaking up or are agitated or anxious or blaming or whatever, maybe you're creating an environment that has FOPO in it as a leader. I'm suggesting also whether it's to work from the inside out, yes. And if you are fortunate to be in a leadership position, know that this is happening for most people. Their brain is saying, don't screw it up. Their brain is saying, don't get kicked out of the tribe. We need to invest in their psychology and create an environment to support them for speaking their mind, for going for it, for being honest, even if it comes out a little clumsy. And so, look, engagement of productivity are all time low in corporations. And so, FOPO is part of that. I don't know how to speak up. I don't know what to say. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how I fit in here. So leaders can help in very specific ways by helping increase seeing the purpose that somebody has to the shared mission of the organization, seeing what the person's impact has in that purpose and calling it out privately and publicly. And those start to shape shift the way that people are afraid of saying or speaking truth to power because they see that they're valued. And so, there's so much that we can do as leaders. And I know I'm shifting the paradigm here a little bit, but this is where most of us spend most of our time is at work. Some of us are leaders. Some of us are managers. Some of us are individual contributors. Come on, leaders. Like, most people are struggling with FOPO, if not you. There's a lot of work we can do. The future of work is going to be met by the future of leaders, just like sport for kids is met at the handshake with the coach, the relationship with the coach. Business and experiences for people is met at the way that their leaders create space or create construction. And that recognition of your own FOPO or potentially team members' FOPO is increasing your emotional intelligence at a very core level, raising your self-awareness and recognizing that others are struggling with it and how can you support them, increases your EQ, makes you a better leader, and ultimately improves not only your performance, but everyone around you. It's like a breath of fresh air when we can take that load off of someone else's shoulders. So here's something that we do at Finding Master. We've got a small team of about 40 people and we just open it up. Like, hey, how's FOPO showing up this week, this month? How's FOPO showing up for you the last couple of days? And people are like, oh, I'm good. And then you just wait a minute and you're like, no, really? How's it showing up for you? Well, actually, there was this thing I wanted to say and I don't know. Like, it's there now. It is there for people. And it's a simple question. And you have to wait, though, to get underneath it, but you have to give it a little bit of hydration because we're not quite sure if we can be authentic because we don't want to get kicked out of the tribe, you know? And so that's kind of what I think one of the real gems of psychological safety at the workplace is about is like creating the right temperature and atmosphere for people to say what's up. If you can do that, you're going to have a more productive or more engaged, a higher performing organization. We know that from research. Well said. Thank you for joining us again. Our last question for you. I know you've asked it in the past. I love to hear your thoughts on it now. What do you believe is your X factor? What makes you unique and extraordinary? I love that question. And before we go, I want to say, like, thank you for including me. I'm stoked of what you guys are doing, how you're doing it. And thank you for including me. The X factor, in sports, sometimes we call it like the it factor, it's being fully present. And that's the thing that it's not charisma, it's not kindness, it's not a value or virtue. It's the skill of being fully present with other people and doing that consistently across conditions, whether that's when it's high stress or when it's a low stress moment is being fully present with other people. The X factor is not for somebody to determine if they have it. Others determine it. And when others are in an environment with you and they say, I don't know, she's just like, whew, or he is like, wow, it's because you're fully present and you're not abandoning who you say you are in those hard moments. You're fully engaged with other people and the task at hand. That to me feels like the prerequisite for the factor or the X factor. Thank you again for joining us and sharing this wisdom in the book. Where could our audience find out more about the work you do? The website is really, you know, the easiest way. It's findingmastery.com. The podcast, of course, is a favorite place for us to build relationships that's finding mastery. And then hopefully you punch over to findingmastery.com forward slash book to be able to check out the pre offer for the first rule of mastery that's coming out. And you can buy the book anywhere that books are sold. Awesome. Thank you again. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Michael.