Michael Gervais, PhD
Gervais has a knack for helping athletes and business leaders harness self-awareness and mental skills to push their limits. But he sees himself as more of a conduit for psychology than a guru.
“I see myself as a guide,” he said, “helping people unlock the possibilities that already sit inside them.”
That humility has earned Gervais trust in a world where accepting support can be tough. When he started with the Seahawks, wide receiver Doug Baldwin resisted the idea of working with what he called a “shrink dude.” But after one group session on breathwork and gratitude, Baldwin changed his mindopens in new window.
“Our job as psychologists is not to convince people, but to be the fullest emblem of flourishing,” Gervais said. “And when that light is so bright, people are naturally curious and interested in it.”
We asked Gervais to share some insights from his work with top athletes and high performers.
Can you describe your approach to helping athletes, leaders, and other high performers find mastery?
There are two main pillars in my approach: a self-discovery process and the building of mental skills.
Self-discovery is the foundation. When you understand who you are at your core, you become more focused and effective in pursuing your ambitions. And it all starts with the oldest, simplest, most terrifying question: “Who am I?” What are the bedrock principles you refuse to compromise on? What values and virtues actually steer your choices—not the ones you brag about, but the ones you live by when no one’s watching? Getting brutally clear on that is one of the biggest leaps a person can make toward mastering anything. Because once you’ve got that foundation, everything else—your goals, your habits, your ambitions—finally has something solid to stand on.
In terms of applying mental skills, the entire inner game begins with awareness. I emphasize three main practices of awareness: mindfulness, journaling, and conversations with people of wisdom. Once a person is aware, they can apply the requisite mental skills—things like self-confidence, optimism, and calm—to navigate an environment of high stress.
Even with that awareness, skills won’t hold up under pressure if they haven’t been practiced. That’s why we do breathing training in a calm environment, a noisy or intense environment, and finally in a high-pressure or dangerous environment.
How have you applied these principles in a way that challenges traditions in sport psychology?
Many people imagine that a sport psychologist works directly with the athletes and that’s where the impact is made. At the Seahawks, we went at it differently. In talks with Head Coach Pete Carroll, I quickly realized that building a high-performing culture depends on leaders having the psychological skills to be their best under high stress.
So, instead of working primarily with athletes, I spent most of my time with the coaches, helping them master the psychology of excellence, so that they could be the living emblem of those practices. Then they, in turn, trained their athletes on those mental skills.
Is there a moment in your career that illustrates how critical psychologists are to high-performance environments?
Skydiver Felix Baumgartner’s* 2012 space jump with Red Bull Stratos is a clear example of how essential psychology is to performing in extreme conditions.
Red Bull spent several years and invested tens of millions of dollars on one goal: to see if a single person could jump 128,000 feet from the stratosphere, break the sound barrier in free fall without the protection of a capsule, and survive the descent. It was an extraordinary blend of engineering, human performance, and risk—all focused on pushing the limits of what’s possible.
Everyone who pursues a bold ambition at some point reaches the edge of their skills and needs to develop new ones. Felix met the edge of his psychological skills. Inside the suit and capsule, he was overwhelmed by claustrophobia. He was supposed to stay in there for five hours—he couldn’t last more than five minutes. That’s when I got the call.
The aerospace engineers said to me, “No offense, but we don’t think it’s possible. People don’t get over claustrophobia like that.” But they didn't understand the basic psychological mechanisms of fear and extinguishing it.
Thankfully, Felix did. He said, “I want to learn the psychological skills to handle this fear.” And that was the opening we needed.’’
He faced his fears, invested in the skills, and went on to do something that no one’s ever done before and probably never will again.
Felix didn’t just jump from the edge of space, he lived at the edge of human potential. In doing so, he changed me, my understanding of potential and forced all of us to re-examine our own life, asking: Am I really living to my fullest?
Was there a moment where you doubted your role as a performance psychologist?
One of the most significant experiences of my career happened after an Ultimate Fighting Championship fight. During the fight, I was one of three people on the athlete’s support team, along with his coach and cut person (who treats the athlete’s wounds between rounds). We walked into the arena together—the environment is absolutely unhinged—and I took my place in the designated area beside the cage. It’s live on TV and there are cameras capturing the whole thing. It was an incredible experience.
On my way home, my mentor called. He said, “Mike, I saw you at the fight. What are you doing?” I was completely stunned. I was doing what he hoped I would do—deploying the most potent psychological skills to help athletes be their very best. But he said, “You need to get yourself out of the camera’s view.” That really floored me. It took me years to bounce back from. I thought, “I’ve embarrassed my mentor. I’ve embarrassed the field. I should be in the background.”
That’s a flawed approach to our beautiful science. If we hold that there’s a stigma around our contribution, then the athletes will feel that, too. But if the athletes are saying, “This is my team, we’re going into this together,” then of course we should be part of it.
Was there a time your perspective changed because of someone you worked with?
Kerri Walsh Jennings is recognized as the greatest female volleyball player to ever play the game. Twelve years ago, when she had already won two gold medals, she showed up at my office to go after something that was, at that time, new. She said, “I know I have a good shot to medal at the next Olympics, but I can’t keep sacrificing my family. Do you think it’s possible to be the best in the world and also be deeply connected to my loved ones?”
At that point, the field of performance psychology had erroneously swallowed the pill that true high performance begins where wellness ends. That was fundamentally wrong, but I didn’t know it yet. So, we went on this experiment together. At the end of it, she podiumed—and she was also more deeply attuned to her family members than ever before.
What insights from high performance psychology can also apply to everyday life?
For general well-being and high stakes environments, the psychological principles are essentially the same.
It starts upstream with a vision of a compelling future, something so clear and aspirational that a person fundamentally organizes their life to see that through. And the psychological skills the world’s best use to achieve their ambition—things like cultivating optimism and calm—are the same skills we can all invest in for our own flourishing. These skills are not reserved for those on Mount Olympus.
We all want the same thing: to live a great life. What the best in the world show us is that excellence begins with a deep commitment to be their very best—and the radical honesty required to pursue it. That commitment is the real secret hidden in plain sight.
*Austrian BASE jumper and skydiver Felix Baumgartner died in a paragliding accident earlier this year.
