"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 fromthe 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"--
High-performance psychologist Michael Gervais presents a groundbreaking guide for overcoming what may be the single greatest constrictor of human potential: our fear of people’s opinions (FOPO).FOPO shows up almost everywhere in our lives—and the consequences are great. When we let FOPO take control, we play it safe and small because we're afraid of what will happen on the other side of critique. When challenged, we surrender our viewpoint. We trade in authenticity for approval. We please rather than provoke. We chase the dreams of others rather than our own.But it doesn't have to be this way.In The First Rule of Mastery, Michael Gervais shows us that the key to leading a high-performance life is to redirect our attention from the world outside us to the world inside us. He reveals the mental skills and practices we need to overcome FOPO—the same skills he's taught to the top performers in the world, including sports MVPs, world-renowned artists and musicians, and Fortune 100 leaders and teams.Filled with fascinating stories from the worlds of sports and business, leading-edge science, and insights from the frontier of human performance, The First Rule of Mastery is a much-needed wake-up call that when we give more value to other people's opinions than we do our own, we live life on their terms, not ours.