The First Rule of Mastery

October 1, 2023

Performance psychologist Gervais (host of the podcast Finding Mastery; cocreator, Performance Science Inst. at Univ. of Southern California), writing with Kevin Lake (chief creative officer, Finding Mastery), guides readers in unlocking their full potential by dismantling the pervasive fear of people's opinions (FOPO). Through a blend of real-life anecdotes, research, and practical exercises, Gervais navigates the nuances of FOPO, including its psychological underpinnings and its connection to internal considerations such as self-worth and belonging. Organized around three phases--unmask, assess, and redefine--the book helps readers find a better understanding of themselves and their relationship with external judgments. Each chapter focuses on a topic (the relationship between FOPO and the human need to belong, for example) or a question (why does the human brain naturally tend toward self-criticism?) to work through, including anecdotes from Gervais's experiences and from his and others' research. Each chapter concludes with an exercise to try out the book's suggestions. VERDICT Though the subject is widely covered in popular titles like Carol Dweck's Mindset, Bren� Brown's I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Wasn't), and Nick Trenton's Stop Overthinking, Gervais's ability to intertwine theory with actionable strategies make this a worthy addition to collections. Will appeal to a broad, general readership.--Sara Holder

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 23, 2023
“When we give more value to other people’s opinions than our own, we live life on their terms, not ours,” according to performance psychologist Gervais’s repetitive debut. Case studies of famous individuals illustrate, with varying degrees of success, how vying for others’ approval can stymie personal growth and damage one’s mental health. For instance, Gervais suggests that champion swimmer Missy Franklin’s reliance on winning for self-validation left her distraught after underperforming at the 2016 Olympics. He’s less persuasive, however, in claiming that a despairing letter written by Beethoven as he was losing his hearing signaled the composer had “accepted his deafness” and stopped worrying about “external opinions,” which allegedly enabled him to create his late-period symphonies. To Gervais’s credit, he adds a bit of nuance to his central argument about not basing one’s self-worth on others’ approval when he contends that it can be beneficial to learn from criticism. Unfortunately, he otherwise does little to expand on his thesis, instead repeating the same point ad nauseam and buttressing it with superficial psychological observations (“Our interpretation of the opinions of others often reflects more about what’s inside us, and our own beliefs, than the opinion of the other person”). This is too slight to make an impact.