Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Flow Genome Project's Jamie Wheal and Steven Kotler on Altered States of Consciousness and Stealing Fire

Episode Date: March 9, 2017

This conversation is with Jamie Wheal and Steven Kotler. Many of you will remember Steven from our conversation about flow state -- if you missed that, check out episode 16 on Ultimate Human Performance. Jamie and Steven are the co-founders of the Flow Genome Project, which is a collection of world-class academics, athletes and artists dedicated to taking flow from the extreme to the mainstream. I've loved being their friend and being part of their community. Jamie and Steven are completely switched-on : smart, quick and divergent thinkers, lovers of life, and are so curious, that they embody what they're trying to learn. This conversation has very nuanced adult themes -- so -- if you're listening with kids, maybe you'll want to consider listening to this one without them depending on however you roll. Steven and Jamie just wrote a book together called: Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work. What I hope you'll take away from this conversation is the value of exploring the edges, the value of community, and how challenging it is to really change._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Finding Mastery is brought to you by Remarkable. In a world that's full of distractions, focused thinking is becoming a rare skill and a massive competitive advantage. That's why I've been using the Remarkable Paper Pro, a digital notebook designed to help you think clearly and work deliberately. It's not another device filled with notifications or apps.

It's intentionally built for deep work. So there's no social media, no email, no noise. The writing experience, it feels just like pen on paper. I love it. And it has the intelligence of digital tools like converting your handwriting to text, organizing your notes, tagging files, and using productivity templates

to help you be more effective. It is sleek, minimal. It's incredibly lightweight. It feels really good. I take it with me anywhere from meetings to travel without missing a beat. What I love most is that it doesn't try to do everything. It just helps me do one very important thing really well,

stay present and engaged with my thinking and writing. If you wanna slow down, if you wanna work smarter, I highly encourage you to check them out. Visit remarkable.com to learn more and grab your paper pro today. The things we know for sure, you get one shot at this life and you're going to spend a third of it asleep. Those things are non-negotiable facts. So to me, the only question that matters is, are you going to be fully awake for the rest of it? Our welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast.

I'm Michael Gervais. And the idea behind these conversations is to learn from people who are on the path of mastery, to better understand what they're searching for, to understand how they understand the world, what is their worldview, how do they understand themselves, and how do they understand people in general, let alone the craft that they've come to understand. And these are people that have dedicated their life efforts to be able to explain and explore the nuances in a craft. We wanted to dig even deeper to understand the mechanics of how they've trained their mind to be able to do just that,

to understand and explore the nuances. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true. Meaningful relationships are at the center of sustained success. And building those relationships,

it takes more than effort. It takes a real caring about your people. It takes the right tools, the right information at the right time. And that's where LinkedIn Sales Navigator can come in. It's a tool designed specifically for thoughtful sales professionals, helping you find the right people that are ready to engage, track key account changes, and connect with key decision makers more effectively. It

surfaces real-time signals, like when someone changes jobs or when an account becomes high priority, so that you can reach out at exactly the right moment with context and thoroughness that builds trust. It also helps tap into your own network more strategically, showing you who you already know that can help you open doors or make a warm introduction. In other words, it's not about more outreach, it's about smarter, more human outreach.

And that's something here at Finding Mastery that our team lives and breathes by. If you're ready to start building stronger relationships that actually convert, try LinkedIn Sales Navigator for free for 60 days at linkedin.com slash deal. That's linkedin.com slash deal. For two full months for free, terms and conditions apply. Finding Mastery is brought to you by David Protein. I'm pretty intentional about what I eat, and the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods. And when I'm traveling or in between meals, on a demanding day certainly, I need something quick that will support the way

that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David Protein Bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put them on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them. One a day, one a day. What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell. Okay. All right. Look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective. 28 grams of protein, just 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. It's rare to find something that fits so conveniently

into a performance-based lifestyle and actually tastes good. Dr. Peter Attia, someone who's been on the show, it's a great episode by the way, is also their chief science officer. So I know they've done their due diligence in that category. My favorite flavor right now is the chocolate chip cookie dough.

And a few of our teammates here at Finding Mastery have been loving the fudge brownie and peanut butter. I know, Stuart, you're still listening here. So getting enough protein matters. And that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Okay, this conversation is with Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheel. And many of you might remember the conversation Steven and I had on flow state.

And if you missed that on the Finding Mastery podcast, check out episode 16, and it's titled Ultimate Human Performance. So Jamie and Steven are the co-founders of the Flow Genome Project. And so we talk about how they've come to know each other and the genesis of that project. And then just as a summary, Flow Genome Project, it's fantastic. And it's a collection of world-class academics and athletes and artists dedicated to trying to understand flow state, which is a very technical term. And some people in the athletic world call it being in the zone and musicians call it being in the pocket. Like there's lots of ways to describe

this state, which is the most optimal state a human can be in. And so they're trying to take that understanding from the world of extreme performers and bring it into mainstream. And I've loved being their friend. I've loved being their friend. I know we don't get to see each other enough, but I've loved being their friend. I love being on their advisory board and I love being part of their community that they're building. So Jamie and Steven are completely switched on and that's going to come through through this conversation. They're smart, they're quick and divergent thinkers, they're lovers of life, and they're really curious. But they take it a step further and they embody what they're quick and divergent thinkers, they're lovers of life, and they're really curious.

But they take it a step further and they embody what they're trying to learn. So they don't just talk about it and research it, they live it and they become this working laboratory within themselves. So this conversation is adult themed, right? There's nuances in here. So if you want to take, if you're listening with your kids, you want to take a quick moment, you might want to hit the pause button or not, depending on how you roll in your family, but just a little heads up and a little warning that there might be some

adult themes that you want to suss out here. Okay. So Steven and Jamie just wrote a book together and it's called Stealing Fire. How good is that? Stealing Fire. How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and maverick scientists are revolutionizing the way we live and work. Okay, what I hope you'll take away from this conversation is the value of exploring the edges, the value of building community, and then how challenging it is to really change. And throughout the conversation, we weave in very applied ways that you can do, hopefully, all three if you're interested in those in your own life. With that, let's introduce each of you first for folks that aren't familiar with your work and then preface it by me saying that I've had the fortune of knowing you guys for a while and I love your work. I'm fascinated by your approach as a lifestyle as well as the acumen and interest that you guys have pushed forward. And so I want to start by just saying that, that I've really enjoyed learning from you guys and knowing you guys as well. Yeah, yeah. Back at you, man. Yeah, for sure.

Okay. So let's go, Stephen and I, we've had, we've gone back and forth quite a bit on podcasts and conversations. And so we've done some of that work before that people can reference on previous podcasts. And Jamie, you and I, I've only been fortunate enough to be on yours. So this is the first time that you're coming on the Finding Mastery podcast. So thank you for coming on. Absolutely. Can you give people a quick background of your work, of your interests, and the things that are guiding you that have brought you to this conversation? Well, you know, I mean, I think this was really a, you know, the expansion of my own

lived experience from the time of being in college until kind of, you know, mid adulthood, really, which was just figuring out, I don't think that all of those relentless forward improvement, you know, whatever you believe you can achieve and post-it notes and annual goals was exactly how I lived my life. Um, and I. And I kind of would look back over those places. I found myself most motivated, most connected, most inspired, and they sort of seem to share patterns. And the patterns were often wild natural environments or, you know, or collective musical experiences, or, you know, fundamentally what we end up writing about in our new book is like those moments outside ourselves, um, ecstasis. And, and so for me, I realized, wow, my motivation just to grind stuff out joylessly is exceptionally finite,

but my motivation to chase those experiences that left me most fulfilled were almost infinite. And so the flow genome project, the organization that Stephen and I founded together is really dedicated to that. It's saying, how do we take that from the occasional lucky lightning strike to being able to bottle that lightning? And by understanding the neurobiology of these states, can we get to them more easily and readily via kind of a much broader spectrum than just the lucky ones we happen to get the combination right with to start off. And then what led you to want to do that as really a life effort or a business? What's the stuff that preceded your activities to take a run at it professionally? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the first part of my career was all in sort of designing and

delivering dynamic learning experiences. So everything from expeditionary leadership, surf rescue, wilderness medicine, mountain climbing, kayaking, winter camping, and ski mountaineering, like just things that were super engaged and really, you know, deeply immersed in the natural world, plus academics, plus science, plus literature, plus history, ecology, et cetera. And so for me, like laying on all those, like having amazing, you know, what you would nominally call peak experiences, whether that's making fresh tracks under a full moon in the backcountry or riding a glossy wave, you know, and seeing the sunset on the other end of that barrel. You know, those moments are phenomenal, but they're even more phenomenal when we take them and we then combine them with learning, combine them with theory and tools. So really, for us, that's it. Flow Genome Project is about like, here's the mechanisms of action, and just enough neuroscience to be

dangerous. And then let's go out and play. Let's go out and practice and create our own data sets. And then, so if I keep rewinding just a little bit further backwards, from high school, what did you do right after high school? Went straight to college. I was a bit young going in, I think I was 16 playing freshman soccer and, and, and ended up being a sort of three season athlete briefly until I figured out other stuff, which was soccer and sailing and tennis. And I realized over time that I was like, okay, um, I'm less and less interested in spending my time with those dudes. And I'm more and more interested in windsurfing and mountain biking and these other things that

just seemed to get me there with less hassle. So for me, it was absolutely a way to feed the rat, you know, which is like that climber of Mark Twight's kind of term for like what draws a lot of guys out into the mountains or into the oceans, which is that gnawing sense of I've got to get out of my own skin. And I think if anything, that was my first search, was just how do I either break through or shut up that relentless self-awareness that seemed to me to be a bit of a prison. And then, so, do you remember a point in time when you made that decision to quiet down or break through? Like, is there a story or a moment in time that captures that for you? Yeah, I mean, depending on, you know, what rating you give your podcast. I mean, I think, I think there's, there's two different versions, which would you like the PG 13 or the grownup version? The grownup version.

Okay. So it was sophomore year in college. Uh, I think there was a cow field out back from our dorm. Our friend gathered a few, a few mushrooms that were growing on it. We, uh, hooked them down to see what would happen. And the college campus was this old colonial recreation. So you literally walked into the 17th century, and everything was that. It was like Williamsburg in Virginia. And I remember climbing to the top of the tree on this sandy point where there was this giant cross that had been put there in 1634 by the

original settlers. And I'm poking my head out from above this tree to see a full moon and a howling breeze and the world lit up, you know, like daytime. And I just remember thinking, thank God that this exists. Thank God that this degree of connection and clarity and even mystery and possibility is here in this lifetime on this earth or else i would i would have probably gone nuts or broken things so that that old beatles tune i used to be an angry young man you know was absolutely me and i'd spent my earlier years just trying to break everything to see if anything was durable and i would say that experience was the first lodestone of like a switch flip and saying, there is more, there is this. And from ever on, that was kind of the North star to keep coming back to. Okay. And then, so you made a decision to not shut up that inner

quest, but to, to move toward it. Yeah. And it just, it informed everything and informed my academic career. I mean, what I was studying and, you it informed everything and informed my academic career i mean what i was studying and you know literature and history and and anthropology became what i was experiencing in those evenings and those days out windsurfing and you know immersing ourselves in in the natural world and it just became whole cloth you know and and that's been that's literally been the guiding the guiding direction of life since it's just how to embody it more and how to bring more of it through. With that kind of intense experience and the fortitude to keep going in that direction, did you finish up school or did you – Well, I was all done on a dissertation at the age of 22.

And I was actually living up in the mountains above Boulder and came down one day after spring skiing. I was doing it like I was doing it and my dissertation was on the mountains, the history of human land use up there. And I came back down to class and one of my colleagues looked at me and squinted her eyes and she said, why are your hands so tan? And I was like, at that moment,

I was like, okay, this may not be my jam. I love reading badass history and anthropology, but sitting in basements of libraries compiling tax records just might not actually be my thing. Why are your hands so tan? God bless it. Yeah, yeah.

And it was a bad thing. And I thought, okay, that cannot be congruent with the life. Okay, Stephen, as a way of introduction, you and I have talked about this a few times, but you met like, I'm not sure how this a few times but you you met like i'm not sure how you two met but i want to get to that in a minute but you met your career path your passion path whatever you would call that at at the point at which you were incapacitated due to an illness can you talk us through okay yeah i mean know, I always, I mean, for me, it started when I was nine. I mean, like my central focus of my life came to me when I was nine years old. So that's where, you know, it's, it starts for me. We, the illness was like something that happened when I version from 9 to 30, and then the point at which 30 made sense. And I know you've told this story often.

So, like, you know, give us the version that you're most comfortable with. So, I think the central question in my life has really been, how do people achieve the impossible? And, you know, whatever it is, we're, if we're talking about my work in abundance, it's how do people take on impossible grand challenges like poverty, energy scarcity, that sort of thing. Rise of Superman was how do athletes do that. And honest to God, what happened when I was nine years old, I have a baby brother, he was seven,

came back from a friend's house, was hanging out in the kitchen with my mother. And my brother walks in and he's got a red sponge ball in his hand. He takes it from one hand, he puts it into the other, and the thing disappears. And A, my mom starts paying a whole lot of attention to my brother, and I had been getting all the attention a second ago. So that was not going to happen, like at all. That was not how it was going down. Second thing was I was like, well, it looked like total magic, right? Like what I saw, what my brother did look like total magic.

I knew at that moment, I was like, my brother is not magic. Like somehow there's a skill beneath this thing that looks like magic. And from that kind of moment on, I was like, well, wait a minute, does everything that looks like magic have a, a skill beneath it which sort of you know became sort of the central most of my life the story that you're talking about um when i was uh 30 years old i got lyme disease and spent about a portion of three years in bed and uh i was i was done i mean i you know the girl i was going to marry the house i i thought all my money i was bankrupt i bankrupted myself trying to find a cure i like and i was going to marry, the house I thought all my money, I was bankrupt, I bankrupted myself trying to find a cure. And I was going to kill myself because I was functional about, I don't know, maybe 40 minutes a day. Couldn't work, couldn't do anything. All I was going to be was a burden to my friends and my family. Doctors pulled me off drugs. They had

no idea if I was ever going to get any better. And so I was, you know, I determined that the practical thing to do was end my life. And it was really probably like a question of like days, maybe weeks at that point. And a friend of mine should have been a doorstep and she demanded we go surfing. And, you know, as I've said before, it was a laughable request. I couldn't walk across a room. You know, I hadn't been on a surfboard in years. In fact, the last time I've been on a surfboard was in Indonesia and I nearly drowned. And I had no desire to get back on a surfboard in years. In fact, the last time I'd been on a surfboard was in Indonesia, and I nearly drowned. And I had no desire to get back on a surfboard ever, actually.

But she wouldn't leave and wouldn't leave and wouldn't leave. And after hours of her badgering, I was like, you know what? What the hell? Let's go surfing today. I can always kill myself tomorrow. And, you know, they loaded me into a car and they drove me to sunset beach in los angeles which you know is the wimpiest beginner wave in the entire world and it was summer so it was the waves were warm and the tide was low and maybe like the waves were two feet high at best and nobody was out it was just

shit day um but you know and they walked me out to the break and they gave me a board the size of a cadillac and i was out there maybe 15 seconds and a wave came and for reasons unbeknownst to everybody still to this day including myself I spun the board around I paddled twice and I popped up into my feet and I popped up into an absolute different dimension dimension I had no idea even existed right time seemed to be moving in an absolute crawl I felt like I had panoramic vision I felt like a little bit like I was floating outside of my body and the most amazing thing was I felt like I had panoramic vision. I felt like a little bit like I was floating outside of my body. And the most amazing thing was I felt great. I mean, after three years of being in massive pain, being incredibly depressed, I like for the very first time, I felt that drum of life, that possibility of possibility. And I caught four more waves that

day. And by the fifth wave, I was done. They brought me home me home they put me in bed and for a couple of weeks uh people had to bring me food because i was too tired to even make it in my kitchen 50 feet away but on like the 15th day when i could walk again i caught a ride back to the beach i did it again and over the course of about six to eight months when the only thing i was doing besides kind of lying on a couch and moaning was surfing every now and again and i went from 10 functional up to about 80% functional. And, you know, the first question was, you know, what the hell is going on? Surfing and these weird altered state experiences I was having while surfing are certainly not a

known cure for chronic autoimmune conditions. And, you know, the second thing was I, you know, I'm a science guy. I'm a hardcore rational materialist, mostly. And I was having mystical experiences out in the waves. And I, Lyme's only fatal if it gets into your brain. So I was pretty sure that the reason I was having these experiences was because the disease had gotten into my brain. And even though I was feeling better, I was dying. So, you know, I lit out on a giant quest to figure out what the hell was wrong with me. And I very quickly discovered that the same state of consciousness that had gotten me from seriously subpar back to normal flow states was helping normal people go all the way up to Superman, right? The very question I started with when I

was nine years old, what is the skill? What is the thing underneath the impossible? This was the thing underneath the impossible. And pretty much every domain I've looked in, I think every domain there is, whenever you see impossible, you tend to see these non-ordinary states of consciousness. You tend to see closed states. Okay. So, Jamie, if Stephen's craft is, I guess, writing, I guess that's your craft. It seems too simplistic to say that about you. Is that an accurate statement, though? You can have, yeah. First and foremost, I'm a guy who puts words together

in a straight line. Okay. And how many books have you written? It's like five or something? Eight are published, two are endorsed. So ten, depending on how you count. Brilliant. Okay. And then, Jamie, how do you describe your craft? Goodness gracious. I mean, I certainly love ideas and communicating them, spoken or written, but I would propose something along the lines of culture architect. I love creating experiences that allow people to come together and learn and make things. And yeah, probably

if I had to jump in and also tell you, he is a bad ass writer, just because we share, my name is on the title of the stealing fire. He is a bad ass writer. That book is not possible without Jamie wheels, written, writing craft. Just saying. Okay. Really cool. Because yeah, I, and I wasn't even trying to infer that, you know, Steven, you're the writer and Jamie, you're an idea guy. And like, I wasn't inferring that by any means, but I wanted to try to capture how you described it, which is cultural architect. And so can, okay, so we know what an architect is. How do you define or describe culture? Well, I mean, I would say just literally the connective tissue between us and shared experience. So yeah i mean fundamentally i find myself an

irresistible kind of mashup artist so i love to take badass research you know on whatever on psychology history performance you know you name it and then combine it with really fun ways to learn it dynamically and then roll all that together into a shared experience that just feels seamless, but is super rich. So like, even like this last week, when we did that flow and snow retreat up in Utah, you know, we were using pro skiers and the neuroscience of flow states to train on the hill. But then we had Ben Freed, who's, you know, a nationally known comic, do a complete improv flow set. So he was just off the cuff, interacting with the audience for 30 minutes of demonstrated flow in a different field. And we had an amazing Parisian farm-to-table chef who simply made the dinner for that night, which was

incredible, five-course meal from what was at the market. And then we had a world-renowned DJ who plays, you know, everyone can think from the Olympics to Burning Man show up and do an off the cuff improvisational set. So like, to me, like that's creating culture around a theme or a meme or an idea and then letting people dive into it headfirst and get gather their own data and make their own meaning and learning. That's that to me is like one of the most rewarding things possible. Is it corporate cultures that you work with mostly, or is it some other populations that you spend most of your time with? Yeah, I mean, we do a ton of work inside organizations and fundamentally helping executive and leadership teams, fundamentally strategy, leadership, and alignment. How do they do the thing they're going to do as well as possible in as coordinated a manner? Probably not that different, just totally different domain than what you're doing with the Seahawks.

So very much helping those organizations become high performing organizations. But there's also just this additional part, which is like self-selecting cultures from which people are leaders and impact entrepreneurs and artists in a bunch of different venues in their kind of professional lives, choosing to come together. And whether that's organizations like Mai Tai or Semi-Series or Burning Man or South by Southwest or 10, you know, like different communities of practice where people self-select. And there's, generally speaking, they're advancing what I would consider sort of cutting edge or progressive culture even further than most, you know, sort of for-profit or non-profit organizations. Okay. And then, so you guys connected prior to flow state prior to the interest in, I'm sorry, um, to rise a Superman and the flow genome project you connected prior to that as friends.

Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah. And then, and then, so then you, you generate or built the flow genome project. You built a community around it. You push some ideas forward. And then you said, there's more to go. And that's where Stealing Fire comes in. Is that right? It wasn't even that there was more to go. It was as we were putting forth the ideas from Rise of Superman, we stumbled upon the more. We did not go out looking for the stuff in Stealing Fire. And I think both of us were a little like, I think we're both us were a little shocked to bump into it. We had seen this stuff in our own lives, but bumping it into in the world as kind of forcefully,

I think that's a good word, Jamie, right. As we did, was really almost shocking to us. I can elaborate if that's fair. No, no, no. That's great. Finding mastery is brought to you by Momentous. 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 Momentous. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers, their co-founder and CEO, I could tell this was not your average supplement company. And I was immediately drawn to their mission, helping people achieve performance for life. And to do that, they developed what they call the Momentous Standard. Every product is formulated with top experts and every batch is third-party tested. NSF certified for sport or informed sport so you know exactly what you're getting personally i'm anchored by what they call the momentous three

protein creatine and omega-3 and together these foundational nutrients support muscle recovery brain function and long-term energy they're part of my daily routine and if you're ready to fuel your brain and body with the best momentous has a great new offer just for our community right here. Use the code FindingMastery for 35% off your first subscription order at LiveMomentous.com. Again, that's L-I-V-E Momentous, M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S, livemomentous.com, and use the code Finding Mastery for 35% off your first subscription order. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Felix Gray. I spent a lot of time thinking about how we can create the conditions for high performance. How do we protect our ability to focus, to recover, to be present. And one of the biggest challenges we face

today is our sheer amount of screen time. It messes with our sleep, our clarity, even our mood. And that's why I've been using Felix Grey glasses. What I appreciate most about Felix Grey is that they're just not another wellness product. They're rooted in real science. Developed alongside leading researchers and ophthalmologists. They've demonstrated these types of glasses boost melatonin, help you fall asleep faster, and hit deeper stages of rest. When I'm on the road and bouncing around between time zones, slipping on my Felix Grey's in the evening, it's a simple way to cue my body just to wind down. And when I'm locked into deep work, they also help me stay focused for longer without digital fatigue creeping in. Plus, they look great. Clean, clear, no funky color distortion. Just good design,

great science. And if you're ready to feel the difference for yourself, Felix Gray is offering all Finding Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code F mastery 20 at checkout again that's felix gray you spell it f-e-l-i-x g-r-a-y dot com and use the code finding mastery 20 at felix gray dot com for 20 off and so let's push into this okay the central idea of stealing fire and then but you can if you want to tell us the story of what you're just talking about forcefully forcefully bumping into these ideas and concepts if you want to start there but i love the i love the concept of stealing fire that that phrase has so much energy and you trace it back to the god prometheus is that the right way to say it and um you know the legend that legend so that's a

fun way to start maybe to get us going into the insights that you learned from your research. Backstory or legend? Let's go to what you guys found as you were building Flow Genome Project and then why you named the book that title and then the insights. Well, I mean, I think the first thing was we kind of we began we got this suspicion going around and traveling to speaking with advising all these super high performing organizations, you know, from military organizations to, you know, fortune hundreds, Silicon Valley companies to pro athletes, extreme athletes, that kind of stuff. And we just found that there was just this strange overlap, a, and just their annual calendars, where were all these people and where were they meeting up on a routine basis? And that was from as sort of highbrow as Davos and Ted to as sort of Bacchanalian

as, you know, Burning Man and Coachella or South by Southwest. And we just, there was, there appeared to be this sort of global circuit of what, you know, what we would call the sort of the technomatic glitterati, you know, like these people who were all in on the same game. And they would go back to their worlds of incredible high performance, social, political, economic prominence. And there was this sort of almost sort of secret fraternity of people who were all playing that game together on weekends and on vacations, and then coming back and, you know, rocking the world. And so that seemed super interesting. We're like, what is going on here? And there also seemed interesting is that we were there to sort of meet with them and talk about getting in the zone, peak performance,

flow states, those kinds of things. And they kept on just pinging us with, well, we're, I'm stacking ProVigil, you know, an off prescription pharmaceutical designed for narcolepsy, but you know, I'm using it to stay, you know, to stay super focused and nail my trial case or, or, or a hedge fund guys who are saying, Hey man, we're using transcranial using transcranial direct stimulation we got these badass headsets and they're helping us make snap decisions faster you know or special operations commanders saying i've gone on a nine-day vipassana style meditation retreat and this is what i've learned or i've taken some of my team to tony robbins awaken the giant within like personal you know sort of experiential personal growth to you know soccer moms who are you know reading 50

shades of gray on their kindle and doing orgasmic meditation workshops and we're like no wait a second this is a fascinating bunch of incredibly strange bedfellows if any of these people were walking up and down the street they would blow right past each other never give each other a second glance but because we've been doing all that neurobiology of flow states we're like this is our rosetta stone this is letting us translate all these different subcultures their pursuits and their mechanisms how they're getting into their non-mortar states but by golly they're all doing the same damn thing whether they know it or not and so that was really the that was the intrigue and the hook was is this going on for starters because certainly just as we traveled around it sure felt like

there was something happening and then what's under the hood of it, which is these unifying mechanisms of neurobiology, and then how big is it was kind of the next step. And Stephen can kind of unpack some of the architecture on that. Okay, before you go, Stephen, Jamie, how you think fast, you think in systems, you think in patterns, and how does your mind work? Do you? No, no, Mike, just ask a small question. Yeah, right. I know. But like, seriously, how is it that you organize the varied streams, the divergent ideas, and to find patterns? How do you do that in your own mind?

I mean, beats the tar out of me, man. I would say like back in the day when we didn't have more advanced technological metaphors, like in college, I perceived it like a stock ticker. And the stock ticker would just be spitting out information, I don't know, with like a three second delay from what would then come out of my mouth. So there was always time to move the parts and pieces around, even up to and including the ability to like fill out assonance or consonance or alliteration or rhyme or whatever, or just be like, so there was sort of like a timeline between ideation and elocution that continues to sort of amaze because like, I'm just in on the ride with everybody else. So like, what I experienced is that when I hook up in serial with other people, something

more interesting comes out of my mouth, he sounds, and it's just as much fun and just as much of a revelation to me as it might be to anybody. Listen, how old are you? I think I'm 45. I'd have to do the math. And then when, like, okay, have you noticed any change from your thirts to your 40s in the way that you think that's a great question interesting um it may be that there's like more of the matrix it might be that like my peripheral vision in the neosphere is broader now and it sort of feels like any

strand or thread in indra's net as it were, like in the sort of matrix, is available to go down. So it's sort of like an infinite set of directional choices. And they all kind of wrap around and come back home, provided you don't drop the plot. You don't what? Provided you don't drop the plot, in which case you're a wool gatherer and you deserve to have a backhand. That's so good. Okay. Because I love the speed at which you are able to articulate and wind stories throughout to be able to keep attention and then to be able to stay the thread that you started to pull on, which is, it's rare. And it's like a very wonderful, engaging way

to listen to someone exercise thoughts from a whole swath of different colors. So I appreciate it. You know know it's really cool it's fun that's been my favorite part of knowing you is how you articulate ideas yeah yeah i mean for me for me the the best metaphor is like never lose the one you know like as a musician like that you always be able to come back to it and someone who's doing a screaming solo or doing really funky backup right as long as we know where the one is you can get off it you can play with it and for action sports athletes right it's your center so someone throws corks and spins and flips and twists it's like they stomp it on the back side of a bump like you're never losing the one and

that just feels like the dance of life and we can be super duper centered whether it's linguistically cognitively physiologically right then we get to play and the further we a field we go from the one but still come back and nail it ultimately the more delightful it is for all of us. And then your one is? I guess this, right? I mean, it's just this jam, you know, like this present moment. And then what gets in the way of you thinking clearly and quickly and dancing around the central ideas or the central spirit of what you're most curious about? I would suppose probably just when I unintentionally hurt people.

You know, the blind spots in my psychology, personality, directive, like if this is a bright light, does it burn or scorch? Like how do I learn to be present for others, how to not suck up all the oxygen and create space for those around me that may express differently how have you dealt how have you dealt with the frustration of other people's ticker working at a slower speed than yours um i would say just like the constant presence and learning of a woman that i've been with since i was 18, right? Since within two months of that first experience I

shared earlier, um, and two super clear children that don't give me an inch. So like just the, the constant dropped me to my knees, um, humility of how little I have figured out and how many beautiful people I love do it differently. So there was like, yeah, there was one, there was one thing I read once, probably in my thirties, they said, would you rather be right or effective? And I realized up until that moment, I had spent my entire life assuming they were the same thing while heavily favoring the first one and realized that I was often wildly ineffective. So it didn't matter what came to mind if I wasn't getting it on the ground with people I care about. Okay, two questions. And I want to come back to Stephen

in a minute. And so the first question is, are you more interested in making a large impact on many, not an impact on many or a large impact on few? I mean, honestly, I'd be interested in making a large impact on the many, you know, in the sense that if I had to choose depth over breadth, I'd choose depth. But my hope is particularly like with the stuff that, you know, the case we're making in Stealing Fires that, you know, depth, profound earth shattering depth is our birthright and is available to everyone. And that, you know, the sort of the keys to our cage are the keys to the kingdom. And if we can get that out, that information,

so people can go conduct their own experiments and see for themselves, my hope is we actually have a chance, we have a chance to, you know, to knock out both of those goals. Was stealing fire a way to help people unlock a method for depth? Is that the idea, right? Based on what you've come to learn or research, it's not a prescriptive book by any means. It's an illuminative book about how others have thought. Now, are you looking for, was that the central quest of the book?

And maybe each of you have a different response to that. Yeah, my sense, and then Stephen, let's hear from you, is that it is the ultimate Promethean trick, right. I mean, Prometheus was a trickster himself. And our trick, don't share this, friends and neighbors, was the idea, can we wrap ourselves in just enough neuroscience and incredible historical analysis to give off at least the whiff of a neutral third party narrator, when in fact, we are smuggling in dynamite to the bookstores and the idea would be hey folks if you can read the text and the subtext of this and you know enough to see what's going on here this is a manual for radical democratic waking up and staying that way and and that would be my personal hope is that more people can come to what we might call like an agnostic gnosticism like gnosis in the sense of direct experience of that which like an agnostic Gnosticism, like Gnosis in the sense of direct experience of that which is, but agnostic, like, and who the hell am

I to say? And I feel like that's probably what we need in a postmodern age to sort of, you know, as an antidote or as a progression from doctrinal bureaucratic, religious orthodoxy, most folks are rejecting that seeking something more direct, immediate and experiential. And if we can provide just people with the source code to diy it themselves go forth and prosper you know stay awake build stuff right that would be the goal for me and then you're starting with building the building yourself through exploratory ideas and practices yeah i mean that whole you know three part thing like wake up grow up and show up i mean if wake up is the is the instant flash of

ecstasy oh shit there's more and then the grow up is and I'm a little banged up and broken. I'm this fallible human being, duh, but I got work to do. So I go do that. And then finally show up, right, which isn't this end, I don't need to wait until I can levitate to, you know, give a homeless guy a nickel, you know, he can we can do all these things in sync, but ultimately and show up like what's my what's my walk on part in the war? What's my fearless stand for whatever it is that I'm, you know, I'm prepared to live and die for. And I

hope that that is like no more lives of quiet desperation, you know, let's, let's show up and play our part to the hill. Okay. Brilliant. Stephen, where do you want to take the next part of this conversation is so good. Like, I hate to set you up like this because like jamie and i are on a roll right now it's also you know i it's funny because jamie and i sort of disagree on this i mean jamie is sort of trying to so he said smuggle something into the bookstore and there's there's certainly that is going on in the book but honest to god i you know i think one of the things i've been i've been very good at over the course of my career and i think we do it again in stealing fire is just putting kind of clear language around stuff that everybody's been doing everybody kind of

understands it's going on inside all of us it's going on inside a culture we don't exactly have a language for it. We don't have the larger container. So we can't see all the pieces of the puzzle. And my quest has always been the same with this stuff is I want to get to the next set of questions. Right. I like a lot of the stuff that we're talking about in a steel link fire. Right. For example, let's just you know, one of the things we talk about is psychedelics. And the book is by no means about the psychedelic revolution at all. It's about a much bigger thing going on.

That's one of the things we covered. And, you know, everybody's all really excited that we're doing all this psychedelic research right now. And, wow, isn't it neat? You know, the truth of the matter is all we've done is rerun every single experiment we did back in the 60s. Before this stuff was outlawed, right, over 1,000 published papers had happened. And with the exception of Robin Card Harris's fMRI visualization of the brain on LSD

and the brain on psilocybin, which took place last year and the year before, which I think was fantastic and wonderful and actually was the next question, everything else that had gone on, all we did is we said, oh, well, we don't trust those goddamn hippies, so let's redo their work. And no, we don't even trust it, so let's do it again.

And we've been doing a lot of that. When it comes to non-ordinary states of consciousness, if you go back 100 years ago, what are we saying in Stealing Fire? We're saying that, hey, neurobiologically, flow states, awe, psychedelic experience, meditative states, contemplative states, all these things share phenomenal neurobiological similarities. They take us to the same place. They're very important. They heal trauma.

They unlock performance, blah, blah. William James said all this in 1902. 1902, he said the exact same thing. And we took a 100-year detour. We didn't believe him. So 100 years later, turns out that science is exactly correct correct and we're still not asking the next freaking question i want to get to the next set of questions what are your next ones what are you most fired up to ask i think you know for me it's always the same right it's the question you and i bonded over the very

first conversation jamie and i had which is that in these states of consciousness, and I, as you know, am the most like hardcore rational materialist guy you could possibly meet. And I can give you all the science behind all of them. But the question is still, where does the information come from? Because in these states of consciousness, we do seem to tap into a richer information feed than seems possible, right? And I'm, you know, I've had that experience. Forget intellectual, I've had it physically, right? Where I'm surfing and my body links together six or seven moves I don't know how to do

to get myself out of a bad situation, right? And you may say, okay, well, you've seen Kelly Slater throw a floater into a reverse 360 off the lip, but okay, maybe, but I certainly don't have the kinesthetic pattern in my body. So I did it to get out of trouble. Where does that information come from? That to me is one of the next set of questions. And how is that the next set when that's been one of the primary ones that I feel like you've

wrestled and grappled with for a long time? Well, but no, I've wrestled and grappled with for a long time. I've wrestled and grappled with it. I want other people to get... With Rise of Superman, I took flow as far as I could. It's full of my brain power. In that book, and I'm thanking Jamie's too. He definitely contributed. I can't not mention that. I wanted to establish a common language. I wanted to put all the research out in one place so other people could pick it up.

And I'm starting to see that there are Adam Ghazali at UCSF is starting to ask really great questions. Scott Barry Hoffman at the University of Pennsylvania is starting to ask really great questions. Scott Barrett Hoffman, University of Pennsylvania is starting to ask really great questions and further this stuff. And people like yourself who are taking these ideas and field testing them with the Seahawks and other people. Yes, finally. I'm freaking so excited about this stuff. But that's a lot of it for me. I'm sorry. Did I interrupt you, Jamie? Did you have a thought there?

Well, no, I mean, I was just going to say, I mean, this may not be politically correct, but hell, I think that's all we're all, we're all getting permission to say what we think now with no filter. So I'll say my, I just think, I think baby boomer worldviews are just tired and past it at this point with all due respect to all the ground they broke, but you can, there's something almost stale about the mindsets of both the experiential stuff, the psychological stuff, the practice, training, transformation, development stuff. And it feels like young Gen X into millennials, including that list that Stephen just mentioned of folks that are really starting to advance the research. It just feels like a new fresh wave of baseline assumptions and what's possible and what's next is getting us much closer to that next set of questions. And it's super exciting time.

It really is. And the question is, where does information come from? It is, it's troubling. It's troubling. And so it is troubling. And because I think it falls far below words at this point. And so I don't, I don't know the spiritual 11 spiritual, I'm sorry, religions across the world for have tried to answer that. And they've come up with some answers, you know, maybe they're right. Maybe we don't, maybe they're not, but science hasn't backed much of it up. And I know people are going to start screaming, wait a minute, you know,

you can't blend the two or yes, science is backing up spiritual thoughts. Like I know that, that there's so many varied thoughts about it it but the string theory of where information comes from it's it's not it's not present at least for me you know it's amazing and we talk about this stealing fire we sort of do a kind of a brief history of neurotheology right the science of spiritual experience and i've i was lucky enough I got to know Dr. Andrew Newberg who conducted the first kind of fMRI studies on meditating monks in the 90s. And I got to know him pretty much right after it was done.

So I've sort of had a front row seat to this research. And the amazing thing is in 1997, Dr. Newberg, Andy, you decoded cosmic unity, right? The feeling of becoming one with everything. And he figured out, by the way, no, this does not mean anything about the bigger mystery you just figured out that the experience is biologically mediated it's created by a part of our brain that separates self from other and during extreme focus it goes quiet so we can no longer separate self from other and the brain concludes you know at this moment you're one with everything. But as sort of we document in Stealing Fire, it's 20 years later.

Pretty much every type of meditation has been looked at, all chanting, singing, prayer, speaking in tongues, near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences. Shahar Arzi at Hebrew University decoded the doppelganger effect, the seeing of one's double, which is one of the rarest spiritual experiences in history. And then he figured out how to build a VR simulation so anybody can experience it. So in 20 years, you know, in 1996, you walk into a doctor's office, you say, Doc, I feel one with everything. And you were going to the nuthouse. And in 1997, suddenly you're like, oh, wow, there's biology here. And 20 years later, and pretty much all of the mystical states that have been decoded,

we have an understanding that we've come nowhere on where the information comes from, the bigger questions. But the actual biology, these experiences that religions for thousands of years have been saying, hey, this is real, and they show up in every culture before mass communication existed, that sort of should have made you pause and wonder. But we still haven't gotten to that next question. But tiny, quick, funny story on everything I just said. My friend, Salim Ismail, who is the original founding director of Singularity University,

founder of Exponential Organizations, literally just presented on this neurotheology stuff a lot of the ideas I just mentioned to you at the Vatican. Afterwards, he was pulled aside and by a very high-ranking official, he said, I'd like you to know I think the last time there's this much

heresy has been spoken in the Vatican, it was Copernicus. All he was doing was giving him a rundown on what was in stealing fire. So we've certainly done our job on that front. Oh, very cool. Okay, cool. You know, I was fascinated for a long time and it didn't go anywhere. I didn't have the right team or funding or resources, but there is a group that's beginning to pick this conversation up, up in Seattle. And I'll share this about, I'll share this with you guys at some other time, but how much, like where do

thoughts come from is different than information, right? But where, what happens, how much do they weigh? Where do they go? Once you expend a thought, what is that about? Is there any materialism around a thought or is it going to stay completely invisible? Much like many of the things that we couldn't see before, but now we can see. And so I, you know, there's a group up in Seattle that's kind of pushing into that a little bit and you guys might be really interested in hooking into it. Wait a minute. That was the first time I met you. I don't know how many years it's been at this point, but that was your fundamental question, right? That from the very first time the very first time I met you, I want to know where the information comes from. You've been asking where the thoughts come from.

What do they weigh? What are they made of? What do they eat? Where do they go? So they're poking at your questions finally. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I don't know what the layers of influence on that or directionality is, but I do know that when I heard what they're trying to accomplish, I said, holy shit, I didn't have the money and the resource that these people do.

And so there's, it's starting to happen, which is pretty phenomenal, isn't it? Like, so maybe we come up with nothing, but maybe there's something really fun there. But don't you want to look right? Aren't you just happy that we're looking? Yeah, that's exactly right. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that. Their bedding, it's incredibly soft, like next level soft. And what surprised me the most is how much it actually helps regulate temperature. I tend to run warm at night and these sheets have helped me sleep cooler and more consistently,

which has made a meaningful difference in how I show up the next day for myself, my family, and our team here at Finding Mastery. It's become part of my nightly routine. Throw on their lounge pants or pajamas crawl into bed under their sheets and my nervous system starts to settle they also offer a 100 night sleep trial and a 10-year warranty on all of their bedding which tells me tells you that they believe in the long-term value of what they're creating if you're ready to upgrade your rest and turn your bed into a better recovery zone, use the code FINDINGMASTERY for 40% off at CozyEarth.com. That's a great discount for our community. Again, the code is FINDINGMASTERY for 40% off at CozyEarth.com.

Finding Mastery is brought to you by Caldera Lab. I believe that the way we do small things in life is how we do all things. And for me, that includes how I take care of my body. I've been using Caldera Lab for years now. And what keeps me coming back, it's really simple. Their products are simple and they reflect the kind of intentional living that I want to build into every part of my day. And they make my morning routine really easy. They've got some great new products I think you'll be interested in. A shampoo, conditioner, and a hair serum. With Caldera Lab, it's not about adding more. It's about choosing better. And when your day demands clarity and energy and presence, the way you prepare for it matters.

If you're looking for high quality personal care products that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. And so with that back to stealing fire, what, who do you hope reads the book? Like, and then, and then I want to make sure that I'm clear what you hope happens for people that do read the book. Yeah. I mean, you know, and again, Stephen and I have some, some variations in our perspectives on this. The folks I imagine it being best suited for, the first are just straight up Prometheans. I mean, people who are already out there tearing shit up, who have hooked up, who tune their

states of consciousness, whether it's skydiving or electronic festivals to do a daily meditation practice, to float tanks, to whatever it is they're doing, right? They're already doing all this stuff. And this is just the handbook for their tribe oh yeah by the way validation a few more you know stories connecting the dots of subcultures i wasn't aware of but now i can understand we're all playing the same game so like that would be step one prometheans but the next the next two for me are the ones i probably care about the most they're also a much larger number of people which is the first is sort of closeted ecstatics. You know, people who

have made their, you know, who have put aside childish things, right? Who have gone into adulthood with responsibilities and lives and wives and things that matter, right? And mortgages and kids. And yet there is this part of them that holds the candle for those moments when they felt most alive. And that could be the surfboard in the garage or the guitar that they're reluctant to send to Goodwill or the yearning to get back with their old friends and just blow it out for a weekend. And they're trying to stay connected to themselves, but they may feel a lot of guilt, a lot of shame, sort of this torn between don't be a Peter Pan, time to grow up, all that, those kinds of social messages for them to actually realize, no, you're seeking actually at a point. It might have always been focused. It might not have always been mature and responsible, but the seeking and where you were trying to get

is a legit destination. And it has all the benefits that you intuited and probably some more. So just giving people permission to securely annex that part of their seeking and learning, which is like we have, it is our birthright to occupy healthily and inhabit multiple states or ranges of consciousness and not just be locked in the singular prison house of 21st century normal. What do you hope happens for people that have the, I go to work, I come home and play with the kids and I watch TV and then I go to sleep and then I wake up again and I go to work and I play with the kids for a little bit and then I eat and I go to sleep. What do you hope happens for that? That very common. And I'm not saying it's bad, right? That is like, that's the routine for the majority. Yeah. That's okay. I, you know, like, I think there's like, you know, I say this all the time to, to, you know, I, I, the things we know for sure, you get one shot at this life and you're going to spend a third of it asleep. Those are, those things are non-negotiable facts. So to me, the only question that matters is, are you going to be fully awake for the rest of it and honest to god if you want

to i always say jamie just told me who he wants this book to be for and who should read it my interest i i am interested in the people the bleeding edge that you know the people on the very front end of any movement up 15 percent who are driving the stuff forward and then i'm really interested in the trailing 30%. I want, I'm interested in the people who, A, were on the leading edge or got their ass kicked so badly, they're now on the back end, or the people who never, ever, ever got a shot. The folks in the middle, the folks who are living the life that you just described, if they're totally fine with that, great, cool. Keep going, right? I like, you don't need me. I don't need you. We're we're awesome. We're awesome.

But, you know, I think I have I have never I well, I take that. I rarely meet somebody who's living that life who is actually satisfied. They're mostly living that life because they don't really know how to get to the life they want. And I think the interesting thing about Stealing Fire and the point, one of the biggest points is the people in this book are living the most fulfilling, meaningful, powerful, purpose-driven lives possible. They're not all super rich. They're not all super talented.

They're not all super brilliant. They're not all super talented. They're not all super brilliant. But they're applying these same techniques and they're having incredibly deep, powerful, meaningful lives that keep getting better and better over time. Right. And if you measure them objectively, you give them tests of quality of life skills and things like that, they end up off the charts for overall life satisfaction. So I think the point is, A, that's available to anybody. If you like doing what you're doing, if that is fulfilling for you, absolutely cool. Keep doing it. No, say they don't say, they say you mother fill in the blank. You guys are like, I feel so judged by you guys because you're saying there's a better way, but listen, I'm a skill guy. I make things with my

hands. And if I'm not making something with my hand, I'm not feeding for my, I'm not providing food for my family. And you know, this is that. And so let me back up that thought for just a moment. It's like, when you go into mindfulness communities, there's this, I'm better than you. No, we are better than them. When you go into a sports psychology, performance psychology, it's like, we know better than them. You go into a yoga community. It's like, we know better than those. And so it's like, I want, I want to hear you guys. Cause you're very practical people that are very smart and pushing on the edges. How are you trying to bridge this gap between the extraordinary and the man and woman that says, listen, it sounds great, but you guys like there's no possible way.

I can't do that. And they're miserable and they're tired and they're depressed and they're anxious and they're not being fulfilled. I just would love to hear you guys riff on that a little bit. Yeah. I mean, you know, the simplest is just to say any of these skills or techniques can be regressed so that there's an infinitely progressive on-ramp no matter where you, no matter where you are, no matter how banged up and broken, right. Including right. You know,

war trauma, childhood abuse, sexual trauma, like ecstasis, these movements outside of ourselves with therapeutic support, right. Within a constellation of care that you might need can help you grow mend and heal faster so that the idea is the least of my brothers and sisters right we are all and you know we all have a seat at this table so tell me about on-ramp tell me what do you mean by on-ramp i love that phrase you just said what do you mean right i mean so again to you know to go back to those, those therapeutic studies, right. It could start with, I mean, the simplest, simplest on-ramp I can ever think of is just hot baths, right. I mean, regular soaking like that used to be, that was something, the Greeks, the Turks,

the Romans, the Japanese, the Scandinavians, right. I mean, there's so many cultures of bathing in the world that have all now been replaced by a two minute standup shower on the way to work. So just start with soaking our broke-ass bones in a warm bath. It's a good thing, right? And that's as simple as it gets. And then breathing. Can I just focus on slow, steady breathing for five minutes a day?

Like that alone. You can add biofeedback and smart tech. You could add meditative technologies and something to say or think as you do the breathing. But just start soaking. Start breathing. Start moving. Start stop practicing gratitude start making love start getting some sunshine you know sleeping more like all those things fill our tank and they leave us more likely to have those moments that you know it's basically you sort of just put your ego to sleep with a high vitality state it's no longer y yammering. It's no longer on high alert. And we

just, we can get to those moments incrementally and progressively. Love what you just did in to make this very, I don't know, kind of highfalutin conceptual ideas about a better way of living really concrete and simple. And when you say on-ramp, what are we, what are we ramping on to? What is the freeway or highway or whatever? I think, you know, I mean, yeah, it's funny to me, like hashtag do the obvious, right? Sunrise, watch the sunset, be good to each other, smile, dance, laugh, cook, right? I mean, I mean, there's no mystery, like human culture is steeped in all sorts of awesome. We just need to go back and remember and revive a lot of it, you know, but the on-ramp is ultimately a, to a life with like full and open hearts,

right? Where we are living fearlessly. Um, B the slightly more technical thing is that as if, and as we get better and better at not living from just my psychological stories, a little, you know, fight or flight behind my eyes, trying to be seek validation and approval and avoid pain and judgment. But like saying, i'm actually a thinking feeling sensing human being here right then we kind of go over this watershed where you know i used to just be in my in my head all the time with moments where i get out of it blessed relief three seconds five seconds till i think oh this is so awesome and i get kicked out and at some point there's a continental divide there's a watershed and there becomes long stretches of time where we're just living and just being sensing thinking feeling and only occasionally do we get a sucker punch and go and we're back down in our egoic

identity and so like if that's of interest right if that you know if that sort of existence outside neurotic psychology is seems relevant, seems potentially valuable. It absolutely goes there and it goes there a step at a time with no skipping steps. It's, it's, it's, you know, it's the human experience. Beautiful and brilliant. And what's the dark side? Where, where do we, what's the ugly side of this pursuit or the ugly side of pursuing? Yeah, I guess it's the pursuit. Where have you guys found those traps in the darker side of pursuing yeah i guess it's the pursuit where have you guys found those traps in the darker side of of this experience or this way of living like you know the the you know stealing fire is essentially a book about non-ordinary states of consciousness unlocking

higher levels of performance surprise not the first time in history we've made this discovery, right? In fact, pretty much every generation has come to this. What we're saying is it's bigger now than ever before, and it's more precise, and it's got more layers and everything else. But hedonism is the age-old pitfall right and um these these states are sticky they're very very very sticky and you know for example when you know i'm sorry is that code for addicting yeah it's code it's code for somewhere between way too much fun a little bit and addictive right and okay that's a real problem. Even when we see it just with flow work,

with action adventure sport athletes who just start chasing the state and chasing the state at any expense. And we just see in flow, and there's studies that back this up, that the longer you pursue flow, the higher your risk profile goes, the bigger risks you will take, right?

That happens with flow. We see people turn into bliss junkies where the high of the flow state, the high of any of these states is so intense. They don't want to do anything unless they're feeling that way, right? If I can't go with the flow, I won't do anything at all. And they end up, you know, becoming lazy in the name of ecstasis and things along those lines. So those are, you know, obvious, obvious dangers. And then it sort of just goes from there, right, Jamie? Yeah, I mean, you know, this is probably not the most technical psychological explanation, but it, you know, I'll just sort of say it straight, which is when you get fundamentally proficient at cultivating these states more or less on demand, right, through the variety mechanisms that we have today, like you really should not die wondering at this point there's 17 different ways

to blow yourself sky high and people are starting to do that and the biggest peril i've seen is when people start cultivating those high energy high information states and then they they they loop it through their ego so rather than using it to burn off or or clarify their integrated psychological self system they actually hyper animated and so what will happen is um it can it can lead to aggrandizement so megalomaniacal inflation i am all that i am a golden god right so that's clearly a route they can get into way off the res and metaphysics you know so if there's more to this world than just waking state consensus bound 3d reality then it must all just be in a notion of figment of imagination or mind and that you know and they sort of lose the stack of of reality tunnels right which we're all

operating in concurrently um and then the other one is sort of like ecstasis at 80 you can end up with people who seek the experience. And this is back to that, where does the information come from? At least in our experience, when you break through into those states of ecstasis, it does two things. It says, hey, you're in God's fair line back pocket, man. You're whole, you're healthy, you're exactly where you need to be. It's awesome. And that's all the beautiful neurochemistry, the oxytocin, the serotonin, the loss of the inner critic, all that kind of stuff. And at the same time, it's like, and you could use a little work. Here's the laundry list of all the places you're full of shit, you're contradicting, you're hypocritical, you're broken, banged up, literally on every level. You know, everything from spiritual, psychological,

emotional, relational, physiological, you feel it all. And so the question is, is how many people do what Stephen cautioned against, which has become the bliss junkie, which is like, oh, I saw that stuff. I look away from it. I try to ignore it. And I go back and try and ring the bell as fast as I can again, because that part felt awesome. And so I think it's the notion of like, you know, ecstasis plus catharsis equals gnosis. You know, if we can have our peak breakthrough that leaves us feeling whole, but with our work to do, that's the catharsis, that's the deep break open heel. And then that equals an abiding sense of that, which is, but you've got to do the catharsis part in addition to the ecstasis otherwise you just do shadow shadow looping

on hyperdrive also you know i i also think like you know these are we've been talking about where does the information come from so like i mean the term and jamie doesn't jamie does not like this term and i don't blame him. We haven't come up with a better one, but inflow in these states, you get what I call the high perch experience. You get to pot yourself goes away right towards your brain, the general yourself. So turn off. You can see farther over the vistas of your life. You can actually get a greater vision for your life it's amazing you can and then you come back all fired up and you know you're feeling great and you think you're going to get it done in a week

and you've actually managed to see like five years worth of work and after two weeks you're totally discouraged and burnt out and i like that's i'm not i don't want to say that's a danger but i think that's one of the one of the big issues like this this this kind of path it does it never excuses us from the work as jamie pointed out right the integration stuff doesn't matter how big the peaks are unless you're doing the integration work right you're you're you're screwed it's the you know surfing may produce a tremendous amount of flow states right but that does not mean everybody on the pro surfer tour is a buddha right clearly that is not the case right yeah can you know can you guys push against this a little bit is that let's use

alcohol for an example but you could map on any drug you wanted i, is that when some people take drink alcohol, while they're drinking, there's a social lubrication, they're inebriated just a bit in their saying things or feeling things or expressing things and movements and ideas and gestures that they normally wouldn't do, right? That's kind of liquid courage, if you will. And we know how it works on the brain. Well, we have a sense of how it works on the brain. And then the next day, right? We haven't earned the right to be that close to somebody, but we were close. We were engaged with them. And I'm talking about social setting stuff. The next day, it's as if it didn't completely happen, but it did happen. Okay. And mapped on top of that. And I'll tell you why I'm saying that is because we weren't completely authentically ourselves. We had something on board that was helping us access a part of ourselves that was maybe lying

dormant. Okay. So that's concept one. Concept two is that now we're dealing with a hangover effect and our brain doesn't work quite as fast. And you know, there's a recovery process that's taking place as the hangover is existing. So I think we could map any drug on top of that is that you experience something that is different, maybe dormant, maybe outside of our reach. It's not completely authentically ourselves because we needed an added substance to reach it. And the second, there's a hangover from just about every drug, if not all drugs. So how do you guys talk about those two things as far as reaching these experiences that are life altering? So specifically vulnerability and hangover? Well, it's, I think it's more than

vulnerability, but that's a cool word to map to begin this conversation. Yes. So the idea that like I showed or shared a part of myself that I'm unwilling to own fully come light of day. And I want to kind of re-grab that territory. And I also might be physically feeling less than fully resourced. That's right. And on the second part be physically feeling less than fully resourced. That's right. And on the second part, when I'm not physically resourced the way that I want to be, is that I don't do as much. I'm not vibrant. I'm not fully alive because I'm dealing with that, the feeling awful. And so if I saw five years into the future of what could be, and day one, I feel awful. Well, maybe i should take the drug again maybe i should drink again but i mean the simple the simplest answer that is do better drugs i mean you know come on

there's just no reason like i mean that's always a good role of good richard richard's famously said that in his autobiography it's like the only reason i'm live is because we had such bloody good drugs you know people just gave us all the best shit so you know if you were feeling crummy like never never rob peter to pay paul i'd say that's just a baseline premise is that if it's coming out of your ass the next day, the next morning, if you're not waking up the next day, more fired up to be here and more, more enthused and inspired to do the work in front of you, you're doing it wrong. And there really aren't, there aren't, there aren't, you don't need to engage in substances that take it so thoroughly out of your ass that you have less gas in the tank than when you started. I would say just steer clear of that.

Listen to your body and never go near them. And ayahuasca, interestingly, with the MAOI inhibitor that is the second ingredient to ayahuasca, it actually boosts serotonin levels for up to five to seven days afterwards so that's why it's been this part of the reason why it's been so effective with dealing folks dealing with opioid and alcohol addiction is that it gives them kind of a a warm afterglow come down where they can do a lot of extended integrating and so that that actually has a benefit in a sort of therapeutic context for precisely the opposite you know problem that you were just highlighting okay so i'm like yeah please i got yeah i want to jump in on this. And I'm not going to specifically talk about drugs. I'm going to talk about flow for a second.

Because flow is this huge high and there's a deep low, right? You exhaust the neurochemicals and flow. And I think that low serves a fundamental evolutionary purpose. And I'm using that word specifically. When we're in flow and when we're in any of these states, right, we have a lot of norepinephrine and dopamine. So pattern recognition goes through the roof. We're generating massive amounts of ideas all the time. And oh my God, they're visionary ideas. They're flying out of my butt. And the next day, all of those feel good neuro

chemicals are gone. And what a wonderful thing. I get into a flow state. I generate all kinds of writing ideas. I do all kinds of writing. And then the next morning, when I'm not in that flow state, when I've got no more feel-good neurochemicals, I go back and I read what I wrote, and I use that time to edit. Because if I still like what I wrote, stone cold, sober, no flow state,

no feel-good neurochemicals. I know it's good. I think the downside on the back end of these kind of ecstatic highs, what science now shows is that they now talk about the urge towards intoxication, the urge to get out of our head as our fourth evolutionary driver. This is Ronald Siegel's work at UCLA, and he says, you know, it's essentially as powerful as our first three drives for sex and sustenance and shelter. And the reason is it helps us problem solve. It helps us become incredibly creative, right? It gets us out of ruts. And that's so fundamental to all species. So we have this urge because it is the very tool

evolution designed for hyper creativity and problem solving and things like that. But you want to fail safe on the back end. You want to be able to look back over all your neat, fancy ideas and go, okay, this is the good one. These other ones are kind of crazy, but this is the good one. On a certain level, even if this is not the reason, I think those dark lows, if you can avoid taking the emotion personally are incredibly useful okay that's a i mean it it feels like you're functionally using something um that is a consequence to the experience that you're wanting to create once you ingest something to create that experience and we we all know that like, say, alcohol, not alcohol, let's go to cocaine or ecstasy,

that when you take that drug the next day, you're not right. And it's not that you just went back to baseline, what you were the day before you took the drug. You've gone below it, right? Let me ask you a question. good question as a as a agro type a type a lot of the time you know i find that the day after a substance a trip and experience when i'm subnormal and i'm forced to take a day off forced because i can't function to me that's wonderful it's a recovery day i would never ever get any other way because i would never give it to myself but there is a force so once again i think it's a great wonderful thing and i

think i honestly god i think a lot of like for a lot of type a types i think the hangover even though it feels crappy i think it's sort of they're looking for permission to totally shut it down and recover for a day so you may say that sounds crazy but yeah well i mean and i'm also going to push back on on just the the premise in general which is truly i think i think if you are engaging in ecstatic practice of any shape or form that is leaving you feeling lower than when you went into it, you're doing it wrong. You're choosing the wrong combination of tools. It doesn't need to be that way. Because I feel like there's this implicit guilt, shame, crypto puritanism wrapped into all that. Like, oh, I did something I shouldn't. I got to pay the piper. Now it's my penance. Or I really not

regret or have to diminish or include that against any light or insight that I experienced. And my sense is that there's a ton of mechanisms these days, which are nothing but net and ideally are accretive and propel us further forward so that when we come into the next morning, we're better integrated. We're more focused. We meet the day with clarity and conviction that we didn't have not fuzz not not not because i want to make sure we talk about that because that is like the underlying trap and i love how you mix the puritan kind of piece into there with the biology because i was strictly

talking about the biology like neurochemically the cost of doing a substance that brings you high and then there's a drop off below baseline and not the Puritan piece, but I get, I love how you wrap that, that into the fold. That's why I'm so attracted to mindfulness and sport and conversation and deprivation tanks and, and, and, and because they provide this non-necessary additive to experience something that is still within, but separated from or integrated with, however you would use that language. So brilliant. Okay, cool. So that's, I think, what I wanted to learn from you guys. And I know that there's so much more that you have to offer, but the one thing is, what do you hope people will take away from your insights

from your research around stealing fire that's you chief oh i was waiting for you so i could have time to think i mean i think you know in a nutshell um that a full full range of human experience is is available to all of us and is a fundamental birthright. That for the first time in history, it's openly and readily accessible to all of us. We've cut out the middlemen and we've demystified the mythic. And that it's potentially time for us all to wake each other up and do what we're here to do just in time to write a ripping ending to this chapter of the human experience. Yeah, but don't say anything, Stephen. That's good. That was really good, Jamie. Ditto, what he said. Ditto, yeah, that's really good. Awesome. Okay, so both you

guys, Stephen, I've asked you this question already. No, no. Before I ask you the question on mastery, what one or two habits do you have that you would love to share with other people that have been fundamental for you to explore the edges and the boundaries and the meaning in your life that you just spoke to? That's for both you guys. Habits. You know, I mean, for me, it sounds so crazy, but just staying in tune with your natural rhythms. When I get up, normally my body will wake up really early. I'm an extreme lark in the technical parlance but that means like 3 30 in the morning if left to my own devices my

body will start waking up and that doesn't fit comfortably in society's narrative right that's a that's but and I think a lot of people's you know some people are night also and I think one of the things that I've done is just honor my own natural rhythms and really, really try to kind of adhere to them and use use my own time clock to my advantage. I do my best writing from three thirty four o'clock in the morning till seven or eight a.m. And by the way, that's it's not easy. Right. Like when you're getting up at that time and i have to go out into the world nobody else is on that schedule that schedule is absurd right so i have to twist myself around a lot to make all the other things work but i that that to me has been one of

the most powerful habits and the other thing is putting for me action sports hurling myself down mountains at high speeds at the center of my life, committing to them, saying, no, no, this is more important than working. This is more important than all those other things that feel more important because if I do this, especially if it kicks me into floor, I can challenge myself or push everything else works. So you ask for two habits, committing to the action I'm committing to my own basic rhythms again I don't think like there's they're not super fancy but I think those things have made a huge difference for me Jamie what do you think your life well it might it might be three

starting like baby to big but uh the first is just uh daily gratitude at dinner with family um really really forcing and pausing to accentuate the positive because I'm so run and gun and most of us are and it's just so easy for me to be constantly focusing on what's next. So to slow down and acknowledge that has been a life-changing family improving daily practice. Another would just be in the context of long-term relationship, make love, like literally learn the neurochemistry of attraction and magnetism and all these things and like love is a verb it's an action so actually engage that don't worry about who socks are where who did the dishes i mean you know my partner might have a different opinion on that but um you know like actually feed the holy in that core

relationship and do it on a daily basis and then the final is just like wild ass natural environments and high grade psychedelics. You cannot beat sitting under a full moon under snow-capped mountains in the middle of the wilderness, you know, in a hot spring for reconnecting. Like we deserve those experiences from time to time. You guys are awesome. You know, yeah, you guys are great. Where can we find out more about your work and give us the social platforms and all that good stuff to find your work?

You can find out tons about the book at stealing fire book.com. And also the flow genome project.com. And both are just kind of jam-packed with lots of free and useful goodies for anybody. Yeah, congratulations on this book, guys. Seriously, congratulations. I hope it's everything that you hope for to create a dent or an off-axis spin into the universe and to create a better good, whatever that might mean for people. So congratulations. And then where,

what are your social handles? Let's just announce those really quickly. At Steven underscore Kotler on Twitter. I am emphatically not on Twitter, but you can definitely reach us just at flow genome on Facebook as well. Flow genome on Facebook. And Mike, before we hang up, I just, you know, I got a shout out to you for everything you do. Your podcast, there's a lot of podcasts out there. There really are.

And I love, you know, I love what you bring. Nobody asks as weird questions as you do. Nobody comes in from such great angles um and you know as i as i said before i still think you're one of the wisest smartest most amazing people working in the in in this space and it's always a treat to spend time with uh i'm grateful to hear that so thank you thank you yeah and your and your your community is awesome mean, the care and concern and respect that they treat, the inquiry you and each other with is noticeable just by scanning your feed. So you're doing seven shades of right on that one. Oh, it is like, seriously, it's unbelievable.

That part is crazy. And for anyone listening, it's at findingmastery.net forward slash community. And it's on Facebook. It's a private page. We'll accept you in there. It is ridiculous. So people are going to have questions for you guys. So I hope that you can spend some time and get on there and answer the questions.

And they are supporting each other. And they're making commitments out loud to each other about their pursuit of mastery and the habits that they're building and the ways they want to think. And Stephen, I'm so glad you talked about that you are attuned to your natural rhythm because I can't tell you how many people have said, Stephen Kotler, like getting up at three 30 in the morning. That's amazing. I'm trying it right now. And then they call me back in two weeks are like, I'm such a failure. This is unbelievable. I can't do it. So I'm so glad that you made that stitch. I mean, like, I'm not, this is not me being some kind of like anything. Like you have to understand,

I am a lunatic Jewish man with a crazy neurotic brain that my brain just starts going at 3.30 in the morning. So my choice is like lie in bed and think all kinds of negative, crazy thoughts or get up and start writing so I could purge it out of me, right? Like there is nothing bad badass going on here. This is self-preservation, man.

That's brilliant. And so in the background to this conversation, I'm listening to how many pearls of wisdom, like, you guys are dropping. And there's so many. And that's why we fired up the other podcast called Minutes on Mastery. So it's nuggets and pearls of wisdom in under three minutes. And you guys just littered this podcast with pearls of wisdom. And then so Jamie, we've already asked Stephen this question, and we'll close with this is how do you describe or articulate the concept of mastery? How do you think about it? Yeah, I mean, for starters,

it feels like, you know, the horizon line you're always sailing towards and never arriving at. And then to me, it just seems like sort of the relentless pursuit of novelty. It's just that idea of just continued open-hearted, open-minded learning. And the people who are furthest along it, all the cliches are true. They tend to be the most humble. They tend to know how much they don't know. And it feels like that. It feels just like setting your sights on a distant star,

like second star to the left and straight on till sunrise. That to me is master. Oh God, I love it. Okay, guys, I love knowing that you're in the universe. I love knowing that you're, uh, that we're friends and I'm wishing you guys the best success in this book and all the four things that potentially we get to do together. So thanks for your time. And I hope you guys have a great, great rest of the day.

Boom, man. Thank you, Mike. Okay. Okay. Bye. boom man thank you mike okay okay bye all right thank you so much for diving into another episode of finding mastery with us our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show,

the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter we send out every Wednesday. Punch over to findingmastery.com slash newsletter to sign up.

The show wouldn't be possible without our sponsors and we take our recommendations seriously. And the team is very thoughtful about making sure we love and endorse every product you hear on the show. If you want to check out any of our sponsor offers you heard about in this episode, you can find those deals at findingmastery.com slash sponsors. And remember, no one does it alone. The door here at Finding Mastery is always open to those looking to explore the edges and the reaches of their potential so that they can help others do the same. So join our community, share your favorite episode with a friend and let us know how we can continue to show up for you.

Lastly, as a quick reminder, information in this podcast and from any material on the Finding Mastery website and social channels is for information purposes only. If you're looking for meaningful support, which we all need, one of the best things you can do is to talk to a

licensed professional. So seek assistance from your healthcare providers. Again, a sincere thank you for listening. Until next episode, be well, think well, keep exploring.