How Alex Honnold Trains His Mind to Stay Calm 3,000 Feet Above Ground
Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais
Dr. Michael Gervais
4.7 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 25 June 2025
⏱️ 114 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How do you stay calm and focused when you’re 3,000 feet off the ground — with no ropes, no safety lines, and no room for error?
Legendary climber and free soloist Alex Honnold returns to The Finding Mastery Podcast for a raw, insightful conversation about mindset, being great with fear, and what it means to live at the edge of human performance.
Alex is best known for his historic, ropeless ascent of El Capitan — captured in the Oscar-winning film Free Solo (which you should watch if you haven’t seen it yet). But in this episode, we go far beyond climbing.
We explore:
- How Alex manages fear, consequence, and risk with rare mental clarity
- What it takes to perform under pressure — and when to walk away
- How fatherhood and loss reshaped his relationship with ambition and danger
- The underrated power of optimism and framing hard moments as growth
This isn’t just a conversation about climbing. It’s about the psychology behind pushing your limits, the skill of regulating your mind under stress, and how to chase a bold, purposeful life — even when the summit feels out of reach.
Whether you’re an athlete, entrepreneur, or anyone seeking mastery under pressure, Alex’s honesty, humor, and hard-earned wisdom deliver lessons for all of us.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentus. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers, their co-founder and CEO, I could tell |
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| 0:52.5 | these foundational nutrients support muscle recovery, brain |
| 0:55.1 | function, and long-term energy. They're part of my daily routine. And if you're ready to fuel your |
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| 1:23.7 | mastery for 35% off your first subscription order. |
| 1:28.4 | In my case with free-souling, the consequences are almost always death. |
| 1:31.5 | Like for the most part, if you fall off, you're going to die. |
| 1:33.4 | We understand the psychology of excellence, and we understand what a great mindset means |
| 1:38.3 | and how to be great with fear. |
| 1:40.5 | And then there's Alex Honnold. |
| 1:42.6 | Welcome back. |
| 1:43.5 | Or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast where we dive into the minds of the world's greatest |
| 1:47.7 | thinkers and doers. |
| 1:49.1 | I am your host, Dr. Michael Jervais, by trade and training a high-performance psychologist. |
| 1:53.3 | Now, the whole idea behind these conversations, it's pretty simple. |
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