How a UFC Fighter, Olympic Skier, and Extreme Climber Master High-Pressure Moments | The Mindset Roundtable

Michael Gervais (0:00)

Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training a high-performance psychologist. And this episode, it's unlike anything we've ever done before. So last summer, you may remember that a few members of the Finding Mastery team, along with X Games champion and Olympian Kaya Turski, UFC champion Vitor Belfort, and famed climber Tommy Caldwell, went aboard the USS Ronald Reagan, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, while she was on deployment in the Western Pacific. While we were on board, we recorded a podcast with the ship's commanding officer, Captain Daryl Cardone, and the commander of the air group, CAG, Captain Patrick Corrigan. It's a great episode. If you haven't listened to it or watched it, I really recommend you make the time to do that. It released last July, and you can just go to findingmastery.com/podcast and search Reagan. It'll come right up.

Now, before we went on board, we were stuck at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, waiting for a typhoon to pass through, and it was just wreaking havoc in the Western Pacific. The weather was terrible. There we all were, waiting in the hangar for the storm to blow through. And we had a high-performance psychologist, an MMA fighter, a climber, and a world-class Olympic skier. It's kind of like the start of a bad joke, yet there we were. So what we decided to do was to make the most of our time. We sat down on whatever we could find in the hangar and we had a conversation. It was kind of an impromptu roundtable. It was a wide-ranging discussion that delved into adversity and resilience and high-performance mindset. And each of them has faced extreme challenges from high-altitude survival, to fight night pressure, to life-threatening injuries. And in this conversation, we break down the mental frameworks and strategies that help them do more than just survive. They emerge stronger and more invigorated than ever. If you've ever wondered how elite performers navigate fear and setbacks and the unknown, this is a conversation you will want to take the time to listen to. So with that, let's drop into the special roundtable from a hanger at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa.

SPEAKER_3 (2:16)

The views expressed herein are solely those of the persons expressing them and do not represent the views of the United States, Department of Defense, or Department of the Navy.

Michael Gervais (2:24)

Mike, do you want to just lay down?

Vitor Belfort (2:25)

Yeah, you want to sit down.

Michael Gervais (2:27)

So, how did you guys get into what you're doing?

Vitor Belfort (2:30)

So I was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and I was born in a broken family, so I was very hyped. So they discovered that I was considered a genius, but they, but in the sense of, of like, it was the kid that can be put into sleep. He can do things, or they found the sports as a way of like, can you put his energy there?

Michael Gervais (2:57)

So, So you can't sleep. You were restless.

Vitor Belfort (3:00)

Yeah, I was like all over the place and very active. And I think back in the days, I think this is, that's his attention. You know, just like people make up when you when you're a special kid, they make up rules like they want to put in MADS. And I remember they put in MADS. But actually, I was very active. I was just active. And, and then sport was my thing. So I grew up in a very, like rough area. So I was bullied. I was a stutter kid. And I stutter. So I remember my my teacher said, Read an essay. And I was reading, and he said, You stutter? I said, Yes, man. So my first bully was my teacher from school. So and it was funny because back in the days, they don't have the word bullying. Now it's bullying. So I think sport driven, but martial arts just was a place where I can express myself and feel just feel like take ownership of who you the insecurity that was designed and creating me. I think every kid is like a little bit more like you need the real force of a teacher dependence. And I think martial arts gave me that you came up with them.

Tommy Caldwell (4:20)

So the martial arts in the beginning, was it about protecting yourself from things like bullies or was it? It sounds like it's a little bit of both. You had the protecting yourself and then you had that finding something that made you feel full.

Vitor Belfort (4:31)

Yeah, I think martial arts, everybody should, I call it martial scientists. It's the way you discover yourself because the weakness is strength. And I mean, we all, we all in the martial, we're always fighting something. You know, you fight a disease, you're sick, you're fighting, so you're always fighting something or you want to achieve something. You're either in offense or in defense in life, in every area. So, but martial arts teach you to be relaxed, teach you to kind of, okay, someone's choking you, you say, okay, let me take my time, don't tap, you can fight. So martial arts, so in every martial arts, teach you a different principle. Since Jiu Jitsu teach you, you're in a very bad situation, use your leverage, you know, use his strength against himself. So then you have the strike, you overpower someone, and then you have the wrestling. Like in wrestling, you can never go back. You can never go back. Jiu Jitsu, you can stay in a different mode and let the other guy. So every martial arts has your strength and your weakness. And then you discover this in yourself. I started working on what I'm good at, not what I'm not good at. So I think that's called the, I don't know how they call it in psychology, but you know, working on your strength, not on your weakness. So I think that's kind of it.