Dr. John Ratey, Neuropsychiatry Expert

John Ratey (0:00)

To perform well, you really have to have attention.

I mean, there's just no way around it. And that means you have to be really conscious of what you're doing.

Michael Gervais (0:20)

All right, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais, and by trade and training, I'm a sport and performance psychologist, which means that I've spent most of my life efforts working on the science and application of how people become their very best. And some of those people end up changing the way we understand what's possible. But the idea behind this conversation, behind this podcast, is to learn from those people, the most courageous doers and thinkers in the world, to understand how they've organized their internal life and their external world to follow the path of mastery or to carve, in some cases, the path of mastery. So we wanna understand their framework, how they understand the world. And we also wanna understand the mental skills that they've used to build and refine their craft.

I wanna take a minute here to announce a really exciting event that we have coming up. As you continue to navigate the challenges and opportunities of 2024, I wanna pose a question. What are you doing right now to be great with stress? How are you working with stress on your pursuit towards your most important ambitions and goals? And I just wanna get right to the heart of the key elements, one in particular, for what it takes to excel in today's high heat, high stakes world. Because stress is not the problem that we think it is. Stress is a synonym for change. And our ability to be agile with change, that is the real opportunity at hand. So if you're wanting to unlock extraordinary results and sustainable performance in your life, it's not about avoiding or reducing stress. And as simple as that sounds, it's very tricky to do, but it is about fundamentally changing your relationship with it.

And that's why I'm so thrilled to invite you to a special event, it's a free virtual event that we're offering and it's called The Power of Embracing Stress.

It's on Wednesday, March 6th at 2 p.m. Pacific. So to sign up, just head over to findingmastery.com/training. Whether it's advancing in your career or improving your health or cultivating stronger relationships, I think a new approach to stress can be one of the most powerful unlocks for you in your life. So join us for this free virtual training, The Power of Embracing Stress, on Wednesday, March 6th at 2 p.m. Pacific.

Go to findingmastery.com/training to sign up once again. That's findingmastery.com/training. And I'm really excited to see you there.

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This week's conversation is with bestselling author, John Ratey, medical doctor and associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and an internationally recognized expert in neuropsychiatry. He's published over 60 peer-reviewed articles. So we're getting right to the essence of what science and the applied science from his lenses looks and feels like in this conversation. 11 books in 17 languages and the groundbreaking book for me about focus and attention really centered on ADD and ADHD called Driven to Distraction.

If you've been in the psychology world, you've definitely read it. And if not, I think it's something to definitely pay attention to. And he did that series with Ned Holloway and he's also an MD as well.