The Psychology of Winning and Losing | Mikaela Shiffrin - From The Vault

Finding a way to coach yourself with challenge and grace can be an extraordinary unlock for performance.Mikaela Shiffrin is an Olympic gold medalist and the winningest alpine ski racer in World Cup history. We first released this conversation in 2023. Since then, she has won Olympic slalom gold at Milano Cortina and her sixth overall World Cup title, tying the women’s record, and what she describes in this conversation is the inner work that was already well underway.Mikaela and Mike get into the performance anxiety that had her sick at the start gate years into her career, the self-coaching habit she developed to put her own assessment first, and the race she lost at Killington that she calls the most free she has ever felt in her career. She is open about how long she let the outside world dictate how she felt about her own skiing before she reclaimed that for herself.Coaching yourself well is incredibly difficult, and Mikaela shows us in this conversation what becomes possible when you do it in a world-class way.Enjoy the conversation.--------------------------------------------------Links & ResourcesMikaela Shiffrin: linktr.ee/mikaelashiffrinMikaela Shiffrin’s YouTube Series: Moving Right Along, on her channel youtube.com/@mikaelashiffrinMikaela Shiffrin’s Podcast: What’s the Point with Mikaela Shiffrin: listen hereSubscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletterDownload Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and XSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What happens to the rest of your relationships when the one you have with yourself goes untended?Dr. Thema Bryant is a clinical psychologist, tenured professor of psychology at Pepperdine University, director of the Culture and Trauma Research Laboratory, and former president of the American Psychological Association. She hosts The Homecoming Podcast and wrote Matters of the Heart: Healing Your Relationship with Yourself and Those You Love.Thema emphasizes that one of the biggest predictors of our mental wellbeing is not your achievement or your bank account. It is the people you spend your time with.Thema and Mike get into her working definition of trauma, the difference between guilt and shame, and why so much people pleasing begins as a strategy for staying safe. Thema talks about being evacuated from Liberia as a teenager during a civil war, and the shift in her own identity after the death of her mother.This conversation is also for the person doing well by every external measure who sees no reason to do any of this work. It is not that you need to, Thema says. It’s that you deserve to.At one point, Mike asks her how we would lead differently if we knew what she knew. Thema’s answer is that you would not leave yourself behind.Enjoy the conversation.__________________________________Links & Resources:Dr. Thema Bryant’s Website: drthema.comDr. Thema Bryant’s Books: Matters of the Heart: Healing Your Relationship with Yourself and Those You Love, Reclaim Yourself: The Homecoming Workbook, Homecoming: Overcome Fear and Trauma to Reclaim Your Whole, Authentic Self, The Antiracism HandbookDr. Thema Bryant’s Podcast: The Homecoming Podcast with Dr. Thema (video version on YouTube, audio on Spotify and Apple Podcasts)Mentioned in this conversation: Dr. Lisa Miller’s research on spirituality as a protective factor for mental health. Her Finding Mastery episode: The Psychology of Spirituality | Dr. Lisa Miller. Her book: The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life.Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletterDownload Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X#FindingMastery #ThemaBryant #DrMichaelGervais #MattersOfTheHeart #Relationships #Trauma #Healing #Shame #EmotionalSafety #SelfWorth #Attachment #Loneliness #Therapy #Psychology #MentalHealth #HighPerformance #Emotionaltrauma #reltionshiptrauma #selfhelp #selfhealingSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“…the stories that we tell ourselves and other people become our lives.”— IN-QThis is a conversation about the story you are living inside, about creativity as a practice rather than a talent, and about why being witnessed helps us release what we might otherwise carry alone.Before this conversation started, IN-Q walked the entire Finding Mastery team through a poetry workshop. Each person wrote about a personal experience with risk that changed the direction of their life, then read it out loud to the room. Mike opens this episode saying he has never started a podcast feeling the way he felt coming out of it.IN-Q is a spoken word artist, two-time Emmy-nominated lyricist, multi-platinum songwriter, keynote speaker, and bestselling author of Inquire Within. He has written songs with Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus, and Aloe Blacc, and he was one of the original members of Da Poetry Lounge in Los Angeles, the open mic he calls church without religion.IN-Q and Mike get into the three guidelines he gives people before they write, and the night he read his old breakup poems and realized every one of them applied to the new breakup.He also describes giving himself the room every morning to decide not to be a poet. Choosing it again each day – instead of waking up already being one – keeps the work from turning into a life he inherited from a version of himself that has already faded away.Both of them tell stories about an old chip on the shoulder, and the two trace back to a similar place. The chip became fuel. IN-Q calls it unhealthy fuel, and describes chipping away at it now, trying to turn it into a sculpture.Change your story, change your life, is how he puts it. He also tells you exactly where to start.Enjoy the conversation.____________________________________________________________________________Links & ResourcesIN-Q’s Website: in-q.comIN-Q’s Books: Inquire Within, The Never Ending Now Poetry JournalIN-Q’s Album: The Never Ending Now (featuring Isabella Turso)IN-Q’s Poetry Special: IN-Q – Live at the Ace Theatre, streaming on Amazon Prime VideoIN-Q’s Poetry Workshops and Retreats: in-q.com/poetry-workshopsSubscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletterDownload Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and XSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What if the calmest person in the room isn’t avoiding pressure, but experiencing it differently?Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is one of the world’s most recognized spiritual teachers and humanitarian leaders. He founded the Art of Living, which teaches meditation, breathwork, and service in over 180 countries, and he is the author of Notes for the Journey Within.Stress has a use, and Gurudev compares it to a pinch of salt in food, useful in that amount and unconsumable past it. Most of us have taken on far more than that, and have never learned how to put it down or manage it well.Gurudev and Mike get into why he defines success as exhibiting your limitation, why he thinks failure is worth being proud of, and why authority over your own mind is the only authority there really is. Mike asks him when his body last went into fight or flight. He says it never has.This one is for people who are working hard and running warm. What Gurudev points back to is something simple and repeatable: breathing, meditation, and learning how to release stress before it accumulates.Near the end, Mike asks him to finish a sentence: Mastery is... Gurudev’s answer: recognizing you are not there.Enjoy the conversation.______________________________________________________Links & Resources:Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s Website: gurudev.artofliving.orgGurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s Books: Notes for the Journey Within: Essentials of the Art of Living, An Intimate Note to the Sincere Seeker, Celebrating SilenceThe Art of Living Foundation: artofliving.orgSubscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletterDownload Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and XSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How much of the time you spend in pain comes from the injury itself, and how much comes from the fear around it?Dr. Tom Walters is a board-certified orthopedic physical therapist, strength and conditioning specialist, educator, and founder of Rehab Science. He has spent more than two decades helping people understand pain, movement, and injury recovery, and he is the author of Rehab Science: How to Overcome Pain and Heal from Injury.Tom’s starting point is that pain and injury are not the same thing. Pain is an unpleasant sensory or emotional experience tied to actual or potential tissue damage, which means what you believe about your body can change what you feel in it.Tom and Mike get into the nocebo effect, how a clinician’s words or reaction to a scan can amplify pain, why the field traded the word chronic for persistent, and how to manage exercise loads as your body adapts.Mike tells the story of an MRI he had around the age of 23. The doctor looked at the film, his eyes got big, and he asked if Mike was okay. Mike says his pain felt worse instantly.Tom says many musculoskeletal conditions improve with time and movement. He encourages people to take an active role in recovery: try an appropriate movement, notice how your body responds, and adjust from there.Enjoy the conversation.___________________________________________________________________Links & Resources:Dr. Tom Walters’ Website: rehabscience.comDr. Tom Walters’ Books: Rehab Science: How to Overcome Pain and Heal from Injury, plus the 2026 Rehab Science body-region series: Knee, Back and Spine, Hip, Shoulder, Elbow, Wrist & Hand, Ankle and Foot, and Head & NeckDr. Tom Walters’ YouTube Channel: Rehab ScienceThe Rehab Science App: Rehab Science on the App StoreSubscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletterDownload Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and XSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A letter landed on Masud Husain’s desk about a man in his thirties who had stopped doing anything at all.Dr. Masud Husain is a clinical neurologist, neuroscientist, and Professor of Neurology and Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Oxford. He is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Brain and author of Our Brains, Our Selves, winner of the 2025 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize.The letter was about a man named David who had been highly productive, worked in finance, and was charming company. Then he lost his job, stopped showering, and could not be bothered to claim the benefits that would have covered his rent. Asked why he no longer listened to music, he said it would take five minutes to connect the cables.David was not depressed. He had suffered two tiny strokes in the basal ganglia, structures deep in the brain that help link motivational cues to action. Nothing was worth the effort to him anymore.After an initial treatment failed, Masud’s team tried another drug that acts on the dopamine system. Three months later David came back with a haircut, a suit, a new job, and a new girlfriend.Addiction researchers had arrived at that same circuit from the other direction: Masud says it is the circuit hijacked by almost every drug of addiction. He and Mike get into what that overlap means about the science of motivation, why apathy and depression are different conditions, why there are more than 200 causes of dementia and what that means for prevention, and whether there is a self to be found in the brain at all.This is a conversation for anyone who has decided to do something and then not done it. Masud frames motivation as a calculation of whether the reward is worth the effort, and the lever most of us have is the size of the effort.After thirty years of seeing patients, the thing Masud says he has learned is that the self is not set in stone. You can change.Enjoy the conversation.______________________________________________________Links & Resources:Dr. Masud Husain’s Website: masudhusain.orgDr. Masud Husain’s Books: Our Brains, Our Selves: What a Neurologist’s Patients Taught Him About the Brain, Oxford Textbook of Cognitive Neurology and Dementia (co-editor)Dr. Masud Husain’s Journal: Brain, where he is Editor-in-ChiefSubscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletterDownload Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X#FindingMastery #MasudHusain #DrMichaelGervais #OurBrainsOurSelves #Neuroscience #Neurology #Motivation #Apathy #Dopamine #Attention #Dementia #BrainHealth #Consciousness #Identity #HighPerformance #PsychologySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What moral code do we need when our tools can reshape intelligence and biology itself?Jamie Metzl is a technology and healthcare futurist and geopolitical expert, founder and chair of OneShared.World, and a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He has served on the U.S. National Security Council and with the United Nations in Cambodia, and he is the author of Hacking Darwin, Superconvergence, and his newest book, The AI Ten Commandments.The book began as a question Jamie put to a popular AI model, asking what ten principles, drawn from all of recorded human history, would produce the most peace and human flourishing. What came back pulled from traditions he already knew and others he had never encountered.Jamie and Mike get into what it takes to be a participant in this rather than a bystander, why Jamie thinks the moment belongs to all of us rather than to a handful of technologists and billionaires, and what he would keep from the original Ten Commandments.Mike’s push is that principles on their own do not necessarily hold. Most of us sign off on them easily. What happens to them in a high stress, consequential environment is the harder question.Jamie says technology is what gets us to this conversation, and the conversation is about values. The unsexy word for the rest of it, he says, is governance, and it starts with governance of the self.Enjoy the conversation.Links & ResourcesJamie Metzl’s Website: jamiemetzl.comJamie Metzl’s Books: The AI Ten Commandments: A New Moral Code for Humanity, Superconvergence, Hacking Darwin, Eternal SonataOneShared.World, where Jamie is founder and chairAtlantic Council, where Jamie is a Senior Fellow: atlanticcouncil.org/expert/jamie-metzlSubscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletterDownload Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and XSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tamsen Fadal was 47 and anchoring the evening news when the first hot flash hit.She got off the set and lay down on the bathroom floor. No one had prepared her well for any of this. The answer, when it finally came, was a short note from her doctor in her patient portal with four words: "In menopause, any questions?"Tamsen Fadal is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, executive producer of the PBS documentary The M Factor and The M Factor 2, and New York Times bestselling author of How to Menopause. She spent thirty years in television news before turning to the thing nobody had explained to her.Tamsen and Mike get into what menopause actually is, how its symptoms can resemble anxiety or depression, and what changed after the 2002 hormone study.This is a conversation for men as much as for women. Every man is a partner, colleague, son, or father to someone moving through this. Tamsen’s line is that men don’t have to go through it, but they do have to understand it.Tamsen calls what comes after menopause “the next 30.” Her point is to decide what you want those years to look like, and start building toward them now.Enjoy the conversation.___________________________________________________Links & Resources:Tamsen Fadal’s Website: tamsenfadal.comTamsen Fadal’s Books: How to Menopause: Take Charge of Your Health, Reclaim Your Life, and Feel Even Better than Before, The New Single, Why Hasn’t He Proposed?, Why Hasn’t He Called?Tamsen Fadal’s Documentaries: The M Factor: Shredding the Silence on Menopause and The (M) Factor 2: Before the Pause, both on PBSTamsen Fadal’s Podcast: The Tamsen ShowSubscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletterDownload Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and XSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What are the things we can do today to help minimize our chances of developing dementia as we age?Dr. Tommy Wood is a physician and neuroscientist, Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Neuroscience at the University of Washington, and author of The Stimulated Mind.The book takes on a belief many of us still hold, that the adult brain becomes fixed at an early age and then declines from there. Tommy traces that idea back to 1906 and to the words of a Nobel laureate. Then he unpacks what the latest research and data say, and it’s not what you might think.This is a conversation about a tough subject, mental decline and dementia. Many of us have been touched by this in our own families, and what Tommy has to say gives all of us hope that we have more agency than we think when it comes to this part of our health.Tommy and Mike get into the 14 modifiable risk factors named by the Lancet Commission, why midlife is when risk starts to diverge, and the three buckets Tommy sorts everything into: stimulus, supply, and support. Mike talks about his grandfather, who had vascular dementia and covered for it so well that the family did not see it for years.Tommy tells us that “At 70 years old now, you are less likely to be diagnosed with dementia than any other time in history.” The trajectory is not fixed, but there’s a lot more work to be done.Enjoy the conversation.____________________________________________Links & ResourcesDr. Tommy Wood’s Website: drtommywood.comDr. Tommy Wood’s Book: The Stimulated Mind: Future-Proof Your Brain from Dementia and Stay Sharp at Any AgeBetterBrain, where Tommy is Chief Science Officer: betterbrain.comSubscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletterDownload Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and XSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a conversation about habits, the ones you want to build and the ones you want to get rid of.Jon Gordon has written more than 30 books on leadership, habits and mindset, including numerous bestsellers.Jon's most recent book is titled The Power of Positive Habits, and it tackles a critical issue so many of us face: how do I break the habits that no longer serve me, and how do I build ones that will help me flourish?Jon and Mike discuss the inward reflections that have helped them break the patterns that have held them back. Jon talks about how he needed to heal wounds from his childhood before he could really break his most challenging habits. The path he describes is not easy, but one well worth considering.This is a conversation about self-awareness, self-challenge, and how to build practical habits, like gratitude, visualization, and something Jon calls the habit before the habit."You are your habits," Jon says, and the best part is you can choose new ones.Enjoy the conversation. Links & ResourcesLearn more about Jon here: https://jongordon.com/Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletterDownload Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and XJon Gordon’s Books: The Power of Positive Habits, The Energy Bus, The Power of Positive Leadership, The Power of a Positive Team, The One Truth, The Coffee Bean, and The Hard HatSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.